The outcome of Washington’s long-awaited McCleary deal drew cautious optimism and uncertainty from local school officials, who now enter their own budget discussions with new regulations and revenue for school budgets in play.
Clark County’s largest school districts — Battle Ground, Evergreen and Vancouver Public Schools — will respectively see 22, 25 and 27 percent funding increases over the next four years in the school funding solution presented by legislators Friday, according to budget documents.
“It appears to answer many of the funding pressures districts in Southwest Washington have been facing,” Evergreen Public Schools Superintendent John Deeder said in a district statement. Evergreen will see its $283 million state and local funding increase to $353 million by 2021, according to budget documents.
But that means most Clark County residents should expect to be paying more taxes for schools, as smaller, rural districts across the state will see decreases in their property taxes.
The $43.7 billion biennial budget includes a $5.2 billion revenue increase from existing and new taxes, according to budget documents.
Clark County Assessor Peter Van Nortwick said he hadn’t looked into the details of the budget legislation, but he said that it will have both positive and negatives.
In a follow-up email, Van Nortwick wrote that 2018 property taxes will rise from their current rate of $1.98 per assessed thousand dollars of assessed value to $2.70 per thousand dollars of assessed value. He wrote that this will mean a “sizable bump” in school taxes, but they will fall in 2019 as a levy limit included in the budget deal comes into effect.
The budget includes a property tax swap that increases the state property tax designated for schools while capping local school district levies at a rate of $1.50 per thousand in assessed value, or $2,500 per student, whatever is lower. That cap, however, won’t begin until 2019, according to budget documents.
Vancouver Public Schools taxpayers, for example, will in 2019 see local levy rates cut in half from the $3.04 per thousand rate paid in 2016. But preliminary information from House budget documents show that a homeowner in a median home valued at $251,600 will see their taxes increase by $220 in 2018, followed by smaller increases spread out over the following three years.
Van Nortwick said that the levy cap is the most positive thing in the budget legislation. However, he said, the budget has a negative. Specifically, he said that the roughly 5,000 to 6,000 senior citizens in Clark County who are currently exempt from excess levies will have to pay extra taxes when the cap goes into effect.
“I’m incredibly disappointed in how we are paying for it,” said Rep. Monica Stonier, D-Vancouver, of the budget.
She said that while she was pleased it would provide more money for schools, she called the property tax increase “regressive” and worried it will adversely affect seniors and people on fixed incomes.
Neither Rep. Paul Harris, R-Vancouver, nor Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center — two GOP legislators who negotiated the budget — returned phone calls seeking comment.
Rob Lutz, president of the Evergreen Education Association teachers’ union, said “nothing is a complete win, nothing is a complete loss,” in Friday’s budget deal. He said, however, that he was frustrated by the lack of transparency during the budget process, criticizing the Legislature to wait until hours before government shutdown to approve a plan.
“My biggest concern is they have to pass something now,” Lutz said. “What mistakes are possibly going to be made because they aren’t able to go over it with a fine-toothed comb?”
Rick Wilson, executive director of the Vancouver Education Association, said he was concerned about a policy in the budget that sets higher regional salaries based on home prices. Wilson worries that policy will assign value to teachers based on their ZIP code, when all teachers typically carry a heavy load of college debt when they first start working.
“To say you deserve more, they’re not recognizing the sacrifice so many people are making to become a public school teacher,” he said.
Clark County’s school districts head into budget discussions next month and must have a preliminary budget presented and made available to the public by July 17, according to state law.
Small school districts with fewer than 2,000 students must have budgets approved by Aug. 1. Larger districts must approve their budgets by Aug. 31 — one day after students are set to return to class in Clark County’s largest districts.
“We understand the magnitude and complexity of the fiscal and policy challenges this session,” Vancouver Public Schools Superintendent Steve Webb said. “When the legislature releases the biennial operating budget at the last possible moment, however, it puts a significant strain on all 295 districts across the state to analyze, plan and present a thoughtful set of budget recommendations to elected school boards and the public.”
