With a strained budget, how did Pasco afford $155M for 2 new high schools?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Pasco used a $195.5M bond passed in 2023 to fund two new high schools in 2025.
- Operations, staffing costs remained neutral as existing personnel were hired up by new schools.
- Declining enrollment drives cautious budgeting, with 200 fewer full-time students forecasted this year.
At a time when the Pasco School District is under incredible financial stress, how was it able to open two new high schools this month?
Construction of Sageview High School and Orion High School cost the district $155.8 million together — or, respectively, about $127 million and $29 million.
That was covered by a 21-year, $195.5 million capital bond measure that voters passed in 2023. That bond will also will help pay for $7.5 million in future land purchases and several projects next year, including athletic improvements at Pasco High School and career and technical education modernizations at Pasco High and Chiawana High School.
In Washington state, bonds are for building schools and facilities while levies pay for learning and education programs. Unlike levies, which are a regular tax on property owners, school districts sell bonds to investors and rake in large chunks of cash to be repaid by tax payments over time.
Superintendent Michelle Whitney said because Pasco’s secondary schools were so large, and the bond projects reduced student density, the school district already had the staff on hand to open the buildings, so they simply moved people around.
“It really, truly is staffing neutral because we were so overcrowded,” Whitney told the Tri-City Herald. “We just spread that staff out across three buildings because the enrollment of students is being spread out across three buildings.”
About 5,200 full-time high school students were enrolled in Pasco schools last school year. The opening of Sageview, Pasco’s third comprehensive high school, means several portable buildings at Pasco High and Chiawana will go unused this year.
Move-in, hard goods, curricula and other similar costs were covered by the total bond amount, Whitney said. Their intention is to keep operating costs neutral, too.
The total cost for consumables in both schools was $200,000, said construction manager John Weatherby. Those items, which include paper and pencils, will be covered by the district and individual schools.
Salaries and benefits are the largest expenditure for Pasco, as well as nearly all other public school districts in the state — it’s people teaching kids and keeping school buildings running efficiently. Those costs make up nearly 85% of Pasco’s general fund budget.
Pasco School District has five budgets: A general fund, capital projects fund, debt service fund, an ASB fund — which is money raised by students to pay for extracurriculars — and a transportation vehicle fund. Revenues for building improvements and new construction do not intermingle with the general fund, which covers routine operations.
Enrollment is important because Pasco receives thousands of dollars in state apportionment for each full-time pupil. That cash makes up the foundation of public school budgets while other revenue sources, like federal dollars and local levies, help supplement education and additional academic needs, school programs and extracurricular activities.
For years, prior to the pandemic, Pasco schools was adding hundreds of new students each year to its enrollment. Some years it was enough to fill a whole new elementary school.
But as demographics change in the rapidly growing city of 80,000 — with more retirees moving in, more young people delaying having children and more families pursuing education alternatives to public schooling — Pasco schools is seeing its reality slowly shift away from the era of rapid growth it had once seen.
As enrollment plateaus, Pasco School District is taking a more conservative approach to budgeting.
Last school year, it planned for 17,663 full-time students and was nearly 70 students short. The school board this month passed a conservative $343 million budget that assumed 200 fewer students would be in its classrooms. That would amount to about $2 million in potential lost apportionment.
When asked if Pasco would need three high schools in 40-50 years, Whitney said their high schools were overcrowded by more than a thousand students to begin with.
With its nearly 1,200 freshmen, sophomores and juniors set to start class in a week, Sageview is already a large high school, she says. The Lobos will compete as a 3A school in the Mid-Columbia Conference.
“Enrollments in a community wax and wane and, historically, in times of tension and crisis people just don’t have too many kids,” she said. “So, I would fully expect that pendulum to swing back to where people are having more children, because part of why we’re reducing enrollment is we just don’t have as many kindergarteners coming in.”
She says Pasco is different from other school districts in that it had seen such consistent, strong growth in enrollment. Their reduction in enrollment is more of a stabilization, Whitney argues.
“I don’t see, like, at some point this place is empty,” she said standing outside Sageview High School. “A lot of communities, their high schools are much smaller than this.”
This story was originally published August 21, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
