Olympia’s unprecedented mid-year budget cuts have the Issaquah School District scrambling to reduce its budget by another $1 million this year.

The unwelcome decision is equivalent to a man offering to buy dinner, but when the bill comes he announces he left his wallet at home, said Sara Niegowski, the district communications director.

Fortunately the district keeps spare cash.

The initial plan is to take money from the district’s $10 million to $15 million reserve, a rainy day fund, said Jake Kuper, the district’s financial chief. “One million dollars is still a rather large portion of those reserves.”

More education cuts are expected to come in the next few months. The Legislature’s bill makes up about $590 million of the $1.1 billion deficit.

In Superintendent Steve Rasmussen’s 40 years of academic experience, he’s never witnessed mid-year education cuts from the state.

Districts build their budgets through the spring and summer based on what the state says it plans to give. The budget is signed in August, and contracts are finalized.

“We have obligations we cannot go back on, even though it seems as if the state can go back on its obligation to us,” Rasmussen said.

Most of the cuts are to kindergarten to fourth grade staffing money, called K4.

Reductions to smaller education programs haven’t had much affect on the district, Kuper said.

“Some of the non-basic education programs, they may have served their purpose and their time,” said state Rep. Glenn Anderson.

“Considering that the challenge we’re in with the state budget, it is appropriate to let them go.”

Anderson was among a few legislators who voted against the bill. He spoke out specifically about cuts to K4, which is considered basic education.

Legislators convened a special session Dec. 11 to decide on cuts, and by the afternoon a bill was passed.

“This was a jam job by the political leadership in the state,” Anderson said. “There was no debate, there were no amendments. It was just sort of a panic attack.”

Washington state is in the third worst in the nation for budget deficits, causing uncertainty about the future, he said.

“I can make a very safe assumption that further reductions are coming our way,” Kuper said. “The magnitude of those, of course, is anyone’s guess.”

Issaquah already faced about $4 million in cuts to its budget this year, but the state’s decision to lift a local levy lid gave it the ability to balance the cuts with more local taxes.

“It basically allowed us not to make cuts last year,” said spokesperson Sara Niegowski. “We barely scraped by coming into this budget.”