KPEC-TV and later KCPQ covered for the state's public television stations—approved plans to fully fund basic education at the state level, which would change channel 13 into a financial drain on the school system. For instance, Clover Park would stop receiving federal funds that accrued to it for educating military dependents to the tune of $3.5 million a year; this money would instead go to the state, making the $600,000 in annual station maintenance costs (equivalent to $ in dollars) a "luxury". Meanwhile, portions of Clover Park High School were condemned, but voters rejected four separate bond initiatives that would have funded the reconstruction of the high school and taken students out of portable classrooms. The school board stated that annual losses from operating KCPQ reached $500,000. In late 1978, the Clover Park School District received a $6 million offer from two investors from Tucson, Arizona: Gene Adelstein and Edward Berger, owners of that city's independent KZAZ-TV. Adelstein and Berger were looking to expand; already in the early stages of a bid to build a new station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the pair saw the Seattle–Tacoma market as having recovered from the market conditions that claimed KTVW four years prior and as being overserved by educational stations. They also felt that the Tacoma area alone represented a market of similar size to Tucson. Channel 13, however, attracted another buyer who topped the Adelstein–Berger bid. In January 1979, the school board accepted an offer from Kelly Broadcasting, owners of KCRA-TV in Sacramento, California, to buy KCPQ from the Clover Park School District for $6.25 million (equivalent to $ in dollars). This purchase price was financed by Kelly Broadcasting's sale, earlier that year, of two radio stations in Sacramento. The sale was met with stiff protests and a petition to deny led by members of the station's advisory board, organized as "Save our Station 13". After the approval of a settlement between this group and Kelly that included a $450,000 gift (equivalent to $ in dollars) from the buyer for public television and the donation of the Ruston tower to KTPS, KCPQ ceased educational broadcasting on February 29, 1980, and the station went silent for a major technical overhaul. While KCPQ would continue to use Clover Park's studio space, the transmitter was relocated to Gold Mountain, a peak located west of Bremerton, where the station erected a new tower; this enabled channel