Ex-superintendent was shortlisted to be fired. Then Ki-Be parents, teachers packed the meeting
.JPG "Nearly 100 community members packed the Kiona-Benton City School Board meeting, most in support of keeping three employees who laid off.")
The last week has been hell for Chris Howell.
The 2010 Kiona-Benton City High School graduate had dreams of teaching in the small town where he grew up.
He got a job as a student support specialist at Ki-Be Middle School and coached the middle school wrestling team. He was pursuing his master’s degree. Things were going well, and he believes he was making an impact on kids’ lives.
But things changed when he received a slip of paper March 6.
His position was being eliminated because of budget cuts. He was given a week’s notice.
“I’m a Ki-Be kid. I was going to stay here forever. I live here,” Howell said. “Now, I’ve been pushed away.”
Howell’s job and two others — including former Superintendent Wade Haun, who currently works as the district’s director of federal and state programs — were on the chopping block at Monday night’s Ki-Be school board meeting.
But nearly 100 community members packed the Ki-Be School Board room, most in support of keeping the three employees. Nearly two dozen voiced their concerns during the public comment period.
“Research shows that having one caring adult when you are in school can make a difference for kids, either they graduate or they get lost in the system,” said Amber Farley, a science teacher at Ki-Be Middle School. “And Mr. Howell is that caring adult for so many of our kids — and these are the kids who do not have support at home, they do not have strong male role models, they are struggling.”
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Budget crunch
Superintendent Pete Peterson said he recommended cutting those positions in order to keep the district’s reserve fund from slipping from 5% to 1.8%.
Ki-Be’s reserves are being eaten away at by higher service costs, he said.
The district is currently spending $225,000 a month on basic operational expenses, including food services, diesel, heating bills and other services required to keep the lights on, according to agenda materials.
“The catch is our non-personnel related costs have skyrocketed. That’s the bottom line,” Peterson said.
Limits already have been placed on travel, teaching supplies and other expenses, and consolidations of non-contracted services.
The district serves about 1,400 students with an annual budget of about $22 million. It’s staff size is about 285.
The school board ultimately decided to pull the three names from the consent agenda in order to hear the concerns of the community members who packed the small board room.
An infuriated community
Lorie Haun, a middle school employee and the wife of Wade Haun, told the board she wasn’t buying the district’s reasons for the cuts.
She also criticized Peterson’s handling of school expenses, and said the community was “not happy” with his performance.
“The staff and community are not stupid. This is not the cost of diesel and milk going up,” she told the school board. “We all have had the cost of diesel and milk going up. We are not in the danger of being in the red — you are.”
“(The employees) did not put this district in financial despair. Our superintendent did with your approval,” she added.
The elimination of the three at-will, non-contracted positions would have accounted for at least $207,000 in savings for the school district, based on 2021-22 data from Washington OSPI.
Haun, who searches out state and federal grant money for the school district, makes a salary of $101,000, Howell makes $41,400 and high school student support specialist Agustin Tovar makes $64,500.
Also, the school district has looked at saving more than $800,000 by not filling the positions of employees who retire or leave over the next year.
“This particular school board has been extremely active in monitoring our expenditures and understands the current problems that the district is facing with expenditures,” Peterson said.
Community members also brought up using some of the district’s COVID relief dollars, also known as Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief Funds (ESSER), to cover staff costs.
But Peterson said they’ve already allocated nearly all of the $5 million the district was eligible for.
Public school districts will be under hard deadlines to apportion out and spend those dollars over the coming months, starting first in September 2023.
The remaining $900,000 of Ki-Be’s ESSER money is intended for summer school programs, transportation and other learning loss initiatives.
Consider other cuts
All the community members who spoke out Monday pleaded with the board to reconsider firing “three exceptional people” who directly benefit kids.
Farley said losing Howell will “hurt our most vulnerable kids.”
“He deals with kids that have been in fights, he deals with kids that have done things at recess. And then, while he’s doing all of that, he is checking grades and pulling kids in and sitting down with them and helping them with their school work. And I have seen a night-and-day difference in the support available for those kids since he’s been here.”
Instead of being in the classroom with Howell and learning, Farley said at-risk students were instead suspended.
Other community members advocated for cutting redundant principal positions or consider taking down job postings for high-cost principal and administrative positions.
Because the school board removed the three employees from being cut at Monday night’s meeting, Peterson told the Tri-City Herald he expects the board will request he look at other places to make cuts. The school board at a previous meeting said they wanted to avoid eliminating any teaching positions.
The comments from Monday’s meeting were “much needed information,” one school board member said.
After the meeting, Howell said he was still unsure if he had a job after all this. He had spent the past week reconsidering his future, looking for new work.
He didn’t come in to school on Monday, the day his job was supposed to end.
He nearly left Monday’s meeting unsure if he had a job or not this week until Peterson caught his attention.
“Please come into work tomorrow,” Peterson told Howell as he headed for the door.
