Rhoda Nkrumah, a senior at Garfield High School, was also among the organizers of the rally. Nkrumah said she moved to Seattle from Ohio before starting high school with hopes for a better educational experience.

“I live in this community; I live in Rainier Beach,” Nkrumah said. “I see myself in the students at Rainier Beach. And I wish that when I was back in Cincinnati, I had somebody to fight for me.”

Students have also urged the district to expedite its plans to construct a new Rainier Beach school building, which is currently expected to be finished by 2025.

Seattle Public Schools uses a system known as weighted staffing standards to apportion school funding. These guidelines determine the budget a school receives and are dictated by both enrollment numbers and student characteristics, such as socioeconomic background or need for special education services. Once a school receives its budget, administrators decide how to best meet their school’s needs.

Moreover, SPS triages schools based on the number of students belonging to certain demographic groups, such as English-language learners and children living in low-income households. The district considers Rainier Beach to have high equity needs; about 81% of students at Rainier Beach come from low-income homes, and 15% are experiencing homelessness. Additionally, 25% receive English-language learner services.

Once a school’s needs are assessed, the district issues a budget in the form of staff and the pay they require. Secondary funding sources like grants and money raised by parent-teacher organizations go toward filling funding gaps. This year, Rainier Beach is operating on a budget of about $8.4 million, which equates to less than 1% of the district’s overall budget of approximately $1.4 billion.

For the past several years, district officials have underestimated enrollment at Rainier Beach. SPS projected that 671 students would enroll at Rainier Beach during the 2018-19 year, but 740 actually walked through its doors.

Miller said this pattern, in part, has left the school without the dollars needed to serve the number of students who actually enroll. Rainier Beach lacks the same community-based funding that other schools — especially those in the north end of the city — often lean on to fill gaps in district-provided funding.

“These years where funding issues come up, we just really don’t have the [parent-teacher association] or private funding, so we have to cut,” Miller said. “It’s not ideal but it's what we decided to do. When you make cuts, you make those decisions together as a staff.”

Several SPS librarians felt the effects of a districtwide budgeting pinch last spring, as they faced seemingly imminent cuts resulting from a projected $39.7 million shortfall for the 2019-20 year. But the positions were ultimately restored after state lawmakers passed legislation easing restrictions on the district's levy-collecting authority. SPS officials expect that the district's revenue will increase by $16 million starting in 2020.

For Rainier Beach, a federal School Improvement Grant had plugged budget holes in prior years. But the grant expired before the start of the new school year and before dollars from the district’s recently renewed operations levy kick in.



Students at the Sept. 4 rally called attention to financial predicaments impacting Chief Sealth International and Franklin high schools, which also serve predominantly low-income students of color and lack parent-teacher association resources. However, neither school is facing staff cuts, SPS spokesperson Tim Robinson said in an email.

When it comes to appraising education funding, per-pupil expenditures are often looked to as a key metric. Data from the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction indicate that spending amounted to approximately $15,424 per student at Rainier Beach during the 2017-18 year — nearly 19% over the statewide per-pupil figure.