Quick Recap: Sep 19, 2023 SB Work Study – SI and SB member replacement, Levies, and more
by Jenn Askew
The Tahoma school board held a six+ hour work study/retreat yesterday (Sept 19), starting at 9am, to more thoroughly discuss some of the bigger topics the district is currently tackling. They hold a few of these every year, and they are open to the public and streamed live. The video from this meeting should eventually be available here. I was able to watch the stream sporadically, so here’s what I was able to glean.
Succession Planning and Appointment(s)
I came in partially through this segment, but I think I caught the gist. There were two topics: The superintendent search and the process to replace the two resigning board members.
Our current superintendent, Mike Hanson, is retiring at the end of this school year. The board appears to have decided to go with a search firm to find a new superintendent. The conversation at this meeting revolved around what they are looking for in that search firm, and the timeline they’d like to see for community involvement. Director Carreon expressed a desire to have input from at least teachers, principals, and PTA/Os as early as possible, even for the firm selection itself. Director Wiggins requested a longer list of options for firms to hire. They are hoping to discuss firm selection in October at a work study and make the choice in October or November. (This is just for the Search Firm itself, not hiring a replacement superintendent.)
The board, with district advice on legalities, then discussed their options for replacing the two resigning school board candidates, Malia Hollowell and Haley Pendergraft. The top two takeaways: One, they are going to wait until after the election to determine what to do with Malia’s seat, which is position number three.
Two, for Haley’s seat, which is position number one, they are looking at a very quick timeline for appointing her replacement. If you’re interested in applying for this position, you should get your resume together now and start preparing to interview! Look at the Board Director Districts maps to determine if you live in the correct location. They expect to post the application on September 20th, and the following Draft Timeline was proposed. (These dates could change based on availability of the board members, and the decisions made at the end of the meeting regarding their schedule for this school year.)
Continuous Improvement – Teaching and Learning Directors and Equity Director
The audio for this portion wasn’t great, so I’m just going to recap what I understood from this presentation. The district has hired a consultant from Studer Education named Bonita Coleman. She’s working with the Teaching and Learning department to identify some focused goals to pull out from the Tahoma CARES goals to work on immediately. The two they’re looking at are Higher Expectations and Climate & Culture. Director Carreon asked why Diversity and Equity weren’t on the short list, and Gretchen Schlag and Lindsay Henry, the Directors of T&L, answered that those should be woven throughout everything the district does at this point.
When asked what metrics the district will be looking at to measure success, Equity Director Tony Davis said they’d be looking at the district’s report card, furnished by OSPI (though he might have actually been talking about the Score Card that will be a product of the site plans, which they discussed later in the meeting. I might have misunderstood.) Carreon asked that the district find specific goals that make sense for our district, rather than just using the more generic report card. There seemed to be broad agreement that this was necessary, and was part of the goal of working with the consultant.
Correction: The board is actually choosing two goals to focus on for each of the CARES goals, then will choose or combine these to create SMART goals. All five of the initial Tahoma CARES goals is represented in this plan.
Lunch break
Site Plan Presentations
It sounds like they’re rejiggering how these site plans work, with a focus on smaller meetings amongst the teachers first to pull out areas of concern and more data capture on what’s working and what’s not on a more system-wide basis. Meetings with the school board will also change, and Director Wiggins responded that he expects these plans to continue to evolve as the district works with Studer Education. He expressed the board’s ongoing concern with accessing data, and understanding their relationship to that data, and feels that these changes will help the board move forward on both counts.
Superintendent Hanson expressed his belief that this will make the work of an incoming superintendent easier, as well. (Hanson is retiring at the end of this school year.)
Assessed Valuations/Levies
This was a presentation by Chief Financial Officer Bill Hernandez and Public Relations Director AJ Garcia, with input from the board’s Finance Liaison, Director Miller, followed by a lengthy discussion with many questions to the district from the board. This is a follow-up to the discussion they had at their May retreat.
The district is now expecting a significant decrease in property (homes and commercial) valuations over the next two years in our district, and this will impact the total amount that the district can receive in levies. WA state limits school districts to a maximum levy rate of $2.50/$1000 in assessed valuation, so when home and business property prices decrease then so, too, does the maximum levy amount that the district can receive. There was an attempt to raise this limit during the past legislative session, but it failed.
With the expected decrease in property values, the district now thinks that a levy at the maximum of $2.50/$1000 would bring in $51.7 million dollars over the first two years, or $105.7 million over four years. At the May retreat they determined the “glide path” for the next few years of the district. At that time they determined a need for $58 million over the first two years of the replacement levy, or $135 million over four years. With the new valuations, in order to receive the same level of funding, the district would have to ask for ~$3.20/$1000, which is above the rate allowed by the state.
There was extensive conversation about what these numbers would mean for the district, how to communicate this with the public, and the expected timeline for the board to decide on the amount to ask for on the ballot in February. (The current levies expire next year.) There is a tentative plan to hold a Levy Hearing in early October, where the community can provide input and ask questions. (This date is not firm.)
Because of the unknowns, the district is recommending that the board seek only two year replacement levies (EP&O and Technology), rather than the full four years allowed by the state. This would give the district a chance to reassess with more information two years down the road.
(This was not discussed at the meeting, since they covered it in their July work study, but for some context around these numbers: The current levy amount yielded roughly $18 million in the 2022-23 school year. The district was going $9.4 million negative that year, in an effort to spend down the fund balance, but that fund is running out. The district will need to raise the total levy amount to make up that difference going forward, which means $27.4 million/yr in today’s dollars. This assumes no cost increases – related to enrollment or program costs – in the meantime. You can view the latest budget at this link. Click the PDF.)
The Rest
The rest of this meeting that I was able to watch consisted of a brief discussion about upcoming conferences, a lengthy conversation about scheduling the rest of the board meetings/other responsibilities for this school year, then a conversation about the board assignments which will need to be determined in October (this is president, VP, who is assigned to each school, etc.)
One of the conferences mentioned was the WSSDA General Assembly. We do want to take this chance to again remind people about the proposed WSSDA changes. The WSSDA General Assembly is coming up, in Spokane (with a hybrid option) on Sept 22, and we have recently found out that our district is not yet signed up to attend. We need a representative there, who can vote for policies that suit our district’s needs. WSSDA is an impactful policy-writing body for school districts in our state, and a powerful lobbying force in Olympia.
Quick Update: We reached out to our school board about the WSSDA conference and received a response from board president Miller today. Director Carreon is the Legislative Rep for the board, and was planning to attend the meeting but had not registered yet. That’s now done, so we’ll have a representative at this important meeting.
This meeting summary was written by a member of the Tahoma Values Team. Do you have an article you would like to publish on our site? Please contact Tahoma Values at TahomaValues@gmail.com
