COVID-19 drives school budget uncertainty

MOSES LAKE — Uncertainty as to just how many students will be back to school this fall means the Moses Lake School District will likely have to make some very conservative assumptions in its 2020-21 school year budget.

“Student enrollment drives revenue,” said district business manager William “Joe” Connolly during a regular, online meeting of the Moses Lake School Board on Thursday.

Connolly cited a recent district survey in which over 50 percent of parents and nearly as many students wanted “as little remote learning as possible” when school resumes this fall. However, a similar percentage of parents also expressed concerns about “the health implications” of returning to school, Connolly said, while roughly a quarter of parents surveyed also expressed concerns about masking requirements for students this fall.

“In the circles I run around in,” said Elliott Goodrich, board president, “everybody intends to have their kids back in school if possible.”

While board member Bryce McPartland said he would likely send his kids back to school, he also said he had spoken with a number of parents who have concerns about how online instruction was managed in the spring, and would rather enroll their kids with an online learning “specialty provider” if online instruction is required again.

“There’s concern about how remote learning is managed,” McPartland said. “OSPI had reduced expectations, and most people want more for their kids.”

When Gov. Jay Inslee ordered schools closed in March, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction mandated that all students would get the grade they had on March 17, and that while students could improve their grades, no one would be allowed to fail.

“They want to be assured their kids will be educated,” McPartland added, “that school is not a placeholder.”

In a typical school year, for budgeting purposes, Connolly and Superintendent Josh Meek said the district normally assumes that around 96 percent of the previous year’s students will return.

However, for MLSD’s upcoming school year — which starts on Sept. 1 — Connolly drew up district revenue models that would see student enrollment at anywhere from 83 percent to 92 percent of this year’s 8,497 average enrollment. The projections show MLSD enrolling as many as 400 fewer students in 2020-21, which could see regular state funding fall as much as $10 million.

The state apportions money to school districts in a complex formula that allocates basic salaries for teachers, administrators, and classified staff such as janitors based on a certain number of students per class in each grade or the number of children attending an individual school.

Board members agreed that the district should work up possible 2020-21 budgets based on 87 percent enrollment and 90 percent enrollment. The board must approve a budget for the next school year before the end of August.

Meek told the Columbia Basin Herald later that conservative enrollment projections make it easier for the district to increase spending if there are more students than projected. However, he also added there is real uncertainty this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is also about a ‘prediction’ for us to estimate how many students will show up to school. Year to year there is always change,” he said. “This year between COVID, local economic impact of plant and facility closures, increasing popularity of online school programs, and more we are proceeding very cautiously.”

“It lessens the likelihood of having to close down a classroom or two in the fall if there are not adequate students enrolled. That is incredibly disruptive to students and their teacher,” he said.

Connolly and Meek also told board members that the toughest part of projecting enrollment figures is trying to figure out how many kindergartners the district might have. Meek explained that online kindergarten registration is proving to be “a challenge” and that many parents “are really contemplating the right choice regarding school entry.”

Connolly said the district uses live birth figures from the state Department of Health from the previous five years to try to predict how many kindergartners might be enrolled in the fall.

Currently, Connolly said, only 264 kindergartners have been registered, compared with 319 at this point in 2019.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.