The Bainbridge Island School District announced May 9 that it will not make any staffing reductions in the coming school year, largely thanks to savings from staff attrition.

But the district may still fall $1.1 million short in funding for 2024-25 — $100,000 more than the estimated deficit range from early February.

One major way the district anticipates saving money is by not hiring new staff for the 21 positions that were still vacant at the end of 2023-24. Instead, the responsibilities of those positions — a combination of part- and full-time employees that adds up to 18.4 full-time-equivalent roles — have been redistributed to returning staff.

“Every single one of those positions, in one way or another, through another current staff member, has been filled,” superintendent Amii Thompson said.

Nearly all departments saw resignations or retirements. A handful of employees from the custodial team, sports and music programs, and administrative staff announced their departure, but about 20 teachers and paraeducators have decided to leave since February. Many were replaced internally, and some were combined with another role.

So far, a K-4th grade teaching position is the only position that the district may hold off on filling, and is dependent on kindergarten enrollment in the fall.

“We have enough teachers adequate for our student population, and we want to be thoughtful about our class size,” Thompson said.

District chief financial officer Kim Knight and Thompson have been reviewing the budget nearly incessantly since Knight was appointed in March, Thompson said. Staff attrition has saved the district about $600,000, but as of the May 9 board meeting further cuts are becoming hard to ascertain. If budget strain continues at the same rate, leadership may have to consider trimming student programs in the 2025-26 school year.

Thompson emphasized that would be the last resort. “Cutting programs is a value statement,” she said.

Prior to last October, when the budget discrepancy first arose, Knight found that the district had been double-counting federal grant funding as a source of certain, additional revenue. That mistake snowballed into a potential school closures crisis that rocked the district for months.

As a result, leadership intends to go through the budget line by line, reassessing each cost and pruning where possible to achieve a fund balance above 5% for the next school year.

Schools in Washington are required to maintain a positive fund balance, but there is no specific benchmark they must meet every year. BISD board policy mandates that the district must maintain a fund balance of at least 5%.

Board member Robert Cromwell reminded meeting attendees that a 5% fund balance is technically functional, but still very lean — monthly payroll, for example, is more than 5% of the budget.

“If you were to equally divide the budget by 365, a five percent fund balance would be about eighteen days of cash,” Cromwell said. “I’d be crying if I had less than sixty days of operating cash. You are so close to the edge of survival […] We know that something will hit us — some facility will fail, something will need to be replaced. Being below five percent is something I would be very, very worried about.”

Meanwhile, enrollment continues to lag.

The district’s Annual Back-to-school Check-In program, which notifies the district of a student’s return to school and gives the student their class schedule, only has about a 37% response rate so far, BISD communications director Erin Bischoff said. BISD expects more families to respond over the summer, but it has also begun to offer kindergarten enrollment to families that live off-island earlier this year than is typical.

School board members Mark Emerson, Evan St. Clair and Cromwell noted the importance of seeking creative sources of income in addition to cuts. Cromwell recalled how his high school senior class of 13 people paid for their prom by selling sodas from a vending machine.

Thompson agreed. She said that the district is considering expanding its preschool program, which would help increase enrollment and patch a citywide lack of affordable childcare.

“The control we have is trying to change revenue streams,” St. Clair said. “We need to seek sustainable revenue streams and start asking ourselves — is there a need that’s not being met in our community, that we can serve? Can we monetize that?”