The Grand Coulee Dam School District is asking for more money as they enter the uncharted territory of beginning a new school year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The district board of directors Monday night approved a budget for the 2020-21 school year, as well as a resolution authorizing a new enrichment levy that will ask property owners for an additional dollar per $1,000 of assessed value on their property.

Voters will decide in the November general election whether the district gets that extra dollar.

The history of local school levies in the past few years gets a little tricky. 

Before the Legislature rearranged the way education is funded in the state in 2017, the district had an “operations and maintenance” levy, which brought in $4.01 per thousand dollars of assessed property value.

Engrossed House Bill (EHB) 2242, passed the Legislature in 2017, limiting the district to asking for $1.50 per thousand in what is now called an enrichment levy. The state then began taking 81 cents per thousand for education. That, combined with the enrichment levy, and a $1.70 Capital Projects Levy passed in 2018, brought the grand total the local district collected back to the original $4.01 per thousand, which was used as a talking point in passing the Capital Projects Levy. The state then raised the limit a school could ask for in an enrichment levy to $2.50, which means the GCDSD can now ask for this extra dollar per thousand dollars of assessed property value.

Passage of the levy requires participation from at least 40 percent of voters in the district who voted in the last election in order to validate the results, according to state law. 

The total number of voters in the district in the last general election for the GCDSD is 890, according the Grant County election office, requiring participation from 356 people to validate the results. 

Levy’s require a simple majority of 50% plus one vote in order to pass. 

If it passes in the coming general election Nov. 3, the school would be receiving around $4.20 per thousand dollars of assessed property value through their levies, plus the $0.81 per thousand the state takes for education, for a total of about $5.01 per thousand that local property tax payers would be paying into education. 

The levy is aiming to bring roughly $300,000 into the district per year for the next two years, or close to a dollar per thousand dollars of assessed property value within the district.

“Hopefully voters will support [the levy] so we can maintain educational services for our kids,” Superintendent Paul Turner said at the July 27 school board meeting.

For the calendar year 2021, the original enrichment levy is expected to bring in $503,000; the capital projects levy is expected to bring in $508,000, and the new enrichment levy would bring in $302,000. 

The new two-year levy would expire at the same time as the current, three-year enrichment levy, and they would then be combined into one, Turner told The Star on Tuesday. 

“When we tried to put the budget together this year, we needed that $300,000,” he said, adding that revenues remaining about the same but expenses going up, and the anticipation of COVID related expenses, factored into putting another levy on the ballot.

The 2020-21 budget passes

The school board also approved a budget for the 2020-21 school year, which includes $12.9 million in expenses in the general fund, but only $12.4 million in revenues. 

Some $8.9 million, or 68%, of the budget will be spent on teaching and support for it.

“This includes funding for teachers, instructional assistants, teaching supplies, materials and textbooks, counselors and librarians, special education and related services, health services, and pupil management and safety,” a description included in the budget presentation reads. 

Prior to approving the budget at their July 27 meeting, the GCDSD board of directors asked district Business Manager Susie Marchand, who presented the budget, about how COVID-19 will affect it. She replied, essentially, that time would tell, and that it could cause increases or decreases of different expenses.