From a shooting to job cuts, Richland schools had a tough year. Leaders hope for better 2025
Richland School District is closing out the year tattered from what 2024 brought it, but leaders remain optimistic for what the new year may bring.
Between a budget crisis, cuts to vacant teaching positions, a months long internet outage, a school shooting that made national headlines and a myriad of other happenings, there was no shortage of tragic, unfortunate and strange events that befell the district serving 14,000 students.
But there remains some silver linings as educators flip the calendar’s pages.
Included among them is a renewed push gearing up next year for the Washington Legislature to increase funding for K-12 public education, the state’s “paramount duty.” Richland was also able to cut enough in its budget to avoid layoffs to their force of basic education paraeducators, despite many choosing to leave or take separation incentives.
Here’s everything that’s gone awry this year at the district:
Sex offender alleged exposure (February)
A sex offender exposed himself and tried to lure at least two students at Enterprise Middle School earlier this year. Many parents said they felt livid that neither the school district or police notified them until after the man was arrested.
Javier Ayala-Colin had been accused of driving past the Tri-Cities middle school more than two dozen times over a week. The first reports of a student being approached by Ayala-Colin were made to school administrators Feb. 13, but no police report was filed. A second student was allegedly exposed Feb. 20
West Richland police said they could not share the information immediately in order to protect the investigation. Richland School District administrators told parents they would work to ensure it did not happen again.
Ex-teacher forces student to pray (April)
A former teacher at Leona Libby Middle School was charged with felony unlawful imprisonment for allegedly locking a student in her classroom and forcing him to pray with her.
Court documents allege the teacher, Rosalinda Torres, 32, got upset on April 11 after a 14-year-old student made a “yes” motion in response to comments she might miss class the next day due to an illness.
The student apologized, but Torres told the teen’s mother in an email that day that she didn’t think the apology was “sincere or sufficient,” according to court documents.
The next day, the teen approached his teacher to apologize again. But Torres became emotional and allegedly locked the only door leading out of the classroom, saying they were going to pray.
Torres allegedly kept the student through the whole class period, calling him Satan and made him repeat prayers in Spanish. The student told investigators his fear was a 10-out-of-10, and that he didn’t feel safe with her in the room.
A principal was called by staff to open the door as they were trying to let students in for sixth period.
Her contract was not renewed for the 2024-25 school year. She was placed on paid administrative leave almost immediately following the April incident.
Ex-husband kills educator outside school (April)
An ex-cop shot and killed a Wiley Elementary paraeducator as students were getting out for the day on April 22, scarring dozens of students who likely witnessed the ruthless act.
The shooting spurred a manhunt for Elias Huizar, the former Richland emergency substitute and volunteer wrestling coach who killed Amber Rodriguez, as well as a $150 million tort claim against school districts and police departments in West Richland and Yakima. A teen groomed by Huizar was also found dead at his West Richland home.
School was closed the next day, allowing students and staff to recover. Over the subsequent days, parents and staff emblazoned T-shirts and car decals with the phrase “Wiley Strong.”
Huizar got his position in West Richland largely based on the strength of recommendations from administrators at Franklin Middle School in the Yakima School District, according to the recent claim. Before that, the state attorney general’s office investigated whether Huizar engaged in a sexual relationship with a student while working as a school resource officer at Washington Middle School.
Richland school officials have previously said they were not aware of any of the accusations Huizar faced as a school resource officer. All background checks came back clear, they said.
He later had a child with that teen, Angelica Santos, 17, and was charged with one count of child rape and one count of rape in February 2024 involving Santos and a 16-year-old friend.
Richland school officials said they removed Huizar from their substitute roster after those charges.
It appears Huizar killed Santos in his nearby home before going to Wiley to shoot his ex-wife, Rodriguez.
A day after shooting Rodriguez, Oregon police spotted Huizar heading southbound on Interstate 5 outside Albany and engaged in a pursuit. An Amber Alert had gone out hours earlier after Huizar fled the Tri-Cities with his 1-year-old son.
Huizar crashed the vehicle outside Eugene and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound before he could be arrested. Police retrieved his son from the vehicle unharmed.
Months-long computer, internet outage (June)
Information access and enrollment was crippled for educators, parents and graduates thanks to a summer-long internet and phone outage.
The school district pulled the plug on its systems on June 11, and later slowly brought them back online, after IT teams identified an “unauthorized access” to some of its computer systems connected to the the network.
A third-party forensics investigation concluded shortly after the outage began that there was “no evidence that student or staff data was affected” by the breach.
But the outage affected attendance records, grades and the district’s online portal. Class of 2024 graduates were unable to immediately send their official transcripts to colleges since the software the district uses to enter grades and print transcripts was also placed offline.
Richland School District submitted about $450,000 in insurance reimbursements to respond to the outage. By early December, the insurance company had made more than $117,000 in direct payments to vendors on the district’s behalf.
Shed fire ignites at high school (September)
Richland lost a small equipment shed, filled with irrigation parts and supplies, as well as several utility and snow vehicles parked nearby in a Sept. 21 fire on the Hanford High School campus.
An electrical issue is suspected of starting the blaze.
Superintendent Shelley Redinger said at the Dec. 10 school board meeting that the district will demolish the shed and replace it this spring. Richland paid a $10,000 deductible on the shed, and insurance advance $145,000 to cover the cost to design and begin rebuilding it.
Budget woes trigger jobs cuts and more (October)
In an October letter to parents, Redinger detailed publicly for the first time discrepancies in the 2024-25 school year budget. Cuts to programs and vacant positions, as well as a pause on non-essential spending, needed to be made immediately to avoid a dire financial situation.
Schools had been reeling from rising student needs, insufficient state funding and climbing costs to deliver students an education. While Washington state was making incremental raises to public education, it had also recently cut $10 million in levy equalization funds to Richland due to rising assessed values in the district. Comparing 2018 to today, the Legislature allocates about $1,000 less per student when adjusted for inflation.
Although the district’s budget plan for the year included $233 million in general fund spending and $235 million in revenues, it was on track to overspend and end the school year with a 0.5% fund balance — just $438,500 left.
While the school board has passed balanced budgets in recent years, “actual” expenditures eclipsed revenues by about $6.5 million in 2022-23 and $2 million in 2023-24.
In her letter, Redinger wrote that changes began at the district office, where they cut 20% of staff through retirements and departures. Documents would show that the district had made more than $4.8 million in total cuts — about 52 jobs — through attrition, mostly in administrative and classified positions.
Before the financial woes came to light, the school district’s executive director of finances amicably left his job due to personal matters. Richland is now working to hire his replacement.
Voters deny $314M bond (November)
Richland School District voters overwhelmingly shot down a $314 million bond measure to build a third comprehensive high school and make several other high-priority capital project fixes to school district buildings.
It was the first time in more than two decades that Richland voters had rejected a school measure — either levy or bond. Its last bond — passed in 2017 by a margin of 2 percentage points — paid for three new elementary schools and renovations at Richland and Hanford high schools.
The failure comes at a time when school districts across the state are struggling to pass bond measures — which require a 60% super majority to pass, instead of a 50%, plus 1, for levies — to fund basic capital project improvements and to build new schools.
There’s no one single variable hindering taxpayers from saying “yes” to these measures — some cite frustrations with the public education system leftover from the days of the COVID pandemic, while others say they simply can’t afford the additional tax after a period of sharp inflation.
In addition to a new comprehensive high school in West Richland, the bond would have also funded a replacement building on the Rivers Edge High School campus to house it and Pacific Crest Online Academy, land purchases, a new transportation cooperative facility, and several upgrades to Richland and Hanford high schools.
In addition to building new, state-of-the-art learning and extracurricular spaces, the bond would have also eased overcrowding. The district’s two high schools are overcrowded by a combined 900 students.
With the measure dead, school board members have acknowledged that they need to focus on correcting the district’s finances and rebuilding trust to pass its operations levy in 2026. District leaders and officials will likely revisit a revised bond package sometime in late 2026 or 2027.
Tri-City sports busing cut (November)
Richland administrators and the school board unveiled a “Phase 1” plan for reducing spending by $3 million in the 2024-25 school year to address its budget problems.
The plan includes cutting the athletic transportation to all high school sporting events in the Tri-Cities, as well as filling middle and high school classes up to “negotiated sizes.”
It included a one-time, $1,000 separation incentive for senior general education paraeducators to resign. About 15 took the district’s deal, while others were reassiged to special education positions that had been filled by substitutes.
Additionally, the plan included cutting facilities and operations costs by $1.1 million. Several administrators also donated multiple days’ worth of pay back to the district, too.
Instead of the forecasted $438,500 fund balance by the end of the year, the district’s reductions put it on track to have around $2.4 million. Its longterm goal is to come back into realignment with policy suggesting it hold a 5% reserve balance or about $12 million.
District officials and the school board are preparing for further cuts in the new year — a “Phase 2” plan — that will be reflective in the 2025-26 school year budget.
Car rams elementary school (November)
A driver rammed their vehicle into a kindergarten classroom early Nov. 30.
The car did significant damage to the side of the building, Redinger said. A kindergarten teacher had to move her class to an open classroom across the hall.
It’s currently unclear how much repairs may cost. The district’s insurance is pursuing reimbursement for the accident from the driver.
Reports suggest the driver may have been driving under the influence when they rammed their vehicle into the school, located at 415 Jadwin Ave, around 1 a.m. on a weekend morning.
“The caller advised that a car with multiple people in it had crashed int other school building and several people fled from the car,” read a social media post from Richland police. “The driver tried to flee in the car, but got high-centered on a large rock in the landscaping. The male driver then fled the scene on foot, but was quickly located by responding police officers and arrested for DUI after further investigation.”
Fire, then flood at Hanford High (December)
Nine classrooms on the first floor of Hanford High School were damaged by water after a trash bin fire set off the school’s fire suppression systems early morning Dec. 6.
Restoration work on the wing’s water and smoke damage ensured about half the classrooms were fixed and able to be occupied by the following week. They utilized dozens of dehumidifiers and air scrubbers to fix the smell and environment.
The supression system ran for about 80 minutes before staff turned it off, Redinger said.
