The cost of education in La Conner

As the La Conner School District prepares to again ask voters to approve a new two-year $2.5 million property tax levy, it commissioned a study to answer a question that keeps popping up:

Why does La Conner spend more per student than many other districts in the state and $4,607 per student more than other districts in the county?

The answer is mostly because it has the money to spend. At its meeting on Monday, the school board heard a more in-depth explanation.

Bottom line: “The money is spent on students in the classroom,” said Andy Wolf, assistant executive director of the Washington Association of School Administrators, which conducted the study and made a draft of its report available on Monday.

For the report, school finance expert Allen Jones pored over the district’s finances for the 2015-2016 school year and compared what he found to the rest of the districts in Skagit County and three other small school districts that encompass tribal lands.

Here are the raw numbers on pupil expenditure, which Jones said he obtained from the state: In the last school year, La Conner spent $16,620 per student. The other district’s in the county averaged $12,013 per student, meaning La Conner spends an average of 38 percent more per student. With the exception of Concrete and Conway, the other districts — Anacortes, Burlington-Edison and Mount Vernon — are much larger than La Conner. For example, Mount Vernon, which spent $11,981 per student last year, has more than 10 times the enrollment of La Conner, which reported 616 students last year. Concrete, with an enrollment of 530, spent $14,214 per student.

When compared to the Wellpinit, Cape Flattery and Mount Adams school districts, which, like La Conner, are districts with fewer than 1,000 students that encompass tribal lands, the spending difference shrinks to about 1.4 percent with La Conner spending an average of $226 more per student.

Like those three districts, La Conner receives impact aid from the federal government. That money is to help offset the cost of educating students from federal land school districts cannot tax, including Indian reservations and military bases. It also helps toward the extra costs associated with educating those students – which include frequent moves for military kids and cultural differences for Native American kids.

In La Conner’s case, impact aid provided $3,321 per student last year — which according to the report appears to account for much of the expenditure and funding disparity between La Conner and other districts in Skagit County. Also factored into the expenditures per student is the money contributed by the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community.

Wolf and Jones were very complimentary of the tribe’s role in providing school funding — which includes $400,000 of the tax money Swinomish assesses on non tribal members who own homes built on leased reservation land. Swinomish also helps fund a preschool program, which also feeds into the money-per-student figure.

Wolf, who is a former super-intendent of the Yelm School District, said there is no other tribe in the state that partners with a school district to the extent that Swinomish does.

The draft Management and Operational Review report the association prepared for the district was distributed to everyone who attended Monday’s public meeting.

It contained many charts detailing La Conner’s expenses per student compared to other districts. It’s available at the district office for anyone who really wants to get into the weeds on this.

Areas where the district generally spends more than others include classroom instruction and extra-curricular activities.

To cut costs, the report said the district could increase class sizes and hire fewer teachers — a measure that is not apt to be popular with parents.

Property tax, according to the report, contributed $2,172 per La Conner student last year, and the state provided a total of about $8,812. This year the state Legislature is supposed to find a way to fully fund basic education in the state after the state Supreme Court ruled that using property tax levies for anything other than extra-curricular activities and enhancements is unconstitutional.

Ballots will be mailed to La Conner School District’s approximately 3,700 registered voters on Jan. 25 for a special election ending Feb. 14 on a new levy for the district. Last year voters approved a one-year levy for just under $1 million.

This time the district is asking voters to approve a two-year levy with $1.25 million to be collected each year in 2018 and in 2019.