Sitting 116 votes shy of victory and with just an estimated 27 ballots left to count before the Lewis County Auditor’s Office certifies the special election results on Feb. 24, the Centralia School District’s levy proposal has apparently failed.
The proposal would have renewed the existing levy for an extra two years at a higher annual amount, allowing the district to collect no more than $6.7 million in 2024 and no more than $7.6 million in 2025 for educational programs and operations.
The district’s existing levy, which expires at the end of 2023, allows it to collect no more than $4.6 million for the current year.
The proposal was for the same rate of $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed value that voters approved in 2021, but due to increased property valuations, the rate would bring in a higher collection amount than permitted by the existing levy.
The measure gained about 20 votes in favor between the preliminary results released Tuesday, Feb. 14, and the updated count released on Wednesday, Feb. 15, but not enough to close the gap.
As of the Feb. 15 count, the most-recent as of Monday afternoon, the measure was failing 2,530 to 2,415, or 51.16% to 48.84%.
The race was closer in Lewis County than it was in the small section of Thurston County included in the Centralia School District’s taxing district. In Lewis County, the measure was failing 50.86% to 49.14%, or 2,472 to 2,388, while it was failing 68.24% to 31.76%, or 58 to 27, in Thurston County as of Feb. 15.
Between the two counties, 4,945 ballots had been counted as of the Feb. 15 update.
The levy’s apparent failure has put the Centralia School District on the state’s “watch list,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) Chris Reykdal said during a media event in Olympia on Thursday.
That list consists of 20 to 30 districts who have had multiple levy failures, significant student enrollment decline or have had other factors contribute to a significant loss of funding.
“Our job is to make sure that (school districts) are following the law of basic education and making sure those (state) dollars are being spent on basic education,” said Reykdal, “Quite candidly, we won’t intervene in the district’s decisions as long as they’re following the basic education (requirements).”
What Reykdal’s office is watching out for, he said, is for districts to cut basic education requirements such as special education services or to cut days off of the school year.
“Most districts won’t fall into that, but that’s when we really have red flags. That’s where we can go in and enforce some spending in a program area,” he said.
That situation is extremely rare, Reykdal said.
Worst case scenario, if a school district is found to be not financially viable, it can be merged with another district that is, he said.
“It happened in timber country when they lost resources. I hope we don’t get to that place, but it’s possible,” Reykdal said.
Levy dollars are intended for “enrichment,” but some districts have historically coded special education and other basic education requirements into their levy funds, Reykdal said.
Indeed, $500,000 from Centralia School District’s levy collection for the 2022-2023 school years was budgeted toward special education staff, according to material previously released by the district.
That money is far from the only funding allocated for the program, however, as special education instruction accounts for $8.07 million, or 12.45%, of the district’s 2022-2023 budget.
Other programs and positions that currently benefit from levy funds include athletics, visual and performing arts, club and activity stipends, school counselor and nursing positions, instructional facilitator positions and instructional coach positions.
The Centralia School District operated without levy dollars between December 2020 and the 2022 levy collection cycle — leading to layoffs last summer — after multiple attempts to pass a replacement levy failed at the ballot box.
The district has one more opportunity to try and pass a levy before the existing levy expires at the end of the year.
“No matter what, we remain focused on serving our students and moving our district forward. We will be relentless in this effort. I am proud of our district and am proud to serve as the Centralia School District superintendent,” Centralia Superintendent Lisa Grant told The Chronicle last week.
