The Blaine School Board approved a reduced educational program that would cut around 30 staff members at a special meeting Monday, April 29.
The vote was delayed by one week after staff and community members packed the Blaine School Board meeting last week and the board voted to delay to consider alternatives. This week, meeting attendees again spilled out into the hallways as the board held a 10-minute meeting to unanimously vote in favor of the reductions.
The plan is intended to help the district address its expected deficit of $2.5 million and includes eliminating one K–5 principal, several teachers and four special educators, among other reductions. As proposed, it amounts to an 11% reduction in administrative staff, a 12% reduction in classified staff and an 11% reduction in certificated staff.
Superintendent Christopher Granger said on Monday, April 22 that the plan isn’t final. He’ll still be able to adjust retain more staff or change positions that will be eliminated as the district continues preparing its budget for next year.
In the week between the two meetings, the Blaine chapter of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents classified staff in the school district, developed a proposal that would eliminate five administrative positions and reduce the contracted days for most positions from 260 to 220.
The Blaine Education Association (BEA), which represents certificated staff, urged the district to keep cuts “as far away from our students as possible,” Co-President Julie Creager wrote in a Thursday, April 25 email to school board members and Granger on behalf of the BEA executive board.
Granger said he appreciated the unions’ efforts in developing an alternate plan and providing feedback. He said some of the administrative suggestions to combine roles and responsibilities are being considered. But he said he thought SEIU’s plan wouldn’t allow them to “meet the needs” of the district currently.
“As hard as all of this is, I would stick by the resolution that was presented last Monday as the best of the bad options,” Granger said.
Board member Ryan Swinburnson said he intends to push the legislature to better fund education.
“I hope everybody here joins in that and we make a collective voice that has to be listened to,” he said.
After the meeting, SEIU chapter president Shane Levetsovitis said the board made a mistake in voting to approve this plan.
“If these cuts were to go through, then it’s their students that are going to come and talk about that we’re not around and there’s no one watching them, and that there’s less people feeding them and things are dirtier and the grass is longer,” he said.
Levetsovitis said SEIU is pushing for more administrative cuts because many classified staff were already cut last year. The district eliminated 59.5 positions in 2023, according to The Northern Light.
“[Administrators] need to share in what’s happening right now,” he said. “And what’s happening is we’re not being funded appropriately by the state. We need to get smaller as a district to survive. Admin needs to help out with that as well. This cannot be done on the backs of classified [staff].”
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
