Funding Issues & Priorities
Several factors are creating financial distress for Oregon school districts, including:
Inadequate funding to keep up with inflation
Inadequate funding to meet student needs, such as the continued lack of funding for special education while costs increase significantly
Declining enrollment
Unfunded state mandates
In the Medford School District, these factors force us to reduce our budget by $15 million over the next two years.This is difficult, and we are doing everything we can to protect the student experience as much as possible. Our priorities in this process are:
Preserving our high-quality classrooms, including the educators who support them, as well as our curriculum
Safeguarding student wellness
Ensuring continuing innovation
Keeping safety and security as our foundation
Year 1 Cost Reductions
Today, we wanted to let you know how we are proposing to address the deficit. We will be putting forward a budget to our budget committee, which is made up of appointed community members (including MSD parents), that includes $7.5 million in proposed cuts for the next fiscal year. As we are currently deficit spending in this current year’s budget, we also propose spending down reserves by $1.9 million to soften the blow. The remaining cuts will be made in year two, the 2025-26 school year.
Staffing Reductions
The total staffing reduction is 32.5 positions:
District-level administrators will be reduced by 12.1%
School-based administrators will be reduced by 8.2%
Confidential/Manager/Supervisors will be reduced by 5.9%
Certified Staff (Teachers) will be reduced by 2.5%
Classified Staff will be reduced by 0.9%
Of course, the most important factor in the student experience is a high-quality classroom teacher, so we worked to avoid affecting that position as much as possible. The largest number of these shifts are due to our lost enrollment since COVID-19, specifically at the elementary level, where the number of students we serve is down 24% since 2019. Because of this, many of our school-based adjustments are typical for this time of year, balancing our staffing to match the number of students in classrooms and programs.
Additionally, you will notice within the proposed reductions that while we will be keeping our libraries open and staffed, we will no longer have teacher librarians in our secondary schools. Our classified media technicians will manage libraries for the same number of hours of operation. There will be one K-12 Library Media Specialist to support this restructure.
In other areas, we are not moving forward with planned construction at Innovation Academy, we are reducing the amount of funding to our preschool partners, we are reducing our summer programming, and we will not be expanding our school marshal program beyond what we already have. The full list of proposed reductions can be found here.
Continued Reductions & Fiscal Responsibility
While these cuts are challenging, year two will be even more difficult as we must reduce the budget by around another $8 million.
As mentioned above, MSD and districts nationwide have been experiencing declining enrollment since COVID-19. MSD has seen a 24% decrease in elementary enrollment since 2019. These decreases are due to lower birth rates and families choosing other options, particularly homeschooling.
We have several elementary schools that have dropped to under 300 students when their physical capacity can accommodate significantly more students. Maintaining underutilized schools creates an added financial burden on the school district budget, money that could otherwise be used to enhance the student experience.
To optimize our facility needs, we will begin evaluating how best to consolidate some of our elementary schools. The analysis will take place in the fall of 2024, with an anticipated announcement around early 2025. At this time, we believe we need to consolidate two elementary schools for the 2025-26 school year. More information on the process and opportunities for community input will be shared in early fall 2024.