More cuts in store at Tacoma Public Schools, which has run out of savings

TACOMA – Pierce County’s largest-school district is facing a $30 million deficit for the next school year, and district officials say financial insolvency is a possibility.

Tacoma Public Schools’ chief financial officer Rosalind Medina said the district has had to make cuts to its budget in recent years and has sought to keep those cuts away from the classroom as much as possible. Medina said at a Thursday board meeting that more staff positions, services and programs might now be on the chopping block as the district seeks to bridge the $30 million gap, again citing rising costs and insufficient funding from the state.

Though Gov. Bob Ferguson has yet to sign the Legislature’s budget and the district’s deadline to finalize its own budget isn’t until July, Tacoma Public Schools’ Superintendent Josh Garcia said the funds for education outlined in the budget will not be enough for the district to fulfill its needs.

“The needs in special education and (materials, supplies and operating costs) across the state were billions of dollars, and the reply was a few hundred millions of dollars,” he said at the meeting.

“A major gap is the amount of money the state provides for staff salaries and benefits,” the district said in a statement. “Simply put, the state gives us roughly 65% of the costs for what we need to fully fund staff salaries and benefits.”

The district’s reserve funds have also been depleted, Medina said.

“If all things were to end today, if things were to continue on, we would have no reserves to help us either balance the budget and or in case of emergencies,” she said. “So resources are limited in that respect.”

Also a possibility are “binding conditions” – a situation in which a district’s expenses exceed its revenues, and it has to turn to officials from the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to intervene and set certain benchmarks for it to achieve in order to resolve its deficit. Binding conditions would be the first of several steps in a process of increasing state intervention to help school districts address a budget deficit that would culminate in the dissolution of a school district if the state-recommended mitigation efforts are not successful.

District officials pointed out a handful of other school districts in the state that are also facing binding conditions like the Tukwila and Marysville. Medina said she doesn’t expect to enter into binding conditions, but it is a possibility.

“Our intent is to avoid them at all possibilities,” she said.

The district has eliminated a handful of positions, instituted a hiring freeze and canceled certain contracts to mitigate the deficit, but additional position eliminations are in progress, she said. Medina also said that the district is implementing new strategies, like freezing purchasing cards and overtime.

Garcia said district staff have not received certain raises in recent years as part of budget-mitigation efforts, and some staff reduction efforts have taken place at the district level.

A handful of educational support staff from schools around the district spoke at the meeting, criticizing the board and district leadership for maintaining high salaries for its administrators despite cutting school-level staff positions.

Connor Griswold, an educational support professional at Fawcett Elementary, said at the meeting that the school’s other ESPs were notified this week that they “no longer have jobs to return to.”

“Staff aren’t being cut because of the state, they’re being cut because the district chose buildings and salaries over people,” Griswold said at the meeting.

Director Lisa Keating expressed frustration at the meeting with state lawmakers for not allocating more money for education, saying that Ferguson seems to be opposed to new tax revenue.

“I know that my colleagues and I don’t sit up here with any sort of relief to hear these reports, to hear public comment,” she said.

The district plans to determine the reduction in force by Thursday and adopt the budget for the 2025-2026 academic year by July 10.