The Bainbridge Island School District announced the dates that its budget-mandated reduction in force will take effect at the Jan. 30 school board meeting: April 24 for certificated staff and May 8 for classified staff.
District financial director Kim Knight and superintendent Amii Thompson shared an outline for the reductions, explaining the timeline of conversations between administrators, the District Budget Advisory Committee and labor unions to establish reasonable reductions that maximize financial savings.
“What most people do is they see that number of $6.5 (million) or $7 million, and they ask, ‘What’s the average cost of a certificated teacher, or a classified staff member?’ and then divide by that number and say, ‘That’s how many reductions we need to make.’ That’s not what we’re doing,” Thompson said.
“We have a very thoughtful, intentional, almost individualized approach to reductions. We are a small school system; we care about one another, and we really care about our student day. So we look at each potential reduction from start to finish, and this takes many months to do because we are talking about one situation at a time.”
A “reduction in force” is similar to a layoff, but rather than leaving a position vacant, a RIF often corresponds with a permanent restructure of an organization or elimination of a role. After almost 60 forums in January, public feedback has been incorporated into the RIF draft process.
In February, ideas for reductions will be considered by DBAC, then by building administration, then by unions. In March, DBAC will review potential savings from proposed reductions, which will be confirmed by administrators and unions. Starting April 14, employees will be notified of their possible reduction, and by the April 24 and May 8 meetings, the list of reduced staff will be adopted by the school board.
Outside of trimming costs, the district must seek new revenue as well.
BISD is facing a minimum $6.1 million budget shortfall in the 2025-26 school year, about 10% of the budget. That has forced leadership to consider more staffing reductions than initially planned in November. Expenses like insurance premiums, utilities and materials, and operations costs are projected to increase, and state revenue from enrollment may struggle to keep up, Knight said.
“As we look to next year, the first place to start is kindergarten, and in the best of times, kindergarten is a Magic 8-Ball. What we do know is that over the past five years, we’ve had a fairly stable rate of enrollment to live birth, with a small fluctuation,” she said.
“We know that our live births for the next year are 95, and that is a frighteningly small number for next year. It would translate into an anticipated enrollment of 148 for next year, which is the smallest kindergarten class that anybody here can remember.”
Since the pandemic, public school enrollment has declined statewide and has yet to recover in many schools around Puget Sound. In October of 2023, BISD enrolled its lowest percentage of Kitsap-born kindergarteners since 2014, which if continued could result in the loss of several hundred students. But enrollment from families who move to BI or transfer into the district account for up to 100 kindergarteners annually, which buoys the cohort.
Because of the “move-in” effect, BISD may not be subject to the same enrollment decline that other schools around the state anticipate in 2025-26, Knight heard from the financial oversight team at the Puget Sound Educational Service District. Whereas many districts are facing a minimum 5% overall decrease in enrollment, BISD may see closer to 2.5%.
“They acknowledge the uniqueness of Bainbridge — the fact that we are an island, and we are rather isolated and not prone to the same trends,” Knight said. “We worked with DBAC, and they recommended we err on the side of caution with a very conservative estimate of a decrease of 85 students. The reason for that is, if we were to underestimate the decrease, we don’t have any levers left to pull in order to right-size the budget.”
