Plan To Save MIYFS School Counselor Job Before Council

MERCER ISLAND, WA — A plan to save one elementary school-level counselor job will be before City Council at a special meeting Tuesday. But a long-term solution to funding the school counselor jobs is still in the works.

The Mercer Island School District and the Mercer Island Youth and Family Services Foundation — the nonprofit that supports MIYFS — will donate $87,000 to keep one counselor employed between the start of the school year in September until June 2020. But that position and a second school counselor job do not have funding for the 2020-21 school year.

The mental health counselor positions were eliminated in the city's 2019-20 budget in response to impending deficits after the failure of Proposition 1. The Council also reduced a geriatric specialist and an administrative position, but those have been funded for the remainder of 2019 with MIYFS Foundation grants (the admin position, now vacant, is funded at half-time for July to December 2019).

The Council will also discuss changes to the MIYFS Thrift Shop operations in a bid to increase revenue. In turn, the revenue increases could help fund school counselors in the future. Some suggestions Council will look at include opening a second location off Mercer Island, hosting pop-up shops at the farmers market, and putting the city finance department in charge of operating the store.

Mercer Island contributes to MIYFS operations each year, but funding was reduced in 2019 and 2020 due to larger budget issues. In 2019, MIYFS got $359,000 from the city compared to $530,000 in 2018. About 67 percent of MIYFS' budget in 2019-20 consists of revenue from the thrift store.