What are the issues and what are possible solutions?
What is the budget issue?
There is a 14 million dollar deficit in the school district’s budget, which means they are planning to spend 14 million dollars more than how much they expect to bring in (revenue). Budgets are complicated but spending in the WLWV school district has grown significantly since 2018, while there has been a decrease in student enrollment (with the new lower enrollment relatively stable since 2020) and staff levels have remained at relatively similar levels.
How can the district reduce spending and increase revenue without affecting students and teachers? By affecting, we include school closures, increased class sizes, loss of programming and teacher layoffs.
What are the enrollment issues?
Coming Soon….
Adopt a district-wide school closure policy which lays out consistent, transparent, intentional steps to consider for facility closures.
What are possible solutions?
Hire an outside budget analyst to analyze the district’s budget and create a community budget task force to look at the budget analyst’s report.
Investigate potential for cuts at the district administration office, including in Human Resources, the finance office and building and construction management.
Start enrollment task forces in individual schools that work with PTSAs and school leadership to come up with and implement ideas to boost enrollment at our smallest schools.
Negotiate changes in services that the district contracts with (such as hiring substitute teachers).
Market our schools’ language and immersion programs in ways that reach more people and encourage enrollment.
Investigate possible budget cuts in areas such as: improvement of instructional services, assessment and testing, fiscal services, materials & supplies, and liability insurance.
Apply for new federal grants, such as grants under the Inflation Reduction Act. These grants could offer additional funds for green upgrades such as efficient lighting, replacing HVAC systems and insulating windows.
Lobby at the state level for changes in how schools in Oregon are funded, such as removing/raising the special education funding cap (on average WLWV School sped populations are 14% but state funding is capped at 11% so there are sped students who receive base student funding).
Follow the example of the Lake Oswego School District and add a Bond Development Committee (including students, teachers, and parents) and a Separate Bond Accountability Committee in addition to our existing Long Range Planning Committee to separate the development of bond ideas and the accountability for completing them and build in more accountability and a wider range of stakeholder involvement. See the Lake Oswego bond accountability committee HERE and the LO bond development committee HERE.
Transform small schools into full service community schools, which could offer some of the following on the school site: full-day preschool, after-school tutoring for languages, math and literacy, summer school programs, adult education classes, on-site health clinics, nutrition programs, parenting workshops, and community events.
Build up preschool programs at small schools and work to market them and make them profitable. Take a survey about District Preschool options HERE. Investigate state funding options such as Preschool Promise.