SEATTLE — Seattle Public Schools may have put aside, for now, plans to shut down four elementary schools, but the district’s crushing budget deficit isn’t going anywhere.
Tuesday night, Gina Topp with the SPS Board of Directors held a community meeting at the West Seattle Library.
The budget crisis was a key topic with Topp saying there’s a lot of work ahead to figure out where nearly $100 million is going to come from.
“We’ve spent our rainy-day fund, we’ve taken a loan from ourselves, we’ve cut the easier things – not that anything is easy to cut – and now we’re left at a spot where we have $100 million budget deficit and we’re going to have to make some very difficult decisions,” said Topp.
For funding, the district is looking at two levies up for renewal, along with trying to get more money from the state.
“I was just at a meeting this past week with other school board directors across the state as we talked about how we planned to advocate to the legislature to make sure that we get the funding we need to operate our schools,” said Topp.
Sanislo Elementary PTA vice-president Kelly Alleen-Willems echoed those concerns.
“It sounds like an impossible problem, and quite frankly, it’s pretty clear that a lack of funding at the state level is the problem. This isn’t a Seattle issue, this is a Washington state issue and I’m excited for us to go to Olympia and start to hold our legislators accountable,” said Alleen-Willems.
At the community meeting, parents shared worries about what they call dysfunction in the district.
Topp agreed the district needs to rebuild trust with families.
“I think we could do that with transparency engagement and hopefully the two-way sharing of information,” said Topp.
Up next for the school board is a budget meeting set for December 18.