The Kent School District could be getting millions of dollars less than expected from the state because of declining enrollment.
District enrollment has a shortfall of approximately 792 students, Superintendent Israel Vela told the Kent School Board at its Oct. 8 meeting and revealed in an Oct. 6 Vela’s Voice newsletter emailed to community members.
“This ongoing decline will have significant implications for staffing, budgeting, and resource allocation,” Vela said to the board and in the newsletter. “KSD (Kent School District) is currently assessing this funding gap and evaluating its impact.”
The board has a retreat scheduled for Oct. 15 to discuss the budget impacts.
“An updated budget presentation will be shared at the Oct. 15 board retreat providing further clarity on the financial outlook for the current school year and beyond,” Vela said.
When the board adopted the 2025-2026 budget in June, district staff projected enrollment to remain flat at 24,222 student, actually an increase of about 320 students from the 2024-2025 school year, according to district documents.
The Oct. 1 count shows an enrollment of 23,430 students, a decrease of 792 students.
The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) determines how much money to distribute to school districts based on fall enrollment numbers. OSPI spends an average of about $11,500 per student per year in basic funding across the state, although that figure can vary by district.
With 792 fewer students, that could be an estimated minimum impact of $9 million this school year just based on the $11,500 figure, but the number could be much higher depending on the state formula for payments to the Kent School District.
Vela said in his newsletter that “four out of six neighboring districts and 13 of 19 districts in King County are facing similar enrollment challenges following the September count.”
The Kent Reported emailed the Kent School District’s communications team for the names of the four neighboring districts and how much their enrollment had dropped but did not receive a response.
The school board heard a budget report from Raul Parungao, district executive director of finance, during its July 23 meeting that staff recommended cutting $7.5 million per year from the budget starting in 2026-2027 due to expenditures exceeding revenue over the next few years.
That was before the drop in student enrollment became known.
Parungao told the board in July the district’s expenditures are higher than revenues because it is not fully funded by the state and it’s paying more to employee contracts.
The district has a general fund balance of about $60 million, which Parungao told the board in July it could use to help cover any deficits. He emphasized, however, the district cannot continue on a path of using the fund balance as a way to cover deficits as eventually that money will run out.
The district has been down that path before. Projections for the 2015-16 school year were off by about 500 students in the fall of 2015 costing the district about $7 million in state funding, according to a previous Kent Reporter article. The board didn’t make any budget cuts until the spring of 2016.
The district had a $14.1 million fund balance at the start of the 2015-16 school year, a $3.8 million balance going into the 2016-17 school year and a negative $6.9 million balance to start 2017-18, according to the article. The board reduced personnel costs, began hiring freezes and cut materials, supplies and operating costs to eventually get out of a financial hole.
The school board and district have since built up the fund balance, but now face more financial challenges and potential budget cuts.
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