In a KUOW Radio report yesterday Seattle school superintendent Denise Juneau (makes $374,100 a year) says she plans to impose severe cuts in ways that will hurt children because she thinks her budget is not getting enough money. 

She is making these threats even though she’s just received a massive budget increase from a state property tax increase.  In ten years her budget has jumped from about $550 million to nearly $1 billion.  Here are her budget numbers:

The legislature just increased property taxes an average of 17 percent.  As a result, Superintendent Juneau got nearly $100 million more in one year (from $858 million in 2018 to $955 million in 2019).   And that doesn’t count an extra $32 million the state gave her in Special Purpose funding, as you can see in Seattle’s F-195 below. 

In per-student terms, Seattle’s school spending increased by $5,000 per student, from $13,000 to $18,000.  That’s more than the tuition at many private schools.  Superintendent Juneau gets $18,000 per student and she is still planning cuts? 

Seattle’s charter public schools get less than that yet are so popular that they are often over-subscribed.  So how can Seattle officials get more funding and then cut programs?

Seattle school children are constantly plagued by politics, strikes, school closures and threats of program cuts.  At the same time, other school districts are quietly serving their children without disruptions, on smaller per-student budgets.

The Superintendent’s KUOW interview sounded like a marketing campaign to get taxpayers to provide even more money, in the highest-taxed city in the state.  And if the district doesn’t get it, it looks like the school board plans to take it out on kids by cutting learning programs.