Budget Updates
BUDGET CONTEXT
Funding for our public schools is falling. While the legislature has added additional funding for our schools since the state Supreme Court ordered them to do so in 2017, the amount of new funding has leveled off since 2021. The money the state provides to districts doesn’t actually pay for the full costs of a basic education as defined in state law. The cost of operating our schools, including inflation, means the costs are growing faster than the funding the state is providing.
The State Legislature is not funding K-12 education in a way that is sustainable. Some of this is due to our revenue system–an income tax could be more sustainable, adequate, and equitable revenue source instead of property tax–but some is due to the State requiring school districts to provide services without giving more money *and* limiting school district’s ability to tax themselves to cover those costs.
Recent drops in public school enrollment is a regional challenge. Since 2019, public schools in King County lost 14,000 students. SPS lost 5,000 students over that time period, which is the equivalent of 14 average-sized elementary and K-8 schools in SPS. We do not believe that declining enrollment should cause students who remain in public schools to suffer a degradation of their education through budget cuts.
2024-25 BUDGET updates - from 4/3/24 board mtg
See the budget work documents
The district’s 2024-25 budget proposal closes a $104-$111 million budget deficit. Based on feedback from the Board, the district made two changes to its proposal from March:
Increase the interfund loan to $36.8 million. The Interfund loan borrows money from its capitla budget to pay for operating expenses. The loan must be repaid in full by June 30, 2026 and it is unclear what revenues SPS will identify to use to repay this loan.
Not cut discretionary equity funding in schools. Based on feedback from the Board, school leaders, and staff participants in the school staffing process, the district proposes to: restore discretionary equity funding in schools allocations for non-staff allocation, which is approximately $1.3 million.
To finalize the 2024-25 budget, there will be a public hearing on June 10th, and the Board will vote on the budget on July 2. However, the Board will need to approve the interfund loan prior to June 30th.
Board President Rankin raised the concern that the district may not conduct a June enrollment update to ensure the best possible plan for staffing this fall. We agree and strongly urge the District to ensure they conduct a June enrollment update and adjust budget allocations based on the most up-to-date enrollment projections. Staff has recently testified to a recent influx of students in their schools.
2024-25 Budget updates - from 3/20/24 board mtg
SPS is not proposing to close or consolidate any schools for the 2024-25 school year, as they want to instead make school changes at a system-wide level (starting 2025-26) rather than piece-meal changes.
SPS is proposing $38 million of one-time solutions, $30 million of ongoing operating reductions, and $35 million of an interfund loan from its capital fund.
One-time solutions means there is a known amount of money that can only be used one time to plug the budget gap. For example, the use of ending fund balance from a prior school year (money that SPS thought they would spend but did not, which occurs commonly from staff positions being vacant) can only be used once, and cannot be accurately projected in future years.
Ongoing reductions are typically viewed as sustainable budget solutions. The $30 million of ongoing reductions are proposed to begin this year and continue into future years, such as:
$7 million of budget reductions at schools, which includes cuts in discretionary dollars at all schools (with less of an impact to high-poverty schools) and increasing in middle and high school student to staff ratio from 30:1 to 31:1. Discretionary dollars are used by schools to pay for tutors, “buying” more increments in school FTE such as art, music, or multilingual educators, among others. Each school’s CSIP includes what they funded this year with discretionary dollars.
The interfund loan means SPS will borrow money from its capital budget (which is very large) to cover operating budget shortfall but then they have to repay the loan by 2026 with interest.
OUR TAKE ON 2024-25 PROPOSAL
We, along with some members of the Board, have significant questions about the line items in $30 million of ongoing budget cuts as SPS did not seek community feedback on these plans before announcing them, and has not shown these are less bad than other proposals, such as not allowing schools to carryforward money they did not spend last year. The board requested more information on the options considered and we agree! We also urge SPS to consider more options than currently presented, and provide more transparent and detailed information than what they have shared publicly. For example, there are entire lines of business that are not student-facing that SPS has not publicly discussed as options for budget reductions and we believe it is important to share why this is the case.
2025-26 & Beyond Budget updates - from 3/20/24 board mtg
At the May 8th board meeting, SPS will present various ongoing budget reduction proposal to address the anticipated $75 million budget shortfall. In this meeting, SPS will present its plan for a System of Well-Resourced Schools. This will include various options in pursuit of that system, including school closures/consolidations, three-tier bus schedule, grade-level reorganizations (such as changing some schools to K-6), other program changes (which could be changes to option schools).
Consolidations
SPS said each consolidation (e.g., 2 elementary schools into 1) school could save $1.5 - $3 million each. We anticipate a proposed list of school closures/consolidations to be shared at this meeting.
Since most school funding is based on enrollment, with some aspects of it based on the type of students within that building, not all buildings receive the same types or levels of support for kids. What was expressed in this meeting is that elementary schools with fewer than 250 students are currently under-resourced (e.g., they could only have a nurse 2 days a week) and larger elementary schools such as those with 450 kids are sufficiently resourced (e.g., they could have a nurse 5 days a week) due to the state funding models.
OUR TAKE ON CONSOLIDATIONS
We believe that a well-resourced school is one that can comprehensively and equitably support all students. This requires stable funding and ample supports. School closures or consolidations may not automatically create those supports. For example, consolidating two schools into one might allow for a full-time music teacher instead of only half-time, but the student to staff ratio remains and student access to music may not increase.
Three-tier bell schedule
SPS is considering a move to a three-tier bell schedule as a way to save $9 million of ongoing costs. There are 343 buses daily and a 3-bell system would reduce that by about 80 buses, because some buses would make two runs (for an early start school, then a later start school).
SPS officials acknowledged that this could have major impacts to students, families, and before-and-after school care providers, so want to spend the next year diving deep and carefully exploring this option.
When this was proposed in 2022, it was met with pushback from many, including elementary school families whose school start time was proposed to be 9:30am without any before-school care option offered at their school or in their community.
SPS officials also implied that the State Legislature thinks SPS could solve its budget problem because most other districts operate on a three-tier bell schedule, so it should do the same.
OUR TAKE ON THREE-TIER BELLS
There was a lot of key context not presented during the transportation discussion. While there may be efficiencies to be made in the general education bus system, most of the SPS transportation deficit is due to the state underfunding transportation for our homeless (McKinney-Vento) and special education students. SPS staff have been working hard to address some inefficiencies with special education transportation (make sure students aren’t getting assigned a special bus when they don’t need it) and we applaud this effort! In general, we urge SPS to provide detailed information about transportation costs by type of student service and the revenues available to support them. We also would like to see SPS explore an opt-in/opt-out transportation model for general education bus transportation that we believe could reduce the number of buses on the road (and reduce costs) without such a heavy impact to students and families as a three-tier bell schedule.
January 17, 2024 - Board budget work session
In January 2024:
The board held a 90-minute budget work session; find the materials here. SPS has also updated its budget development website. Take a look.
District staff shared ideas on how the district can balance its 2024-25 budget. Discussed were ideas that have significant student-facing changes, like moving to three-tier bell schedule, program adjustments and restructuring (such as K-8 and option schools), grade level reorganizations (such as moving 6th grade to some elementary schools), school closures and consolidations, as well as the lease or sale of non-school properties and delayed repayment of the Economic Restabilization Plan (rainy-day fund).
Staff also shared that there will be Phase II Well-Resources School meetings, but did not provide details.
NOVember & december 2023 - board meetings
In November & December 2023:
The board voted to approve the financial policy as introduced, which did not include Director Song’s proposed amendments. While this was disappointing for many of us, there will likely be opportunities for community voice as the policy elements are implemented.
The board approved a budget resolution that will determine the process by which next year’s school budget will be developed. It is called the Fiscal Stabilization Plan to Create a System of Well-Resourced Schools.
District staff presented a summary of the Well-Resourced Schools meetings that occurred this past summer and early fall. You can see these results here (starts on page 9).