CHIMACUM — Rick Thompson, Chimacum School superintendent, said Thursday he is keeping a wary eye on a pending lawsuit by Randy Dorn, Superintendent of Public Instruction that aims to determine if the practice of using levy monies to fund teacher salaries adheres to the state constitution.

Dorn reportedly plans to file a lawsuit in King County Superior Court to see whether public school districts can use levy funding for teacher pay.

He has said he believes the practice is illegal.

The state Supreme Court has said in the McCleary decision — named for Stephanie McCleary, a Sequim native who is a Chimacum parent and school district human resources director — that the state must fund basic education by 2018 and that the use of local levies to cover the costs of basic education is unconstitutional.

‘What basic ed is’

“First of all, you’ve got to define what basic ed is, and that is going to be different to some degree in different communities,” Thompson said.

The Chimacum School District, and many districts in rural areas, is dependent on levy funding to hire an adequate number of teachers to serve the needs of students when state funding is unavailable, Thompson said.

“I think most all districts . . . use your local levy to help support educational programs, which is translated into some degree into staffing,” he said.

Attempts on Thursday to reach other North Olympic Peninsula districts to determine whether they also use levy funding in a similar way were unsuccessful.

Discussion

“We had a board meeting [Wednesday] and were discussing our budget,” Thompson said.

“We were actually discussing . . . to some degree a number of teachers that are levy-funded.”

Should a court rule against using levy monies to pay teacher salaries, districts will be left scrambling to find a way to pay for the positions, Thompson said.

“What would it do? Well, we have collective bargaining agreements” that affect both state and levy funded teachers, he said.

“We just can’t do any willy-nilly action with the staff. We have to follow procedures, timelines and contracts, if we were to — for example — lay off staff that were part of the collective bargaining agreement.”

Hypothetical layoffs

Such hypothetical layoffs would be a Catch-22 because the district would no longer be in compliance with state class size provisions, Thompson said.

“For example,” he said, “if you hire an extra third-grade teacher using levy money to reduce class size” and then lay off the teacher, that would “trigger a higher class size [and] you would have to pay what is called overload money by contract anyway.”

Thompson said he “certainly wouldn’t sit in front of my school board and recommend — as a recourse — laying off an X number of levy-funded teachers.”

However, “I would say let’s keep working on it to figure out a way to make this work. Sans new revenue,” funding for teacher salaries has “got to come from somewhere,” he said.

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Features Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.