Well, we already made the call to close for tomorrow. It became easier to do when Jeff at KC Public Works told us his crews would not be able to grade and sand the emergency routes as they were struggling just to keep the main roads safe. With the 20 degree temperatures, continued snowfall, and without that sand it will not be safe for buses to be on the roads in the morning. It would have also been very difficult for many staff to get to work from the surrounding communities. Not a very good weather week for school and learning.
The big news of the day was Governor Gregoire's proposed budget. Based upon what we had been hearing for the last couple of weeks the actual proposal was almost a relief. Instead of cutting all of I-728 the budget cuts 21% in year one and 23% in year two. This means a cut of approximately $800,000 instead of $3.3 million and makes the balancing job more manageable. It doesn't, however, mean that we will not need to make cuts because we do. Though we don't have all the numbers yet from the proposed budget, we know that we still must find $2.5 to $3 million in order to have a balanced 2009-10 budget. This is new ground for us as we have not had to make changes of this magnitude to balance prior budgets.
Overall, K-12 was cut 5.6% with another of the other major cuts being I-732, the Cost of Living initiative. Though this is not something that any of us wanted to see happen, it actually saves us money because we will not have to use local dollars to cover this potential salary increase for non-formula unit positions.
We are now moving forward using the Governor's proposed budget to identify how much to cut. This could change when the House and Senate propose budgets in March, but we can't wait that long to bring closure to this process. As I shared in yesterday's post, we will provide periodic updates on our web page.
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