Starting in the new year, the Battle Ground Public Schools (BGPS) will be the only school district in Southwest Washington without an educational programs and operations (EP&O) levy as the current one expires in just seven days.
The district is facing a year of utilizing its savings in 2026 after a double levy failure. Leaders hope voters will approve a replacement EP&O levy on the Feb. 10, 2026, ballot.
The large school district in Clark County currently operates 19 schools educating 13,000 students. One problem with a district of that size is that state funding doesn’t even come close to the actual cost to operate. From 2021-2025, the school district had a funding gap of $66.72 million between state funding and the cost to operate safety and security, substitute requirements, special education, sports and other extracurricular activities.
The district asked voters to approve a levy at a rate of $1.95 per $1,000 of assessed property value, but was turned down twice. An EP&O levy began at $1.99 in 2022 and has expired at a rate of $1.68 in 2025. The next year will see no EP&O levy rate charges on assessed property values.
The district will seek an initial estimated rate of $1.99 for a replacement levy that would begin collecting in 2027 and run through 2030, though actual rates could be lower as that is affected by the amount of new construction within district boundaries. By law, the district can’t collect more than the amount that voters approve, even if property values increase, the district website states.
While seeking a replacement EP&O levy twice already, one issue the district faced was a brick wall of national political topics that have urged voters against public education as of late.
“We all want our kids to be successful, and we all want our kids to have every opportunity moving forward,” Whitten said. “The only way that we can do that is when we put those partisan politics aside. Because we can agree or disagree all day long about certain things. There are certain things that being part of a public school system we’re required to do, and we find a path in Battle Ground. I think we find that path very well about how to mirror our community and try and meet the needs of our community and that’s ultimately what our goal is, is to represent our community while living within the laws and expectations that we have when things are laid down to public schools that we have to follow. We’ll continue to do that as best we can and navigate as closely to our community’s values as we can.”
Whitten said that partisan topics that may not even exist inside the walls of the Battle Ground Public Schools district become a focus of community members voting “no.” That can be discouraging, not just to staff and administrators, but to the students who suffer from the cuts.
Deputy Superintendent Lynnell Murray added a comment in regards to partisan politics swaying voters.
“I will just add that public education is really a bedrock of democracy and that our obligation is to provide each and every child a free and appropriate public education regardless of where they’re coming from, who they are, and I think that’s also misrepresented of we are here for each kid no matter what,” Murray said. “That’s our fundamental purpose, and that is not political. That is just our moral obligation of educating each child.”
After voters denied back-to-back levy proposals in 2025, causing the district to go into double levy failure mode, Superintendent Shelly Whitten highlighted the work that student representatives on the school board have accomplished this year by hearing from those impacted the most: the students.
“This year, they've decided to get impact statements from students across the district, primarily in middle and high school, about what they’re feeling with the loss of the levy so far,” Whitten said, adding that the loss of middle school sports has been hard for the students. “That creates an environment where kids don’t experience school in the same way that they were because they don’t have the desire. There’s not something to look forward to at the end of the day. Some of those types of things certainly have surfaced.”
While cuts upwards of $20 million were needed this school year, the district was able to dip into its one-time use savings and spend $14.88 million to ease some of the impacts. If the 2026-2027 school year were to go unfunded by a levy, the district can’t just make up for cuts with savings like it did this year, Whitten said.
If that were the case, the impacts could be devastating.
“We would dramatically change the way in which we’re providing education for students,” she said. “What I’m concerned about is I’m not sure where all the cuts would come from. We’ve actually done some preliminary work and identified about $12 million in possibilities. There are things on that possibility list that I don’t see as very feasible options.”
Whitten said one of the biggest impacts would ultimately be in safety. She added funding toward instruction would likely be transferred to ease safety cuts.
“What it would do though is it would really significantly impact the kind of instruction that our students would receive, because we’re going to have to keep a lot of those resources around safety,” Whitten said. “We can’t not have kids in our schools safe. And people don’t see the cuts now that we have going on. We feel it, we know it internally, our staff knows it.”
Whitten even said the district would have to consider what she deems some pretty radical cuts.
“We may have to consider consolidating some of our schools and shutting down a building,” she said. “We may have to do furlough days. We would certainly, probably, have to freeze salaries, which, in and of itself, isn't going to save us a whole bunch of money. But we’re going to be looking at everything.”
The school district outlined what a new levy would ultimately pay for. The district listed student safety, staff for smaller class sizes, special education, counselors and mental health support, up-to-date curricula and more as a key emphasis.
BGPS is also faced with a Clark County rarity of increasing student enrollment totals. In the 2024-2025 school year, the district educated 13,080 students. By 2033, projected enrollment could reach 14,500 students. Whitten and Murray said that funding the future will be crucial for the success of the community.
The school district stated that other struggles with funding include state-mandated but unfunded transportation contractor benefits totalling over $2 million in 2026-2027 while water rate increases will exceed $20,000. Utilities have raised $514,000 between 2019 and 2024 and risk insurance nearly a hundred grand during that same span. A new sales tax will likely exceed $250,000, too.
On Wednesday, Jan. 14, at 6 p.m., district leaders will host a presentation at Battle Ground High School in the media center to learn more about the EP&O levy proposal. Questions can also be sent to communication@battlegroundps.org. For more information, visit battlegroundps.org/page/educational-levy.
