As we begin developing our 2024-25 general fund budget, our focus is on ensuring that our expenditures support basic operations and the goals of our strategic plan.
Like districts across our region, we face significant budget cuts due to declining enrollment and the end of ESSER funding.
Highline is in better shape than many districts because we used ESSER dollars for short-term expenditures, not ongoing operating expenses. However, we still must cut $8 million from our expenditures for the 2024-25 school year.
Budget decisions will be guided by the extensive input from students, families and staff gathered over the past year during Superintendent Ivan Duran’s listening sessions and the development process the new strategic plan:
- Many listening sessions with students
- Focus groups with staff, families and community partners
- Staff workgroups who identified strategies to meet our goals
- Family Action Committee
- Superintendent's Student Leadership Team
- Thoughtexchange feedback
Informed by this feedback, Superintendent Duran has charged cabinet with identifying all district initiatives and determining which to retain and which to re-engineer, reduce and remove.
Our goal is to focus our limited resources—both financial and human—on fewer initiatives so we can implement them well and keep our staff’s workload to manageable levels.