Seattle Schools This Week, March 2-8, 2026
There are two meetings this week for the Superintendent and the Board, both are on Wednesday, March 4th. (I note that the next Board meeting is next Wednesday, March 11th; there is no agenda yet.)
The first one is an Executive Session at 4 pm, to review the performance of a public employee. Executive Sessions are not open to the public.
The second meeting is a Board Special Meeting: Budget Work Session and a Work Session for Goals and Guardrails starting at 4:30 pm.
The agenda for the second meeting only has a presentation for the Budget Work Session and it's quite interesting. The presenters will be Superintendent Ben Shuldiner and Dr. Kurt Buttleman, Assistant Superintendent of Finance.
Legislative
- The district notes that the state legislative session will end next week on March 12th.
As of 2/24/26, anticipated changes in State funding for SPS:
- Reduction of ~$1.1 million in bus depreciation reimbursement
- Reduction in BEST grant program
- Sales Tax exemption (~$2M assumed in budget deficit for 2026-27)
- Other changes net to less than +/-$100k than anticipated in planning for 2026-27
I'm a bit confused about the bus depreciation because I thought SPS didn't own buses.
And are SPS and other school districts going to get that break on the sales tax? It doesn't look like it.
There's a page Annual Average FTE Change Summary.
It looks like the district is pretty steady-state except for a jump in K-8 at about 359 students which is the largest rise in number of students in any category. The category that is losing the most is the "non-traditional" one at 380. Does "non-traditional" mean Option Schools? If it does, I would find that hard to believe.
They believe next year that there will be just over 48,000 students.
On Open Enrollment:
It was held earlier than in previous years and families have now eceived their assignment notification.
Currently 830 students remaining on waitlists for 2026-27. At this time last year, over 2,000 students were on waitlists.
The most fascinating page is Enrollment Change Overview (page 7).
It's tough to read this small chart but here are the "Outliers:"
Outliers
+ Enrollment: Cleveland (+220), South Shore (+87), Hazel Wolf (+87), Thornton Creek (+84)
- Enrollment: Interagency (-102), Nathan Hale (-139), World School (-86), Cascade K-12 (-98), Garfield (-89)
Did they finally allow Cleveland High to fill their underenrolled building? And for South Shore PK-8 that jump is good news as their large building has not been filled. Meanwhile Hazel Wolf continues to be popular.
As for the lower enrollments, Interagency is a special program that always has swings. But Nathan Hale HS AND Garfield HS with lower enrollments? Oh my. World School could be seeing a loss because of the federal crackdown on immigrants. I'm a bit surprise at Cascade K-12 because I thought homeschooling was on the rise and they provide classes and services to those families.
One big category - Educational Programs notes:
No program changes are being proposed at this time for 2026-2027.
For WWS model changes, the district says:
SPS is committed to ensuring that the changes to the WSS model on the following slide will not result in school staff losing employment with SPS. The district will manage these changes through attrition and displacement processes.
WSS Changes for 2026-2027
You can see it for yourself on page 11. Highlights include:
- Align Grades K-3 with state funding model of 17.1.
- Increase Grades 4-5 staffing allocation model to 28:1.
- Increase Grades 6-12 staffing allocation model to 32:1.
And there's this:
Reserve 35% of saving to fulfill the employment commitment.
Are they saying take savings from these measures to keep people employed?
Central Office
- eliminate centrally funded vacant positions (by their count that's $4-5M!)
- restructuring/reorganizing JSCEE
- reduce professional development for subs
- travel reductions
- optional contracts (I don't know exactly what they are saying)
- Repurposing Self-help budgets (~$600k)
- Inter-district reimbursement process updates
- Culinary Services changes
- Continue Furlough days for Non-represented staff (~ $600k)
- Sun-setting previous Strategic Plan budget (~$1.5M)
Transportation
It appears they will change some routes and try to "leverage volume pricing" for vendor bus assignments.
Balancing the 2026-2027 Budget
o Transfer Capital Interest ($5M)
o Delay Repayment of the “Rainy Day” Fund (Economic Stabilization Account) ($7M)
o Inflation Reduction Act “tax credit” (~$5M)
o Interfund Loan not utilized ($16M)
o Current projection of unused fund balance available from 2025-26 Budget (~$10M - $20M)
• If necessary: Reduce Fund Balance
They are STILL going to delay the repayment of the Rainy Day Fund. I really don't think fingers crossed is a good strategy and that's what this feels like.
One the other hand, they are getting $5M from a "tax credit," aren't using all the Interfund Loan, and believe they will have $10-20M leftover from this year's budget? Hmm
Here's their bottom line for 2026-2027:
o School Staffing Changes ($9.5M)
o Anticipated Central Office Changes (~$8M - $15M)
o Transportation Changes (~$3.5M - $5.5M)
o Anticipated Net change in State Funding from Legislature (-$1M)
Range of Solutions/Savings: $63M-$81.1M
I give them credit for understanding they need to go through JSCEE with a fine-tooth comb. This has been a long time coming.
I know parents won't be happy with what looks like somewhat larger class sizes; I wish they could keep 4-8 grades smaller.
Comments
However, on the flip side of Garfield and Hale losing enrollment… there are currently 134 students on the waitlist for 9th grade at Lincoln and 77 at Ballard. In such a short period of time after reopening it seems that Lincoln has become the district’s top high school and it’s already bursting at the seams with current enrollment. It earned “platinum” AP school status recently (an eye-popping number of students are taking 5+ APs) and is the only north-end HCC pathway school, so the HC kids all get routed there from multiple pathway middle schools. Hmmm.
—AlwaysHopeful
I suspect Lincoln's enrollment is related to Garfield gutting advanced learning. it began with Honors for All. It appear north end HCC students are returning to their north end neighborhood schools.
The rise of enrollment of 359 is not in elementary schools: it's in K-8s, showing that K-8s are a model that families want for their children.
"Non-traditional" schools are probably "Continuous Enrollment" Schools- Cascade, NOVA, etc. It would be nice if SPS chose a name and stuck to it.
The outliers are the outliers if you are looking at the data in a certain way- it matters what numbers are being compared to what numbers when talking about change. If you are comparing projections to projections (budgeted FTE to budgeted FTE), or current enrollment to projections (P223 count to budgeted FTE). No one is looking at how well the Enrollment Department is doing at enrollment projections (reconciling budget to actual enrollment- which is what the state funds). This is critical for a true understanding of how well both departments are doing (and a reflection of the amount of siloing that is happening).
The outliers are largely the same either way. One interpretation is that Option Schools are serving the needs of "non-traditional students"- in other words, when Option Schools weren't allowed to fill, a portion of the families left on the waitlist didn't actually remain at their neighborhood assignment school: they enrolled in SPS' "non-traditional" schools like Cascade PP. We do know that 24% of those left on 2024 waitlists left the district (somewhere in the 200s... ).
Increases in 6th + ratios shouldn't be taken lightly: these allow zero wiggle room towards the contractual max (32). That means that if more kids show up than projections (again, we don't know how accurate they are), the district will be breaking contract and will need to pay overage until an October Shuffle. No one likes Oct Shuffles. We should be doing everything in our power to make them unnecessary.
Rounding is a much larger problem than it appears: A few years ago WSS got changed from "rounding UP" to "rounding" for classroom teachers, just as it has this year for Bilingual Teachers and Counselors. The WSS are meant to translate student need into budgets. They use these very strict ratios that divide teachers into 0.001 of a PERSON. They add them all together, and then they round. Classroom's don't work like that. You can't divide a classroom into 0.001 parts. You can't divide teachers like that. The ability to round anything but UP to the nearest functional increment structurally understaffs schools from the beginning. It identifies a need, and then says that that need doesn't actually need to be staffed.
For advocates: We must demand transparency in the accuracy of enrollment projections. We must completely re-think the mechanism by which we translate them into budgeting (and the timeline over which it is done). The WSS are no longer functioning as their intended purpose. We must examine the goals behind them, how they function, and then re-design the system to meet the goals and the current state of the district.
What continues to be perplexing and further shows how careless the budget office is, is that the district continuously does not fund a high school counselor or any other high school positions (including a CTE teacher to support graduation pathways) despite the 9-12 enrollment making up nearly half of the entire enrollment! Neighboring districts with the same homeschool and remote schools accept out of district students. SPS’s disregard for this school is going to be what decreases enrollment.
https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Building-for-Learning-2022-Historical-Overview.pdf
The district is bankrupt. The next year or so should be really interesting.
~JustCheckedTheFinancials!
-Cascade-connected parent