The Wallingford-Swarthmore School District is pushing back a planned high school renovation amid budget challenges

The Wallingford-Swarthmore School District is cutting more positions and pushing back a planned high school renovation to balance next year’s budget.

The reductions come on top of a downsizing in staffing approved this spring. And more cuts are likely coming, as the district tries to roll back what officials have described as a pattern of unsustainable spending in the 3,700-student district.

“Unfortunately, we are at a point where we cannot continue to support the number of staff we’ve added,” Superintendent Russell Johnston said at a school board meeting last week, before board members approved a $106 million budget for the 2026-27 school year.

In addition to pushing off some borrowing for a high school renovation, the affluent Delaware County district is also looking at reducing the renovation’s scope in light of fiscal constraints.

Here’s what to know about the cuts the district has made so far, and what might be coming in the year ahead.

District officials have attributed Wallingford-Swarthmore’s financial difficulties to several factors, including rising costs confronting all school districts and a declining tax base in the heavily residential community.

But officials have also said the district has a spending problem, citing growth in staffing levels in recent years.

Johnston, a former Massachusetts education commissioner who became Wallingford-Swarthmore’s superintendent in May 2025, informed community members of significant budget challenges last fall.

In February, Wallingford-Swarthmore approved a reorganization plan that eliminated almost 20 positions, of a 562-member staff.

Officials said that restructuring would save the district $2 million. But they were still looking for cuts — saying that spending could not continue to outpace revenues.

The budget approved last week includes $550,000 in savings from not filling four positions that are becoming vacant. In one case, a high school science teacher is retiring, and the district is replacing her with a part-time teacher, Johnston said.

The district also scaled back plans to borrow $40 million for capital projects next year — including for a planned high school renovation — to $10 million, which saved $880,000 in borrowing costs.

But those changes weren’t enough to balance the budget. The district raised taxes by 3.2% and spent about $550,000 from its reserves as part of the plan passed last week.

“Those are rainy day funds. Those should not be used for operational purposes,” Johnston said at last week’s board meeting. He said that if the district doesn’t make more cuts, budget projections show it will need to rely even more heavily on those reserves.

“$550,000 would be a dream compared to what we see coming,” Johnston said.

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At the board meeting, Johnston noted past “rapid growth” in district staff, with 70 people added between 2020-2021 and 2025-2026.

“We created a structural challenge for ourselves,” he said. “From a financial perspective, that is just unfortunately where we have to look.”

The district has already made other cuts, Johnston said, including reducing supply budgets.

“Even the cupcakes for the retirees tonight were not paid for by the school district,” he said.

In an interview, Johnston declined to comment on where future staffing cuts might be made, but noted that the district plans to discuss the budget picture going forward at its June 9 finance committee meeting.

The district will also consider reducing the scope of its planned $99 million high school renovation, having recently asked architects to present a $65 million version.

Despite delaying some borrowing and reevaluating the renovation, Johnston said the district would begin smaller related projects next year.

Board members last week acknowledged the tight financial situation.

“We know we have some hard decisions to make for sure,” said the board’s president, Michelle Williams.

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