From Washington to Ohio, public schools slashing positions while grappling with millions in budget shortfalls

Public-school districts nationwide are cutting staff positions while admitting layoffs alone won’t suffice in solving multimillion-dollar deficits.

In one example, Tacoma Public Schools in Washington has committed to continuing staff and program cuts “indefinitely” to address a $30 million budget deficit for the 2025-26 academic year.

“Had COVID not happened, I think we would have hit this point a lot sooner, but COVID masked that problem because we had a disruption in our operations, and so everything looked different,” the district’s chief financial officer Rosalind Medina told the News Tribune. 

Likewise, the Cincinnati Public Schools board has voted to eliminate vacant positions while pondering ways to resolve “an anticipated budget gap of roughly $51 million to $52 million,” Gannett’s Cincinnati Enquirer reported. 

“District officials are scrambling to finalize a balanced budget before the June 30 deadline,” Bebe Hodges wrote for the Enquirer. “Some board members expressed concern that, even after the June 2 meeting, a clear way to a balanced budget before the deadline does not exist.” 

‘Unique things happening post-pandemic’ 

T.J. Kelly, chief financial officer for Washington’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, blamed a plethora of factors contributing to these budget shortfalls. Perhaps the most significant involves the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER. 

“We’ve had a lot of unique things happening post-pandemic,” he said. “You had the sunsetting of the federal ESSER money, you’ve had enrollment declines, and in a lot of cases, that enrollment hasn’t rebounded yet. There are many factors contributing to just the financial circumstance of all districts right now that are easily identified and pointed to.” 

Some schools used the ESSER to build new programs they now want to keep even though funds were designed to be temporary, Kelly noted. 

“That doesn’t imply that we would fault districts for how they spent the ESSER money. I think a lot of districts spent the ESSER money on what they intended to be temporary programming, but then their community members liked it so much that they’re trying to figure out a way to sustain those efforts, and yet they don’t have the available resources to do so.” 

Tacoma Public Schools, which serves approximately 28,000 students, is urging the state to increase public education funding to help cover rising deficits. 

“We’re not able to keep up with inflation. We’re not able to keep up with the competitive market-driven salaries that we offer, and the state is not providing us with revenues in order to do so,” Medina argued at a May 22 district board meeting. “We’re seeing the effects of that in the current year.” 

Meanwhile, the Ohio Legislature is projecting a decrease in public-school funding for the upcoming fiscal year – causing the Cincinnati Public Schools board to consider additional ways to cut costs. 

“The most cost-effective investment we can make is for us to fund training and support for teachers so that we help them implement the high-quality curricula we’ve already purchased,” board member Ben Lindy told the Enquirer. “This kind of investment is 40 times more cost-effective than class size reductions.”