Some residents of the Battle Ground Public Schools (BGPS) District have been taking to social media to state they’re voting “no” while others have shown up to board meetings to voice their support of the replacement educational programs and operations (EP&O) levy appearing on the April 22 special election ballot.
BGPS Superintendent Denny Waters and Deputy Superintendent Shelly Whitten said they haven’t been paying any attention to the negative social media posts but have been hearing a different tone in the community.
“The response that we’ve been getting out in the community has been really positive," Waters said.
On Tuesday, April 8, the school district hosted a levy proposal presentation for the public to attend. Waters and Whitten said a crowd of three attended to learn more about the EP&O replacement levy.
“Three people isn’t getting the job done in terms of communication,” Waters said. “But to Shelly’s point, if we didn’t have a levy forum, then people would be mad because they would say, ‘well, you won’t come out and talk to us about it.’ So there’s the catch-22. So we have a levy forum, but only three people show up. Where are all those Facebook people? Why didn’t they show up? I’m sure they’ve got plenty of questions they want to ask us.”
If voters approve the levy, it would replace the expiring EP&O levy, which ends in December 2025. The replacement levy would begin in 2026 and end after 2029. If approved, property owners would pay an estimated $1.95 per $1,000 of assessed property value for each year of collection. In 2021, voters approved an EP&O levy at a rate of $1.99 per $1,000 of assessed property value, but that levy began at $1.97 in its first year.
Educational programs and operations levies fill the gap between what the school district receives from state funding and what it actually costs to educate students, the district said in a news release. Currently, the estimated difference between state funding and the annual cost for the district is $40.8 million.
Waters and Whitten said they would welcome levy critics to share their concerns.
“We’re ready to have those conversations,” Whitten said. “We just need the people that have them to show up and engage with us.”
If the replacement levy were to fail, incoming superintendent Whitten said the district would have to step back and regress.
“There’d be some programs that we have worked really hard to get into place that we’d have to refocus,” Whitten said. “Obviously, we still have a strategic plan that we believe really strongly in and we’re going to continue to allocate resources based on that, and that’s what we did when we identified our cuts. We tried to mitigate those coming from any one area and tried to figure out what would be the least impactful for kids — all of it’s impactful because, again, it’s necessities.”
If voters were to say “no” to the replacement levy proposal, the district will need to make cuts that impact all facets of Battle Ground Public Schools. The district’s budget reduction proposal includes cuts to safety, teaching staff, sports and activities, among other things.
“They’re not enrichment levies anymore,” Whitten said. “They are operations and they’re educational programs.”
Roughly 80% of the district’s budget is people. When looking at what to cut, Waters said it always has to be people, which also impacts programs.
The school district will hold a levy forum at the Prairie High School media center from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 16.
