News & Information

The Bellingham School District reminds families, community members and staff to submit input to the Superintendent on the District's Budget Advisory Committee recommendation by noon on Wednesday, Feb. 25 through the district's Web site.

Click here to submit input.  Please do not submit input by e-mail. Input submitted by e-mail to individual staff or the Superintendent outside of the established timelines may not be properly evaluated. The Superintendent will read and consider all of the input submitted during the established timelines.

As many district families and businesses face challenging economic times, so does the Bellingham School District. With a growing state budget deficit and a state budget yet to be developed by the Legislature later this spring, the district must be prepared to reduce its budget for the 2009-10 school year as necessary.

"These are decisions that no one wants to have to make because they impact people -- students, families, staff and our community," says Superintendent Kenneth Vedra. "Yet, taking no action is not an option. We are required by law to adopt a balanced budget and we must work within our means. That said, we take this very seriously and will carefully weigh the impact of any future decision."

Thank you to the District Budget Advisory Committee members for their work last week to rank order the budget savings ideas that are potentially feasible (List 1) for implementation by Sept. 1. The committee thoughtfully considered the ideas that were submitted by staff, students or community members. They anonymously voted as representatives of their stakeholder groups on how much they agreed or disagreed with the idea's potential implementation.

"I greatly value the committee's recommendation. This is challenging work that the committee took very seriously because of the potential impact on students, families and staff," Vedra says. "We are facing an unprecedented budget challenge due to the state's growing budget deficit and national economic situation. We will have less revenue to operate our district and schools next school year, and we must balance our budget. We receive 68 percent of our funding from the state, which is facing a multibillion dollar deficit."

Click here to view the committee's recommendation to the Superintendent.

After receiving public input via the Web site through noon on Feb. 25, the Superintendent will review and consider the input as he works with district leaders to draft a Budget Savings Plan. He will share that plan at community meetings on March 2 and 3 and online with additional opportunities for input. Click here to view the next steps in the process.

It will be possible to implement some, but not all of the recommendations on List 1. The Superintendent, working with district leaders and taking input into consideration, may need to make some modifications to the committee's recommendation, weighing impact, logistics, planning for restructuring, and staffing adjustments districtwide. In addition to these budget savings ideas, we may need to adapt our plan based on budget reductions imposed by the state Legislature.

The district received more than 800 budget savings ideas, which it summarized on the budget savings lists. Ideas captured on List 2 and List 3 have been identified as potentially feasible in the future (with departments assigned to review), are subject to Collective Bargaining Agreements or legal review, are not feasible, unclear, illegal or are repeated on another list. Click here to view Lists 2 and 3.

"We will continue to keep our community informed as we move through this process," Vedra says. "It is unknown at this time exactly how much of our budget we will need to reduce, depending on actions of the state Legislature and the growing state budget deficit. However, we will be ready with our plan to implement savings as needed. Thank you to those who submitted budget savings ideas and for continuing to provide your input."

Please click here for a budget-related FAQ.