Budget Update

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback on our recent budget survey. Your responses will help us as we continue to establish our priorities for the 2023-24 school year budget. 

Some themes from your feedback included:

  • Competitive compensation for teachers and staff
  • Sufficient staffing and additional support (paraeducators, health services, etc.)
  • Requests for smaller class sizes
  • Additional support for students in Special Services (Special Education, multilingual learners)
  • More enrichment and after school opportunities for students

The budget summary and complete budget feedback are available on our website.

Currently, we are continuing to receive budget requests from our schools and district departments. The district executive team is processing these requests. They will take these requests and your feedback into consideration as they begin to build a proposed budget for next school year. We will continue to share budget updates with you as we continue through the process. 

Information about our annual budget process is on our website.

Facilities planning and budget

We received a few feedback comments about the need for a new middle and elementary school. While we complete regular maintenance of our buildings, large projects such as building a new school would require us to run a bond for our community to vote on. These funds are separate from our general fund which supports the day-to-day operations of the district and classroom learning. Some examples of facilities projects that were completed with our general fund budget and through grants were highlighted in our fall 2022 newsletter. 

School budgets are complex. Our general fund consists of three funding sources, federal, state and local funding. Local funding is our levies and bonds and comprise 20 percent of our district budget. A good way to remember the difference between these two budgets is, levies are for learning and bonds are for building. 

Levies pay for teachers, support staff, supplies and materials, or services that the state only partially funds. Bonds are used for constructing, repairing or remodeling facilities. Bond dollars cannot be used for general district expenses. You can learn more about our budget and the difference between levies and bonds on our website.

We recognize the need for updating some facilities in our district and want to be very thoughtful about what we present to voters in our community. Through grant funds provided by OSPI, Meridian School District has hired King Architecture to complete a study and survey. This study identifies current and future facilities needs of the district. The study should be complete by the end of the school year. We look forward to sharing the results of that study with our community later this year.