Dear BISD Community,

At the November 14, 2024, school board meeting, the board voted to continue with me as the permanent superintendent, and I am honored to have earned their trust. Having been in BISD for 20 years, I have served in several roles — teacher, association leader, administrator and parent. I care deeply about our BISD community and promise to show up every day as a heart-focused leader who keeps student needs at the forefront of my work. Although there are great challenges ahead (as you will read below), I have confidence that we will navigate through them together as a BISD community. 

For the second consecutive fall, BISD faces uncertain times with our budget. However, there are key differences between this year and last year, and I want to share these differences with you. 

We finally have a solid sense of our budget picture.

I have complete faith in our CFO, Kim Knight, and with the close of Fiscal Year End (2023-2024, due to the state last Friday) we now have our absolute bottom line for this year and, most importantly, have zeroed out our last two years of fiscal reporting with OSPI, so believe we have finally uncovered the last of our budget surprises. That’s the good news. 

The not-so-good news is that our final bottom line is currently projected at -$396,781. This change (from $28,000 a few weeks ago) reflects recent additional inaccuracies found in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 budgets that necessitated corrections in general ledger accounts specific to grant accruals, inventory and previous force balancing. This means that $4 million deficit last October was likely not actually $4 million but would have been closer to $6-7 million. Please note that this current projection is where we end August 2025 if we make no fiscal changes this school year. We are actively working right now to make changes to remedy the close to -$400,000 shortfall by recapturing previously encumbered expenditures (i.e., pausing most committee work, pulling back a portion of building and departmental budgets, charging additional curricular items to the Technology Levy, etc.) so that we can end this year in a positive financial position, in the black, not the red. 

School closure and consolidation are not on the table:

Last fall felt like a flurry of budget-related events. The announcement of a budget crisis, without a firm number grounded in factual information, quickly led to a recommendation for school consolidation or closure. As we worked through this process last fall and into late winter, it became evident that school closure or consolidation would not generate huge cost savings and that our buildings simply did not have the capacity to absorb all of our BISD students in a way that would be equitable and best for them. 

We are sharing budget information with you in a timely and transparent manner:

While it may mean sharing information with you before we have all of the answers to your questions, we are working diligently to share real-time budget information with all of you, and we are openly sharing our current budget outlook. School district budgets are nuanced and ever-changing, but we respect and appreciate that you can understand this and want you to have relevant information as soon as possible. 

We are approaching our budget crisis collaboratively with our staff and our community:

Beyond sharing important information with all of you, we are collaborating with the District Budget Advisory Committee, our Building/District Administrator Teams, and our Labor Partners to receive feedback and work together on our path forward. We will hold building-based and community-based small group meetings (more like focus groups) beginning in December to have meaningful conversations about potential budget reductions and revenue ideas throughout late winter and into early spring. Our goal is to have a very clear plan by mid-March so that we are not rushing into decisions in April and May. We do not yet know the amount we will need to reduce by but will be working closely with PSESD and DBAC in the coming weeks to get a firm understanding of what we need to reduce to create a balanced budget for 2025-26, and how much we will need to set aside to pay back our Capital Fund Loans, and to start building back up our fund balance.

I know this is a lot to continually digest, and I appreciate you taking the time to read this lengthy update. In this time of what feels like literal and figurative darkness, I still find light and hope for our path forward. I am continually inspired by our collective BISD community and our unwavering commitment to come together in times of need on behalf of our BISD students.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly if you have any additional questions or would like to connect further. 

Take good care,

Amii Thompson
BISD Superintendent
athompson@bisd303.org