What should WA schools cut? Districts face unpopular choices

Earlier this year, parents filled open houses at several Bellevue elementary schools to make the case to save their neighborhood schools.

The district ultimately opted to close two of those schools and make other administrative cuts to help bridge a $31 million budget gap.

When the Bellevue School Board voted to authorize the cuts at a meeting last month, parents pleaded for more time.

Bellevue isn't alone.

Across the Puget Sound region, districts are communicating a harsh reality — they are confronting fiscal shortfalls and they need to cut costs.

Seattle Public Schools is facing a $131 million budget shortfall. Shoreline Schools was facing a $12 million budget deficit earlier this year and floated the possibility of cutting extracurricular activities and some arts programs.

"People were not happy," said KUOW's education reporter Sami West. "Over 100 folks lined up around the block to get into a budget meeting earlier this month. The meeting lasted six hours."

The meeting dragged on past midnight. Parents and students pleaded with the school board to keep those extras in the budget that make school fun.

"I've been to a lot of school board meetings," West said. "They don't usually last quite that long."

Shoreline ultimately cut about $9 million of its nearly $170 million operating budget last week, but spared extracurricular activities for now.

"Unfortunately, that means about 70 employees ranging from security guards, nurses, certified staff are losing their jobs," West said.

Districts are facing these budget shortfalls for a number of reasons. For one, they rely on enrollment for funding, and enrollment has been down.

Another factor is the end of federal coronavirus-related funding.

"Those relief funds are running out soon, in the next year or so," said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. "So, depending on whether or not districts have spent them all, they're going to have to get used to the revenues that they lived on before they had these emergency relief funds."

Roza said some districts have used relief funds to promise raises or to hire new employees. Now, districts will need to figure out how to cut costs.

"It's never easy to go from having excess staff to downsizing," Roza said.

There are a number of trade-offs districts can make. Closing and consolidating schools is one option. If districts try to stretch staff across too many schools, those schools may have skeleton crews and may not be able to provide arts or electives.

Districts can also cut down the amount of weeks in a school year, discontinue payments to vendors for programs like aftercare, consolidate central office programs, or negotiate lower pay raises for staff.

Cutting a school budget is never popular. Roza said it is paramount for districts to ensure that parents have a choice in how those cuts are made. People need to engage with the process in a productive way.

"We encourage school districts to lay out the full range of options, even the ones the district doesn't like," Roza said, "It's not like we have an answer where everything goes back to the way it is, we can do one of these things, and we want your input."

Not all districts are facing low enrollment. KUOW's Sami West visited Orting Primary School, which is over capacity.

"Orting is definitely on the extreme end of this," West said. "But I think it also does suggest a trend that urban sprawl is making its way from King County to Pierce County and other surrounding areas. Other districts just in Pierce County alone are seeing really similar growth to Orting. Not quite as extreme, but they're seeing it."