Tacoma school to lose beloved vice principal as district budget cuts take their toll
Britni Proudman has been “the face” of Birney Elementary in Tacoma’s South End for the past few years, according to parents, who credit the vice principal with reaching their children, engaging families and fully committing to a high-need school that serves a significant deaf and hard-of-hearing population.
But Proudman is among five assistant principals whose jobs will be eliminated after June as Tacoma Public Schools grapples with declining enrollment and more severe budget issues than it faced a year ago. Her pending departure has upset parents and staff who fear her impact cannot be easily replaced.
Nearly a dozen people, either in person or in writing, urged the school board Thursday to act against the move. A change.org petition had more than 180 signatures as of Friday. Twenty-six school staff members penned a letter to the board Thursday, seeking to delay cuts until public feedback can be heard and requesting the board scrutinize TPS’ decisions to eliminate the jobs if found to be based solely on financial constraints.
“You think of Birney, you think of Britni Proudman,” Cole Nagel, father of two students, told The News Tribune in an interview.
The district is ascertaining its exact financial situation for the 2024-25 school year, but it expects it to be worse than the prior year when it dealt with a roughly $15 million budget shortfall, The News Tribune previously reported. The troubles, which are being felt in districts across the state, rise from drops in enrollment, inadequate state funding and inflationary increases in school costs, TPS has said.
Tanisha Jumper, a district spokesperson, confirmed in an email that Proudman, who’s been offered a certificated teaching position along with the four other affected administrators from other schools, was being reassigned for the next school year.
“Tacoma Public Schools is overstaffed in our elementary assistant principal positions across the school district due to declining enrollment over the last several years,” Jumper said. “This resulted in the district needing to eliminate some assistant principal positions.”
In the letter to the school board, Birney staff noted that positions were also being cut at Edna Travis, Lister and Stafford elementary schools and Hilltop Heritage Middle School.
The district was continuing to take “necessary steps” to right size its spending as it faces factors outside of its control, according to Jumper, including by maintaining its non-essential position hiring freeze, redeploying staff where needed and seeking to run programs more efficiently and reduce budgets and spending where it can.
During the week of March 11, TPS eliminated 16 “office professional/professional technical positions” in the central administration office, adding to the 14 essential office support staff it cut from the office around February, according to Jumper. She said the eliminations didn’t directly impact school staffing.
As the district responds to present enrollment reductions and financial woes, the decision to remove a beloved vice principal has caused a stir. Jumper said the district had received “some emails” from parents and staff over the move and responded to those individually.
She also noted that no final decisions had been made on whether Birney’s enrollment was large enough for an assistant principal next school year.
“We will review demographer data, returning enrollment and legislative impacts in the upcoming months,” Jumper said by email. “If it is determined that Birney’s enrollment drives the need for an assistant principal, one of the remaining assistant principals will be assigned to Birney.”
It was unclear whether that meant that it was possible that Proudman could still return. Jumper, who was attending a conference, and another district spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up inquiry Friday.
Birney’s enrollment was 484 students for the current school year, the third-highest of all district elementary schools, according to data from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. The school’s comparatively large population was another source of frustration for those who criticized the decision to eliminate Proudman’s position.
Won’t be ‘the same without her’
Marquita Dickson, who created the change.org petition, is a parent to two children — girls 9 and 3 — in Birney’s deaf/hard of hearing programs (DHH).
Since Proudman’s arrival, which Dickson and others estimated was roughly three years ago (the district didn’t immediately have details on Proudman’s start date), Dickson said she noticed a major positive change in the behavior of her eldest daughter, who is profoundly deaf and developmentally delayed. The assistant principal absorbed how her daughter learns, according to Dickson.
Perhaps most importantly, Proudman can understand what she is communicating, Dickson said, because Proudman took it upon herself to learn sign language, which Dickson said was unique from other administrators and showed initiative.
Dickson said Proudman has been a key driver in dissolving segregation between hearing and non-hearing students at the school, implemented a monthly committee where parents can voice concerns, sits in on PTA meetings and makes the educational environment more fun.
“I don’t have any hope that it will be the same without her,” Dickson said. “I’m fighting because I know it’s going to affect our children.”
Proudman didn’t respond to a message Friday and later, through a third party, declined to be interviewed.
During Thursday’s board meeting, people who pushed for the district to reconsider its decision shared similar worries that students wouldn’t adapt well to the change, particularly when accounting for the fact that Birney’s principal also will be leaving in exchange for another in the upcoming school year.
“The amount of work she does for our school and our students, I believe, is above and beyond probably what she’s required to do,” parent Emily Hasenleder told the board, referring to Proudman. “And so to lose her would be a huge disservice to our school.”
Regina Lewis has three foster children with severe behavioral issues who attend Birney, along with her daughter. Lewis said that her foster kids have thrived because of Proudman, who has embraced them and attends their individualized education program (IEP) meetings.
“I don’t know how we’re going to tell them, that the person that they love so much — who’s there, who’s consistent, who’s dependable, available to their every needs there — that she’s leaving,” Lewis said.
Nagel said he arrived outside the school Thursday as parents dropped off and picked up their children. He held a laminated sheet of paper that declared support for retaining Proudman and displayed a QR code that linked to the online petition. Among her achievements, he said, she was integral to instituting a program to walk students to and from school.
He has two boys, a third- and fifth-grader, and expressed unease that his youngest would be losing someone he looked up to as a “school mom” of sorts. Nagel’s wife echoed that sentiment later that night.
“The decision to cut vice principals is not the right answer,” Kaitlin Nagel told the school board. “What may look good on paper, I assure you does not look good in person.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2024 at 5:15 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misidentified Hilltop Heritage Middle School as an elementary school.
