Aberdeen School District prepares to cut spending, staff

Officials working to identify $3.5 million in savings for next school year

The Aberdeen School District is preparing a plan to cut spending by $3.5 million for the 2023-2024 school year that will involve a reduction in staff, an action district officials say is necessary to sustain operation amid shrinking resources.

At a March 27 budget meeting, the Aberdeen School Board tasked Superintendent Jeff Thake to draw up a plan detailing which positions and expenditures would need to be dropped for next year, heeding a recommendation Thake made at a March 7 board meeting.

Thake said the district is contractually obligated to produce the plan by May 15, but anticipated it would be ready by mid-to-late April after a series of meetings with the district’s executive cabinet on the subject.

While the exact number of layoffs is currently unclear, cuts to classified (uncertified), certificated, and administrative staff are on the table at this point, Thake said.

The district is also “taking a very strong, critical look” at some of its six-figure external contracts for mental health and behavioral supports, Thake said.

“We’re engaged in a very careful program review looking at spending across the district and how we can make these cuts and serve kids at the highest level we possibly can,” Thake said in an interview.

Some portion of the cuts will come by way of attrition — when a district leaves vacant the position of an employee who plans on leaving anyway. Thake said attrition — “the path of least resistance” — is the district’s “number one” approach for reductions, and could account for almost two thirds of the reductions, although that number is variable.

In a statement to The Daily World, Cathleen Wilder, president of the Aberdeen Education Association, the district’s teacher’s union, said the association will provide further comment when a final plan is produced, but said the teachers were “deeply concerned that any cuts will directly impact our students, who are still recovering from impacts to their education due to previous cuts and movement within departments.”

The Aberdeen School District reduced staff by 46 prior to the 2019-2020 school year.

Thake, who’s serving in his first year as superintendent, said the district is “not in a very sustainable position” because of a mix of colliding factors.

At the March 27 meeting, Thake predicted a nearly $9 million loss in revenue for the district next school year, including almost $6 million from the expiration of ESSER money — emergency money deployed in 2020 by the federal government in response to the pandemic. In total, schools in Washington State received $2.5 billion in ESSER funds in three rounds of funding, which districts used in a variety of ways.

Thake said the district was “doing the best we can” to prepare for what he called an “ESSER cliff.”

Another funding avenue called Local Effort Assistance — state money provided to property-poor districts for extracurriculars — could dwindle because, according to a report prepared for the district by financial advising company DA Davidson, the district’s assessed property value jumped by nearly a quarter in 2023.

According to Thake, the district currently levies $3.13 per thousand dollars of assessed value, much of which comes from an EP&O levy that expires at the end of 2024. But the amount the district can garner from taxpayers is limited because of a 2018 Washington State Supreme Court ruling.

In the McCleary decision, named after the family who brought the suit, the court ruled that the state was obligated to pay for school districts’ basic education programs. The Legislature’s response, called the “McCleary Fix,” limited levy asks.

Both Thake and Wilder said effects from the McCleary Fix are at least partially responsible for Aberdeen’s current funding woes.

“I fear that the aftermath of the McCleary decision has not adequately supported the students in our district and there is more work for the state to do in order to fully fund education,” Wilder said.

The state allocates funding to school districts based on enrollment — about $10,000 per student, in Aberdeen’s case. But district enrollment — now at about 3,100 students — has declined by 1% on average over the last ten years, and by about 250 students since 2018. Thake is projecting another 30 student decline for next school year, or $300,000 fewer dollars in outside funding.

Meanwhile, staffing levels are about 10% higher than enrollment, Thake said.

While the district will make cuts based on the $3.5 million benchmark, Thake said, there’s a chance that, depending on the district’s financial status after this school year — and variables in state funding — some laid-off positions could be reinstated before the school board agrees on a budget in July.

“We’ve been careful and tight with our spending this entire year,” Thake said. “Shy of any huge mechanical emergency, if we continue to be as conservative as we are, our fund balance might be a little higher and that too could save more positions.”

But Thake also said there’s potential for more budget cuts in future years, although they wouldn’t likely be as dramatic as this year.

The Aberdeen School Board is scheduled to meet on April 18, and again on May 9. Thake said the reduction plan should be ready by late April and will likely go before the board at the latter meeting for final approval.

Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.