A Message from Superintendent Greg Baker

Dear students, staff, families and community,

We are continuing to plan our budget for the 2026-27 school year, and I want to provide an update on this difficult budget cycle.

I also want to acknowledge that there is a lot going on across our city, state and country right now with unrest and uncertainty.

Our schools provide safe, loving spaces for our students – ALL students, and that will not change, regardless of any challenges.

First, gratitude

 We are so grateful to our community and the support you give our district through levies and bonds. Our recent levies helped significantly but didn’t solve all our shortfalls. Levies are capped by the state, restricting how much we can collect. This is especially challenging because the state legislature continues to fail to provide ample funding for PreK-12 education.

More than two thirds of our revenue is funded by the state, but we won’t know how much we are getting until legislators finish their budget session, scheduled to end in mid-March.

While we wait to see what happens in Olympia, we are focusing on balancing our budget.

Increasing costs and inflation

There are many examples of districts facing increasing costs and state funding falling short. One example in our district is the cost and reimbursement of utilities and insurance costs.

Because the state underfunds districts across the state, including ours, and the governor’s budget proposal does not include additional funds for public education, we need to look for cost-savings.

I have accepted the recommendation of the high school schedule committee, which calls for shifting from our current eight-period schedule to a seven-period schedule. This will significantly save money while still allowing the most choice and instructional time for students. See more about the high school schedule.

I’m grateful for those who served on the high school schedule committee and those of you who offered feedback this fall, which helped influence our desire to maintain as many classes and electives for students. We will be looking at other ways to save money across our district, and we will share those plans in future updates.

Declining birth rates, enrollment

Our state superintendent recently spoke about the upcoming legislative session and birth rate trends and shared the graph below. I encourage you to watch his press conference.

As you can see, the number of births across our state is declining, which means lower enrollment in schools.

 

This trend is consistent with what we see in Bellingham; enrollment projections for our district show a continuing dip in the coming years, despite continued growth in the city, in part because the new construction isn’t affordable for families.

Our district needs to be judicious and flexible as we experience ups and downs in enrollment so that we can continue to offer a robust education while being efficient with facilities and staffing.

We will be engaging our community in several ways to continue this conversation; we are working with a demographer to better understand enrollment trends and potential ways to contract and expand across our 22 schools and additional programs.

This could mean adjusting construction timelines and/or repurposing some of our schools or sites. Regardless of growth or reduction, we want to ensure our schools are high-quality and modernized.

I am confident we can weather these challenges, and that students in Bellingham will continue to receive a great education, despite limited resources from the state. This is thanks to the unrelenting dedication of staff, involvement of parents/guardians and support of the community.

What can we do?

If you have made it this far, maybe you are asking what you can do to help.

One way to advocate is to share your views with your state representatives.

• This one-page document summarizes shortfalls and our messaging to the state. It also includes some creative ideas that are cost-neutral to the state but would greatly help districts by giving them more flexibility.
• We will continue to advocate to our local legislators. Our school board is involved in these efforts, as well. They recently approved a resolution urging the state legislature to honor its constitutional duty to fully fund public education and penned an open letter to legislators.

All efforts are appreciated.

We will continue to work on a balanced budget for next year and share more information soon.

Our district, our students, our staff and our community deserve better from the state.

Please share questions and thoughts here.

Greg Baker