White Salmon School District approves budget

These new computers will replace teacher laptops, while the district has a rotation plan set in place for student Chromebooks, McGeeney said.

“They are definitely due for replacement,” he said. “This is all grant money going towards the purchase of technology.”

District staff saw changes to the methodology of the budget – as McGeeney explained, the budget was conservative in order to capture the possibility of extreme scenarios. The 2022-2023 school year budget, approved by the school board, shows expenditures are outpacing the rate of growth of revenue. The district is expecting a loss of nearly $453,622 through the year from the general fund.

“One of our advantages of knowing this early is… our departments can all analyze their budgets, and we can take some action now to try to help maybe close this gap, so it doesn’t have to be a $450,000 overage, but it’s something smaller,” he said.

The school district is anticipating a continued decline of full-time enrollment in the budget from 1,083 average actual full-time enrolled students to 1,055, following a statewide trend.

McGeeney said the state is not offering stabilization money this year, which is funding to school districts seeing lower enrollment numbers, and that the district’s anticipated budget reflects a 6.6% increase in allocation per student full-time enrollment.

McGeeney said kindergarten full-time enrollment figures specifically have dropped from 100 to 60 in the past few years.

“I assumed there wasn’t going to be a sudden rush of kids and that we might slowly over time have less and less kids,” he said, adding that housing in the community is in short supply and it could be years before additional housing, and potentially more students, come to the community.

The district will receive nearly $1.5 million in state funding for materials, supplies, and other operating costs, the projected expenditures from which are anticipated to be reduced exponentially, business manager Kathy Raley said. She cited supplies and travel costs as having been reduced. That fund will be focused on as a way to reduce the deficit, Mcgeeney said, adding that certain expenses can be controlled, such as energy usage.

$2.1 million has been reserved for capital projects that are expected to be completed this fiscal year, including an upgrade to the HVAC system in the park center, $50,000 to upgrades to the multipurpose facility, $1.3 million to the parking lot remodel, and $480,000 to general improvements.

“I want to acknowledge (Kathy Raley) this month. No one works harder in the month of July than your business manager — weekends, nights, all the time. I think she sleeps and dreams budget during July… Thanks so much for your hard work,” McGeeney said.