On July 29, 2025, Superintendent Steve Marshall sent out following update on the district's 2025-26 budget to HSD staff and families:
Dear Hockinson Community,
I wanted to take a moment to follow up on my message to you from May 14 and inform you that the 2025-26 budget was formally approved at last night’s regular HSD School Board meeting. I also wanted to provide you with some additional context about next year’s budget.
The annual process of developing a budget is never easy, but it was especially challenging this time around. Like many districts across Washington, we are facing a growing gap between the funding we receive from the state and the actual costs of running our schools. This situation has forced us to make some difficult decisions, but we have done everything possible to minimize the impact on our students.
Our approach to this budget shortfall involved careful reductions that were furthest from the classroom and preserved the services and learning opportunities that our students rely on. Wherever possible, our district has cut costs relating to materials, supplies, curriculum and technology. Unfortunately, we also had to make cuts to our staffing.
Here are the specific areas where we will see staffing reductions for the 2025-26 school year:
Central office school administrators
Removal of professional development stipends
Reduced hours, implementation of three furlough days or waived IPD* increase
Reduced work days for curriculum and instruction staff
Classified employees
Reduced custodial support for schools
Reduced hours for state- and federally-funded employees
Implementation of one to three furlough days
Certificated employees
Reductions through attrition, with a focus on maintaining current staffing levels where possible
* IPD (Implicit Price Deflator) is a measurement of inflation that the State of Washington uses in determining changes to funding levels. The IPD for the 2025-26 school year is approx. 2.5%
Over the last few months, district and building leaders have notified all staff impacted by reductions.
The HSD operates efficiently and is committed to fiscal responsibility. These reductions are occurring not because our district has unrealistic expenses but because state K-12 education funding is not keeping up with rising costs. If the state had maintained the same percentage of its budget for K-12 education as it did in 2019, school districts would have received an additional $6 billion over the past five years. Instead, public education’s share of the state budget dropped from 52.4% in 2019 to 43.1% in 2024 while staffing, insurance, fuel, electricity, and operations costs increased significantly. Learn more on our budget webpage.
For the 2025-26 school year, the state funding we will receive will fall short about $1 million of what is needed to fully fund our schools. We are fortunate to have a voter-approved levy that provides local funding for support programs and services through next year, but it does not bridge the entire gap. This has left us with the difficult task of keeping students’ educational experiences the top priority, weighing the impacts to our staff and schools, and ultimately balancing our budget.
I am hopeful that this is the final message I have to share on this topic, but you can count on future updates should our circumstances change. Thank you for taking the time to read this update and thank you for your understanding and continued support of our schools.
Sincerely,
Steve Marshall
Superintendent
Hockinson School District