Richland halts school employee hiring 2 weeks before classes begin
Richland School Board tabled the hiring of nine teachers and four classified staff during Tuesday night’s meeting, just two weeks before students are set to return to class.
Instead, the board plans a 9:30 a.m. executive session Friday for administrators to explain why the new hires are warranted at a time when Richland is trying to tighten its purse strings. The agenda says it may take action after the closed-door personnel discussion.
The suggestion was made by board member Rick Jansons, who voiced concerns that the district might find itself in the same spot it was in this past school year, with layoffs in the middle of the year.
Administrators at Tuesday night’s public meeting declined to say which positions were “existing” and which were “new.”
“I think it would be helpful for us to understand the amount of (full-time equivalent) and whether these are replacements or building capacity — or how we are considering capacity — so that we are moving forward at a very slow pace with the new hires,” board President Katrina Waters said Tuesday night.
The Richland district has been cutting positions left vacant through retirements and resignations after administrators last fall identified that it was on an unsustainable financial path and needed to pivot to avoid a budget catastrophe.
Student enrollment is important because it’s tied directly to apportionment dollars that public schools received directly from Washington state.
When student enrollment dropped during the pandemic, Richland chose to keep employees to get students caught up. Between 2018 and 2023, for example, the district increased staff by 12% while its full-time enrollment only grew by 2%.
Those staffing increases — plus big cuts in levy equalization money from the state and slimmer increases to fund rapidly rising teaching costs — resulted in the district coming to an inflection point.
While post-COVID enrollment rebounded, it’s now falling. Richland expects about 100 fewer students in the fall compared to last school year, for a total of about 13,350 students.
Jansons called the ratios of students per staff member, on the district level, “not sustainable,” and said administrators reassured him in August 2024 that new hires at that time would be OK.
“I’m going to be asking very directly, ‘Why do we have hiring,’ when last year, I asked the same question, and we had to do layoffs. And I had to apologize in January and February because I didn’t look at the budget close enough,” he said.
In April, the district laid off five full-time nurses and six administrative assistants. And earlier, in December, the district reorganized dozens of basic education paraeducators to new positions; some who were offered new jobs opted to leave.
The move comes as Richland is busy finalizing its budget for the 2025-26 school year.
The initial, balanced $236 million plan includes more than $2.5 million in “built in capacity” that will be stowed in three places — the superintendent, board and business accounts.
If left unspent, those dollars will rebuild the district’s general fund reserves to $3.6 million, or about 1.5%, by summer 2026. The goal is to eventually rebuild the balance up to $12 million.
The first day of school for Richland is Tuesday, Aug. 26.
This story was originally published August 14, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
