Superintendent’s Blog: We Did It. The 2025-26 School Year Is in the Books.

Dear BSD Community,

We just finished the last graduation ceremony. The 2025-26 school year is in the books. And summer break is finally here! As we close out another school year, I want to start by saying ‘thank you’ to our students, families, educators, staff, volunteers, and community partners for everything you have done to help our students learn, grow, overcome challenges, and thrive this year.

This year brought moments of celebration, joy, transition, and challenge. Through it all, we got to see the best of Bellevue: students caring for one another, staff showing up with excellence and heart, families partnering with schools, and our broader community continuing to believe in and support the promise of public education.

A Year of Bright Spots 

There has been so much to celebrate across BSD this year. Bellevue was recognized with the 2026 State Superintendent Award for Educational Excellence and named among the top districts in Washington.

Just as the Seattle area has welcomed the World Cup with fans from around the globe cheering in so many different languages, we in the BSD continued to expand educational opportunities that reflect the unique strengths of our own beautifully multilingual, diverse, and global community. Record numbers of students are learning in two languages from kindergarten. Over the past three years, our elementary language programs expanded from Spanish and Mandarin to now include Arabic, Korean, and Japanese. In response to community interest, we are developing plans to start an elementary Modern Hebrew language program beginning with kindergarten for the 2027-28 school year. These language programs — along with our world-class middle and high school world language programs, plus the hundreds of kids each year who earn the seal of biliteracy — reflect our district’s value that bilingualism is a superpower that uplifts family and culture, builds bridges across communities, and opens up endless opportunities in the future.

Across our schools, I saw joy and innovation: students climbing through tough moments on a new rock wall at Phantom Lake and students at Ardmore learning computer science with some guy named Trevor Noah. Hundreds of students have discovered promising career pathways through programs like nursing at Sammamish or welding and construction at Interlake. Students have elevated their voices, creativity and leadership in robotics/rocketry, athletics, the arts, and a huge range of clubs and activities. And our students built community through school events, including the annual Day of Champions that brought together students with and without disabilities for a day of inclusive fun.

Building Our Beloved Community 

At the beginning of 2026, I invited all of us to recommit to building what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the beloved community — a place where everyone belongs, people care for one another, and discrimination has no place. That work took off in classrooms, cafeterias, and clubs across the district. 

The Beloved Community is not a fixed state or fake optimism. The Beloved Community is an aspiration, something we must build towards with intentionality. Remember, “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” For our immigrant students and families, many of whom experienced great fear and loss this year, our multilingual learners, our students with disabilities, our LGBTQIA+ students, our students of every race, religion and background — BSD’s commitment to you is unwavering: you are a treasured part of BSD, you are valued, and your safety and dignity matter. 

This week, I’m receiving the Tikkun Olam Award for Public Service from the Jewish Federation for Bellevue School District’s work to address and interrupt antisemitism in our schools. This recognition is a direct result of our collective work to build the Beloved Community. 

To every student who helped create a more welcoming school culture, every educator who disrupted bias and lifted up student voice, every family who showed up with care and partnership, and every staff member who made a child feel seen — thank you. This is how we build the beloved community together. 

Gratitude for Our Staff, Students, Families, and Community 

To our staff: thank you for the care, skill, and commitment you bring to students and our district every day. This has not been an easy season in public education. We have navigated budget challenges, changing needs and the ongoing work of rebuilding systems so they better serve students. Through it all, you have continued to teach, lead, support, feed, transport, counsel, coach, clean, organize, welcome, and inspire. 

To our families: thank you for entrusting us with your children and for partnering with us through celebrations and through hardships. We couldn’t do what we do without your advocacy, volunteering, partnership, and love for your children and our schools. 

To our community: We passed a levy! Thank you, Bellevue, for voting for our kids. The levy plays such an essential role in providing the educational opportunities our kids need to thrive into the future.  

And to our students: thank you for giving us hope. You remind us every day why this work matters. Whether you are graduating, moving up to a new school, finishing kindergarten, performing on a stage, competing on the field, presenting a project, trying again after something hard, or simply showing kindness to a classmate, you are the reason we do this work. 

Rocketing Around the Moon (Stabilizing Our Finances) 

This year, we worked through one of the most significant financial challenges in our district’s recent history. You’ve heard me refer to this as our Apollo 13 moment: not a crisis of our choosing, but one that required focus, ingenuity, and teamwork. The challenge we had to work through together was to bring our spending within our revenue, live within our means, fight the urge to add investments and expenses that we can’t afford, rebuild our fund balance (reserves), and put our district back onto stable financial ground.  

And, together, like Apollo 13 and Artemis II just this year, we made it around the moon and are heading back to earth. Despite the continued challenges with inadequate state funding for public education, we accomplished so much this year in our effort to stabilize our finances. While operating under binding conditions with OSPI, our School Board, district leaders, labor partners, school teams, families, and community members had to learn to live within a more lean resource reality. But by doing so, we brought spending back within our revenue, strengthened financial discipline, and began rebuilding our fund balance. And the hard work is paying off. We expect our ending reserves in August to be just over $10 million — up from the -$700,000 that we ended with last year. This is a huge accomplishment and a result of intense fiscal discipline, tough budget decisions, and the ingenuity of staff to find new revenues and efficiencies in spending. Much of the $10 million is from one-time revenue sources that we won’t likely see in future years (improved safety net collection, a one-time boost in levy authority thanks to the 2025 legislature, underspend in contingencies), but we’ll take it. None of this was easy, and none of it happened because of one person or one decision. It happened because people across BSD stayed focused on the long-term health of our district and the students we serve. 

We should be proud of that progress. At the same time, we know the broader state financial outlook is dismal. The state is projecting deeper cuts during the next biennium, which means we are not likely to see relief anytime soon from the state. Meanwhile, districts across Washington continue to face soaring costs for insurance, utilities, and staffing, with revenue growth based on formulas that simply doesn’t keep up. This is not a Bellevue issue or an individual district issue, but instead a broader state education funding issue.  

Despite the gloomy financial future, what this year has shown us is that we are a district that can tackle even the greatest challenges together. This gives me confidence as we look ahead. In addition, we aren’t taking the underfunding of public education sitting down. There is no stronger coalition of education funding advocates and leaders than right here in Bellevue. The Bellevue Education Association, the Bellevue PTSA Council, the Bellevue School Board, the Bellevue Schools Foundation, and I, with my superintendent colleagues from around the state, will continue to fight every day, all year for ample and equitable funding not just for our district but all 295 districts in the state.  

Looking Ahead 

As we celebrate all that we’ve accomplished this school year, we are already preparing for the next one. Our 2026-27 Annual Plan approved by the School Board will focus our work on raising math and reading achievement, improving special education services and supports, stewarding our limited resources responsibly, strengthening guidance around educational technology (e.g., cell phones, laptop use, AI), and continuing to build schools where every student feels safe, welcomed and valued. 

We know there is still important work ahead. We will continue listening, learning, and improving. We will continue advocating for the resources our students and staff deserve. We will continue innovating and designing the education of the future. And we will continue keeping students at the center of every decision. 

Congratulations, Class of 2026 

To the class of 2026, including my own kiddo who went to Sherwood Forest, Highland, and graduated last week from Interlake: congratulations! You did it! I have had the absolute privilege (and physical strain) of shaking all 1,600+ of your hands as you walked across the graduation stage. You have grown up through a time that has required flexibility, perseverance, and courage. Despite challenges like COVID, you have found ways to learn, lead, serve, create, dream, and make us all proud. As you take your next steps, please know that Bellevue will always be part of your family. In fact, make sure you sign up for our BSD alumni network! We’d love to stay connected, follow your next steps, and celebrate your accomplishments. Even I signed up (Newport Class of ’93)! 

Have a Wonderful Summer 

As summer begins, I hope every student, family and staff member has time to rest, reconnect and enjoy the people and places that bring you joy. 

Thank you, BSD, for another amazing year. I am honored to serve this community as superintendent and humbled that I get to do so with such a supportive, extraordinary community. 

In service of our beloved community, 

Dr. Kelly Aramaki 
Superintendent, Bellevue School District