Grand Rapids Public Schools is considering the displacement of up to 47 teacher positions ahead of the 2026-27 school year. The potential cuts would affect special education, elementary, middle and high-school teachers across more than a dozen schools in the district.

GRPS Communications Director Luke Stier told MLive the district is working to align staffing levels with current enrollment figures. Stier emphasized that the priority is to eliminate open vacancies rather than lay off current employees.

"These will not be layoffs," Stier said. "This will require some teachers to transition to different school buildings to align with enrollment."

Student enrollment has been declining in recent years. GRPS enrolled 13,437 students during the 2025-26 school year, according to state data. That represents a drop from 13,692 students in 2024-25 and 13,802 students in 2023-24.

Documents obtained by MLive initially listed around 45 teaching positions at 20 school buildings that were being considered for displacement. Stier said those numbers continue to change as the district identifies necessary movements. The most recent figure provided on April 14 was 47 educators. Final totals will depend on how many vacancies the district has to fill, with some educator retirements also anticipated.

Elyse Horak, a seventh and eighth-grade science teacher at C.A. Frost Environmental Science Middle High School, said her school has been told it would lose a teaching position that would not be replaced. She criticized the potential loss during a public comment period at the Board of Education's April 13 meeting.

"Our enrollment is not declining," Horak said. "We have 19 teachers total. There's no extra positions."

C.A. Frost enrolled 319 students during the 2025-26 school year, up from 309 students in 2024-25 but down from 357 students in 2023-24. Horak said any layoffs or displacements could mean more teachers will be overworked and face larger class sizes.

"We're kind of panicking," Horak said. "Next year looks like a mess for our school, and I think we're affected much less than some others."

The possibility for displacements comes after GRPS eliminated 25 positions across the district in July 2025, attributing them to budget constraints. At that time, Superintendent Leadriane Roby said in a letter to staff that the district continues to work to navigate financial challenges.

She said district administration attempted to first reduce non-salary-related expenses, but despite these efforts, it ultimately became necessary to expand reductions to include staff positions. Those included the loss of the district's lone bilingual communications coordinator.

GRPS narrowly passed a $259.8M budget on June 23 of last year, with a projected $13.5 million operating deficit. The district planned to use 48 percent of its fund balance to bridge the gap.

Roby previously said the budget deficit was not due to a lack of fiscal responsibility, but measures beyond the district's control, including a loss of federal funding and state budget uncertainty. District leaders attributed the deficit to a combination of rising education costs and the loss of pandemic-era ESSER dollars that expired in September 2024.

For the 2025-26 school year, the budget included a $16.7 million reduction in spending compared to the previous year. All departments have also worked toward a 10 percent reduction, Robysaid.

When asked about updates to the district's budget, Chief Financial Officer Rhonda Kribs said it is definitely still a work in progress. She said building budgets are mostly completed, and GRPS is now working to identify its department and district-level budget.

I don't have a number, Kribs said, anxiously looking forward to what the House and Senate may put out at the end of the month for a budget proposal.

Data from Michigan Public reveals the broader context of teacher shortages in the district. GRPS has more than 90 unfilled teaching positions. In the 2023-24 school year, GRPS employed 866 full-time teachers, a 10-year low for the district.

The daily substitute rate surged from 1.8 percent to 18.6 percent in 2020, according to Michigan Public. To keep classrooms running, the district has turned to stopgap measures, relying on long-term substitute teachers and, in some cases, remote instruction delivered via video conference.

Matt Marlowe, president of the Grand Rapids Education Association, pointed to teacher salaries as a driving factor behind the ongoing shortages. He said the district spends less than half of their money on instruction, which is very unusual. About half of their employees are non-instruction, not counting administration.

Over half of Grand Rapids' full-time teaching staff have 10 or fewer years of experience. Data from the union shows the median salary for those teachers was under $50,000 last school year. The highest salaries in the district are just under $88,000, but the majority of teachers anywhere near that salary level have decades of experience and masters degrees.

State data shows the district's superintendent and other top officials each made an average of over $200,000 in 2024. The district's best-paid teacher received less than half of that.

To make up for the deficit, the 2025-2026 school year budget includes a salary freeze for district leaders for the immediate future, along with the removal of at least nine existing positions including two executive director roles.

We're projecting that our general fund balance will have gone from $40 million last year to about $28 million this year, Stier added.