Jessica Van Velkinburgh
The debate about what should and shouldn’t be included in ongoing budget cuts in the Coupeville School District is the story of the summer.
The following letter to the editor comes to us from Wolf Mom Jessica Van Velkinburgh:
What does priority services mean to the Coupeville School District, its parents and its leaders?
When we talk about budget cuts it’s important to acknowledge what’s a priority to keep and what’s seen as excessive and/or unnecessary considering the available budget.
As parents, students and staff, if we were asked to rank these four items in order of priority services, what would your order be?
1 — Adequate special education service that meets the IEP requirements of ALL students ($200k appropriately).
2 — Adequate paraeducators to be able to provide necessary safety and educational services to all students, required by IEPs — 30k average annual salary per paraeducator.
3 — A Dean of Students with over a decade of working with these students inside this district.
A staff member who is the #1 relied upon staff member students trust to confide in when being bullied, feeling unsafe in and out of school, and asking for help with mental health services.
Annual salary — 85k.
4 — A six-figure salaried farm to table private chef experience with a personal assistant to this chef with a pay of 80k salary per year.
A ‘pet project’ to the superintendent, totaling 180k.
Not including anything else related to the lunch program — two salaries only.
As a mom of a student with an IEP who Coupeville has acknowledged for nearly a decade they can’t/won’t accommodate due to funding, my priorities may vary from yours.
But keep in mind I also have three children who have a combined 20+ years of schooling in Coupeville — one graduated, one in middle school, and one in elementary.
My husband, myself, and my mom are all Coupeville graduates, so this district is dear to us.
With that said these are my thoughts on our budget crisis.
My second oldest child is autistic and has been enrolled in the Oak Harbor School District since first grade.
She has been in their self-contained special education program as an out of district student for over nine years.
All nine of those years Coupeville released their state funding for her to Oak Harbor so they wouldn’t have to accommodate her IEP.
Several of those years Superintendent Steve King signed an agreement with Oak Harbor to pay upwards of 30k annually on top of her state funding so he didn’t have to accommodate her special education IEP in Coupeville.
What does that amount of given away money total, and what could it have done for Coupeville, as well as other students in the district whose needs aren’t met?
I know at times many students with IEPs were being sent away from the district as well, with the same financial loss to Coupeville.
This year, with the support of the OSPI Special Education Director, we have met with the Coupeville Special Education Director to require they meet her IEP and accommodate her as the law requires, so she can attend her home school next year.
In this meeting the Coupeville director acknowledged that they not only don’t and likely never will have the self-contained special education program her and many other Coupeville students need, they are extremely short staffed in paraeducators.
That makes it impossible at the moment to accommodate her IEP, which requires a 1:1 para throughout the duration of the day.
They assured me over the summer they would be filling this position to ensure there will be adequate paraeducators for my daughter and the other students.
Now I am seeing not only did they eliminate one full time paraeducator position, they also cut the hours of the remaining paras.
Meaning in essence, if they assign her the full-time para next year as the law requires, the remaining students in the district are now short two full time paras with eliminated hours for the remaining.
This is scary and alarming not only for me and my child, but for the parents and other students that will no longer get their legally required paraeducator support because this was seen as a lower ranking priority to Mr. Steve King and the board.
With all that considered, what seems to take #1 priority for the above mentioned is the farm to table private chef service they offer at our district.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful idea.
And the students and us parents think it’s a great program IF, and only IF, there are extra funds to make this program work.
But in what I believe to be a biased decision, the superintendent is protecting his ‘pet project’, his ‘resume builder’, over protecting what’s essential for students to have a free and safe education.
Their most basic right.
The salary going to the private chef (100k annually) as well as the salary going to the private chef’s assistant (80k) would cover not only Mr. Black and 3+ paraeducators.
It could instead cover a fulltime special education teacher, and 2-3 full time paraeducators, which is what is needed for a self-contained special education program.
Or that 180k would rehire Mr. Black (who I whole heartedly believe saves fragile teenage lives every year in our school district), fill the eliminated para position, at least keeping the number the same as opposed to 2+ less than promised.
While still allowing for a reasonable salary for an adequate lunch program coordinator.
What I would ask is, are the priorities of the leaders of the Coupeville school district in line with the best interests of their students?
Mr. Black saves lives; paraeducators and children receiving the services needed for a safe and free education truly saves lives of special needs children.
We can even argue saving sports and athletic positions can help keep struggling children alive and on the right track.
But the question is why, when a luxury lunch program in a small district can’t save lives, why is it being placed so high on the priority list above all others?
Coupeville Sports 