North Kitsap School District eyeing possible capital levy for November ballot

It's been more than four months since North Kitsap School District experienced failure of its $242 million, 20-year-old bond. February's rejection came in lopsided fashion, as only 36.4% of the 16,586 votes cast supported the measure.

Without bond funding, the district is seeking to bridge the gap with a capital levy measure that would both target the most pressing needs at its facilities, as well as act as a gauge for voter confidence. Capital levies requires a simple majority (50% plus one) for passage, lower than the 60% needed to approve a bond.

"That will buy us time to come up with that more comprehensive plan," North Kitsap School District facility advisory committee (FAC) member Eric Quitslund said during a community meeting at North Kitsap High School on Monday. "In the meantime, we can't keep kicking the can down the road."

The FAC committee plans to hold another community meeting Tuesday, June 25 at Kingston High School (Commons) at 6 p.m. before presenting North Kitsap's school board with a capital levy recommendation in late July. The board would need to approve a levy measure by Aug. 6 in order for it appear on the ballot for the Nov. 5 general election.

North Kitsap voters passed a four-year, $36 million capital levy in 2022 that featured a front-loaded tax collection rate — $1.10 per $1,000 in assessed value in 2023-24, compared to $0.33 in 2025 and $0.25 in 2026. That setup allowed North Kitsap to proceed with a bond measure that, had it passed in February, would have started collection in 2025.

The bond, of course, did not pass, and one month later, former North Kitsap Superintendent Laurynn Evans resigned after facing a misdemeanor charge of removing/defacing political signs opposed to the bond. Rachel Davenport has served as interim superintendent in Evans' place and will remain in that position through the 2024-25 school year.

Evans' actions didn't help the bond's chances on election night, but FAC member Craig Smith said the measure might have been doomed for other reasons. One of Smith's priorities when the FAC began meeting again in April was to connect with voters who were against the bond and investigate their reasoning.

"I wanted to hear why," Smith said. "People didn't trust it, they thought it was too much, they thought it wasn't prioritized right."

The community also felt the bond-creation process lacked enough stakeholder input, which is one of the reasons the FAC opted to expand in recent months, adding members to represent schools and groups within the district that were not represented before. One community member, Kim Gerlach, told the Kitsap Sun after Monday's meeting that she was disappointed to have her FAC application turned down (she was made an "alternate") after the bond failed. Gerlach previously served as a maintenance lead for the district.

"There is clearly an understanding," Quitslund said, "a recognition that we need to be more open, more transparent, more engaging."

Smith said recent FAC meetings have involved 20-plus members, as well as representatives from Bassetti Architects, a firm assisting the district with facility condition assessments and capital planning, both long-term and short-term. Bassetti's involvement with pre-bond planning was characterized by one FAC member as being minimized under previous leadership.

"We had some very candid conversations about the last bond and about why it didn't pass and how we wanted to operate as a committee," said Jordan Kiel, a principal for Bassetti, which aided in the Kingston High School build two decades ago. "We need to figure out what might need to be done to the facilities. We are going through every single facility in quite a bit of detail."

Some of the targeted projected listed in the failed bond measure, including a rebuild of Pearson Elementary, remain high priority items for the FAC. But the district is also facing a growing backlog of maintenance repairs that can't wait two or three years for another bond.

"We've got systems that are failing, basic systems that are at the end of their service life," Quitslund said. "We can't even maintain a reasonable climate in many of the schools in terms of temperatures. There's definitely work that needs to be done."

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: North Kitsap schools eyeing possible November capital levy