On Monday, September 24, Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones announced that he would be changing the Well Resourced Schools plan to close 5 schools instead of up to 21 schools. The cuts, which were going to save the district up to 31.5 million dollars, were extremely controversial, but the district said they were necessary, considering the almost 100 million dollar projected budget deficit for the 2025-26 school year. Now, the district will almost certainly need to cut more in other areas, including in high schools like Garfield, which have seen large enrollment declines.
Even as classes feel just as lively and crowded as ever, Garfield’s initial enrollment was dismal this year; the district estimated that there would be 120 more students than the amount who have shown up this month. The administration has emphasized that they think this enrollment drop could be very temporary, but it is unlikely to rebound quickly.
“I don’t know, this is anecdotal, but I believe that there’s a good possibility that the reduction in our enrollment is because of safety concerns,” Garfield’s principal, Dr.Hart said. “If we ensure and prove that we are a safe school and that we have safety measures in place that are working, and students here are thriving and growing and learning, and there’s a lot of innovative programming, then people will return who will want to be here.”
This enrollment decline could be a problem because of how the district allocates teaching positions. If there is not a miraculous uptick of students in October, the district is likely to take away up to four teaching positions from Garfield in October. The district deals out a certain amount of money for paying teachers (which is given based off of enrollment) and another amount of money that Garfield decides what to use for, called discretionary funds. The money tied to teaching positions is based on estimations of enrollment and then redistributed if necessary in mid-October. This has caused disruptions before and could be amplified this year due to the gravity of the enrollment drop.
“You know there’s certain things that we want to keep at Garfield, we want to continue to have a robust AP program for instance, we want to continue to have a strong arts program… especially the musical arts,” Hart said. “So, in order to sort of maintain the strength of our AP program and just be consistent with our [teaching positions], we use what we call discretionary funds often to purchase [extra teaching positions].”
When the district distributed funding to Garfield last year, they reduced discretionary funding due to the deficit, resulting in cuts to Garfield’s French program. The PTSA stepped in to fill the gap, but now, that isn’t sustainable and won’t be enough to offset a potential reduction in teacher-position funding. These kinds of funding discussions raise lots of emotions.
“When we’re talking about funding stuff we try to talk about positions and not people to take the personal and emotional piece out of it,” PTSA President, Jennifer Marquardt said. “In order to repeat [last year’s funding] we need to raise thirty percent more than we fundraised last year, which is significant.”
Looking long-term, things are even more uncertain. As the district goes through this phase of belt-tightening, more drastic cuts to the discretionary fund are very possible. Unfortunately, the most uncertain part is teacher allocations, which depend upon enrollment. For this reason, it will be extremely important to monitor enrollment, which could either quickly bounce back or go down and take Garfield’s future with it. There is still room for optimism, however.
“I think the best thing that we that Garfield can do is sort of be the best school we can be, keep the high academic standards that have been part of the history of Garfield, keep those intact, strengthen the culture here and make it a place where students feel like they can lead and make changes,” said Hart. “I think that that kind of word of mouth gets around, and people will realize that this is actually a great school and a great place for us to send their students, and that we have safety measures in place to address many of those concerns.”
