In an unusual move, the Vancouver school board failed to pass an operating budget for the 2015-2016 fiscal year Tuesday night.
The state’s deadline for passing the budget is Aug. 31. The board will have a second chance to pass the proposed general fund budget of $271.6 million at its next regular meeting Aug. 25.
When the vote was called, board directors Mark Stoker and Dale Rice voted to approve the budget. But director Kathy Gillespie voted no. Director Edri Geiger abstained.
This is not the first time the board has failed to reach consensus on a pressing issue. At a work session last week, the four-member board was deadlocked 2-2 in appointing a replacement for a fifth board member who resigned last month.
Geiger’s “abstention is effectively a no vote under these circumstances,” Stoker said after the meeting. “A 2-1 vote on a four-member board doesn’t get the job done. It cries out for the need of a fifth board member.”
Stoker, board president, turned to Superintendent Steve Webb during the meeting and said, “Dr. Webb, I am in uncharted waters.”
Webb stated that he was, too.
Both said they had never witnessed a school board failing to pass an operating budget.
Before the budget vote, Gillespie asked that more money be applied to “programs, personnel and opportunities that directly support student services.”
Both Gillespie and Geiger requested that the budget be changed to increase the number of counselors, drug and alcohol specialists and mental health professionals.
Geiger, a retired middle school teacher, said only two counselors per middle school is not enough, and that counselors take up a lot of time scheduling students.
She said she would like to see a full-time counselor in every elementary school. She said Hough Elementary School has seven high-special-needs classrooms but only one half-time counselor.
“I believe that the money exists in other areas of the budget,” Gillespie said.
The budget makes progress toward that goal, but it falls short “by failing to reduce expenditures in areas far from the classroom and apply those monies to direct student services,” Gillespie said.
Webb asked Brett Blechschmidt, the district’s chief fiscal officer, to outline the additional investments in counselors in the proposed budget. The unapproved budget would add the equivalent of 12 full-time, certificated counselors costing about $990,000 over the 2014-2015 budget.
After the meeting, Stoker said that when the budget was discussed in an earlier meeting, Gillespie and Geiger had requested additional counselors.
“That’s why we made some changes to partially address that, particularly at the elementary level,” Stoker said.
The board will revisit the appointment of a fifth member at its Aug. 26 board retreat.
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