‘An existential moment’ as Southern Oregon’s public schools struggle with budget shortfalls

In a big, bright conference room in Medford’s Oakdale Middle School in May, residents, teachers and parents gathered to talk about the Medford School District’s proposed 2024-25 school budget.

Many were upset.

“The one constant in my time at [Medford School District] has been a decrease in the services given to students,” said Paul Cynar, social studies teacher at South Medford High School.

Kirstie Christopherson, an elective tech arts teacher at North Medford High School, said this round of budget cuts should have been focused elsewhere.

“This round should not impact the classroom staff nor their support because the kids should be able to continue to have great learning environments,” she said.

The district is facing a $15 million budget shortfall over the next two years, so there were some significant proposed cuts, including getting rid of over 32 positions, reducing funding for trainings and cutting back on summer programming.

Medford is not alone.

The Bend-La Pine School District is cutting $21 million from its budget over the next two years. The Ashland School District will have to cut another $2.5 million, in addition to $2.4 million it cut this budget cycle. Districts across the state are facing similar challenges.

Yet, in 2023, Oregon’s state legislature allocated over $10 billion for school funding this biennium — the most ever.

How we got here

Districts have blamed these shortfalls on many things: declining enrollment, inflation, inadequate state funding, the end of federal COVID money and increased special education needs.

Some of these costs can be seen as “a direct output of the COVID situation,” in particular, declining enrollment, according to Medford Superintendent Bret Champion.

The district has seen a more than 100% increase in the number of kids being homeschooled since before COVID, according to Champion. With remote school during the pandemic, parents saw firsthand how their kids were learning, and some wanted a change.

“Whenever I went to school, there was no question exactly where I would go to elementary school, middle school and high school. And now families are saying, ‘We want to have some option in that,’” Champion said.

Medford is considering consolidating elementary schools as a result of declining enrollment.

Superintendents have pointed to other causes of lower enrollment: Oregon’s declining birth rate, the cost of housing and local wildfires.

School districts’ state funding is based on student enrollment. As the number of kids declines, so does the funding. At a certain point, the school no longer breaks even.

And funding from the state is crucial. Back in the 90s, a series of ballot measures drastically shifted Oregon’s school funding landscape from relying on local property taxes to relying mostly on the state. Now, the vast majority of money for schools in Oregon comes from the state, in various forms.

However, the legislature has many priorities competing for that funding.

“We have a housing crisis. We have a homelessness crisis. We have a mental health crisis. We have an addiction crisis. We have a public defender crisis,” said State Representative Pam Marsh. “[There’s] so many different fronts where we need public investment.”

Some superintendents have complained that the state’s school funding model doesn’t keep up with inflation.

Related: Could Oregon’s state school funding mechanism change next year?

State Rep. Susan McLain, a member of two legislative education committees, said there are disagreements between schools and the legislature about how to address inflation.

“Many of our school districts would like to see us just have an adjustment that happens automatically,” she said.

Inflation is considered for every budget, she said, but since more than three-quarters of the school budget comes from the state, it would be risky to have the state on the hook for so much money as inflation spikes.

“We think it’s extremely important for us to look at that inflationary factor on a budget process. And so having an adjustment that happens automatically is not something that we felt is really best practice as we would like to see it,” she said.

The job of the state’s Quality Education Commission is to figure out how much money schools need to create “an optimal public education system.”

But the state has never given as much money to schools as the Commission recommends to create that quality education. The Commission says even with over $10 billion allocated for this biennium, the state is only giving about three-quarters of what schools need to operate the way they should.

Related: Oregon’s 2 largest school districts are nearing the end of a fraught budget season

For the past few years, school districts have had federal COVID relief money to rely on, but that’s also dwindling. The deadline to spend that money is coming up at the end of September.

How the Ashland School District chose to spend its COVID money led to layoffs this year.

During the pandemic, the district hired over 70 new full-time staff to help maintain operations, including enforcing social distance requirements and helping with behavioral needs.

“That caught up with the district, and the action that we’ve taken to reduce staffing has taken longer than we expected. Relying on attrition, people normally coming or going, that didn’t happen fast enough,” said ASD Director of Business Services Scott Whitman. “We are at a point where we went through layoffs towards the end of this year to make up that difference.”

Former Superintendent Samuel Bogdanove, who retired at the end of the school year, defended the district’s decision as “a wise investment for kids. But it was a tough, tough thing to have to move away from.”

Those additional staff are not needed now, since the district currently has about 300 fewer students than it did in 2017. Bogdanove said the district’s declining student numbers are partially due to the end of an open enrollment law in 2018-2019, which had allowed students to transition into the Ashland district.

Meanwhile, districts are also seeing increasing numbers of students with high needs since the COVID pandemic, both those with identified disabilities and those with generalized mental health and behavioral needs.

There’s “a much broader general sense of need for both academic remediation to catch up some of that missed learning, as well as emotional and mental health and behavioral supports,” Bogdanove said.

Many students with special education needs receive individualized education plans, or IEPs, which provide special instruction and support, like speech therapy or counseling.

The state provides funding for up to 11% of a district’s enrollment, but if a school has a higher percentage of kids with IEPs, those aren’t covered.

According to Champion, 15-16% of Medford’s student population has had IEPs in the last few years, so funding for those kids’ needs comes out of the district’s pocket.

“We’re seeing students who are struggling with a whole host of things, behavior being prime among them, and that some of our students require some one-on-one assistance just to make it through the day,” he said. “That’s just costly. It’s necessary, and we’re happy to do it. But it does cost.”

Related: School districts throughout Oregon, Southwest Washington face significant budget cuts this spring

‘An existential moment’

Gov. Tina Kotek’s office and legislative committees are studying ways to improve the state’s funding system.

Rep. Marsh wants to make sure that additional money will actually get results for students.

“Legislators and the public need to really understand how putting more money into schools will make a difference for kids. That needs to be drawn in neon and bright lights, that connection,” she said.

There’s also a deeper question here, according to Marsh: are there ways that public schools could work better? In the years since the COVID pandemic began, now seems to be the time to reassess the system.

“We are just at an existential moment with our K-12 schools when we have to figure out how to renew the confidence of the public in those schools and how to fund them at a level that is both sustainable and that can produce good outcomes for kids,” she said.

Champion also sees the moment as critical for the future of public education.

“Frankly, there is a narrative across the nation that is very anti-public schools. And if we don’t work to try to take control of that narrative, then we’re going to continue to get beaten down. And that’s something we can’t afford,” he said. “It is critical that we invest in and hold accountable our nation’s public schools.”

Meanwhile, some districts will still have to cut millions of dollars in the next few years. State budget proposals for the next biennium are already in the works. And next month, hundreds of thousands of students in Oregon will eagerly return to school.