Our superintendent is looking to save more without fixing the district’s overspending issue. While the board set a budget parameter that would not necessitate a 7% ending fund balance, the superintendent insists on a larger fund balance and larger class sizes.
Please email the board and superintendent at jtourtellottepalumbo@osd.wednet.edu, mflores@osd.wednet.edu, rfullerton@osd.wednet.edu, hseidel@osd.wednet.edu, glamont@osd.wednet.edu, osd-studentreps@osd.wednet.edu, and pmurphy@osd.wednet.edu or click the link below.
Sample email text concerning Cabinet Raises
Sample email text concerning Programming
SUBJECT: Keep Cuts Furthest From Students
Dear members of the board,
The district is currently overspending at the rate 1.9m a year. State Superintendent Reykdal has said districts need to reduce administration costs and look for efficiencies to reduce costs.
Direct Superintendent Murphy to make cuts furthest from the students. Cuts should be outside of staff that work in the schools first and foremost. Last year there were non-mandated raises to the central administration cabinet, which brought the current salary for 12 cabinet members to nearly 2.2m, not including benefits or the salary of the superintendent. This level of spending at the district level for staff or vendors has to be frozen or drastically reduced.
A budget is a value statement. What does this district value? Does the budget have the students best interest as the focus? Don’t accept Superintendent Murphy’s first budget recommendation without hard and thorough review of our planned expenditures.
Sincerely,
SUBJECT: Please Review the Efficacy & Cost of Our Programs
Dear members of the board,
We have heard from Assistant Superintendent Whitehead that Olympia School District has more programming options than a district twice its size, and that so many programs are very expensive.
The vast majority of these programs are lotteries within schools or whole schools that create a situation of haves and have nots. Even if the program is at your home school, you may not get in, and the transportation is not a guarantee in some programs.
Why don’t our schools all have access to the same curriculum opportunities? Is it cost? Staff? Why are we prioritizing some schools? Is there a magic baseline?
We also double up on programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) classes and International Baccalaureate (IB). Both give college credits in the high school IF the families pay for the tests. Both are expensive and the closest district with both offerings is Tacoma Public Schools, with 28k students. Do we need to offer both for our academic-focused college bound graduates? What is our untilization of these? How many students are paying for the tests?
What is the cost of all our programming? To our budget and to our students? Is this meeting our students where they are at? A thorough review of our programs needs to be done as we examine the budget and look for efficiencies.
Sincerely,
Sample email text concerning Large Class Sizes
SUBJECT: Please Keep Class Sizes Small
Dear Olympia School Board Directors and Superintendent Patrick Murphy,
I am currently a parent of a ______ grader and ____ grader at __________ school. We love our school, teachers, and community but current decisions being made in the current budget talks are causing us much concern.
Currently, my student is in a class of ______ when the state mandates a 17:1 student-teacher ratio for K-3, 23:1 for 4-5 grade, and 28:1 in middle/high school. We understand that specialists are also used in these calculations, but the art specialists are also being eliminated, so we are concerned with how large these classes are going to get. We have looked into alternative education options for our students.
Art instruction has been a highlight in our student’s day and vital to their development as a creative thinker. Ideas such as critical analysis, problem solving, idea generation, and thinking outside the box are integrated into this instruction and there should be a dedicated well-trained art teacher in their classroom. Elementary classroom teachers with large classroom sizes cannot substitute their expertise. Most people think art is easy and expendable, and we thought Olympia was different.
This, coupled with the loss of the family liaisons who catch those students when they are at their most vulnerable, makes us question where the district’s priorities are. Is it forcing families like ours out of our home schools or out of the district all together. Are you actually listening? The comments on the budget survey were overwhelming. Arts, student support, and small class sizes are Olympia values. The budget is a value statement. Show us you value our students over a larger savings account.
Sincerely,