Tacoma schools to approve budget after mitigating $10M deficit
Tacoma Public Schools faced another deficit as it prepared its 2026-2027 budget – down to $10 million from the $30 million it faced last year.
The district is required by state law to pass a balanced budget, and it’s on track to do so on June 25. The 2026-2027 budget also includes $9 million set aside to start replenishing the district’s reserves, which it had depleted last year as it came dangerously close to not passing a balanced budget. Even though the deficit this year was smaller than last year’s $30 million and the prior year’s $40 million, district leaders say the decrease doesn’t mean that the district’s money troubles are on the decline and continue to warn about more difficult budget years to come.
“This is going to be an ongoing problem,” Tacoma Public Schools chief financial officer Rosalind Medina told The News Tribune.
Tacoma Public Schools has mitigated past deficits by eliminating positions and cutting programs. Last year, district staff, families and students criticized the district for the cuts, saying they would impact the district’s most vulnerable students.
Medina said the district mitigated the deficit in the 2026-2027 budget without a reduction in force. Instead, it is maintaining vacancies in positions that saw departures during the most recent academic year.
“We’re just not filling positions that become vacant,” she said.
Tacoma teachers union president Angel Morton said the group is concerned about staffing levels in the upcoming academic year. The district’s staffing levels have classes on track to be packed, she said.
“What that does is really put a crunch at the schools with high class sizes and an increasing number of split classes – classes with where teachers are teaching two grade levels at the same time – so they’re not staffed with much wiggle room moving into the future,” Morton told The News Tribune.
Tacoma Public Schools is not alone in facing enduring budget deficits – it’s joined by other school districts like Franklin Pierce and Puyallup, and other agencies like the city of Tacoma and Parks Tacoma. Medina and other district leaders have previously told The News Tribune that the problems are the result of insufficient funding from the state, which they have said needs to overhaul its school-funding model.
Local government agencies in the South Sound are also contending with rising costs – like the city of Tacoma, whose projections for a $27 million deficit recently ballooned to $40 million. City officials have said insurance costs have been rising steadily.
At Tacoma Public Schools, Medina said insurance costs have seen some of the biggest growth in recent years.
“My insurance costs by themselves, without any other cost anywhere in the district, was 300% more than what I got from the legislature this year,” she said.
Medina said the district is planning for insurance costs at $10.7 million, 1.7% of the district’s general fund budget. About 82% of the general fund budget covers the cost of salaries and benefits, according to the district’s budget presentation.
Morton agreed that the state is at least partially to blame for the district’s financial situation and said the union is focusing on rallying support for the millionaire’s tax, lobbying state legislators to support education funding and getting “education-friendly” candidates elected to office.
“There’s just no way, with the rising costs, that we can continue delivering a world-class education to our kids,” she said. “Everybody’s just stretched way too thin.”
Last year, Medina said financial insolvency and “binding conditions” were possibilities. Binding conditions are a set of financial benchmarks that state officials provide to districts to help them balance their budgets when a district’s expenses exceed its revenues. They’re the first in a set of several steps of increasing state intervention into a district’s day-to-day operations when a district faces enduring budget problems.
Medina said the district was less at risk for binding conditions this year than last year.
“But we’re so close to zero that one mistake, one unexpected bill, one crazy scenario could be the nail in the coffin for going into binding conditions,” she said.
