Editor,
Fred McCarthy superintended the South Whidbey School District’s steepest three-year drop in student enrollment in memory, an expensive, divisive attempt to close the middle school, and an unprecedented levy failure memorialized by The Record’s apt headline, “Issue of trust swirls around Prop 1 vote.”
To divert attention from the resulting financial difficulties, he started the practice, now enthusiastically embraced by current Superintendent Jo Moccia, of issuing dire warnings about declining enrollment, “shortfalls,” and “deteriorating facilities.” After nearly a decade of such alarms, many parents and students have learned to unquestioningly pay school fees of every color, accept cuts in programs, and dutifully participate in endless fundraisers to pay for basic classroom activities, usually at the expense of family time and budgets, homework, and sleep.
The Dieringer School District has approximately the same number of students but its fund balance is about one-third of South Whidbey’s $1.75 million. While both districts spend a similar percentage of their general funds on teacher and staff salaries, Dieringer purchases more services and spends a greater percentage of its budget per student on both basic and special education. Its four-year average expenditure per student is over $1,000 more than South Whidbey’s.
How does a poorer school district manage to direct more money to its children? By spending less on administrators. Last year South Whidbey School Board members authorized Jo Moccia to spend $1.6 million on “central administration” while Dieringer spent less than half that amount. That works out to central administration expenditures of $1,128 per student for South Whidbey, compared to $537 for Dieringer. Even Seattle, with its 91 schools and nearly 50,000 students, spent only $704. The average for all districts is just $678. Does this district’s ongoing public relations campaign reflect actual budget woes or mask the manipulations of parasitic district leaders?
The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction publishes the above statistics at www.k12.wa.us/safs/PUB/FIN/1314/fs.asp
ERIC HOOD
Langley
