San Juan County’s four public school superintendents team-up to ask for a correction in state funding formula

Sunday, February 16, 2025
by Jeff Noedel
Video by Jeremy Tyler

A SanJuans.Today VIDEO IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

All four public school superintendents in the San Juans drove to Olympia last week for two days of lobbying legislators for a fix to the public schools funding formula.

On Thursday, the four superintendents sat down with SanJuans.Today to describe the problem they are trying to solve. They are:

• Fred Woods, Superintendent of the San Juan Island School District
• Eric Webb, Superintendent of the Orcas Island School District
• Brady Smith, Superintendent of the Lopez Island School District, and
• Becky Bell, Superintendent of the Shaw Island School District

SJI’s Fred Woods summed-up the problem. He said, “Regionalization was a beautiful concept in that it would honor, the employees, and where they live so we could actually provide some more wage, higher wages to, staff who live in high cost-of-living areas. It’s a mathematical formula that was set for the entire state. But the problem is that the formula hasn’t worked out the way it should. We’re an archipelago that that actually has as high a cost of living as Seattle. And yet we’re not getting the same percentage (due to) regionalization. So it does impact what we can pay our teachers. And it impacts our recruitment and our retainment.”

Orcas Island’s Eric Webb said, “We’re back in Olympia again, asking about regionalization. The cost of living factor that’s applied to school districts… for our representatives and senators to really look at this model, because it does not currently reflect where we’re at with this. It’s a great concept overall, but it does not apply well to the islands.”

The cost of living — and property values — vary enormously across the state. In order to be equitable, the state funding formula calibrates a school district’s funding based on regional property values. The state looks at the median property values in a district, but also factors in neighboring districts.

Like so many unique challenges and problems that our archipelago faces, it’s all about the water. In this case, the concept of neighboring districts is stretched to the absurd. The logic of the state formula is to ignore the 25 miles of the Salish Sea that separate San Juan Island from Port Townsend. Or the 20 miles of water that separates Orcas Island from Bellingham. Or the 12 miles of water that separate Lopez Island from Anacortes. The state regionalization formula ignores the water and imagines that those districts are next door. It ignores the uniquely high median property values in the San Juans and averages them with “neighboring districts” with property values that are less — sometimes far less — than those in the San Juans.

Only Shaw Island is largely insulated from this penalty. Shaw’s share of state funds per student is set at a higher rate than the other three island districts. The superintendents don’t know why.

The superintendents say the shorting of funds is doubly unfair, because not only is there less money to pay special ed teachers, to buy supplies, and to transport children to and from school. The cost of living in the islands is, as everyone knows, much higher.

How much money has the funding quirk cost San Juans public schools? In their meetings with legislators, the group passed out spreadsheets that stated:

• The San Juan Island district has been shorted by $6.7 million since 2019
• The Orcas Island district has been shorted by $7.4 million since 2019
• The Lopez Island district has been shorted by $3.9 million since 2019

In their meetings with state legislators last week, the group asked for a one-time amendment to the K-12 budget that would create a payment of $575,000 to be spread across the local districts to correct the gap for this year. And they lobbied for a permanent fix to the formula going forward.

But this is not the first time they’ve made the rounds at the capitol, asking for this fix. It’s an annual quest now, and this year is especially difficult. Legislators are looking to cut billions from the budget this year.

Said Webb, “I think that we’ve gotten a positive response to this. It’s interesting to walk into a senator’s office. They recognize this because we’ve been here before. They understand this. They really want to help us. They also talk about the challenges of that long-term plan of looking at regionalization as a state. The amount of time and effort it would take to do that.”

“We really haven’t had anybody be able to explain how we ended up with a 12% in this situation and how we can resolve it,” Webb continued. “You know, give us an appeal process. Give us somebody else to talk to where we can state our case. Who can look at this and then make adjustments.”

Lopez Island’s Smith credited community involvement and solidarity for some of the progress they feel they are making. He said, “We have a wonderful group, who are multi-constituency. It’s teachers unions. It’s the classified unions. It’s school boards, it’s PTAs. And of course, the four of us as superintendents, we’ve met three times just this season in preparation for this trip to Olympia. And for all the advocacy work that they’ve been doing. There are town halls planned on islands, there’s a website set up with all of this information available. And it’s and it’s all volunteer work. And so I think on the islands, it’s well understood. And now our task is to help our colleagues in Olympia understand it.”

Some other legislators have suggested the island districts consolidate into one. The superintendents reject that idea as unworkable.

One legislator told the little delegation last week that their ask was a big one because “It’s a zero-sum game,” meaning to pay the San Juans schools more, the state would have to pay the other districts that much less.

The superintendents countered with the fact that it would not be a gift to the San Juans. It would be restoring money the San Juans should have received but did not, due to distortions in the way the state didn’t account for isolated islands in its formula for regionalization.

To read more, or to sign a petition, click here.