Seattle Public Schools faces $74 million deficit in 2017-2018

The court gave the Legislature until 2018 to come up with a solution, with consequences unclear beyond the current $100,000-per-day fine lobbied against the state for being in contempt of court.

Which comes back to Nyland’s first point. 2018 is the same year that Washington state school districts will hit what some have referred to as the “levy cliff.”

Under the Levy Lid Act, originally passed in 1978 in response to another State Supreme Court case on school funding constitutionality, school districts are restricted in the amount of money they can raise from local tax dollars.

At the time of the Act’s passage, that limit was 10 percent of state and federal revenues. But, with repeated amendments to the law, that amount creeped up to 24 percent.

In 2011, the Legislature passed an amendment temporarily raising the lid to 28 percent of revenues until 2018.

Now, if the Legislature doesn’t fully fund basic education or amend the law again, $30 million of the $100 million provided by Seattle’s taxpayers will become off-limits to the school district.

The Seattle School Board has already been presented with potential reductions for that $30 million, but the additional $44 million presents a problem, Nyland said.

“The budget reductions beyond [$30 million] will be challenging for all of us,” he said. “Eighty-five percent of our budget is salaries and much of the remaining budget includes fied costs like utilities and insurance. This $44 million represents over 440 positions within the district.”

He added: “Closing the $74 million gap will be the most difficult challenge we’ve faced in decades.”

Three 6:30 p.m. community meetings are currently scheduled to discuss the budget gap. The first will be held Dec. 13 at Ballard High School. The second will be held Dec. 15 at South Shore PreK-8 School. The third will be held Jan. 3 at Franklin High School.