Letter: Evergreen School District residents should vote no on Propositions 7 and 8

Phil Kronebusch and the Vote No on Propositions 7 and 8 Team urges voters to reject the Evergreen School District’s funding request

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and do not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com

Propositions 7 and 8 are supplemental school funding measures that ask district households to give more than the state has allocated to Evergreen Public Schools. For a $500,000 home, over four years, the taxpayer will pay $5095. Outlined below are some of the many reasons why not giving more to Evergreen would end the self-serving interests of its benefactors.

The supplemental money is not primarily for education, but to enhance Teacher and Ancillary staff pay.
- Evergreens certified staff (teachers) make an average of $125,000 per year. They only work three quarters of the year and have a benefits package that is executive level. Years of poor academic performance do not justify this level of pay.
Low test scores and past performance do not justify spending more money. From the Washington State Report Card (OSPI test score results):
- 38.8% of Students do not pass English Language Arts
- 46.9% of Students do not pass Math
- 41% of Students do not pass Science
- 77.6% of the Teachers have a master’s degree or higher
- Teachers on average have 15.2 years of experience
- Only 61.8% of the students attend 90% of the time, (vs. Camas 83.4%)
- $18,337 is spent on each student per year, (vs. Camas $16,959)
The money is not for education alone but many non-educational items.
- Cyber security- will not enhance student performance.
- Multilingual learning-a statewide issue to be addressed by the legislature.
- Parent Square communication services- a duplication of standard email services
- Professional development- teachers are already compensated in salaries
- Security staff- cameras and monitoring devices already abound throughout the district buildings.
- Student and staff electronic devices- loss of fine motor skills and the ability to search, analyze, and report in a traditional format.
- Online curriculum- sadly in a district where only 60% attend 90% of the time, this has only amplified the problem.
- Network infrastructure, internet services, internet safety- can we justify the cost and benefit structure?
District support of Social and Emotional agendas diminishes the educational experience and is costly.
- Social Emotional integration cost classroom time and enraged many parents.
- The DEI development portion consisted of a highly paid Coordinator and four staff members, who were later reduced due to budget considerations.
- Support for these programs caused budget reductions, the contentious loss of Librarians, and the reassignment of media specialists to only partially fill the labor gap.
The Board has shown constant lack of judgement and leadership.
- Severance of two previous Superintendents with accompanying compensation package pay outs was costly to the district.
- The board will not reprioritize the budget and staff to correct educational deficiencies
The threatened loss of Sports, Orchestra, Band, Choir, and Theater is a farce.
- Parents and community would be in a net gain from not paying future taxes
- All parents and community members will gain flexibility in how they financially support extracurricular activities (i.e. clubs, sports, singing, band, hobbies, music, theater)