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The word that Centralia athletic director Tim Ahern kept coming back to when discussing the upcoming school replacement levy vote was “hopeful.”
There’s good reason for that. When the levy failed in February’s election, it did so by fewer than 150 votes, giving the district two months to either swing voters or get non-voters to send in a ballot, with a manageable goal for improvement in mind. Comparatively, when the district failed to pass a levy in 2020, the first round of voting saw 69% of submitted ballots voting against the measure, setting up a much steeper hill to climb.
And since February, Ahern has been part of an increased effort on the part of the district to get the word out about what exactly is on the ballot.
“We were pretty close in February, and we’ve got a team of people who are working hard throughout the community to provide information, provide transparency, and show how important this levy is for our school district,” he said.
But there’s also good reason for why Ahern says it’s been a stressful few months at the top of the Centralia athletic department.
Schools in Washington receive funding from the federal, state, and local levels; this levy is how the local funding is approved. And while just a slice of the levy’s total funds would go to athletics, just about the entire athletics budget — around $900,000 from elementary to high school — is included. Because budget years run from January to December, the athletic department already has funding secured for the upcoming fall season, but not for anything past the new year.
And since the vote is reduced to a simple “yes” or “no,” there’s no middle ground between the Centralia athletic department getting $900,000 to operate next January — or not seeing a penny for 12 months.
“It’s all or nothing,” Ahern said. “It’s really important for us as a school district that we do want to keep pushing forward.”
Ahern estimated that around 85% of the athletic department’s budget goes into bare necessities for a high school program, like coaches’ salaries, travel costs, and referee fees. The rest goes to “enhancements” like improved equipment.
If the levy fails next week, any “enhancements” would have to be tabled, but that would still leave over $750,000 of cuts that would need to be planned.
The school district doesn’t need to submit a budget for next year until August, and for the most part is choosing to wait to cross the bridge of cuts if it gets to it and not make any explicit commitments. But Centralia isn’t the only school district facing a second levy vote in southwest Washington, and other districts are taking a different tact.
While CSD’s webpage about the levy only mentions the possibility of “significant cuts or elimination of programs like sports, band, choir, orchestra, and theater,” Woodland Public Schools is much more specific.
After a long list of reductions to academic programs and facility maintenance and upgrades, WPS has a list of “extracurricular reductions.” The plan would include getting rid of all C-teams, completely eliminating its organized middle school athletic department, and asking families to organize player transportation to games, instead of hiring buses.
According to WPS, those three changes would amount to $250,000 saved. Woodland’s entire proposed levy amounts to less than half of Centralia’s, meaning that if CSD has to go into money-saving mode, the effects could be even greater.
“It’s fair to say that everything would change,” Ahern said. “Your payment structure to coaches is going to change. Your transportation structure is going to change. The dependency on families helping with transportation is certainly going to have a heavy impact. The number of participants per program would likely be impacted. Everything would change.”
Another school district going through a second levy vote is Washougal, whose levy funding for athletics just about matches up with Centralia’s. On the WSD website, a fact sheet for double-levy failure reduction planning lists the elimination of every single paid coaching position, while back in February, the WSD superintendent said a second failure would mean “there wouldn’t be any athletics or clubs at all, period.”
In Centralia, a double-levy failure may not result in the total and immediate end of the athletic department, but it would put it in a deep hole that wouldn’t be escaped completely with a renewed levy the next time around. Ahern, who came to the district last year, said that the department is still feeling the effects of the double failure three years ago, and another year without funding would make things even harder to overcome, especially if it leads to more student-athletes transferring to other schools.
“If you pass a levy the following year, things don’t just pick up where they left off,” he said. “You have rebuilding to do, you have work to do, you have progress to make.”
The effects on sports below the high school level would be particularly impactful on the future of athletics at CHS. In the past year, Centralia High School added bowling and eSports teams to give more high schoolers opportunities to play sports, but Ahern was just as excited about the participation rates at Centralia Middle School reaching levels not seen in over a decade, as well as expanded youth programs.
As Ahern said, there’s plenty of hope going around the athletic department in Centralia. They just need the road to stay smooth under their feet.
“We feel like there’s a spark, we feel like there’s good energy,” he said. “We feel like there’s good momentum. And this levy is a huge part of continuing that. The funding is so key for the athletics programs to continue to grow.”
