Enumclaw - EdTribune WA - Washington Education Data

Three Decades to the Top: Jill Burnes Takes the Helm in Enumclaw

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Jill Burnes started teaching elementary school in Bellingham, Washington in 1990. By her own account she felt "an incredible responsibility" and "a keen awareness of the influence or impact that my daily words and actions could have on my students." That awareness, she has written, only deepened over the decades. After nearly 30 years she had "more questions than answers."

Those questions took her from Bellingham to Federal Way^↗, where she taught elementary, instructed at the district's Internet Academy, and moved into leadership as curriculum coordinating teacher and eventually the director of assessment. In 2004 she came to Enumclaw^↗ as assistant principal at the high school and has been in the district ever since, rising through nine years as principal, director of teaching and learning, and deputy superintendent. Along the way she earned a master's in curriculum and instruction from City University, a principal certification, and a superintendent certification from Seattle Pacific University, with professional training at Harvard's Leadership Institute and Stanford's School Redesign Institute. When Superintendent Dr. Shaun Carey resigned suddenly on January 12, 2026, the board did not have to look far. Burnes stepped into the role she had been building toward across three decades and three districts.

She takes the helm of a district that is, by almost every measure, defying the direction of public education in Washington state.

A District Built to Grow

Enumclaw enrolled 4,568 students in 2025-26, its highest total in at least 12 years of state records. The district has grown 10.7% since 2015, adding 443 students while Washington's enrollment has been essentially flat and started declining in 2026. It is one of only about a quarter of the state's districts that fully recovered from COVID-era losses. Enumclaw did more than recover: it added 422 students beyond its pandemic low, a 212% recovery rate.

The Ten Trails master-planned community in neighboring Black Diamond is the primary growth engine, a development projected to build more than 5,000 homes. But Burnes was careful to note that the story is broader than one subdivision. "According to the most recent demographic study of the Enumclaw School District, other growth factors include local birth rates and other residential development," she said. Birth rates within the district "have been increasing steadily over the past ten years," and there are "recent, active and planned residential development projects in Enumclaw" beyond Ten Trails.

Among similarly sized Washington districts, Enumclaw's trajectory stands out. Only neighboring White River^↗ has grown faster (+23.0%), while Bremerton^↗, a military-adjacent urban district, has lost 14.1% of its students over the same period.

The community has changed, too. White students still make up the majority at 69.4%, but that share has dropped 9.4 percentage points since 2015. Hispanic enrollment grew from 14.2% to 18.0%, adding 235 students. Asian enrollment increased nearly eightfold, from 23 students to 183, likely reflecting the demographic profile of families moving to Ten Trails from the Seattle metro area.

The district's Capital Facilities Plan projects enrollment reaching 5,311 by 2030, a 23.4% increase. That is the landscape Burnes is navigating: a district preparing for nearly 750 more students in the next four years.

Stability, Relationships, Trust

Asked about her priorities, Burnes did not talk about test scores or strategic plans. She talked about people.

"My priorities include providing stability, rebuilding relationships, and strengthening trust across our district," she said. "There is important work ahead in the coming months, and I am fully committed to ensuring that our school system is well-positioned to welcome a new superintendent this summer."

The emphasis on stability is not abstract. Carey's departure was abrupt. The board accepted his resignation at a special meeting on January 12 that lasted barely long enough to conduct the vote. Board Director Tara Cochran described it as "a mutual decision to part ways." Board President Tyson Gamblin said the board "appreciates his leadership on several initiatives in the district." Carey, for his part, said he was "grateful for the work we have done to put systemwide structures, including common school schedules, MTSS practices, and progress monitoring, in place throughout the school district."

Eight days later, the board unanimously approved $65 million in contracts to design and build a new elementary school at Ten Trails. That school, planned for 600 students, is slated to open in fall 2027. Black Diamond Elementary is at capacity, and Ten Trails families are currently bused to Westwood Elementary.

The financing behind it is remarkable. After voters rejected three separate funding measures between 2023 and 2025, the district sold 43 acres back to developer Oakpointe for $40 million and secured a $25 million developer loan repaid through housing mitigation fees. The entire project is funded without a taxpayer bond or general fund dollars.

Burnes described the arrangement as the product of years of groundwork. "For more than a decade, the Enumclaw School District has been working in partnership with the City of Black Diamond and Oakpointe to plan for school facilities and projected enrollment growth," she said. That kind of long-range institutional memory, the knowledge of a decade of negotiations and three failed ballots and the community dynamics behind them, is what a career insider brings to the superintendent's chair.

What Comes Next

The board hired Northwest Leadership Associates in late February to find Carey's permanent successor. Community input sessions and online surveys in English and Spanish are underway. Preliminary interviews are scheduled for late April, with finalist interviews in mid-May.

Asked what the district should look for, Burnes offered a clear picture: "a community-focused, visionary leader who listens to all voices, communicates clearly, and brings people together around shared values," she said. "They must be willing to step into challenges, stand firm in their conviction about student learning, public education, and lead with courage and integrity."

Whether the board hires from inside or outside, the next superintendent will step into a district that has added 443 students in a decade, built a $65 million school through a creative public-private partnership, and welcomed a more diverse student body than at any point in its history. Burnes is making sure that transition is steady, the same work she has done at every level she has held in this district.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Native American Enrollment Cut in Half

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In 2010, Washington public schools enrolled 24,768 Native American students. By 2026, that number had fallen to 12,622. Half of them, gone from the rolls.

No other racial group in the state comes close to that rate of decline. White enrollment fell 21.5%. Black enrollment dipped 2.3%. Native American enrollment dropped 49.0%, a loss so steep that it raises an uncomfortable question: are there actually fewer Native students in Washington's schools, or has the way we count them changed so fundamentally that thousands simply disappeared from the data?

The answer is both.

The 2011 reclassification cliff

The most dramatic single-year drop came between 2010 and 2011, when 6,952 Native American students vanished from enrollment counts overnight. That 28.1% plunge did not reflect 7,000 families pulling their children from school. It reflected a paperwork change.

In the 2010-11 school year, Washington implemented new federal race and ethnicity reporting standards that added a "two or more races" category for the first time. Under the old system, a student who was Spokane Tribe and white checked one box. Under the new system, that student was reclassified as multiracial. The multiracial category gained 21,611 students between 2010 and 2011, absorbing not only Native students but students from every racial group who had previously been forced into a single category.

The effect was not proportional. Native Americans, who intermarry at higher rates than any other racial group in the United States, were disproportionately reclassified. A 2023 study by the American Institutes for Research estimated that up to 70% of all American Indian and Alaska Native students nationally were undercounted over a four-year period. In Washington, that translated to nearly 36,000 students missing from the count and a potential loss of nearly $12 million annually in funding for the districts that serve them.

What the reclassification does not explain

Strip out the 2011 cliff and the remaining trend is still relentless. From 2011 to 2026, Native American enrollment fell from 17,816 to 12,622, a decline of 5,194 students, or 29.2%. Of the 15 post-reclassification years, 14 saw declines. The only year of growth was 2014, and it was marginal.

This continued erosion cannot be attributed to a one-time category change. It reflects a genuine demographic contraction in communities where Native families live, particularly on and near reservations. Birth rates in tribal communities have followed the same downward trajectory as the rest of the state. Housing shortages on reservations push families into urban areas where their children are more likely to identify as multiracial. And the multiracial category has continued growing, from 21,611 added in that first year to 100,034 total students by 2026, a 178.9% increase from 2010. Some portion of its growth continues to draw from students who have Native heritage but no longer appear in the Native American column.

The two lines are a mirror image. As multiracial enrollment tripled, Native American enrollment halved. They are not entirely the same phenomenon, but they are not entirely separate either.

The steepest decline of any group

Placed alongside every other racial category, the scale of the Native American loss is stark.

Hispanic enrollment grew 74.1%, adding 124,142 students. The multiracial category grew 178.9%. Asian enrollment climbed 28.9%. Black enrollment was essentially flat, losing just 1,279 students. White enrollment fell by 140,996, a larger number in absolute terms, but the 21.5% rate was less than half the Native American decline.

Meanwhile, total state enrollment grew by 61,350 students, a 5.9% gain. Washington's schools got bigger. Native American students became a smaller and smaller share of who was in them, falling from 2.4% to 1.2% of total enrollment.

Where the losses concentrate

Of the 296 districts with Native American students in both 2011 and 2026, 181 lost students. Seventy-five gained. Forty saw no change.

The largest absolute losses came from urban districts. Spokane^↗ lost 455 Native American students, a 58.3% decline. Seattle^↗ lost 431, a 67.9% drop. Enumclaw^↗ lost 336, Bethel^↗ lost 248, and Toppenish^↗ lost 191.

These are districts where Native families have a presence but are not the majority. In a district of 30,000, losing 455 Native students barely registers in the total enrollment count. No budget meeting mentions it. No school board resolution addresses it. The students disappear from the data and, functionally, from the conversation.

The tribal districts holding on

At the other end of the spectrum, twelve districts in Washington are majority-Native American. These are not districts in the conventional sense. They are schools built on reservations, governed through state-tribal compacts, serving communities where the school is often the only public institution for miles.

Muckleshoot^↗ enrolls 463 students and is 98.5% Native American. Lummi^↗ enrolls 416 and is 91.3% Native. Nespelem enrolls 194, Paschal Sherman Indian School enrolls 171, and Keller enrolls 16. Ten of the twelve majority-Native districts enroll fewer than 500 students. Seven enroll fewer than 200.

These districts exist in a fragile equilibrium. Wellpinit School District #49^↗, which serves the Spokane Reservation, enrolled 582 students in 2010. By 2026, that had fallen to 366, a 37.1% decline. The school is 67.5% Native American, located 45 miles from the nearest city, and serves a reservation where, as the district itself acknowledges, housing shortages and limited employment make it difficult to sustain a stable population.

Chief Leschi Schools^↗, a tribal compact school near Tacoma, enrolls 743 students and is 57.5% Native American. Mount Adams, in the Yakama Nation's orbit, enrolls 799 and is 53.1% Native. These are the largest majority-Native districts in the state, and even they are small enough that a single cohort of departures can reshape the school.

The funding question the data cannot answer

Washington allocates school funding through a prototypical model that ties dollars to enrollment counts. When a student who identifies as Native American is reclassified as multiracial, they do not leave the school system. They still sit in the same classroom, still need the same services. But they no longer appear in the count that determines whether their district qualifies for federal Title VI Indian Education grants, Impact Aid for districts on tribal land, or the state's own Native education programs administered through OSPI's Office of Native Education.

The 2025 WSU report commissioned by the legislature made this connection explicit: the undercount of Native students was not an abstract data quality problem but a direct cause of funding shortfalls in districts that serve Native communities.

The twenty-one districts where Native Americans still make up at least 20% of enrollment collectively enroll 3,496 Native students, just 27.7% of the state's total. The other 72.3% are scattered across districts where they are a small minority, often too small to trigger targeted programming. A district with 73 Native students, like Kent, does not hire a Native education specialist. A district with 87, like Highline, does not build curriculum around the Since Time Immemorial tribal sovereignty lessons with the same urgency as a district where Native students are the majority.

What half means

Washington is home to 29 federally recognized tribes. The state requires all public schools to teach tribal sovereignty history through the Since Time Immemorial curriculum. It has a dedicated Office of Native Education and a network of state-tribal education compact schools designed to give tribal communities more control over how their children are taught.

And yet the enrollment data tells a story of slow erasure. Some of it is real, demographic. Some of it is statistical, a consequence of classification systems that were never designed with Native communities in mind. Separating the two is nearly impossible with the data available, which is precisely the problem.

In 2010, 24,768 students were counted as Native American. In 2026, 12,622 are. The students who are no longer counted did not all leave. Many are still in Washington's schools, checked into a different box, invisible to the programs designed to serve them. Whether the state can find a way to count them accurately may determine whether those programs survive.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.