With 21,000 students in 202 square miles of unincorporated Pierce County, making sure kids get the best education they deserve is a big job.

Fun Facts:

To make sure the job is done right, more than 3,000 adults show up to work in Bethel every day. These are teachers, coaches, and support staff. It’s a well known fact that state funding in Washington is based on an outdated funding formula. In fact, all districts in Washington need to employ more teachers and staff than the formula pays for, which is why we use local levies to help supplement the appropriate number of staff and teachers.

Here in Bethel that “appropriate number” is 400 more people than the state funding allows. 

These are people working in positions like teachers, coaches, paraeducators, counselors, social workers, School Resource Officers, campus safety officers, custodians, bus drivers, and nurses – just to name a few. 

Superintendent Brian Lowney said that’s why our two replacement levies are considered essential funding here in Bethel.

“Our number of staff would not be 3,000 plus without the support of our Educational Programs and Operations Levy and our Tech Levy,” he said. “Some of these positions it’s funding fully, because they’re not funded at all [by the state]. Many of them are just underfunded. So when we say it’s over 400 positions, it’s well over 400 positions – if you take into account that it really supports every one of the coaches we have in any athletic endeavor, that’s hundreds of people in and of itself. Those just aren’t full time positions.” 

Athletics are huge here in Bethel, with over 5,000 middle and high school students participating each year. We also have Bethel Rec, another levy-funded program that annually provides extracurricular sports for more than 6,000 elementary students. 

The EP&O Levy also funds arts, orchestra, band, and choir programs, as well as supplementing funds for special education, multilingual, and early learning programs, JROTC, Highly Capable programs, and community resources that support students who are in need or experiencing homelessness. It also pays for after-school activity buses.

“The state would say that none of those are ‘basic education’,” said Lowney. “I tell you that every one of our kids deserve those as ‘basic education.’”

That’s why the levies are important funding here in Bethel, so students are supported and have opportunities in a corner of the county that doesn’t have many resources. 

“That’s what our kids deserve,” said Lowney.

Levies are becoming increasingly important in Washington state. Lowney said, “If you took the whole state budget as a pie, the portion of that pie that schools get has actually decreased over the last five years.” 

Since 2019, the percentage of the state’s budget for K-12 education has gone down significantly. From 2019-21 it was 51.6%. From 2025-27 it will be 43.2%. 

To “fix” this problem, the state is increasing the amount of money that school districts can ask for in their levies. In planning for our two levy renewals, Lowney and our School Board decided that just because we could ask for more, didn’t mean that we should.

“We’re not asking the community for the limit of what we could ask them for,” said Lowney. “We’re asking for what we need. And we’re asking for exactly the same rate that they approved in the 2022 election.”

Both of our replacement levies will be on the ballot for the February 10, 2026 Special Election. 

“Even our closest neighbors are suggesting and are running their levies at a higher rate than we’re asking our taxpayers for,” Lowney said. “One of the things we want to do is have consistent tax rates for our voters.”

Learn more about our two replacement levies at bethelsd.org/levy.