Ongoing Struggle For Survival Tuesday’S Levy Election Critical To Northport

Northport School District officials view a levy election Tuesday as a battle for survival.

While larger, richer districts use levies to supplement their programs, this 237-student district in northern Stevens County is struggling to keep roofs from leaking and heating systems from breaking down.

School leaders blame inadequate state funding for their predicament and fear the district eventually may be forced to consolidate with the Colville School District if patrons don’t start approving supplemental tax levies routinely. They say they’ve already cut all nonessential spending.

Band and choir classes are a memory. So are cheerleaders, although the district is clinging to its scaled-down extracurricular sports program.

“We consider extracurricular a necessity here,” Superintendent Patsy Guglielmino said. “We have very few social activities for students in this area.”

Also, Guglielmino said school directors fear elimination of sports would cause some students to switch to the Colville district, further reducing Northport’s state funding.

But a novel “lifetime sports” physical education program has just been erased from the budget. Grade school students jumped rope for 180 minutes last week to win $2,200 in pledges they hope will partially restore the program of field trips for instruction in skiing and other non-team sports that students can enjoy for the rest of their lives.

“This was a major shock to my system, losing this program this year,” said parent Meri Wright, vice chairman of the school levy committee.

School maintenance man Ralph Pierce said another shock may come soon when a major overhaul of a 40-year-old oil-fired boiler is required. The boiler was intended only to heat a gymnasium but was tapped by the high school as well several years ago when the school’s coal-fired boiler failed.

“We’re taxing it very hard,” Pierce said.

To reduce heat bills and help balance the district’s budget, Pierce and others go to the school at odd hours throughout the winter to turn the boiler on and off. The boiler has no automatic controls that would allow it to heat the buildings as little as possible without allowing pipes to freeze.

With no local industry and an unfavorable currency exchange keeping Canadian shoppers home, Northport’s economy is as flat as Lake Roosevelt. Seventy-one percent of students qualify for lunch subsidies.

The school district hasn’t been able to pass a levy in two years and the last one was for emergency repair of a leaking roof. Because two levy proposals failed last year, the one on Tuesday’s ballot can’t take effect until January 2000.

“We can’t have that as a pattern here” if the district wants to continue to operate, Guglielmino said.

When Guglielmino was appointed superintendent in August 1996 after 14 years as the district’s first-grade teacher, one of her first duties was to make deep spending cuts. She said the district hadn’t passed levies for a number of years and was operating on loans. The state superintendent of public instruction refused to authorize any more state money until the budget was balanced.

Revenues are still running $80,000 to $100,000 short of the district’s needs, Guglielmino said.

“If we were constantly to fall behind $80,000 to $100,000 a year, I don’t know long the state would let us go,” she said.

The state won’t allow an unbalanced budget, but Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Bigelow said a forced consolidation is not in the cards.

“I don’t think consolidation is something we would consider, not unless the people up there wanted it,” Bigelow said.

However, the district needs to cut its expenses further or increase its revenue, according to Crista Emerson, school financial services manager for Educational Service District 101.

Small districts are at a disadvantage because they have fewer students to generate income for disproportionately high overhead costs, Emerson noted.

Emerson declined to comment on the adequacy of state school funding, but said “districts that cannot pass levies have a very difficult time trying to maintain their buildings.”

Statistics show how dependent school districts are on special levies. Only 26 of 296 districts in the state didn’t propose levies last year. Only six levy proposals weren’t approved last year, although some may have needed more than one try.

“You hear a lot about the cliche `free and equal education,’ ” Guglielmino said. “It’s not free. You have to pass levies. It’s not equal if you don’t pass levies.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: ELECTION ‘99 Levies, bond at stake Two school levies and a bond measure are on the ballot Tuesday in Stevens County. A proposed two-year, $85,000-a-year Northport school levy would cost an estimated $1.25 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The Colville School District is seeking a three-year, $965,000-a-year levy that would cost $1.54 per $1,000. A $1.15 million bond measure in Springdale’s Mary Walker School District would modernize a building that houses art, music, drama, special and physical education classes and an alternative school.