BI school board considering a supplemental levy in Nov.

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 25, 2025

When legislators in Olympia approved a levy lid lift this legislative session, they authorized school districts across Washington to garner more money from their existing levies, starting as soon as this year.

This change represents a successful campaign for the Bainbridge Island School District, which faced down a $6.3 million shortfall in 2024-25 and spent hours advocating for changes to the school funding at the state level. But it didn’t fix everything, and financial conditions at BISD schools may push the district to run an additional levy or bond as soon as November.

“There’s been 27 supplemental levies in our state since 2010, and 19 have passed — so that’s a 70% approval rate, when historically in our state, 92.5% of measures pass. We attribute that to one word: supplemental. This is not replacing an expiring levy, so that supplemental is a difficult challenge to overcome, and accountability and explaining the necessity of that supplemental levy is so critical,” said educational finance consultant Cory Plager.

Boardmembers of BISD heard a presentation from education finance consulting firm DA Davidson at the June 10 meeting that detailed the district’s financial outlook for the coming three-year period, as well as a glance at BI’s economy and property prices.

With the levy lid lift, school districts can collect about $500 additional dollars per pupil from their existing levies — in BISD’s case, adding about $630,000 in 2026, $650,000 in 2027 and $780,000 in 2028, explained Plager.

The question is whether BISD should propose a supplemental levy for an additional $1.9 million in 2026, followed by $1.5 million in 2027 and $1.9 million in 2028, which may be crucial long-term, said superintendent Amii Thompson.

“The levy lid has a certain connotation, but it’s really about capacity. Because of the legislative change, we have the capacity to then further collect what has already been authorized. I think the question for us…is whether or not we actually run that supplemental levy which would infuse additional [funding,]” Thompson said. “It’s a good conversation for our community — that would essentially be what we need to gradually and slowly build back up our fund balance.”

Bainbridge voters have historically been very favorable toward public education, Plager said, noting “really large numbers” of voters supporting educational levies, capital and technology levies and bonds back to 2009. They’ve also been generous: in four separate years, 2019-21 and in 2025, voters approved levies that requested funding above the levy lid limit. State law prevented the district from collecting the additional funding.

“We are subject to levy lid laws. We cannot request whatever the local voters will support — we have some limitations,” Plager said. “There’s no red here. This is a huge testament of the support for public education in your communities. We don’t see this everywhere … We’re in a bit of a crisis statewide, and you’re not experiencing that locally.”

Compared to other school districts in Kitsap County, island homeowners are taxed less by BISD than their counterparts in the Bremerton, Central and North Kitsap School Districts, noted Plager, at $2.12 per assessed value. Bremerton homeowners are taxed the highest, at almost $3 per assessed value.