Consultants tell Seattle school board district spends more per pupil but gets less purchasing power; recommend clearer resource-equity strategy

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) presented a diagnostic to the Seattle School Board on Sept. 26 showing the district spends roughly $22,000 per pupil overall but faces lower purchasing power than many peer districts and uneven resource alignment across schools.

ERS partner Dr. Angela King Smith said the report, a 160‑page diagnostic compiled from nine months of qualitative and quantitative work, "is not meant to prescribe a set of solutions" but to create a fact base so the district can align resources more deliberately.

The presentation focused on three areas: school‑level resourcing, access to advanced courses and teacher experience, and central‑office and principal supports. Jonathan Travers of ERS summarized the school‑level finding: "we've got a roughly 40% differential between the lowest to highest quartile schools in terms of their overall per pupil funding." ERS said that difference translates, in an average 350‑student elementary, to about a 19.5 full‑time‑equivalent (FTE) staff gap driven largely by special education and multilingual learner positions.

Why it matters: ERS framed the work as foundational to the district's next strategic plan and superintendent leadership transition. The consultants flagged three choices the board and administration must make: (1) define a clear theory for how resources should be differentiated by need; (2) work backwards from the student experience the district wants to enable; and (3) be transparent with school leaders about how allocations are calculated.

Key findings and details - ERS reported an aggregate per‑pupil spending level of about $22,000 but said Seattle's purchasing power is lower than in many comparison districts because of cost structure differences. ERS estimated the funding‑to‑teacher cost gap between Seattle and peers could amount to roughly $140 million across the district. - At the school level, ERS found roughly a 40% higher per‑pupil spend in the highest‑poverty quartile versus the lowest quartile; removing special education and multilingual learner costs cuts that differential roughly in half. - The extra staff in high‑poverty schools included a higher share of special education positions and MLL supports; ERS described about half of the staffing difference as tied to those categories. - ERS said principals report limited transparency about resource footprints and recommended clearer reporting so principals understand the full set of resources serving their schools, including centrally budgeted positions deployed to schools. - ERS flagged teacher experience as an equity issue: a larger share of early‑career teachers (fewer than three years' experience) teach in higher‑poverty schools. ERS also calculated an average of about 41 teachers per instructional coach across the district, higher than recommended coaching ratios (15–22 teachers per coach). - On advanced coursework, ERS noted about 56% of proficient students were enrolled in advanced coursework in the snapshot; gaps for some student groups were driven partly by incoming proficiency, unequal course availability across schools and differing enrollment patterns.

Board and staff responses Board President Topp said the district will use the ERS findings as a foundation for the strategic plan and transition work. Superintendent Podesta and several directors thanked ERS and the Alliance for Education for funding and facilitating the study.

Next steps ERS emphasized this is a diagnostic, not a deficit reduction plan, and proposed that the district develop a resource‑differentiation theory, then work backward to design allocations and supports. The ERS team and district staff will use the findings to inform the strategic plan and subsequent budget choices and monitoring.

Ending ERS asked the board to treat the diagnostic as a starting point for public conversation and for the board to use the evidence to set priorities the superintendent will fund and monitor.