Student Enrollment Decrease Causes Unexpected Loss of $3.1 Million for Tahoma School District
Financial documents presented during the Apr 26th Tahoma School District (TSD) school board meeting show a $3.1 million-dollar unexpected loss in revenue due to student enrollment decline. This comes at a time when the whole state appears to be struggling with enrollment. Student enrollment numbers are directly tied to district funding, so these unexpected losses can have a huge impact financially. The decline is mostly being blamed on COVID-19, which sparked the WA State Legislature to approve “Enrollment Stabilization Funding” (SB5563).
Image Source: TSD Board Documents
Board documents also show that the TSD is expecting to receive an additional $1.3 million from the state meant to offset the losses. The enrollment numbers shown below have been pulled from both OSPI and TSD board docs. The OSPI numbers don’t seem to match what the district lays out in their budget report (with OSPI being inflated), but the overall enrollment trends are similar.
Any questions regarding discrepancy in numbers should be directed to the TSD.
While it is certainly convenient to blame the enrollment losses entirely on COVID-19, many parents we spoke with who have opted for homeschool, private school, or have simply moved away, have expressed that COVID-19 is not the sole reason for their departure.
“While we certainly faced challenges like everyone else with online schooling during the pandemic, we actually departed from the district after returning to in-person instruction for reasons completely unrelated to COVID,” said one parent of 2 kids previously in the district. “We had a fantastic experience at Rock Creek Elementary but faced a complete decline in educational quality once our children moved to Summit Trail Middle School. It almost felt like we were in two completely different districts. Our oldest was not being challenged in math and when we asked the school to move her to advanced math they refused. Their science classes mostly involved video lessons and limited teaching which caused further frustration. Moreover, the environment seemed very unwholesome overall, with an oddly huge focus on sexuality amongst pre-teens/young teens. It was not an environment for the high-quality education we expected when we moved here, so we opted to sacrifice and put them in private school. We are very blessed to have this option. I know many parents who wish they could do the same but are unable.”
Another parent alluded to COVID being the initial driving factor, but ultimately left for other reasons as well.
“Honestly homeschooling our children was never something I considered, until last spring. I was extremely unsatisfied with Tahoma’s plan for school: their plan for returning to in-person learning [and] their plan to have the kids wearing masks all day. The more unsatisfied I was with how the school district was doing things, the deeper I started looking. After realizing that the district had teamed up with Dr. Caprice Hollins, it was extremely clear that my husband and I didn’t see eye to eye with the district. And then things kept happening. Things that ultimately made our decision easier and easier to make.”
Dr. Caprice Hollins is a controversial agenda-based speaker who promotes Critical Race Theory (CRT) praxis (the application of CRT to real life in order to transform). See: Is Critical Race Theory Being Practiced in the District.
Another set of parents who we communicated with actually removed their child prior to COVID. They had expressed to us that their child was the target of harassment from a teacher due to their Jewish roots, stating that: “The teacher was very very pro-Palestinian and talked about how the Jews had treated the Palestinians so terribly.” They went on to state that the relaxing of homework policies didn’t challenge their child enough either, so they ultimately pulled their child out.
One parent explained that they decided to remove their child due to similar experiences of “teacher-based activism” as well.
“I pulled my kids this last year to homeschool because of the kids wearing masks, the teachers talking with kids about their vaccination appointments [which was] overheard on teleschool, info about CRT, the new sex ed coming out, and teachers online looking for proud pronoun signs for their classrooms.”
It should be noted that the sex-ed curriculum has not changed within the TSD for the time being, but will be revisited next year. See our Parental Concerns page for more info: https://tahomaparents.org/parental-concerns
The feeling we got from many parents is that they are simply fed up with declining standards, unwholesome environments, and teacher-based activism. While COVID most certainly helped to highlight these issues with kids learning from home, it is clear that solely blaming COVID for declining numbers is a convenient excuse meant to hide frustration.
Did you pull your child from the TSD? If so, we would love to hear from you!
