MARYSVILLE — Legacy High School will remain at its current location during the 2025-26 school year following a vote on Monday from Marysville School District’s board of directors.
The vote reverses a decision the board made on Jan. 22 to move the alternative high school from its current location to a different campus, maintaining its current programs as a school within a school.
That January decision was part of a broader plan to also close Liberty Elementary School and Marysville Middle School, while reconfiguring elementary schools to kindergarten through sixth grade, in an effort to save more than $2 million per year amid budget concerns.
Some parents, students and teachers at Legacy High School were concerned about the move because students “generally attend Legacy because they want to get away from the larger high school,” said Anne Galenberg, a teacher at Legacy, after the vote Monday.
“Hearing that we would be moved back into the very school they were trying to escape from was a little bit alarming,” she added.
Monday’s vote means that Legacy will retain its current location, but two district programs will be paused to make up the difference in savings needed to meet the district’s $2 million goal.
One program is the School-Home Partnership Program, which offers families the opportunity to work with a teacher to develop a learning plan while the child is homeschooled throughout the year. Students in that program have their progress monitored and attend weekly in-person meetings with teachers.
The other program to be paused is Alternative Learning Experience options, which primarily provides students opportunities to receive instruction off-campus.
The district will want to bring back those programs at a later date, Superintendent Deborah Rumbaugh said at the meeting.
Marysville School District’s financial woes, largely due to dropping enrollment and a double levy failure in 2022, state auditors previously said, have plagued it for years.
In August 2024, the state superintendent, Chris Reykdal, placed the district under enhanced financial oversight and appointed a special administrator, Arthur Jarvis, to oversee its finances. Reykdal had “lost confidence that the district has the decision making tools or current personnel necessary to fix its financial situation on their own,” he wrote in a letter that month. In Janurary, the board voted to close schools and move Legacy to help with those budget challenges.
In a press briefing held March 13, Reykdal said the district is now in a better position.
“They’re making some of the tough cuts up there,” Reykdal said. “We see a lot more hope in Marysville than we’ve seen in a long time.”
Monday’s motion passed 3-1. Board members who supported the motion said it was beneficial to make as few changes as necessary this year while also meeting the district’s saving goals, to reduce the impact on students, parents and staff.
“We have asked the administration and our staff and our families to do an awful lot this year,” said board member Kristen Michel. “Closing one elementary school is a pretty heavy lift. We’re closing an elementary school, closing a middle school, we are redesigning sixth grade, and we have talked about changes to Legacy. I think as long as we can meet our targeted savings and we can strategically focus our efforts, that makes a lot of sense to me.”
Mark Tomas, who voted against the motion, called it a “very bad idea,” citing a need for Legacy High School to change because of its low enrollment numbers. Moving the school to another high school in the district could introduce other students to Legacy’s programs and allow Legacy students to take part in classes not currently offered at its school, he said.
About 132 full-time-equivalent students attend the high school, according to district data from January.
“We have to find a way to meet the needs of these students at a lower cost,” Tomas said. “… I think that this approach will not meet the financial goals the district has established. I think that by substantially reducing the cuts we intended to make, we have put the whole process in jeopardy.”
Legacy High School has created a multi-year plan to increase enrollment and raise awareness of the alternative high school as an option for students, Rumbaugh said at the meeting.
Tomas also raised concerns over the district’s estimates for potential savings from the school closure plan. In January, then interim superintendent Dave Burgess estimated the closure plan would save about $2.4 million. In a document the district provided to the board on Monday, the estimate savings were listed at about $2.15 million for the original plan, which included moving Legacy High School.
“We’re not explaining where that quarter of a million dollars went,” Tomas said. “That bothers me.”
The estimate of $2.15 million is a more accurate representation of what the actual cost savings of the closures from the original plan would have been, district spokesperson Jodi Runyon said Tuesday. Since January, staff have been able to do a deeper dive into the savings which are set to come from the closures.
The new plan board members approved Monday is estimated to save about $2.2 million.
“The top two goals were to achieve the 2 million-plus savings, and the second was minimal student impact,” said board president Connor Krebbs. “I think that this move, as long as they’re confident in those numbers, accomplishes both of those.”
For teachers and students from Legacy High School, the vote was unexpected and left them “overjoyed,” Galenberg said. Some had concerns over the coming pauses to the Alternative Learning Experience options offered in the district, which some Legacy students use. But their overall reaction on Monday was one of relief.
“I’m very happy the program is staying at the current site,” said Mark Dougherty, a Legacy High School teacher, following the vote. “Because I think the importance of that site for the students is something that is drastically needed in this community as a whole.”
Gaberial Bolar, a 17-year-old Legacy student who serves as a student representative on the school board, said it was good to keep the school where it is now. As a representative, his advisory vote was in favor of the motion to keep Legacy in its place.
But for just over two months, he thought it was a certainty his school was going to move.
“Even though it seems like at the end of every meeting, it’s like, ‘Okay, this is what’s going to happen.’ Things like this happen and then it’s completely different,” Gaberial said. “It throws everybody for a loop.”
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
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