Community weighs in on Camas School District’s looming budget cuts

Camas School District leaders say they will take the results of a community-wide survey that captured input from nearly 1,000 respondents into account as they begin to prepare budget cut recommendations expected to slash the district’s general fund budget by at least 10% before the 2025-26 school year.

“Your input has been invaluable in shaping our district’s priorities as we navigate budget decisions for the upcoming year,” Camas School District Superintendent John Anzalone stated in a letter to Camas School District families and others who participated in the online survey.

The survey results identified five “key areas of focus” and helped district leaders prepare a detailed list of budget priorities, Anzalone said.

Some of those priorities include focusing on having smaller class sizes that “allow teachers to give students individual attention, improve learning outcomes and prevent burnout among staff;” retaining “high-quality teachers (who are) critical to the district’s reputation and students’ learning experiences;” and prioritizing instruction in core subjects such as math, reading and science, while also supporting enrichment programs such as music and art classes.”

Survey respondents also said they want the district to provide “a safe, welcoming environment;” invest in “anti-bullying programs, mental health support and safety resources;” give students access to counselors and mental health resources to “equip students with tools for emotional resilience;” review cost-saving methods that will least impact student learning; support special education students and other diverse learners; and “offer alternative learning environments, such as project-based and online options.”

The survey also showed the community’s desire for a more in-depth understanding of the factors that have prompted budget cuts over the past few years. Survey respondents asked Camas school leaders to “clearly communicate the reasons for budget reductions” with the community; include families, staff and community members in the budget decision-making process; and prioritize “programs promised to taxpayers,” including the school nurses and mental health supports promised in the lead up to voters passing the district’s most recent levies.

Anzalone said the survey results showed some common themes.

“Some obvious themes rose to the top — small class sizes, which research shows is always a good thing for kids; maintaining high-quality instruction, which is why people move to Camas; and people were very interested in student safety and well-being, not just physically, but emotionally,” Anzalone said. “People do appreciate that sense of belonging and there was an appetite in the community for not seeing teachers cut or for students losing resources but to also tighten belts where (we) can. (People also wanted to see) us continue to provide support for our diverse learners.”

Anzalone said he and his team have tried to communicate the district’s budget needs and upcoming budget cuts to the community as much as possible over the past few months — attending Camas community events, pushing out information on social media, on the district’s ParentSquare communication platform and during the school board’s monthly workshops and meetings.

“We’re trying to get to as many people as possible,” Anzalone said.

The school district has struggled to balance its budget without dipping into its reserves in recent years thanks to a combination of factors, including lower student enrollment that impacts per-student funding from the state; rising costs connected to everything from employee health benefits and school building utilities to fuel for the district’s school buses and food for the students’ lunches.

In April 2022, Anzalone and the district’s director of business services and operations, Jasen McEathron, told Camas School Board members that the district could use reserves to balance the budget during the 2022-23 school year, but would need to make budget cuts and hold costs steady the following three years to get to a more sustainable place by the start of the 2025-26 school year.

The board members agreed that, even after making more than $3 million worth of cuts in 2022-23 and 2023-24, the school district would still need to reign in costs during the 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.

Then, on Aug. 28, 2023, members of the Camas Education Association, the union representing 450 educators in the Camas School District, went on strike for the first time ever, causing the district to postpone the first week of the new school year through Sept. 7.

To stop the work stoppage and get students back into their classrooms, school district administrators agreed to a two-year contract that offered Camas educators salary bumps of 6.4% in 2023-24 and 6.6% in 2024-25.

As a result of the increased costs — as well as lower-than-expected enrollment rates and increasing healthcare, utility, fuel and other costs of doing business — the district depleted its reserves faster than expected and found itself facing a need to cut between 10% and 12% from its 2025-26 budget.

“We wanted to settle the contract and get kids back in school,” Anzalone said this week, “but it sped up the decrease in our end-fund balance. This is not to point fingers or place blame — but there are always consequences to those decisions. We made a decision to end the work stoppage and get kids back in class, knowing full well that it was going to accelerate how quickly we would spend down (our reserves).”

But, Anzalone said, district leaders also did not expect other factors to put so much strain on the district’s general fund budget.

“We could not have predicted this type of inflation or such a large decrease in enrollment,” he said, “so I don’t want to point fingers at one specific thing.”

Enrollment, which is directly tied to how much money the school district receives from the state to pay for its educators, learning materials and other basic classroom needs, was never an issue for the popular Camas School District until very recently, Anzalone said.

Some of the enrollment losses are tied to low birth rates across the nation, Anzalone said, adding that the district has seen fewer students enrolling in its preschool programs and coming into its kindergarten through second-grade classes.

The high cost of housing also seems to be impacting enrollment rates in Camas.

“Families are simply being priced out of Camas,” Anzalone said. “We are not enrolling as many students as we are graduating — and, for decades, Camas did not have to deal with that. For the first time since its existence, our preschool program has no waitlist and preschool enrollment numbers have flat-lined. The same in our kindergarten, first- and second-grade classes. We’re not replenishing enrollment like we once did.”

And while the district’s middle school enrollment has remained steady, Anzalone said the district has lost some students in upper grades to private schools and home-schooling options, with some families reporting that they wanted their student to have a better chance at making an athletic team outside the competitive Camas High School athletic programs. Other families, Anzalone said, report they are moving out of Camas for career changes or because, he said, “they simply can’t afford homes here.”

Anzalone said he and his team have urged state legislators to push for more funding for special education, classroom materials and transportation needs.

“If (those things) were more adequately funded, that would be a big, big help,” Anzalone said, adding that he also hopes legislators will consider the state’s current regionalization funding, which gives more money to school districts where educators and staff members have much higher costs of living, such as Camas.

Anzalone compared the Camas School District’s regionalization rate of 6% to Seattle Public Schools’ rate of 16%, despite having similar housing prices.

“I could understand it if our housing were several hundred thousand (dollars) below (Seattle’s housing costs), but it’s only $20,000 to $40,000, so having that 12% regionalization gap with Seattle is outrageous,” Anzalone said.

The superintendent also said he hopes community members understand that it is not a matter of mismanagement that is causing the school district’s current budget deficit.

“Sometimes, when people hear ‘budget cuts,’ especially when you have a more affluent community, there is a misconception. People ask, ‘What are they doing with all this money? Is it mismanagement?’ But it’s not about mismanagement at all,” Anzalone said. “It is actually about fiscal responsibility. It’s a state issue that we’re working really hard, with the state, to fix. And it is a growing problem — not just for Camas. It can’t be that all of these districts are mismanaging funds or overspending.”

Anzalone said his aim is to find long-term fiscal sustainability for the school district, but that doing so means making painful cuts at the beginning of the process.

“I hope that being more conservative, being more efficient and containing our costs will provide sustainability,” Anzalone said, “so that, when the state fixes its funding formula and adequately funds education, Camas will be in a much better position.”

Anzalone is meeting with his cabinet members this week to hear their budget-reduction proposals and will meet with his budget team once more before heading into the winter break. In the first two months of the new year, Anzalone will meet with building principals, employee union leaders, school board members and other stakeholders before going public with budget-cut proposals in early March.

“I want to make sure everyone is on the same page before the announcements come,” Anzalone said. He added that he will ask the school board in January to approve a reduction-in-force (RIF) resolution to allow the district to make employee reductions next spring.

“That will likely include a resolution for all bargaining groups,” Anzalone said, “which will give me the go-ahead to start going through how that reduction is going to look and to discuss these proposals with our board members, so they have an idea of how shallow or how deep those cuts might be.”