The stinging defeat of Marysville’s operating levy Tuesday draped a dark cloud over the end of the school year, a generally happy period marked by prom and graduation.
“The end of school year is largely celebratory and I still want it to be that way for kids,” Marysville Superintendent Diane Allen said. “I want to keep the heart of these last few weeks.”
According to unofficial results Tuesday night, the levy was defeated by voters 4,060 to 3,141. The issue failed in 22 of the 27 precincts comprising the district, passing in three representing Mill Valley and two others in Scott Farms and the Adena Pointe/Links area.
Nearly 30% of the district’s registered voters cast ballots on the 8.4-mill, five-year, emergency levy.
The organizers of the Marysville Citizens for Schools group expressed regret, but said the challenge isn’t finished.
“We are deeply disappointed that the levy did not pass, but we accept the will of the voters in our community,” a statement from the group read. “The dynamics of the school funding challenges continue, so we will regroup for a renewed effort as we care deeply for the district children, teachers, administrators, and for our community.”
With expenditures outpacing revenue by $3.7 million this year and climbing, the levy would have generated about $9.6 million annually. Without an infusion of new money, the district will burn through cash reserves in three years.
In order to protect as much of the reserves as possible, district officials had already announced a contingency plan, designed to save $2 million, if the levy failed.
Those plans include a hiring freeze, eliminating all day, every day kindergarten in favor of a part-time schedule, eliminating TRI-academy, eliminating team teaching at Bunsold Middle School, a reduction of school-funded extracurricular and co-curricular assistant coaches/advisors/directors, and the elimination of school funded field trips and travel for extra and co-curriculars.
“We realize that the implementation of the contingency plan will, in some cases, eliminate and restrict access to high-impact and high-quality learning opportunities for our students,” School Board President Sue Devine said in a release. “Our commitment is to continue to explore alternative avenues to fund and restore these services we believe our students deserve in the future.”
Allen said district officials now have to roll up their sleeves to finalize staff movements related to the hiring freeze. The moves with kindergarten, Bunsold and TRI-academy relate specifically to freeing up educators to assist in other classrooms, all as the district continues to learn about new staff departures and retirements through the end of the year.
“It’s kind of a very large puzzle,” Allen said. “A fairly complex process.”
Allen said the next step would be to meet with the board of education to figure out how to address the funding shortage.
“It (the contingency plan) doesn’t change our need for additional revenue,” Allen said. “That is our reality.”
With the deficit growing too large to be completely offset by cuts, Allen said two options are on the table for a return to the voters in November. The district could choose to ask again for the same amount of money, which would allow the cuts to eventually be reversed. Or the officials could opt to ask for a lesser amount that would meet district needs only if the enacted cuts remain in place.
“We definitely need more conversations with the community to try to figure out a balance between those two pieces,” Allen said.
The district has been able to make few levy requests by operating a financially lean operation, according to the superintendent.
“We’ve been working on efficiency measures for years,” Allen said. “Honestly, that’s why we have been off the ballot for 15 years.”
But, the reality of running a tight financial ship is that the only place left to cut is staff and programming. Allen would not say what kind of impact that could have on teacher’s union negotiations in the future.
“We have a great relationship with our organizations and will continue to work with them moving forward,” Allen said.
She said looming teacher shortages in the state are going to factor into any negotiations with educators. The pandemic left 17,000 fewer individuals working in Ohio schools and colleges have said students are enrolling in educations programs at a declining rate.
“We need to remain competitive to secure high quality employees moving forward,” Allen said. “We want to maintain the highest quality teachers.”
Hiring difficulties are hitting a number of areas in the district, such as bus drivers, and cutting compensation could exacerbate that issue, she said. In fact, the district transportation supervisor position, one of only two jobs being filled during the freeze, remains open after seeing only three applicants apply.
Allen said the district has a special meeting planned for next week, but she is unsure if any talk of future levy plans will be on the agenda.