Oct 19, 2026

Bellingham Public Schools wants to close two elementary schools, Columbia and Carl Cozier, at the end of this school year. The board is scheduled to hold the hearings required by state law on November 2 and 3 and is expected to vote around November 11. We've written about closure plans in Minneapolis and Little Rock before, but Bellingham's plan is different from both. However, like those other examples, closing Bellingham schools is also a smaller fix than it looks – if it even makes sense to call it a fix at all. At the bottom are two appendices: our brief on the closure plan, and our full district briefing.

↓ Appendix A: the closure-plan brief
↓ Appendix B: the Bellingham district briefing

The basics

On September 29, Superintendent Greg Baker recommended closing Columbia Elementary (built 1925) and Carl Cozier Elementary (built 1951). Columbia's students would all go to Alderwood. Carl Cozier's would be split between Sunnyland and Wade King. After families pushed back, the district redrew that line on October 15 so that about two-thirds now go to Wade King. The district's own estimates predict savings of about $2.2 million a year and plans to keep both decommissioned buildings, most likely renting them out (a new revenue source).

The recommendation comes from a 34-member facilities task force that met this spring. Some of its members wanted three or four closures. Most settled on two, “as the district continues to monitor future enrollment and budget projections.” In other words, this could be round one of a multi-stage "right-sizing" project.

The enrollment issue

Everyone agrees on the basic shape of the enrollment problem. Births to families in the district averaged about 954 a year in the mid-2010s and were 762 in 2023–24 – not that any suburban district's future enrollment is directly tied to in-boundary fertility rates. In Bellingham, elementary enrollment is down about 10% since 2019–20, and the demographic study the district commissioned projects the whole district shrinking another 16% by 2035–36. This is mainly because of the type of new housing planned in the district. The demographer counts 0.076 students per new apartment. Currently, fourteen elementary schools are serving a TK–5 enrollment that the state's funding model would use eleven or twelve to educate. So there is room to consolidate.

Columbia in particular has emptied. In the state's count it went from 313 students in 2018–19 to 180 last year, down 42%, and the district projects about 120 if it stays open. Parents point out, fairly, that it's not like families have abandoned the school on their own. The district redrew catchment boundaries in 2021, sending a chunk of neighborhood students to a rebuilt Parkview instead. But that doesn't change how many children are in Columbia's classrooms now.

Which schools are on the list, and what does it mean?

When we examined Little Rock, the three schools on the preferred list were 90% low income and 8% white, and none of the district's whitest schools appeared in any option. We checked Bellingham's list the same way, against every elementary school in the district, using the state's 2025–26 enrollment file. The pattern goes the other way.

  • Columbia is Bellingham's most advantaged elementary. It has the lowest low-income share of the district's 14 elementary schools (19%) and the highest white share (81%).
  • Carl Cozier is in the middle: 48% low income, 7th of 14.
  • Columbia's students would go to Alderwood, the second-poorest elementary in the district (63% low income), with its third-highest share of English learners and its highest share of students in special education. The district's own projection has Alderwood's free and reduced-price lunch rate falling from about 48% to 39% after the merger, and Wade King's rising from 19% to 28%.

So this plan closes a low-poverty school and folds its students into a high-poverty one. That's close to the opposite of the usual closure story. But the closure plan does seem to contravene the district's own stated aims. Both buildings are walkable neighborhood schools near the center of town, and the city's comprehensive plan says to “retain neighborhood schools in developed areas.” That is the core of the case the parents' coalition is making.

Will families leave?

The worry we've raised everywhere else is that closures cost districts students, and students are revenue. Stanford's Francis Pearman found that closures in California didn't fix district budgets because revenue fell along with spending. The Bellingham Neighborhood Schools Coalition makes the same argument, pointing to private-school enrollment in the city, which has grown about 19% since 2021–22 by the State Board of Education's count.

That's enormous growth in very little time. It can be hard to tell, sometimes, whether private-school enrollment trends are directly related to public-school matters, but in this case it seems that families really are opting for private schools at a higher rate than they used to, compounding the demographic squeeze Bellingham public schools are facing.

In terms of the likely effects of school closures on enrollment, the evidence is more reassuring for Bellingham than it was for Little Rock. In our own analyses of closures in Wisconsin, Arkansas and Georgia, the enrollment losses come almost entirely from closing outlying campuses, five or more miles from the nearest open school. There, kindergarten enrollment drops and families transfer out. When a district closes an in-town school and moves students a mile or two, we find no measurable drop in kindergarten enrollment in any of the three states, and in Wisconsin and Arkansas there was no loss of students overall. Columbia is about 1.9 miles from Alderwood, and Carl Cozier is 1.5 miles from Sunnyland and 2.2 from Wade King. That's squarely the in-town case.

But why refer to Georgia and Wisconsin when we're talking about Washington? Well, Washington has only had 69 school-closure "events" since 2007-08, and only two of those qualify as "outlying." In one of those cases (Prescott), there was a steep drop in enrollment, and in the other (Lyle) there was almost no overall enrollment effect. So we can't say whether there's a difference between outlying and "in-town" schools. But "in-town" closures in Washington (all 67 of them between 2007-08 and 2024-25) had no discernible effect on district-level enrollment, either in total or at new kindergarten levels in subsequent years.

None of that guarantees nobody leaves. The coalition says it has counted nine students who have already left Columbia. The district says only one student left for a private school after it closed Larrabee Elementary in 2014; the coalition, citing the district's own graphic, says 18 of Larrabee's 157 left the district's regular programs. Those can both be true, since leaving for private school and leaving the district aren't the same thing. The board should ask for both numbers.

$2.2 million means what, exactly?

$2.2m would make a huge difference to my bank account. Would it make a huge difference to Bellingham's budget? Bellingham's general fund spends about $238 million this year. Closing two schools saves about $2.2 million, under 1%. That isn't exactly nothing, but it's about as close to nothing as you can get without actually being nothing. And as with every school-closure plan, the local disruption it will cause is quite real. So what is $2.2m buying, in exchange for all the pain?

The district has cut three times in four years: about 80 teaching positions for 2023–24, $11.4 million worth of expenditures for 2025–26, and now about 60 more teaching positions for this year. Its general-fund reserve fell from $23.3 million in August 2022 to $11.7 million in August 2025. This year's budget that the board adopted in August already adds about $2.7 million to reserves this year, before any school building is set to close. The closure savings wouldn't start until 2027–28. Will closing schools allow the district simply to rebuild their savings? Will it put them on a path toward financial sustainability after multiple years of staffing cuts?

Well, let's look at what the structural gap is made of The district's own account to the Legislature focuses (correctly) mostly on the state:

  • Regionalization. Washington adjusts salary funding for local housing costs. Bellingham's factor stepped down from 12% to 6% on a schedule written into the 2017 McCleary law, while neighbors like Lynden and Blaine get 12%. That is the biggest single factor. The district puts restoring it at about $5.7 million a year.
  • Special education. Nearly 20% of Bellingham students have an IEP, against 17% statewide, and the district says it covers about $6 million of special-education costs with money meant for other things.
  • Utilities and insurance: about $7.3 million budgeted, $3.5 million more than the state provides.

But then there's another part that's local. The district reports its average certificated salary (mostly teachers) rising from $89,036 in 2018–19 to $128,782 in 2025–26, against a state-funded average near $78,000. Every bargaining unit has had raises above the state's inflation adjustment each year since 2023–24. Obviously, we're not going to tell you teachers in a high-cost city are overpaid; it's the state's salary allocation number that's out of touch. But when raises outrun the formula, the district pays the difference out of everything else every year, and that difference compounds.

The district needs to pay teachers at market rate, but in order to do so in the midst of an inadequate state funding formula, they have had to cut down on the number of teachers they are paying at that rate. And doing so hasn't (and can't) prevent the gap from widening into the future. That's the basic structural problem. Cutting teachers year after year sends a signal to local parents that the district can't sustain its educational offerings, and so parents think twice about where to enroll their kids. As a result, enrollment drops, which means less revenue for the district. And that means more cuts, which sends out yet another signal.

So what do two building closures do? They certainly don't address the core of the financial issue, and they reaffirm the uninspiring signals the district has been emitting already.

And the $2.2 million itself is a squishy number. The district's May worksheets put the two schools at $2.58 million combined; the September recommendation says $2.2 million and hasn't been itemized. On October 15, Baker told the board the figure is “conservative” and includes transition costs. The coalition's estimate of $250,000–300,000 per school, meanwhile, we think is likely too low: it assumes principals and office staff are reassigned rather than cut, and the district now says both principal positions go. But the coalition is right that the savings only exist if positions leave the payroll. As we said about Little Rock, buildings don't cost that much; people do.

The bond problem

The cost we'd worry about most isn't in the budget. In 2022, Bellingham voters passed a $122 million bond that included money to design rebuilds of Roosevelt, Carl Cozier and Columbia. It passed with 60.06%, against a 60% requirement. The rebuild plans for two of those three schools are now closure plans, about $48 million of that bond money is uncommitted, and a district office that cost tens of millions opened in 2024. Read the coalition's materials and the letters pages of Cascadia Daily News and that's the thread running through them: the district asked for one thing and is doing another. That's a pretty significant breach of trust, to put it mildly.

The community voted specifically to redesign and rebuild two of the buildings now slated for closure, and in so doing, voted to authorize the district to take out bonds to do those projects, and to tax residents to repay that debt. For the district to turn around and say, "thanks for the money, but actually we're not going to do the things you voted to authorize, and in fact we're going to close the schools you voted to rebuild" – well, that's the kind of thing that gets a school board routed in the next election.

Questions to bring to the hearings

  • What exactly is in the $2.2 million? Which positions are eliminated, which are reassigned, what the added bus routes cost, and what the one-time costs are. Why is it below the $2.58 million the May worksheets added up to?
  • What are the answers to the board's 45 questions? The board president sent Baker 45 questions after reading the coalition's report. Publish the answers before the vote.
  • What's Plan B? Board member Camille Diaz Hackler asked what gets cut next if the savings fall short or the board says no. Baker said it depends on the Legislature. Ask what the plan is if the Legislature doesn't come through, and where the Legislature is at.
  • Who gets the buildings? One of the groups that toured is a private school. Renting a closed public school to a private school, while worrying about losing students to private schools presents an obvious problem. How is the district squaring the circle?
  • What happens to the bond money? Say now what the uncommitted $48 million goes to.
  • How many families left after Larrabee, and where did they go? Publish both counts, private and otherwise.

What's the takeaway here?

Bellingham's enrollment decline is real, and this plan avoids the worst habit of school closures, which is loading the cost onto the poorest neighborhoods. The moves are short, and our research suggests in-town closures like these don't drive families out (beyond the exodus already occurring). That's the rosiest picture of the plan we can paint.

But the plan saves under 1% of the budget, its savings estimate hasn't been shown to the public, and it puts at risk the 60% coalition the district needs for every future building. The major structural gap is staffing costs against a state formula that doesn't pay for them, and that's the fight worth having in Olympia -- it's one that affects every similar district, so there is excellent opportunity to unite districts behind a state-level push.

If you're going to the hearings on November 2 and 3, ask for the numbers. Solidarity.

Hearings: Columbia, Monday, Nov. 2; Carl Cozier, Tuesday, Nov. 3; both 5:30–7:30 p.m. at the district office, 1985 Barkley Blvd. Written comments go to board@bellinghamschools.org (district notice).

Appendix A: The plan to close Columbia and Carl Cozier

Below is the full Budget Committee brief on Bellingham Public Schools' plan to close two elementary schools: the recommendation, who attends the schools, the timeline, where the board and community stand, the arguments on each side, the claims we checked, and every source, linked. ↑ Back to top

Appendix B: The Bellingham Public Schools budget briefing

Below is the full Budget Committee briefing on Bellingham Public Schools: enrollment, test results, revenue and spending, reserves, levies and property taxes, each compared with similar-size Washington districts and the state, with sources. ↑ Back to top