As fiscal responsibility is one of our strategic plan goals, we proactively and transparently share information with our community regarding how we are efficiently managing our resources. Every month, budget reports are provided to the public and the board. You can find minutes from all prior meetings on our website and in BoardDocs. You can also watch archived recordings of our board meetings on YouTube. In addition, all of our prior budgets, levy spending plans (2025-2026 EPO levy spending plan currently in revision), and audit reports are available on our website. Finally, an outside group of community members on our Finance & Audit Committee regularly meets to review all the district's financial matters. Meeting dates for this group are also published on our website.

Peninsula School District board members, students, and Superintendent Krestin Bahr spent significant time this year testifying, submitting letters, and meeting with legislators throughout the legislative session to advocate for education funding. This year specifically, we advocated for full funding for special education, transportation support, and inflation adjustments for Materials, Supplies, and Operating Costs (MSOC). Final state budgets did not fund these priorities as we had hoped, so we must cover these gaps with local levy dollars. For example, in special education, the funding gap is $6 million. And if the state budget is approved, the state funding impacts and known expenditure increases balance out to a net loss of an additional $2.7 million to our district.

Every spring, we work to balance our staffing to match all our programs' needs, based on enrollment projections for the coming year. As the community's largest employer with approximately 1200 employees across 20 different work locations, this often requires shifting and changes to work locations based on the needs of the organization as a whole. Staffing changes are not arbitrary but are governed by the collective bargaining agreements under which our staff work. Changes also reflect a comprehensive, district-wide analysis of enrollment trends, academic outcomes, and fiscal sustainability.

We may also have shifting, driven by declining enrollment in one building, increasing enrollment in another, or state funding reductions. We always try to balance this with attrition. In some years, this is more challenging than in others. For example, this coming year, we are projected to be overstaffed at high schools, and most of our attrition (retirements/resignations) is taking place at the elementary level. As teachers are required to teach in the areas where they hold certifications and endorsements, we have to move some teachers from the high school to middle school and middle school to elementary, to resolve our staffing imbalance while preserving jobs and not going through a formal reduction in force. At the high school level, six staff members are being transferred from PHS to other schools, and four from GHHS to other schools. Additionally, one staff member who was split between schools will be transferred to another school, and a GHHS teacher will be split between both comprehensive high schools.

In the summer of 2024, we transitioned to a new substitute management software, RedRover, which has been very effective at ensuring most teacher absences are being covered daily. Because of this, we have determined that we no longer need to have full-time dedicated building substitutes.

Using the same process as our 2023 alignment to the Washington State prototypical funding model, and the Peninsula Education Association (PEA) contract for specialist allocations for all schools, we are aligning all specialists in our elementary schools to these contracted allocations. These allocations are entirely based on the student populations of the building and vary across our schools. Building leadership teams (collaborative between the principal and teaching staff) will determine how students receive appropriate specialist time. No specific schools are targeted, and we are not completely cutting STEAM/STEM programs in any schools. In the fall of 2021, the Peninsula School District adopted the STEMScopes curriculum, which is to be taught by every elementary teacher, ensuring all elementary students in every school receive STEM instruction weekly from their classroom teacher.

Involuntary transfers or placements are guided by staff collective bargaining agreements (CBA). Systemwide staffing adjustments are made in every school district yearly in May, in response to state budget allocations and enrollment projections. Staffing levels are determined by enrollment and available funding, and then positions are assigned based on factors specified in the CBA, including required certifications, subject endorsements, and seniority. Read the full CBA here. Section 5.21 speaks to Assignments and Transfer.

PSD is in a much better financial position than neighboring districts, who have seen significant layoffs, program cuts, and even school closures. Rather than laying people off, we have prioritized involuntary staff placements and not backfilling retirements. This has allowed us to manage our own staffing allocations without issuing a formal Reductions in Force (RIF) like surrounding districts. 

No, reassignments have occurred because of enrollment shifts at schools and loss of state or federal funding streams. In addition, most administrative office positions are specialized roles that do not translate to instructional or school-based administrator jobs. 

We follow PEA contract language and state RCW (RCW 28A.150.260) in setting class sizes and caseloads in PK-12 and all our programs. For example, K–3 and special education services, as well as other legally mandated staffing ratios, will remain in place. Class sizes and caseloads naturally fluctuate from year to year and will continue to fluctuate between now and the start of the school year. We are currently building schedules for the coming school year, and no class size decisions are final. We have contingencies that will address specific one-off situations directly with the classroom teachers, per their collective bargaining agreements. Those discussions will occur once the school year starts and we know precisely the class sizes at each school. No schedules are being built now with class sizes significantly beyond the bounds of the above-mentioned statutes and contracts.

Strategically allocating staffing based on the strategic plan is one of the primary responsibilities of the superintendent. District leadership has been working on examining every administrator and school situation independently since last summer. Every move that has been made has addressed different needs that were identified through this process. In some cases, this was to help an administrator advance in their career, or to take advantage of leadership skills we saw that might be better used in other places in the district. Other factors considered in this process were the length of time a principal had been in a building, instructional progress toward achieving strategic plan goals, and building performance goals. Decisions were not part of a rotation system. Every move was thoughtfully considered and specifically targeted. These moves were developed, modified, and readjusted over months as leaders had extensive conversations, gathered feedback, and monitored all 17 schools.

High performing districts go through personnel changes every year, and we will continue this process in the future in accordance with principal contracts, not as a scheduled rotation but on an as-needed basis. Some years, these transitions occur due to attrition, and other years, the process is more public due to greater needs. You may not see the level of moves we saw this year in future years, but movement will occur regularly. We had seven administrative placements in the 2024/2025 school year and three in the 2023/2024 school year.

There are different funding drivers for each school. Most of them are specific to the students who attend a particular school. Title 1 funding, for example, is provided to the district, which then distributes the funding to the schools, depending on the percentage of students who have qualified for free-reduced lunch. When schools drop below a certain percentage of students who qualify for free-reduced lunch (35%), special waivers are applied to continue providing Title 1 funding to schools. This has happened in prior years for schools such as Minter Creek, as their population has fluctuated above and below that line to qualify for this funding. Peninsula School District has no schools that are mandated as Title 1 schools, meeting a threshold of 75% free-reduced qualifying students.

The number of classrooms and locations of specialty programs, such as the highly capable PACE program, are determined by the students who qualify for the program. For instance, due to program identification, Voyager and Purdy will reduce the number of PACE classrooms next year. Due to the geographical location of families in parts of the district, programs may be created to ease transportation, such as the Eagle Quest program, which prioritizes highly capable students who reside on the Key Peninsula. Other categorical programs are entirely based on the number of students served in a building, like special education, EL services, and other intervention programs.

Student enrollment drives many other decisions based on state prototypical funding models and district funding allocations. For example, deans for elementary schools are only provided to schools with more than 425 students (unless we see a trend that a school is on pace for that number of students in a year). Other staffing decisions, such as specialist allocations, are also enrollment-based at the elementary level. This depends on the amount of specialist time allocated with PEA contractual requirements.

All of these varying programs are responsible for the different per-pupil funding that each school receives.

As of today, we are still awaiting final federal Title 1 allocations (as well as all of our other federal funding allocations). These are subject to change through the summer and may impact current planning. Federal law requires Title I funds to supplement, not replace (supplant), state or local dollars already being used at schools. View CFO Ashley Murphy explaining Title 1 funding here and see the slide below showing Title funding by school. 

Peninsula School District has no schools that are federally mandated as Title 1 schools, meeting a threshold of 75% free-reduced lunch qualifying students. We do receive Title 1 funding for our four schools who meet the 35% free-reduced lunch threshold, which means these schools receive additional support because they meet federal eligibility for economic need.

Title I school-based strategies are determined at the building level in alignment with each school’s Continuous School Improvement Plan (CSIP) as well as community needs. Some examples of strategies are early literacy support, additional instructional staff, extended day learning, and academic intervention blocks. Minter Creek was using their Title I allocation to partially fund an English Language Arts (ELA) Interventionist.
 

Staffing changes at the district administrative office, the ESC, are reflective of the same enrollment based adjustments affecting schools. Since the 2022-2023 school year, we have reduced total ESC staffing by approximately 40% in order to maintain teaching positions in the classroom. We are constantly evaluating positions for efficiency and as attrition takes place, we are re-evaluating the needs of every department to determine actual need versus what positions have always been in place and not refilling positions we find are no longer necessary. We are always focused on keeping cuts away from the classrooms if possible and to do that, we need to have the ESC be as lean as we can.

In October 2024, the PSD Board of Directors adopted the Washington State School Directors' Association (WSSDA) model policy on staff expression as part of an employee series update. The language in this policy reflects guidance from the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Education Association, and OSPI. While the policy explicitly mentions employee communications on social media (link to policy 5254), it does not suppress employees' ability to voice their opinions on issues in our schools. Our staff are encouraged to contact their building principal, association representatives, or building leadership teams to address their concerns. When the board adopted this policy, it was stated that the district and representatives from our labor partners would work collaboratively to develop the accompanying procedure. We are convening a workgroup this month with staff and our union representatives to discuss the contents of the accompanying procedure that will guide the use and application of the policy. To date, there have been no staff disciplined under policy 5254.