OPINION | Environmental Education Cuts Will Hurt Residents in South Seattle

It was 32 degrees when a busload of second graders from Kimball Elementary arrived at Lincoln Park. I led my group into the forest, where we explored with our eyes, ears, and hands. The kids were excited, engaged, and observant. No one complained about the cold. At the end, when asked what they'd learned, a girl piped up, "I can see and hear lots of birds in the forest." A boy said, "If a kinglet were my size, it would have to eat 22 pizzas a day!" Their teacher told me some of these kids had never been in a park before. Another day, a Rainier View Elementary fourth grader said, "I appreciated learning it's OK to touch plants."

These nature-immersion programs have a profound impact on their participants. They are among a wide variety of programs and services available through Seattle Parks Environmental Education (EE). Too bad they may not be available much longer: Last fall, Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed axing our program, effective 2026, without a word of consultation or warning to our staff, volunteers, hundreds of community partners, or our many thousands of participants. These cuts will disproportionately impact South Seattle.

I am an urban nature guide, one of over 100 active volunteers for EE. You may have met us or our dedicated staff on public "owl prowls," beach or beaver walks, in programs for disabled adults at Rainier Beach Community Center, or in ongoing environmental justice programs for teens. We are the Salmon Stewards, answering your questions at Carkeek Park; we run the Discovery Park Visitor Center, including Nature Kids Preschool and the bus that helps people with mobility issues get to the beach.

Our programs touch over 80,000 Seattleites per year. Last year, 80 area schools participated in our school programs. On every field trip, we teach age-appropriate science, but our top priorities are to ensure each participant has a positive experience in nature, to stimulate their curiosity, and to make them feel welcome in Seattle Parks. If a school can't afford a bus, we provide a bus scholarship or have a program in a park they can walk to.

A heavy concentration of our program locations and school participants are in Southeast and Southwest Seattle. These include the ongoing Tree Equity & Education program at Cleveland High School, where teens have been restoring a hillside and using their experience on job and college applications, and the Students Empowering Education & Discovery program at Chief Sealth High School, focusing on social emotional learning, natural history, and empowering youth to teach each other using interpretive techniques.

Our small professional staff (seven full-time employees) are the geniuses who have perfected this program over decades, providing us with rigorous training, program materials, and organization. And it's cheap — the annual cost of our program is $1 million, less than one baseball infield turf conversion.

We don't know why we're being eliminated, beyond the wording in the mayor's announcement saying that his budget "ends operation of Carkeek and Discovery Park Visitor Centers and associated programming [that's us] beginning January 2026. During 2025, SPR will explore alternative service delivery models." We've asked why and requested meetings, but the only response is, "City staff are working on alternatives to EE." All our staff know is they are losing their jobs — already they've all been offered replacement jobs unrelated to EE. Once the staff are gone, all of us volunteers will be losing our jobs, and all of you will be losing our services.

We assume the mayor has no idea of the reach and impact of our program, or that we embody his priorities for equity, inclusion, and fostering youth mental health. How else could he eliminate it? From the budget documents, we know that the mayor has added money to develop several new programs, including "$600K to support programming and partnerships at Red Barn Ranch to invest in youth mental health." Which is laudable, except that the Red Barn Ranch is in Auburn and can hardly have the reach or impact of our current program.

City Councilmembers told us they want to find ongoing funding for EE when they discuss the budget later this year, but Parks is eroding away our staff right now. We are concerned there may be nothing left by the time City Council talks about the budget.

Losing Seattle's Environmental Education program would be a senseless fiasco. Please contact your councilmember (or the mayor or Parks superintendent) and ask them to save Environmental Education.

The views expressed are the author's own and do not reflect those of Seattle Parks and Recreation.

The South Seattle Emerald is committed to holding space for a variety of viewpoints within our community, with the understanding that differing perspectives do not negate mutual respect amongst community members.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the contributors on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the Emerald or official policies of the Emerald.

Maggie Johnson is a volunteer nature guide in the Seattle Parks Environmental Education program.