PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles School District may be shrinking, but its spirit is not, according to state Schools Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson.
Bergeson visited the district Friday and talked with teachers, students and administration.
“This district, every school I went in the kids were beautiful,” Bergeson said during her keynote speech at the Port Angeles Education Foundation dinner Friday night held at the Golden Gate Restaurant.
“It felt good, people good,” she said.
But Bergeson said levy dollars in shrinking communities like Port Angeles are stretched thin, and state funding for education has reached a “pathetic” level, ranking 42nd in the nation.
The state’s funding formula was devised 30 years ago at a time when there were no assessment standards to be met in basic education, she said.
Now districts are having to do more with less, and Bergeson said she’s hoping the new “Washington Learns” study of the funding crisis for public schools will open state legislators’ eyes next session.
The first report of the study is expected to be out by November, she said.
“We need to have targeted new resources” for education spending, Bergeson said, and organizations like the Port Angeles Education Foundation are more critical to funding basic education than they should be.