Well, here I am at Mary M. Knight, home of the Owls, with Superintendent Matt Mallory in his seventh year here as superintendent, and talking a little bit today about an upcoming EP&O levy that you have that'll be on the February 10th ballot. How are you? I'm good, how are you? Good, it's good to see you. I saw you at the parade.
Yeah, it was good to see you. And always a lot of fun, lots of good community support and spirit here in the Matlock, Elma area, and good tradition of the voters in the district supporting the work done here through those levies. Yeah, we have a long history of the community supporting Mary M. Knight School District, and the voters supporting what was called M&O levies turned over into EP&O levies, so the community has a really good history of supporting those initiatives.
We often talk about different ways that these levies help school districts here, and a lot of them, especially in the high school, junior high, high school area, are a little more on the visible side. A lot of it comes down to the sports that you guys are able to offer, the career and technical education programs, but there's also behind-the-scenes extra staff on hand that helps support the kids in all grades. Right.
The EP&O levy, the reason we run it, and the reason districts run it, is to really fund support for a district that basic ed does not cover. Right. A small school district, you know, we generate only a certain amount of staffing based on the size of our district, and so with the EP&O levy, we're able to add additional staff to serve students and additional support for programs that's not covered by basic ed.
So we've seen an expansion of our career technical education program, our CTE program, over the last few years. We see a real benefit with that for more opportunities for our students. We've added a really a good construction program, we have horticulture, we've had forestry, we have good business and marketing, we have a welding program, and so we're always looking to expand those and provide more opportunities for students in CTE as a career pathway, but also as a graduation pathway.
And those are real familiar to this community. Those are jobs and industries that people have grown up with over the generations here, so it's a known path forward after school that you can get good work jobs, and that experience that you garner here really kind of gives students a leg up when they go in and they're able to, while maybe not jump right into the full-on full-bore systems, they understand the trigonometry when it comes to taking specs from blueprint to cutting, or where you need to be in the industry to get the most yield out of a piece of timber and things like that. It's true, and we're trying to always, looking at those industry standards, looking at what industries are starting to burgeon here in the county, and in Grays Harbor County, and trying to create programs to help meet that need.
We're fortunate just this month, we had Mason County Economic Development come out for a little youth summit. I saw that. So they could get, interview some of our students with business owners, what are some barriers for youth employment in the county.
I think there's some really good conversation that came out of that on both sides. I think it really helped some of our students to really think about, there are some additional opportunities they haven't thought about, sort of spreading their wings a little bit. There are other opportunities within the counties that they haven't really explored.
One of the goals with Mason County EDC is to drive employment in the county for county residents, and so really another opportunity for students. And we're real fortunate just this last week, we had Representative Travis Couture come do a site visit. He's also a business owner, talked to our construction class about some of the things that he's looking for, for his business, and some of the opportunities in those skilled trades for our students.
So that, we're just trying to get more and more exposure for students in that area. Well one of the last times we were together talking about the school, you showed me the work site facility here for all the woodworking. And knowing Travis, and knowing his business, he must have just loved being able to see that and talk with the students that are in those programs.
I think he enjoyed it. Yeah, we really had a limited, he's pretty busy right now. What turned into a one-hour visit was about 90 minutes, so he did, I think he enjoyed his time.
That's awesome. Additionally, some sporting activities for students with different outlets there. Flag football is really taking off across the country really, and it's a good outlet if you're not into the traditional football sense.
It's a co-ed excitement as well, so this is one of the things you've been doing? Right, so our EP&O levy really supports all of our athletics and after-school activities. And over the last couple years, we've expanded opportunities for students. One of them was flag football.
I think we had our third season of it this year. That's a great opportunity for our middle school and our upper elementary students to get involved in that. It is co-ed, so kids that wouldn't necessarily go into volleyball have an opportunity to go with that, but also the upper elementary don't have an opportunity for what is traditional tackle football.
So it helps them get exposure to that, and it's a great feeder into our middle school and high school programs. So we've expanded that, so we're picking up numbers of kids to participate in our football program, which is good. The other things we've expanded the last couple years, we reinstated our baseball program.
That's in middle school and high school, so we have two there. That's a co-ed program as well, and so we have a pretty busy spring with baseball, track, which has been a pretty solid program at Merriam-Knight. We brought back Institute of Golf a few years ago.
We've had some success with kids going on to the state tournament in golf at the B level, and then this year we are piloting high school wrestling, so we continue to offer opportunities. The other thing is that we are growing. When I first started here almost seven years ago, 2019, we had about 148 kids pre-K through 12.
We're about 190 now, so we are slowly growing. Where are those kids? Are the families moving into the area? We have a few families moving in, a few are coming back to relocate, and so we are seeing some growth out here. It's slow, it's steady, and it's a good problem for us to have.
The school board sits around and kind of maths out these rates for the EPNO levies, so when they are put to the voters here on the 10th, on election day, February 10th, they know that they've put the hard work in to understand not only the community, but what those dollars can go to. What is the rate that you are asking for this replacement? So our board is very sensitive to the economic climate right now in the state of Washington, in Mason County, and are very concerned and sensitive to the burden of local taxpayers. So we spend quite a bit of time, and so what the board landed on, and what we all agree with, is that we want to be sensitive to that and ask for really what we need from the community.
So this is really as close to a replacement levy as we can do. Again, it's not a new tax, it's replacing it. So the rate we're asking for, going to propose to the voters, is $2.08 per thousand in 27 and in 28.
That is the exact rate that was approved by the voters in the last levy, which is $2.08 per thousand. Another thing to think about in regards to Merriam-Knight specifically is a recent change in the legislature's laws in the last couple of years, and this is levy equalization dollars, and Merriam-Knight is in a situation where they're able to, if the voters choose to pass this levy on February 10th, the state will offer up additional resources to help support that levy, in the sense that the community has decided to buy in to the next couple of years for the levy, so the state is going to put in some money as well. It's only available if the levy passes on February 10th, and what's that additional amount? It's kind of hard to kind of get a full number, but what are your... It's about 500,000 additional funds.
Okay. So Merriam-Knight is one of the school districts. There's about 100 that qualify for what they call local effort assistance, and that is really... The legislature recognizes that these smaller communities, particularly ones that don't have large and commercial tax base, industry, high property values, technically it's called property poor districts, where the burden for these EP&O levies really fall on property owners and single family home owners, that there's an additional local effort assistance fund.
So we would garner, if the voters approve this levy, an additional 500,000. And that money is being paid by all Washington state taxpayers, so that's going into a fund and then is divvied out to additional... To schools across the state. So something to think about is you might as well have that come right back here.
That is a big part of our campaign, is letting voters know that if the levy's successful, we'll receive that, we all pay into that, so it's best if we can retain those funds that taxpayers here are already paying. They'll stay in Merriam-Knight and go to Merriam-Knight School District. They don't go elsewhere.
Right. $2.08 per thousand on the assessed value of your property is what the levy... The school board has deemed the number here for this upcoming levy on February 10th. The ballots will be out early January sometime.
I'm sure there's more communication coming out. There'll be a mailing coming out to all of the residents of the Merriam-Knight School District end of this month, early January. I've made some presentations to our staff about that.
Hope to get in front of the Grange, who's another group, possibly go speak at the fire hall at one of their meetings, and the Matlock Historical Society. It's kind of unique in the sense that we don't have big community groups out here. One of the important ones is going up to the general store, meeting with people in the morning that have coffee.
We don't have a Rotary or Alliance or Kiwanis here located in Matlock, so it's a lot of word of mouth out there about what's going on. What a great tradition in supporting the Owls here in the Merriam-Knight School District, and you can get that information through the school district. Matt will be out slinging coffee at the morning stops for people as well, but just a good reminder that this is nothing, especially at the $2.08 level, this is nothing new that property taxpayers haven't been paying for the last couple of years.
It's just a continuation of this. Yeah, this is not a new tax. It is a replacement of the levy that's expiring, and we are asking for the same dollar amount per thousand that the voters approved last time.
So again, being very sensitive to that, property values, inflation, and that those funds really do go back and support the district. I think as people have gradually seen the improvements we've made out here, I go out and aggressively seek grant funding. We were beneficiary a year and a half ago of a small school modernization grant where we replaced all the windows at the high school with high efficiency windows.
We switched over to LED lighting throughout the district to help reduce our utility bills to become more efficient. As you know, we have some electric school buses. Those were all purchased or obtained through Department of Ecology grants, so we have brand new buses that are electric that we could not afford if we had to pay for those out of pocket.
How are those working? Are they working good? They work well. We have three of them. We received our first generation one on the first round of grants.
We had some growing pains with that, but right now they serve us well for our AM and PM route. A lot of people ask, well, are you worried about them running out of electricity? We have it structured. The range on those buses is about 100 miles with about a 20% reserve, so 120 miles is really the max.
Our morning route is about 70 miles. We charge midday, run them in the afternoon. We still have been able to purchase diesel buses for our field trips or sports trips, but they're a real benefit.
They're very quiet. They are efficient in the ways that our diesel fuel usage has gone down with that. They don't require the same maintenance that a diesel engine does with regular oil changes and filter changes because of that.
The other part of it is that we were able through that grant to improve our infrastructure for our charging, which really is the big hurdle in that whole process. Working with the PUD, we were able to add three-phase power over their transportation to handle those level two chargers. Again, that was a really great benefit of the Department of Ecology grant where we didn't have to spend very much money for that.
We got the capability to expand in the future if we need to. Matt's here. He's been here, like you said, almost seven years doing the hard work.
It's amazing to hear about that number of growth in the student population. That is really cool. They're doing what they can with what they can.
It's your opportunity now on February 10th when the election happens is to show your continued support. You can always get more information and get the facts and take those and share them with your friends and family in the Marion Knight School District. I hope for another great half the school year coming up after the break.
Jeff, I appreciate you coming out. I always love it when you're out here. I love it.
I love it out here. Thank you so much. Thank you.