The McCleary-ESSER Trap

How Washington's school districts converted two temporary funding windfalls into permanent obligations, and why the bill is coming due now.

Washington's school districts are hitting a wall. Bellingham is cutting 60 certificated positions despite voters approving $4 million in new annual levy funding, and could still close elementary schools as early as 2027. Seattle's structural deficit has cleared $100 million for two consecutive years. Class sizes are rising while the decisions that created the situation remain largely unexamined.

The pattern is the same in both districts. Two major funding windfalls, McCleary and federal COVID relief, built an institutional trap. Districts converted temporary and one-time money into permanent salary obligations. Now those revenue sources are gone. The obligations remain.

McCleary: Resetting the Baseline

In 2012, the Washington Supreme Court ruled unanimously in McCleary v. Washington that the state had failed its constitutional duty to fully fund basic education. Years of legislative back-and-forth followed. In 2017 and 2018, the legislature finally enacted the required funding increases, including an infusion of roughly $2 billion for educator compensation.

The salary effect was sharp. A 2020 Washington Research Council analysis of OSPI data shows the average base salary for certificated teachers jumped from $55,718 in 2017-18 to $73,101 in 2018-19. A 31.2 percent increase in a single year.¹ State salary allocations for certificated instructional staff were set at $65,216 for 2018-19, confirmed in Washington Supreme Court records from the McCleary oversight proceedings.²

The Washington Education Association (WEA) was a major funder and coalition participant in the McCleary litigation from its inception. The case was filed in 2007 by the Network for Excellence in Washington Schools (NEWS), a coalition that included WEA, local education associations, school districts, and parent groups. WEA contributed roughly $4 million to the litigation over its course, raised through member dues assessments.³ After the court's 2012 ruling, WEA pushed hard for McCleary dollars to flow into salary increases. The union called it publicly a "once in a lifetime" opportunity.

The strategic logic is clean. Salary increases written into multi-year collective bargaining contracts become structurally fixed. Unlike technology purchases, tutoring programs, or staffing levels, negotiated salaries are resistant to reduction when enrollment declines or funding shifts. McCleary money reset the baseline. Districts absorbed permanent obligations that would outlast the conditions that made them affordable.

WEA's annual revenue from member dues grew from roughly $29 million before McCleary to roughly $37 million in the years following, a figure consistent with the salary increases that drove up the dues base.³ WEA total revenue for fiscal year 2021-22 was $50.4 million, per the union's IRS Form 990.⁴

ESSER: The Same Trap, Repeated

Then came the pandemic.

Congress authorized roughly $190 billion nationwide in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds across three legislative packages. Washington school districts received more than $2.6 billion in ESSER funding, with the state receiving an additional $279.5 million, per OSPI data.⁵

The money was temporary by federal design, meant for pandemic response, technology, learning loss recovery, and emergency operations. Districts had advance notice of the spending deadlines.

Many districts used the money to sustain or expand staffing anyway. Bellingham Public Schools is the cleanest documented example. In April 2023, as the budget reckoning was becoming visible, Superintendent Greg Baker acknowledged publicly that the district had added 204 staff positions since 2016-17, a 15 percent increase, and that the loss of ESSER funding was a central factor in the coming cuts. Baker described the district as sitting with "a surplus of staff employed during the COVID-19 pandemic" and no matching surplus of students or revenue to sustain them.⁶

Reporting from The 74 and the Washington State Standard found that Washington districts spent the majority of their ESSER dollars on "teaching," a category that includes hiring instructional aides, extending teacher contracts, and afterschool staffing. A Georgetown University Edunomics Lab researcher cited in that reporting called it "a missed opportunity" to use the funds for academic recovery. States more aggressive on reading and math remediation had already fully recovered from COVID learning losses by the time Washington's spend was scrutinized.⁵

ESSER expired. Bellingham now faces a $7.5 million budget shortfall for 2026-27, which translates to roughly 60 certificated position reductions spread across teachers, librarians, counselors, and physical education and music staff. Voters approved a $4 million annual supplemental levy in November 2025. It helped narrow the gap. Not enough to close it. A facilities planning task force is considering elementary school closures, with any such closures not expected before summer 2027 at the earliest.⁷

Seattle Public Schools has carried structural deficits exceeding $100 million for multiple consecutive budget cycles. The 2024-25 budget acknowledged a projected ongoing gap of roughly $94 million, with district officials citing declining enrollment, expiration of federal relief funds, and previous staffing commitments as the drivers.⁸

The Ratchet Effect

The pattern in both episodes is the same. Money flows in. Contractual obligations get written. Revenue declines. Costs remain. Salary increases written into collective bargaining agreements during flush years can't easily be reversed when conditions change. Staffing levels added during temporary funding periods generate permanent budget pressure.

The dynamic isn't unique to Washington. National ESSER expiration has produced fiscal crises in districts across the country. What sets Washington apart is the compounding of two successive ratchet cycles, one from McCleary, one from COVID, with enrollment decline accelerating in between.

The teachers who bear the consequences of these decisions are, in many cases, not the teachers who benefited from them. Washington's seniority-based layoff rules, negotiated through collective bargaining, require that newer employees be reduced first regardless of performance. Less senior teachers, often younger and earlier in their careers, absorb the institutional costs of choices made before they arrived.

The Administrative Layer

Bellingham's fiscal situation has drawn additional scrutiny over district administration. A guest commentary published in Cascadia Daily News in April 2026 documented that during the same period when student opportunities were being cut, the number of district-level administrators rose from 16 to 27, with administrative salaries climbing in step. The author noted that the district completed a $32 million district office building in 2024 while budget shortfalls were already visible.⁹

The superintendents of the two districts discussed at length in this piece are well-compensated by any measure. Bellingham Superintendent Greg Baker earned $398,393 in 2024-25, per a fact-check published by Cascadia Daily News, the highest superintendent salary in Whatcom County and, as of 2023-24, the 12th highest among all school employees in Washington state. In 2023-24 Baker earned $386,058, again per Cascadia Daily News reporting.¹⁰ Seattle Superintendent Brent Jones received total compensation of roughly $390,940 under his 2024 contract, a package the Seattle School Board approved in October 2024, simultaneous with announcing school closure plans to address the district's $100 million deficit. Community members and editorial observers called the board's action "out of touch." Jones has since stepped down. His successor, Ben Shuldiner, was contracted at $425,000 annually beginning February 2026.¹¹

Washington school superintendents as a class sit among the higher-paid in the country. The Salary.com benchmark as of 2026 puts the average school superintendent salary in Washington at roughly $173,702, ranking the state fourth nationally. The Chehalis School District paid its former superintendent $545,618 in fiscal year 2023-24, though that figure included a $350,000 severance payment on top of a $225,000 base salary.¹²

The Full Cost of Salary: Pensions and Benefits

The headline figures above understate the true cost to districts. Pension contributions are salary-indexed. They rise in lockstep with base pay.

Washington school superintendents and administrators participate in the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), the state's defined-benefit pension program. Under TRS Plan 2, the most common plan for newer employees, the benefit formula is clean: 2 percent multiplied by years of service, multiplied by Average Final Compensation (the average of the five highest consecutive earning years). Under current contribution rates set by the Washington State Pension Funding Council, school districts contribute 7.74 percent of each employee's salary directly to the pension system, effective September 2025. Employees kick in another 7.54 percent.¹³

A salary increase is not just a salary increase. When Bellingham's superintendent salary rises from $330,000 to $398,000, the district's pension contribution alone climbs by roughly $5,260 per year on top of the base salary change. For a district with hundreds of certificated employees all receiving negotiated raises simultaneously, as happened in the McCleary and ESSER periods, the pension tail on each raise compounds the total cost significantly above the headline wage figure.

A TRS Plan 2 superintendent retiring after 25 years at Baker's current salary level could expect an annual pension benefit of roughly $199,000. More than twice the average Washington teacher salary. A guaranteed, inflation-adjusted lifetime income stream paid from district and state contributions. These pension obligations accumulate in the background of every salary negotiation, grow with each raise, and are backed by state law.

Beyond pension, certificated employees receive health benefits through the School Employees Benefits Board (SEBB), with district contributions partially indexed to enrollment and staffing levels. Base salary plus pension obligations plus health benefits: the fully-loaded cost of a senior administrator or veteran teacher runs materially higher than the salary line in any press release or contract announcement.

A 2022 National Center for Education Statistics study found that Washington spends more per pupil on administration than the national average, a finding that has been cited across the political spectrum in discussions of the state's education finance structure.¹⁴

At the union level, WEA's hired executive director received total compensation of $415,545 in fiscal year 2021-22, per the union's IRS Form 990. WEA president Larry Delaney, an elected officer, received $312,281 the same year.⁴