Why are WA school districts facing budget woes, and what can be done to fix it?
Certain school districts across Washington faced budget shortfalls ahead of the 2025-26 school year — some more severe than others.
Tacoma Public Schools displaced staff and cut positions amid a $30 million budget gap, for instance. Bellingham Public Schools slashed positions, too, due to its $11.4 million deficit. Tumwater School District pursued staff layoffs to help mend its own budget woes.
Now that students are back in class, teachers unions, lawmakers and public-education leaders are sharing their perspectives on how Washington got here — plus what they think should happen to fix the problem.
OSPI on state of WA school funding
About a dozen of 295 Washington school districts are facing significant financial risk, said State Superintendent Chris Reykdal with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI).
Those 12 or so districts are either approaching or have entered into “binding conditions,” a process whereby the state steps in to ensure they achieve certain fiscal benchmarks.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, Reykdal said. Under the surface, many other districts are making ever-more cuts to avoid landing on the state’s radar.
“While a couple of districts make headlines, everyone is failing to keep up with inflation right now — and that’s really the story,” he said.
Enrollment also declined during the pandemic, Reykdal said, translating to lost revenue.
Some districts used temporary COVID-19 relief dollars on new programs that they wound up wanting to sustain, as previously reported by The News Tribune.
Education advocates also point out that today’s schools provide far more than classroom instruction: They also address housing and food insecurity and offer mental health support.
This year brought unique challenges with the new federal administration as well.
The looming threat of federal-education funding losses has acted as a disruption for districts, some of which have opted to cut programs in case they do lose access to such funds, Reykdal said. But that’s proven hard to predict.
Case in point: $137 million in federal funding meant for the state was held back this summer — sparking outrage — before the Trump administration reversed course.
In 2012, the state Supreme Court issued a decision in a case called McCleary v. Washington. The ruling? Washington wasn’t meeting its constitutional duty to amply fund education for its students, as required by the state Constitution.
The Legislature then worked to pursue reforms, significantly spiking funding per student. In 2018, the state was determined to be in compliance.
Around the mid-2010s, the Legislature began adding some significant money toward education, Reykdal said. Districts started budgeting at those levels, including adding transportation and programming, and expanding meals.
“Then immediately, when the court says, ‘OK, you’ve done your job, Legislature,’ adjusted for inflation, the Legislature started offering less money to schools,” he said.
The pandemic struck, inflation increase, and districts started spending down their reserves while hoping the Legislature would step in, Reykdal continued.
“And now the bill is due.”
Unions want higher school funding share
Education experts note that the so-called McCleary fix wasn’t a cure-all.
Of the post-McCleary funding flush that entered the system, a hefty chunk went toward teacher salaries, which acted as a solid investment toward retention and recruitment, according to The Seattle Times. Yet some contend that McCleary dollars weren’t doled out fairly: Districts with lower shares of low-income kids benefited more greatly than districts serving more students of color and high-poverty populations.
David S. Knight, an associate professor at the University of Washington College of Education, explained that while all districts received more after McCleary, funding gaps across districts also grew.
“It’s great to see new money come in, but it actually made the system more regressive than it was,” Knight said, per the Times.
At $91,720, Washington counted the fourth-highest average teacher salary in the nation during the 2023-24 school year, according to the National Education Association. First place went to California, where the average teacher pay was $101,084; Mississippi landed in last at $53,704.
In 2023, the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, a research center that analyzes education finance, logged changes in Washington’s enrollment and staffing over 10 years. While staffing had increased 20%, enrollment had only climbed 3% — a trend that can lead school districts to experience financial stress.
Washington isn’t constitutionally required to fund education at a certain percentage of its budget, Reykdal told McClatchy. For years the proportion hovered around 42% or 43% of state general funds before reaching more than 50% in 2019.
That share gradually started to slip back to the low 40s, where it stands today.
“It’s not that we’ve necessarily lost ground,” Reykdal said. “It’s that the cost of everything has gone up — and the Legislature in the last five years has said, ‘We have other priorities that are taking a bigger share of the budget.’”
The Washington Education Association (WEA), the state’s largest union for K-12 and higher education employees, gave lawmakers a muted nod in a post-session blog for their work this past session. Among the pluses: The Legislature boosted funding for special education and MSOC — materials, supplies and operating costs — while maintaining stipends for National Board Certified Teachers, which had been at risk of elimination.
But WEA added that the state’s latest budget “still underfunds basic education” with a K-12 share of 43.2%.
Washington teachers unions have urged lawmakers to “tax the rich” via progressive revenue. The state’s ultra-wealthy pay comparatively little while the bottom 20% of earners must devote nearly 14% of their family incomes to taxes, the argument goes.
Teacher Michael Williams with the Tacoma Education Association said the state’s tax code needs a facelift.
“Progressive revenue was the answer to changing our system,” he said, “and until that’s done, nothing’s going to change.”
Much-debated “wealth tax” legislation was introduced this past session but failed to cross the finish line.
A Seattle high school student argued in an essay published by The Seattle Times in April that passing new progressive revenue would work to address large class sizes and teacher shortages; it’d also “help invest in mental health care for students.”
In another article published by the Times, a pair of academics noted that the state’s tax structure is among the nation’s most regressive. The authors also wrote that the way the state allocates public-school dollars disproportionately benefits more affluent households.
Educator TJay Johnson with the Franklin Pierce Education Association told McClatchy that his district has had to make two reductions in force, one round in 2023-24 and another last school year. At a school board meeting in May, he said, some students shared their concerns about cuts to performing-arts programs.
Johnson wants state lawmakers to fully fund education — from “wall to wall.”
“We want to make sure that these kids have everything that they need the access to,” he said. “If legislators aren’t fulfilling that promise, then they’re not fulfilling McCleary.”
Lawmakers’ take on funding
Reykdal underscored a challenge facing districts: distinguishing between what’s optional and what’s required by law. If a district can’t afford to maintain something that it’s offered for 10 years, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Legislature has failed.
“Just because you’ve subsidized football in seventh or eighth grade does not make it basic ed,” said Reykdal, who’s also a former Democratic state lawmaker. “The Legislature gives you flexible money, but you could be putting that into the classroom and asking families to pay for sports.”
That’s not ideal, he added: “But are we teaching and learning institutions, or not? And those are really hard questions for school districts right now.”
Washington employs a “prototypical school funding model” that ties funding to enrollment using a set of staff-to-student ratios.
Senate minority leader John Braun wants to see the funding model change. The Centralia Republican said the current version is complex and difficult to predict, making it challenging to respond nimbly to enrollment or MSOC changes.
Braun would prefer a “per-student model” for school funding; he said while it’s not perfect, it is better-suited to adjusting to fluctuating dynamics.
The per-student model is used by most states, whose legislatures determine the per-pupil dollar amount that every district begins with.
Braun said that as the state budget grows, so too should K-12 education funding. But the state can’t just heap more money in and expect academic results to automatically follow.
“I firmly support investing in K-12 public education, but I think we have to do so with requirements for outcomes if we’re going to be successful,” he said.
Teachers unions have hammered state lawmakers for the recent drop in the share of funding toward education. This year’s 43.2% share is “the lowest it’s been since McCleary,” per WEA.
It’s true the percentage has dipped, said state Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, who chairs the House Education Committee. At the same time, she said, the scale of the state’s operating budget has also grown considerably.
For example, Santos said the state’s 2011-13 operating budget was $31.2 billion, with about $13.5 billion sent to K-12.
Fast-forward to this year’s $77.9 billion biennial operating budget — $33.7 billion of which went toward public schools.
Santos doesn’t want the rhetoric to be that the state is lowering the amount it contributes to education.
“If the point is made that proportionately we’re falling behind, I’m not going to argue that,” the Seattle Democrat said. “... But the size of the operating budget has increased by more than 100%. The size of the amount that we’ve committed to education has gone up, also more than 100%.”
Santos also emphasized that, in a budget year when lawmakers had to solve for a multi-billion-dollar shortfall, “only education came out with increases.”
Washington is among the top states with the highest per-student spending, she said.
World Population Review’s 2025 national ranking of overall K-12 per-pupil spending puts Washington at No. 11, with $20,748 per student. New York comes in first at $33,437 per kid, while Idaho trails in last at $9,387.
Put the numbers another way, and today’s K-12 state funding is roughly on par with Washington’s entire 2011-13 operating budget, Santos pointed out.
“What does the proportion tell you? It tells you how much do we prioritize,” she added. “And I can tell you this Legislature does prioritize education.”
This story was originally published September 10, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
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