Enrollment decline projected in Othello School District budget

OTHELLO — Othello School District officials are projecting lower enrollment for the 2024-25 school year and expect enrollment to keep decreasing in the future. District officials will sponsor a question-and-answer session on the 2024-25 budget for Othello School Board members and district patrons at 1 p.m. Thursday in the district office, 1025 South First Ave.  

Amy Suarez, OSD executive director of business services, said it’s time to start looking at the future and getting ready for it.  

“I want to take you back to last year when we said, ‘We’re going to kick the rock down the road a little bit.’ This year we’re going to pretend that rock is a soda can. What happens when you kick it down the road? It explodes and goes everywhere. That’s what we’re trying to prevent,” Suarez said during a budget presentation Aug. 12.  

In Washington school funding is based on enrollment, but budgets must be submitted before school starts. As a result, districts must guess what enrollment will be. For 2024-25 Othello district officials are projecting enrollment will be the equivalent of 4,290 students. 

That’s 35 students below actual enrollment in 2023-24. However, actual enrollment in 2023-24 was 90 students below the budget projection.  

For 2024-25, the general fund was budgeted at about $82.87 million. The general fund pays for most school operations, including salaries, materials and supplies.  

The capital projects budget was projected at $1.04 million and $3 million was projected in the debt service fund. The Associated Student Body fund was budgeted at about $639,300. The transportation vehicle fund, which can only be used to buy vehicles, was budgeted at $450,000. 

Suarez said the budget is balanced, but it required using about $5.58 of the district’s reserves. The district’s reserve fund — its savings account — was about $15.2 million at the end of the 2023-24 school year. The reserve at the end of the 2024-25 school year is projected to be about $9.59 million.  

“We cannot continue to decrease our fund balance in future years and remain fiscally sound,” Suarez wrote in the presentation.  

While enrollment is projected to increase at Othello High School, it’s projected to decrease at McFarland Middle School and the district’s four elementary schools. Over the last 15 years, OSD enrollment was highest in the 2019-20 school year, dropped the next two years, rebounded in 2022-23 but dropped in 2023-24.  

More parents applied to homeschool their children and to attend online school in other districts in 2023-24, Saurez said. 

“Therefore, what we are trying to as a district (is) our own online school,” she said.  

Othello students also are taking advantage of other options, including Running Start, which allows qualifying juniors and seniors to attend community college.  

Like all public schools nationwide, Othello received substantial federal funding during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that ended with the last school year. The district’s special education funding increased, Suarez said, but not enough to offset increases in staff salaries and other expenses. 

The same is true in some of the other state and federal programs, she said. Typically, district officials try to reserve some of that funding to carry into the next year, but that percentage is dropping as salaries and expenses increase, Suarez said. 

The district will also receive less money than anticipated for levy equalization. That’s additional money allocated by the state for districts with relatively lower property values. District officials anticipated receiving about $8.85 million in 2024-25, but will actually receive about $6.55 million.  

Suarez analyzed birth rates in Adams County; it’s trending down, which translates to fewer children in school, she said. Births went down 22% between 2019 and 2022, she said. The district’s kindergarten enrollment usually represents about 80% of children born in Adams County in a given year.  

Some teaching positions have been cut, including three primary grade specialists, four art positions, four jobs at MMS and the Othello High School athletic director. One administrative assistant’s job in the OHS finance department won’t be filled.  

Some jobs are being added. The AD position will be combined with an OHS assistant principal position. Othello will add a transitional kindergarten class and teacher. Transitional kindergarten is for children who have had a year of kindergarten but aren’t ready for first grade.  

An art teacher will be added at OHS along with another special education teacher. A physical education teacher will be added at MMS. Two nursing positions will be added; previously OSD had one school nurse, who was a classified (non-teaching) employee. Two other positions will added in the OHS special education department.