200 Tacoma Public Schools employees without job assignments amid budget crisis
Over 200 staff members at Tacoma Public Schools are without a job assignment heading into summer as the district continues to contend with a $30 million deficit.
The district has sought to balance its roughly $577 million general fund budget with the non-renewal of contracts for certain employees and by eliminating certain programs, leaving some staff “displaced” but not necessarily without jobs as officials work to find another position for them within the district. In a statement issued on June 12, district officials said 403 staff have been “impacted by displacements, program changes and cuts,” since the district started implementing cuts. Of that number, 203 are without a job assignment for the 2025-2026 school year.
“It’s difficult to watch our friends and co-workers experience these changes and not feel unsettled ourselves,” the district’s latest statement reads. “We do not take lightly the decisions about our budget and staffing.”
The cuts the district has implemented so far have addressed $20 million of the district’s $30 million deficit, according to a presentation on the district’s finances presented at the June 12 board meeting. Teachers, support staff, families and others in the district have said the cuts have impacted Tacoma Public Schools’ most vulnerable students and employees.
That feeling was apparent at the district’s June 12 meeting, which drew over 150 people, filling the district’s regular board room and an overflow room. First-year teachers who lost their jobs, parents, families and students turned out to speak during public comment, delivering emotional pleas to district leadership asking for them to reinstate their colleagues and mentors.
Parent Angela Walle spoke on behalf of her son Oliver, a student at Geiger Montessori School.
“When I told him about the assistant cuts at his school, he burst into tears,” Walle said.
Several attendees brought large stacks of letters from teachers, parents, staff and students urging the district to reverse the changes and distributed them to the board. As of June 13, 1,530 people also signed a petition calling for transparency from the district and for the district to reinstate support staff who have lost their jobs.
The district also recently announced that 14 education support professionals, or ESPs, were displaced from Bryant Montessori School and Geiger Montessori School, and many of the speakers at the June 12 meeting spoke about the impact that would have on students at the two schools.
“We moved here because of Geiger [Montessori School]. We moved here because we wanted to be in a school district and a state that supported educators, that supported teachers, that supported children,” parent Kimberly Chalker-Quintana said at the meeting. “And this is happening.”
