Failing levy means $1M more expected cuts for small Ki-Be schools
.JPG "Kiona-Benton City School District administration offices at 1107 Grace in Benton City.")
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Ki-Be voters rejected a two-year $4.9M levy by 39 votes; funding gap looms.
- Board plans budget review Nov. 24 and may cut $1M from sports and electives.
- District considers lower levy rate, risks losing state LEA match above $1.50.
With no local taxes coming in for 2026, Kiona-Benton City School District will be forced to make some tough decisions on funding in the coming months.
Voters declined to pass the small school district’s two-year, $4.9 million levy measure in the Nov. 4 general election that would have guaranteed paying for sports, additional teachers, program supports and safety.
It’s the second time this year district voters rejected the measure. Voters declined a comparable proposal in February.
Now, it’s less clear what the future holds for those jobs and programs covered by the budget.
Funding for the 2025-26 school year is set in stone after $1.5 million in cuts were made in the fall in anticipation of a second levy failure. But an extra $1 million may need to be trimmed from sports and electives in order to balance the district’s budget next school year.
The path forward will become clearer after the Nov. 24 meeting, when school board members and administrators will receive an outlook on their budget. No decision on next steps has been made yet, but it’s likely Ki-Be will return to voters next year.
However, even if a measure passes in 2026, no money can be collected until 2027.
“At some point we will revisit a levy with our district, hopefully sooner rather than later. And I want to make sure that the board has all of the options before we make a decision about any type of timing, any type of ask (of) a fiscal nature,” Superintendent Pete Peterson said at a meeting Monday night.
Ki-Be School Board Chair Josh Skipper said losing by 39 votes is painful, but these local races often come down to the wire.
“You’d think, hey, all we had to do is go out and knock on a few doors and maybe we would have swung the vote the other way. But I think it’s always been close when we have these votes,” he said.
About 51% of Nov. 4 voters declined the measure, while another 49% were in favor of passing it. That’s 1,049 to 1,011 votes.
It needs a simple majority, more than 50%, to pass.
But Skipper says he’s concerned about a recent deluge of misinformation spreading on Facebook about the levy and local school funding. For example, false information was circulated about how the district used a grant to study year-round schooling, as well as about the intentions behind why the district chose to cut busing for sports events.
“The reality is we cut all that busing in the fall so that we could save spring sports,” Skipper said. He believes many residents simply do not understand how their local taxes work.
While Benton County still has 300 more ballots countywide to tally before the election is certified on Nov. 25, Peterson says it’s “virtually 100% likely” it will not pass.
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Rate lower than $1.50 not off the table
The district serving 1,400 students trimmed more than $1.5 million from its budget this fall by eliminating extracurricular busing and athletic C teams and by freezing administrative salaries and new curricula adoption.
That included eliminating eight positions, with half of those being teachers. Three teachers were laid off.
But those reductions are coming with some tradeoffs.
Because the district cut out-of-town travel and hours, four of Ki-Be’s 10 full-time bus drivers have recently resigned to take on other better-paying jobs. That’s forced the district to begin talks about route or schedule changes for the 2026-27 school year.
Peterson said he and others are also in the process of earning their substitute commercial driver’s license to drive students in a worst-case scenario.
“I’m not interested at this point, especially going into winter, of any discussion of lengthening the boundaries out to make more kids walk to school. But if we could shift the secondary (school) start time by 15 minutes, which could cut us down to five or six permanent routes, that could be a very big deal towards ensuring we have full-time drivers in all of our routes all the time,” Peterson said.
Skipper said lowering the levy amount so that the rate drops below $1.50 isn’t out of the question, despite the fact that the district would begin leaving state matching dollars on the table.
The state’s Local Effort Assistance program would have contributed more than $1 million over the next two years to Ki-Be schools had it levy passed this month.
“You can get $0 at the $1.50 rate we ran,” he said. “We ran at the $1.50 twice, and we got nothing out of it. But the question is are there 15 people out there who would have swung their vote if it was $1.25 or $1? Maybe.”
It’s unclear how much Local Effort Assistance cash Ki-Be would relinquish for a lower rate. But Ki-Be is already likely losing matching money since its 2024 operations rate was set at $1.42 per $1,000 of assessed property value.
School districts ask for the amount of the total levy, not the rate. The tax pays for the gap between what the state considers general education and what schools actually need to meet student needs.
So when property values exceed projections, levy rates often come down. Ki-Be’s tax rates have been steadily declining since 2017, the school district says.
Ki-Be’s local levy made up about 7% of the $24 million in revenues it collected during the 2024-25 school year. This school year, with heavy cuts in place, it made up just 4%.
