Superintendent Lewis and the district’s finance staff reported to the Moses Lake School District Board of Directors on Oct. 2 about the district’s August financial position, levy timing and steps toward restoring elementary programming.

Ruby, the district staff member presenting the financial report, said the August figures shown to the board are preliminary and do not include year-end accruals. She said the district’s current ending fund balance estimate for 2024–25 is about $19,000,000 and that the figure will change when year-end journal entries and grant claims are processed. “This is August,” Ruby said, explaining that FTE reporting and other year-end adjustments will be brought to a later meeting.

Superintendent Lewis reviewed why the district maintains a fund balance and how levy timing affects operations. Lewis said a reserve is intended to meet cash-flow needs, pay known one-time obligations and protect against unforeseen events such as aging-facility emergencies or audit-related liabilities. She noted that the district will not receive the first levy collection until April (arriving in May), which requires the district to rely on reserves to meet payroll and expenses through the school year.

On restoring elementary instructional time, Lewis said the district would like to add 30 minutes back to the elementary day but must avoid creating an ongoing deficit. She said the estimated cost to add the time is a moving target “anywhere from 2 to $3,000,000” and that a proposal the district previously modeled showed a price tag near $2.2 million. “If we say we're gonna do something, we need to make very certain that we have the means and ability to do that before we go promising it,” Lewis said.

Lewis said the district has already invested levy dollars across a range of priorities it previously advertised — additional paraeducators, added teaching staff, restored some secondary course offerings, compensation for coaches and advisors and additional custodial and maintenance hours. She said work is ongoing to restore music and library offerings and to provide consistent PE minutes across elementary schools.

Lewis and Ruby told the board the district is pursuing multiple approaches to address the library and schedule concerns: at least one option that would require additional funding and a “cost neutral” option that would shift start times to 9:00 a.m. in order to restore student minutes without increasing expenditures. Lewis said the district is bargaining with the Moses Lake Education Association and that proposals from bargaining will be posted to the district website as they become available.

Superintendent Lewis also thanked Jean Baxter and the technology staff and said Big Bend Community College helped the district restore Internet service after a severed fiber line. She credited the district’s tech team for working through the outage: “Jean Baxter and our entire tech department for saving our Internet access,” Lewis said, noting the district temporarily tapped Big Bend Community College with permission to get back online.

Ending: The superintendent and finance staff will bring FTE and finalized year-end accruals at a later meeting and will return with costed options for restoring elementary instructional minutes and library services.