A Message from Superintendent Greg Baker

Dear staff, students, families and community,

Bellingham Public Schools, like other districts across the state and country, continues to face budget challenges, and we continue to seek ways to proactively balance our budget.   

• Local levies: we are so grateful our voters have checked that box for us! Thank you, local voters for supporting our district via the supplemental operations levy and the facilities maintenance levy. The levies approved last week help our budget, but unfortunately, as we have shared previously, they do not fully solve all of our budget issues.  

• State funding: we will continue to advocate the legislature for additional state funding and revisions to the state’s public education models that are inadequate, outdated and broken.   

• Reduce expenditures: we will continue to evaluate costs, including schedules, staffing and programs. One example that has continued to come up is our high school schedule, which we enhanced with more electives in 2018 when state funding more adequately covered needs and created opportunities.  

I have received some questions about the high school schedule, and I want to clarify some things.

• We do not have plans to reduce or eliminate AP or other college prep courses, regardless of schedule.
• We have not made any decisions to change our high school schedule.
• We are doing an initial exploration of different high school schedules through a committee made up of staff to help evaluate positives, challenges and questions, should we decide to change ours in the future.
• The committee is still meeting, and I plan to share their thinking with our community and ask for input from students, families and staff.

In the meantime, we welcome your advocacy as well as your understanding of the difficult choices districts face due to inadequate state funding. Please feel free to share input here.  

Greg Baker