Tonight's community forum at the Knox Center gave over two hundred Olympians a chance to share thoughts about the projected $2 million school district budget cuts. The event filled the Board Room and a spillover room hastily arranged upstairs. As the meeting began people stood along side walls and out in the hallway.

To start the forum, Jim Crawford, Assistant Superintendent and the night's emcee, gave a 15 minute synopsis of the budget process. In short, projected costs and revenues are both increasing, but costs grow faster. Combine this with a needed 5% contingency fund--$4 million--and we'll have to trim about $2 million from next year's expenses. "Reductions to balance the 2008-2009 budget will help forestall major additional reductions in 2009-10," Crawford's PowerPoint noted. Or, in his words: "Our outlook for the following year is another deficit... If we can solve this now, we won't be in this position next year."

Crawford also explained why the publicized cut sheet [pdf] wasn't as much cause for alarm as some think. "There are more cuts on this sheet than we're going to need to adopt, and that's very intentional... We want to hear from you before we [make cuts]."

Students, parents, teachers, and other concerned community members crammed around tables for the next hour and a half, discussing, debating, brainstorming, grousing, and, for the most part, learning a lot about their neighbors' values and their own. I sat in the back corner, sometimes blogging, sometimes taking part in a lively discussion led by constituents of Capital and Olympia's Drill Teams.

Come join your fellow citizens, bloggers, and other concerned parties at the Olympia School District's Knox Center for a community forum to discuss the ongoing budget crunch. Be heard! (More info here.)

The Olympia School District recently publicized a list of potential cuts (with a few additions) for the next fiscal year, and it's set off a firestorm of controversy, mostly because folks aren't sure what's really on the chopping block. The Board wants direction from you, concerned citizen. Here's where I can help.

Using the initial document [pdf] offered by the Olympia School District, I've created a spreadsheet where you can try to save dollars and programs in your own attempt to balance the Olympia School District budget for 2008-2009 by cutting roughly $2.5 million.

Want to keep the Drill Team intact? Better delete it from the "potential savings" column. But what will you cut instead?

More options will be added as they become available. This morning, District and school reps met to discuss other potential cuts and additions, so I'm sure I'll have to update this soon.

Jim over at the 5/17 blog has all the run down on the indecision of the Olympia School District on choosing a new school board member.

As Jim would say, here it is, for free:

Both sides held their positions, Frank Wilson and Carolyn Barclift refusing to name a second choice, Russ Lehman and Bob Shirley calling for compromise. At the impasse, Lehman and Shirley voted against a motion to send the list of three candidates to the ESD, and the matter ended with adjournment at 3:24.

...

Shirley gave a five minute lecture on the proper role of the Board, Lehman accused Wilson and Barclift of merely paying lip service to diversity, and Barclift ended a sentence with "I'm not gonna go there." When Wilson said the Board should quit wasting time, and that the ESD could make a "good decision," Shirley asked him point-blank why the Board couldn't just do the same itself., there was enough general orneriness that you might think you'd walked into a chu Overallrch's choir practice.

You can read the rest of Jim's coverage here, but here are two great liveblogs he did of two meetings where the board discussed bringing someone new on: