Bellwater Public Schools has an extra $4.2 million to spend next year that it didn't budget for. Superintendent Dr. Yvonne Carrick and School Board Chair Melissa Overby have very different ideas about where it should go, and Tuesday's board meeting made that difference public again.
The surplus, driven largely by higher-than-projected state per-pupil funding tied to rising property values in gentrifying neighborhoods, was the subject of nearly two hours of board discussion Tuesday. Carrick proposed directing $2.8 million of the surplus toward hiring additional reading specialists and expanding literacy intervention programs district-wide, building on modest gains in literacy scores the district reported earlier this year. Overby countered with a proposal to direct the bulk of the surplus toward deferred maintenance at aging school buildings, particularly in Lowertown and Cedar Hollow.
“We just spent a year telling Lowertown and Cedar Hollow families their schools weren’t going anywhere,” Overby said. “If we turn around and spend a surplus entirely on new programs while their roofs leak and their boilers fail, that promise starts to look hollow.”
Carrick defends her priorities
Carrick pushed back sharply, arguing that literacy gains the district posted this year remain fragile and could reverse without sustained investment. “I understand the instinct to fix buildings, and we are proposing $1.4 million for maintenance in this same budget,” Carrick said. “But if we let a surplus year slip by without investing in the instruction side, we are choosing buildings over the kids sitting inside them.”
Carrick noted that the reading specialist positions she has proposed would be concentrated in schools with the district’s lowest literacy scores, which include several Lowertown and Cedar Hollow campuses, arguing the investment directly serves the same families Overby says she’s trying to protect.
A rift dating back to the closure fight
The disagreement echoes last year’s conflict, when Carrick proposed closing two under-enrolled schools to consolidate resources and the board, under Overby’s leadership, voted the plan down. Board member Desmond Kelso, who has sided with both Overby and Carrick at different points over the past year, said Tuesday’s clash felt like a continuation of the same underlying disagreement about whether the district’s limited dollars should chase enrollment efficiency or address long-neglected infrastructure.
We just spent a year telling Lowertown and Cedar Hollow families their schools weren’t going anywhere. If we turn around and spend a surplus entirely on new programs while their roofs leak, that promise starts to look hollow.
Melissa Overby, Chair, Bellwater School Board
“Every budget fight we have is really the same fight,” Kelso said. “Do we invest in the buildings we already have, or do we invest in what happens inside them? At some point the board needs a longer-term capital plan so we’re not re-litigating this every time there’s extra money on the table.”
No vote yet
The board did not vote on either proposal Tuesday, instead directing district staff to return next month with a blended option that would split the surplus between literacy programming and building maintenance in some ratio short of either official’s full request. Overby said she was open to a compromise so long as maintenance funding wasn’t treated as an afterthought. Carrick said she, too, was open to a blended approach but wanted assurance that any maintenance spending wouldn’t come at the expense of the reading specialist positions in future budget years.
Parent advocate groups from both Lowertown and Cedar Hollow attended Tuesday’s meeting, and several spoke during public comment in support of Overby’s maintenance-focused approach, describing years of unaddressed complaints about heating and roof leaks at their neighborhood schools. A smaller number of parents, including several from Foundry Row’s newer school-age population, urged the board to prioritize Carrick’s literacy investments.
Carrick and Overby are expected to present separate written proposals to the full board within three weeks, with a vote likely at the board’s next regularly scheduled meeting. Both officials said they hoped to avoid a repeat of last year’s closure fight, which several board members privately described as one of the most contentious in the district’s recent history.
A relationship strained but still functional
Board member Priscilla Nkemdirim, who joined the board after last year’s closure fight and has watched the Overby-Carrick relationship largely from the outside, said Tuesday’s exchange was notably more measured in tone than what she’d heard described from the closure debate, even as the substance of the disagreement remained sharp. “They disagree hard on where the money should go, but I didn’t see the kind of personal edge that I’m told characterized some of the closure meetings,” Nkemdirim said. “That might be a sign they’ve both learned something from how badly that fight got, even if they still don’t agree on the underlying question.”
Overby, for her part, said she didn’t think the relationship with Carrick was broken, just persistently strained by the two officials’ different vantage points. “I’m elected by voters who want to see their tax dollars protect the buildings they already have,” Overby said. “Dr. Carrick is a professional educator who’s going to advocate for instruction every time. Neither of us is wrong to hold our position. The board’s job is to find the version that serves both goals without pretending the tension away.”
A capital plan on the table, eventually
Carrick said she has asked district staff to begin drafting the long-term capital plan Kelso called for, covering building conditions across all of the district’s campuses on a rolling multi-year schedule, so that future surplus years don’t automatically become a fight over competing priorities. She said a draft framework could be ready for board review within six months, though she cautioned that funding any capital plan fully would likely require a bond measure beyond what a single year’s budget surplus could cover.
“A one-time surplus is not a substitute for a real facilities plan,” Carrick said. “I’d rather we use this fight as the reason we finally build one, instead of just resolving this year’s number and waiting for the next surplus to have the same argument all over again.”