Wahluke schools budget for declining enrollment

MATTAWA — The general fund for the Mattawa School District will be about $51.5 million for the 2025-26 school year. That’s slightly higher than the 2024-25 budget, but district superintendent Andy Harlow said the district is seeing a trend of declining enrollment. He cited the incoming kindergarten class as an example. 

“I would say the last two years have been about 180 (students). Now we’re looking at bringing in 134-136,” he said. 

Local economic conditions in the Mattawa area may have contributed to the decline, he said.  

“Orchards are getting ripped out, and vineyards, and they’re not replacing them with anything. If (farmers) do replace them, they’re row crops,” Harlow said. “That requires less labor. On top of that, some are just leaving fields empty.” 

The impact on enrollment doesn’t always show up at the beginning of the school year.  

“We started to see a trend last Christmas, where kids left and did not come back after Christmas,” Harlow said. 

He estimated the district lost the equivalent of about 25 students in the second semester, and the loss of students translated into a funding loss. Harlow estimated the district lost about $200,000.  

“The way we’re combating it is, we’ve just had to let staff go over the last three years,” he said. “We’re down about 50 staff (in that period).” 

There were reports of cuts in federal funding for the district’s migrant program, and while they didn’t materialize for the 2025-26 school year, they’re very likely to be coming in 2026-27. Wahluke retained those jobs but warned the staff that those positions might not be there next school year, Harlow said. 

Wahluke officials have been told that additional cuts may be coming to all federal education funding in 2026-27, he said.  

“What we’re hearing is, the federal budget will be cut in half for all states. Just a projection, so we don’t know,” Harlow said.  

He estimated WSD receives about $4.1 million in federal funding.  

“You can see why we’re all kind of bracing ourselves,” he said.  

From Harlow’s perspective, WSD was overstaffed, he said, which necessitated some of the cuts over the last three years. He estimated that three years ago, the district spent about 95% of its budget on personnel.  

“That wasn’t sustainable,” he said. “All of our extra money wasn’t going into facilities, it was going into staffing,” he said.  

The district has reduced that to about 85% spent on personnel, he said. In all but one case, affected personnel either found other jobs or retired. 

The capital projects fund was budgeted at $7.02 million and includes money from the capital projects bond approved by voters earlier this year. The transportation vehicle fund, which is used to pay for school vehicles, was budgeted at $220,000. The debt service fund, which repays money raised through voter-approved bonds, was projected at $624,000. Money in the Associated Student Body fund is raised by the students and was projected at about $583,000. 

    Students from Saddle Mountain Elementary gather for a picture in February. Wahluke has been following the nationwide trend of declining enrollment.