A Seattle school district is being forced to lay off employees amid financial turmoil that was caused by plummeting student enrollments.
Seattle Public Schools announced on Tuesday that some staff members have been notified they may lose their jobs to address a budget deficit.
"This week...we've issued some notifications to employees about they're being considered for 'RIF' and displacement so that is happening," said Dr. Brent Jones, SPS superintendent, at a school board meeting on Tuesday night.
"We’re in that phase right now," Jones added.
The Board noted that its deficit is at a "tipping point," noting that its "structural deficit" has grown to $131 million.
They also cited an expiration of their one-time state and federal resources from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) and funding of transportation without riders.
On top of the adverse circumstances, the Board added that student needs are increasing and that labor costs are "significantly more than state and local funding."
Jones outlined the district’s "strategy to fiscal responsibility" that included a multitude of objectives including "aggressively" pursuing new or expanded revenue opportunities.
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The starkest issue is the downward trend of enrollment in the district. According to the Board, enrollment dropped since the fiscal year 2013-14 while staffing increased to address the needs of students.
The Board expects a trend of enrollment decrease.
Some of the Board expressed concern about how the cuts to labor will impact student outcomes.
"So, some of these cuts or rather programmatic changes could very well have little to no impact on student outcomes," District 7 School Board Director Brandon K. Hersey said.
Hersey suggested putting expectations and parameters on a baseline level of services that the district can provide in order to guarantee a "streamlined equitable approach."
The number of homeschooled students in the state has nearly doubled since 2019, per data found by the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), a research organization at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.
The Seattle Public School District enrollment has been on a steady decline since COVID closures with the trend expected to continue through 2028, CRPE research shows.
From 2019-2021, private school enrollment increased by 10 percent per year on average, enrollment in homeschool increased by 27 percent per year on average and enrollment in charter schools increased by 28 percent per year on average, CRPE reported.
Fox News Digital previously reported that average math scores saw the largest declines ever across every state, dropping five points for fourth-graders and eight points for eighth-graders from 2019 to 2022, according to the Nation's Report Card.
Reading scores dropped to levels not seen since 1992, decreasing three points for both grades in two years and revealing significant proficiency setbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
