BELLEVUE, Wash. — It’s the first day of school for most students across the Bellevue School District. It’s a time of transition for the district, which has had some major budget concerns in recent school years and since the pandemic.
Bellevue School District Superintendent Dr. Kelly Aramaki says these first few weeks of school are critical to the district’s budget concerns. In a blog post on the district’s website, the superintendent says students in elementary school could see schedule changes, staff may also see shifts, and attendance will play a huge role in how the district secures funding.
Sarah Rankins is a parent of a student at Bennett Elementary School in Bellevue and was preparing a display in front of the school building early Tuesday morning to welcome students back to Bennett.
“Very excited, it’s mixed emotions,” she said about the day.
Rankins and several other parents made sure the students of Bennett had a warm welcome back to school. She and many parents involved in the PTA are willing to support their schools, even when budget concerns are pretty big.
“We have a bunch of excited parents ready to get involved, so we’re really excited to put our best foot forward and raise money for the school, and help give back to where the school needs it,” she added.
Jessica Strazzulla is the principal at Bennett Elementary and admits that all schools in the district are feeling the “pinch” of budget concerns.
Strazzulla knows that her school and others could see teachers teaching two different grades in one class because of budget impacts. She also knows that great attendance in the first few weeks could help ensure that funding per student from the state will meet the district’s needs.
Dr. Aramaki spoke to KIRO 7 ahead of the launch of a Japanese language program at Bennett Elementary, and admitted that balancing the budget has been a process.
“We made a lot of cuts coming into the school year,” he said.
Dr. Aramaki knew that last school year, some cuts had to come ahead of this school year to meet budget shortfalls of tens of millions of dollars.
“Anything that we could cut, like supply budgets, things like that, we basically stopped spending. So that helped us a little bit. A lot of our school leaders and staff took furloughs, so five furloughs each, so that did help us,” he added.
Dr. Aramaki also said he worked with the school board and staff and came up with a spending reduction plan that landed on district employees.
“We had far too many staff for the amount of money we are receiving from the state and from our local revenue, so we cut about 100 positions,” he said.
Bellevue School District has sold property in Bellevue for $30 million, and other infusions of cash mean the district could solve its budget problems in a few years. Dr. Aramaki said that the old plan, which could have seen millions in cuts each year for seven years or more, was just not tenable. He praised Washington lawmakers for passing a bill that allowed the district to make the one-time land deal to get an infusion of cash.
“That is the light at the end of the tunnel for us, it’s going to really help,” he added.
Dr. Aramaki says launching a Japanese language program at Bennett Elementary shows that the district can meet new educational goals, while also trying to balance the books.
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