RIDGEFIELD, Wash. — Ridgefield School District leaders are asking the community to invest in schools through the renewal of a levy after a bond failed in April for the fifth time in three years.
On Friday, the school board voted to put the levy renewal on the August ballot. The levy expires at the end of this year.
Joe Vajgrt, the communications manager for the Ridgefield School District, pointed out that a renewal means it's not a new tax and won't have any effect on the school tax rate that people are already paying. The current tax rate is $1.50 per $1,000 in assessed property value.
Levy money makes up about 13% of the district's budget. The renewal would cover 2023 through 2025.
“[It] pays for a lot of things like teachers’ aides, extra nurses, in some cases school psychologists. For us a lot of that money is extracurricular activities. So, it really kind of just fills in the gaps of what the state doesn't fully fund,” said Vajgrt.
If the levy doesn't pass, Vajgrt said things like extracurricular activities could be scaled back.
“To us, any extracurricular that has to be curtailed is doing a disservice to students," he said.
District officials hope the community pulls together to support the levy renewal, something that didn’t happen to the extent needed for the bond that failed last month.
“One key difference in Washington is that bonds require a supermajority of 60% plus one vote to pass, to where levies are a simple majority,” said Vajgrt.
The bond would have increased the district’s capacity to accommodate Ridgefield’s fast-growing population. Vajgrt said Ridgefield schools are already well over capacity.
“Ridgefield is one of the fastest-growing cities in Washington by percentage of population,” Vajgrt said. “With the number of new homes that are already permitted and are already being constructed, the problem is simply not going away.”
The district won't be able to put the bond measure back on the ballot until next February. For the time being, officials are trying to think up creative ways to find space for everyone. Next school year there are plans to adjust school boundaries to balance enrollment at a couple schools in the district.
If a bond measure doesn't pass in the future, officials will consider ideas like separate morning and afternoon shifts for students, moving 5th grade students back to the elementary school level so there’s more space at the middle school level, or year-round school where groups of students would rotate.
“There's no easy solutions and nothing is ideal, but we're trying to be creative and in accommodating the students we already have,” said Vajgrt.
He said the district has the second-lowest school property tax rate of all K-12 districts in Clark County, and pointed out Ridgefield was one of only two school districts in the entire state of Washington that won the state auditor's stewardship award for being financially responsible.