Marysville district makes its decision on school closures

MARYSVILLE — The Marysville School District Board of Directors voted unanimously on Wednesday to close an elementary and a middle school in the 2025-26 school year while reconfiguring the district’s elementary schools to a K-6 model.

The vote to close and reconfigure schools came in response to declining enrollment and a need to save more than $2 million per year from the district’s general fund in order to balance its budget.

Wednesday’s action is expected to save about $2.4 million per year, interim superintendent Dave Burgess said. The district will have to spend some capital funds to renovate bathrooms and playgrounds to accommodate the reconfiguration. Teachers will not lose their jobs, board president Connor Krebbs said, as they will move along with the students.

The board’s motion directed the superintendent to do the following:

1: Reconfigure elementary schools to kindergarten through sixth grade.

2: Close Liberty Elementary School.

3: Close Marysville Middle School and disperse the students to other middle schools. Marysville Middle School’s buildings will be repurposed for Liberty Elementary students, staff and programs.

4: Reconfigure Cedarcrest Middle School and Totem Middle School to seventh and eighth grades.

5: Move Legacy High School, an alternative high school in the district, to a different campus yet to be determined. It will maintain its programs as a “school within a school.”

The superintendent and district staff are responsible for implementing the closures. As part of the vote to close schools, the board also directed the superintendent’s staff to deliver biweekly updates to the board on how the changes will be implemented as well as their potential impacts, financial or otherwise.

The decision to close Marysville Middle School would be a “potentially disastrous disruption” to students’ educational environments, said J.J. Newman, a Marysville Middle School science and technology teacher, before the vote took place. Students at that age, she said, turn to their friends for validation and problems solving. Moving them would disrupt not just their learning, but their social structure.

“Please be mindful of the significant disruption you are choosing,” Newman said. “These kids we work with every day love their friends and rely on them for so much of their wildly dynamic social, emotional and academic well-being.”

Some board members raised concerns over the closure, particularly the elementary school reconfiguration. The move to kindergarten through six grade is “a very major shift” in how the district educates sixth graders, board member Kristen Michal said.

“We need to save a specific amount of money,” Michal said Wednesday. “My concern is that we head down this path, and maybe it doesn’t quite produce the savings we’re hoping for.”

The money used for one-time costs of reconfiguration will come from the district’s capital fund, board member Mark Tomas said.

“Our crisis, as it were, is the general fund,” Tomas said. “If we can incur one-time capital costs in order to achieve recurring general fund savings, that’s an investment, not necessarily an outright deduction.”

Michal also had concerns over the district’s ability to replenish that capital fund, which currently holds about $7.3 million.

All board members stressed the decision was not a choice they wanted to make.

“We’re not doing this to try and improve things for students,” Tomas said. “We’re doing it because we have to do it, and you have to do it in a way that focuses on causing the least amount of harm.”

Following the vote, most members of the audience left.

Enrollment in the district has dropped by nearly 20% since 2011, the district said in an October information session on the school closures. By the 2025-26 school year, 9,000 students are expected to be enrolled, compared to 11,500 in 2011.

Because of that drop, Marysville’s schools, which receive state funding on a per-pupil basis, are operating under their maximum capacity. The cost to run each school, which includes administrative salaries as well as utility and infrastructure costs, will only remain the same or grow over time while revenues continue to fall due to reduced enrollment. School closures will help right-size the district by cutting overhead to match enrollment levels.

“Students are resilient, they are able to handle changes. Adults are the ones that have problems with it,” board member Craig Hereth said. “I think whatever system you have, kids will adapt, students will adapt.”

Board members hope the significant changes will have the intended effect of saving costs.

“If we’re not realizing some of the financial goals that we need to realize from this, I think we need to come back and look at what we’re doing,” Michal said. “My concern is that we’re moving a lot of bits and pieces and parts around, and I just want to make sure that we’re actually achieving what we think we’re going to achieve here.”

Falling enrollment is one piece of the district’s financial puzzle that needs solving. A double levy failure in 2022 combined with the drop in enrollment led to the state superintendent placing the district under “binding conditions” in August 2023, which occurs when a district fails to submit a balanced budget.

In May 2024, the state superintendent convened a financial oversight committee to examine the district’s financial situation. That August, state auditors said the district’s financial condition left it at an “increased risk of being unable to sustain operations or provide sufficient levels of service.” In September, the state appointed a special administrator, Arthur Jarvis, to oversee the district’s business practices.

The district has been discussing which schools to close since May 2024. Its superintendent at that time, Zachary Robbins, cut ties with the district via mutual agreement in October — just a few months after his contract was extended to 2027. The board paid him more than $400,000 as part of a severance package.

In October, Superintendent Burgess took over in an interim capacity. He started the school closure process from scratch, inviting input from community members in a series of meetings. The board discussed the closures further in a series of work sessions before voting on Wednesday.

Marysville School District’s board of directors initially sought to vote on the closures by the end of 2024. Wednesday’s vote means the administration can start a months-long planning process to implement the closures by the start of the next school year.

If everything goes the district’s way, Burgess said, the district will have a positive ending fund balance of nearly $5 million by the end of the school year.

“I want you to know that I remember the mistakes that were made here,” Burgess said. “I remember that school closure wasn’t done 10 years ago when it should have been done … I’m not interested in warming the seat until the next person is here. I want to build teams that solve problems, not perpetuate those problems.”

The board must also find a replacement for Burgess before his tenure as superintendent ends July 1.

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