Reporter staff

Issaquah School District Superintendent Steve Rasmussen last week told a group of parents and businesspeople that staff would be laid off in local schools in the coming year.

“We’re going to be operating with fewer people next year — that’s the grim reality,” he said at the Rotary Club of Sammamish’s weekly breakfast gathering.

The grim reality to which he referred was the budget deficit of about $8.4 billion that lawmakers are currently wrestling with in the Washington State Legislature in Olympia.

The deficit is due to a disparity in how much tax revenue the state expects to collect compared to the amount of money needed to maintain state services. Because people are spending less, the hole in the budget continues to grow.

Rasmussen said the Issaquah School District is looking at a cut of about $8 million compared to last year’s budget.

“If (we) were going with the budget as presented earlier by the governor, then we’d be fine, we’d have all of the people in our education community coming with us,” he said.

But, he said, state budget decisions had forced the issue, and layoffs would have to be made.

“This is a situation we didn’t create as a district — we have kept our house in exceptional financial shape — and so we are in a waiting game as the Legislature puts together a budget that will pull direct funding sources from our educational programs,” Rasmussen wrote in a continually-updated message on the district’s Web site.

He did not indicate what staffing areas would be most effected, or whether class sizes would increase as a result.

He did say, however, that small increases in class sizes had the potential to save the school district millions of dollars.

He wrote that officials are looking to increase efficiencies in ways such as tightening bus routes, increasing utility conservation, and eliminating unfilled operations positions, among others.

“We do have some sacred cows, and some of those sacred cows will have to be slaughtered,” he said

When asked by someone in the audience what the “sacred cows” were, Rasmussen gave the bus routes as an example.

He also wrote that any layoffs would have to be announced by May 15, and that for the most part it is a district-wide, seniority-based process.

“I cannot begin to express how deeply I feel and share the anxiety of some of our newest teachers,” he wrote. “They are giving their all to their students.”

The district and teacher’s unions have been working closely together throughout this process to make it as easy and transparent as possible if layoffs do become a reality.

“As a district, we owe (the teachers) a guarantee that we will communicate proactively and honestly with them through the coming months,” Rasmussen wrote.

In closing, Rasmussen said at the breakfast that enrollment in the school district was flat, with the exception of elementary school enrollments, which were up.

For more information about the budget, go to the district’s Web site at www.issaquah.wednet.edu. Anyone with questions or ideas regarding the budget is encouraged to send an e-mail to budget2009@issaquah.wednet.edu.