Mukilteo School District plans for possible staff cuts

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 11, 2026

EVERETT — The Mukilteo School District is considering eliminating about 41 teaching and administrative positions in the 2026-27 school year due largely to falling enrollment rates, district staff shared Tuesday at a school board meeting.

As many as 33.5 full-time equivalent positions for classroom teachers may be cut as part of the reductions, a school board document read. Two administrative positions could be cut and 5.6 full-time equivalent paraeducator positions could also be reduced.

Those cuts, along with reductions in supply spending, would help the district save about $6.2 million. The district shared the numbers Tuesday as part of a proposed reduced educational program, a planning document required by the state that gives advanced notice before potential staffing cuts. The board is expected to vote on whether to approve the reduced educational program at a future meeting.

Class size ratios would remain equivalent to what the district had budgeted for the current school year if the cuts were put into place, said Jon Poolman, the director of business services and safety at the Mukilteo School District, at Tuesday’s meeting.

It’s unclear if layoffs will be required, or how many, as some employees are expected to leave the district through either resignation or retirement, known as attrition.

“There can be positions that would potentially be laid off,” Poolman said in an interview Wednesday. “Really, it depends on what our annual attrition looks like for this year. In past years, we have made up the bulk of our reductions through attrition only.”

The district will continue monitoring the number of resignations and retirements it receives, while also making staffing plans within schools, to determine how many layoffs, if any, may be needed. State law requires districts to officially notify teachers they are being laid off before May 15.

The Mukilteo School District is planning to make the cuts largely due to a drop in enrollment. Since 2020, enrollment has declined by approximately 1,000 students, a district memo read. Fewer students means less money from the state, which allocates funding to districts on a per-pupil basis.

“Since we have less students we’re serving, we’re also having less staff to be in the classroom with the students as well,” Poolman said at Tuesday’s board meeting.

In a statement, the Mukilteo Education Association, the labor union that represents teachers and other certificated staff at the Mukilteo district, said it understands the district is facing a drop in enrollment, a trend the union has seen for the last few years.

“MEA (The Mukilteo Education Association) believes the proposed cuts are directly related to this projected decline in enrollment and will be monitoring the situation closely as we begin preparations for next school year,” the union’s president, Molly Addicott, wrote in the statement.

It’s not the only Washington district to face funding challenges in recent years. In 2023, about a half dozen school districts in Snohomish County, including Mukilteo, had to make reductions to close budget gaps.

The Mukilteo district made other cuts in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.

Poolman said multiple factors contributed to the drop in enrollment. One major factor is the lingering ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, where families with the ability to work remotely moved to outlying areas of the county for a lower cost of living, he said. The number of students entering kindergarten classes has also declined, he said, from about 1,200 students per class before the pandemic to about 1,000 students per class today.

There has also been a slight increase of participation in homeschooling and private education, Poolman said.

In response to the dropping enrollment rates, the district has been ramping up communication efforts to inform the community about kindergarten registration, Poolman said, and sharing information about programs that students outside the Mukilteo School District’s borders can utilize, like its Sno-Isle Tech Skills Center.

The school board is expected to vote on the reduced education program resolution on March 24.

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.