Enrollment in the Kent School District has declined 7% or 1,801 students over the last five years.

The district had 25,455 students in 2019-2020, according to district documents. That number dropped to 23,654 students in September 2024. That’s an annual drop of about 379 students per year or 1.5% since 2019.

District leaders updated the Kent School Board about enrollment numbers and staffing during an Oct. 9 Finance and Human Resources workshop.

Enrollment declined by 1.2% from the 2023-2024 school year to October 2024, a loss of 284 students. District staff had projected an increase of seven students for this school year.

With fewer students, the district receives less funding from the state, which leads to a reduction in teachers. The district reduced the number of teachers by 66 (FTE, full-time equivalent) from last school year to this school year. The reductions were covered through attrition, teachers who left the profession or went to other districts.

“The birthrate is going down and enrollment is getting smaller,” Superintendent Israel Vela said near the end of the presentation. “We have to adjust.”

According to the state Department of Health, King County had 26,011 births in 2016, the highest total in the last seven years. The county had 23,012 births in 2022, the lowest total in the last seven years.

The district cut 36 teachers at the kindergarten to fifth-grade level, 11 at sixth to eighth grade, 16 at ninth to 12th grade and three at the academy.

Kindergarten has had the largest enrollment drop (based on percentage of students) over the last five years at 2.5% from year to year or an average of 54 fewer students per year. Next highest is grades sixth to eighth at 2.1% (134 per year) and grades first to fifth at 1.7% (172 per year). High school enrollment for grades ninth through 12th has remained flat, with no decrease or increase.

Board member Donald Cook asked staff why staff was reduced at a higher number than the 1.2% enrollment decline, wondering if the numbers should be closer.

Deputy Superintendent Wade Barringer said the district kept teachers on during the pandemic even though enrollment declined, uncertain about how many students would return to schools when the pandemic ended. The district used federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds provided during the pandemic to keep staff.

“Over the last two years with our budget presentation we had the inequity between enrollment decline and staffing increase,” Barringer said. “The gap was growing coming out of Covid and that’s why we started a step-down process (to the budget). ESSER was coming to an end, so each year over the last few years we’ve been decreasing staffing. We’re still not at enrollment equaling staffing because we were so far off to begin with.”

The district no longer has any ESSER funds remaining. That money had to be spent by the end of the 2023-2024 school year.

The district cut 55 teacher positions prior to the 2023-2024 school year in an effort to better align enrollment with staffing.

“When you look at staffing, enrollment drives funding, so we have to fix that gap and we’ve been doing that the last few years and will continue to that,” Barringer said.

Vela said district leaders will continue to update the board about the latest enrollment numbers in Kent at future work sessions. The enrollment numbers will help dictate the next budget.

The state funds districts for basic education based off the average of the once-a-month enrollment numbers reported each month over the full year to the Office of Superintendent and Public Instruction.

Vela said district enrollment projections have been fairly accurate the last few years, which keeps the budget projections closer.

“When students arrive we see how we did,” Vela said. “We have been accurate within 150 to 200 students. Some districts around us are far from that target or projection and see actual layoffs (not through attrition). We’ve had great projections, especially during Covid and coming out of it because it was difficult for all districts to know whether they were getting kids back or not.”

The Kent School District ran into major budget problems in 2017-2018 with a $7 million deficit which staff blamed on an unexpected drop in enrollment of about 500 students in 2015-2016. It took the district a couple of years to recover from that deficit.

Neighboring districts

Over the last five years, enrollment in the Renton School District has dropped from 14,836 in September 2020 to 13,610 in October 2024, a drop of 8.3% or 1,226 students, according to statistics provided to the Kent Reporter by a district spokesperson.

In the Auburn School District, enrollment increased to 17,290 students in October 2024 from 16,882 in October 2019, according to a district spokesperson. That’s a hike of 2.4% or 408 students.

A portion of that increase is due to a new Transitional Kindergarten program that the district didn’t offer in 2019. The program is for eligible students who turn 5 after Sept. 1 and do not have access to high-quality learning experiences prior to kindergarten. The district has 149 students in the program this year at eight schools.

Even without that program, the district enrollment increased by 259 students.