Christian school takes a funding hit

 

Last updated 2/2/2005 at Noon



Sonrise Christian School has lost its new principal, is reducing teacher medical benefits and plans to trade its school bus for a less expensive model.

These and other steps are being taken to cope with a revenue shortfall of about $130,000 caused by suspension of a program that in recent years has seen the Sisters School District pay parts of the salaries of some Sonrise teachers.

Sonrise Board Chairman Terry Denzer said the hole created by the loss of school district money represented a “double digit” percentage of the Sonrise budget. He didn’t have an exact estimate but said “it’s not like just five or six percent.”

In deciding on spending cuts, the Sonrise board has avoided taking even more drastic actions that were originally considered, including a 10 percent cut in teachers’ salaries.

The budget actions were confirmed over the weekend by Denzer and board member Todd Weitzman. Weitzman told The Nugget:

“The Sonrise budget, in terms of expenditures for the year, was based on the assumption that the funding that has been received through the school district in the past would be in place this year also. In September, when the decision was made to put that funding on hold, we had made expenditure decisions, including staff, that were based on the funding we though we would have.”

When the board told parents and other friends of the school about the revenue shortage, Weitzman said, “The school family responded with a pretty generous and sacrificial outpouring of donations such that we are not making all of those changes.

“We’re making some of them. Our administrator (principal) has agreed to resign in order to make the school budget work for this year, and we’ve asked one of our teachers who is in the middle of getting her administrative credential to operate as a part-time, interim principal for the rest of the school year. That’s one of the changes.”

The interim principal will be Peggy Miller, a fifth grade teacher, who will work about two-thirds time in the chief administrator’s job.

Former Principal Buzzy Castonguay, married with two school-age children, came to Sonrise last July from a school in Phoenix, Arizona. He said that he resigned after placing his own job on a list of budget-cutting options that he submitted to the board.

“I didn’t want to be out of a job,” he explained, “but financially that’s the kind of thing you have to do sometimes.” Did he volunteer to leave? “I wouldn’t necessarily call it that. I presented them (the board) with the options. They had to pick which ones they thought were necessary.”

Castonguay said he is “looking around” for other employment and is not sure whether he will be able to stay in this area.

“Lots of times in Christian school administration that’s not possible; you have to move around a little. But there may be other things that God provides for us to make it possible for us to stay here.”

Board Chairman Denzer acknowledged that, “It’s tough to make budget cuts midstream in the middle of a school year when you have teachers that have contracts already, that’s why it was so extremely difficult. We did poll a lot of parents and had a couple of parent meetings.”

Of Castonguay, Denzer said, “He’s been very good (about giving up his job). We as a board are supporting him as much as we can and we’re doing everything we can to help him find another position, which is difficult in the middle of a school year.”

Denzer also said if that if the salary program suspension had occurred last spring, “we would probably not have hired an administrator just because of the costs involved… We would have made some other staffing decisions based on having the money that we do have.”

He added: “We’re really pleased that we did not have to cut the salaries of the teachers at this point.”

In other money-saving moves, Weitzman said the hours of a physical education teacher have been reduced. And he said the school is planning to sell its current activity bus, “a pretty nice bus,” and to replace it with an ordinary yellow school bus.

“But part of doing that is that we would come out cash ahead in the transaction,” he said.

Sonrise serves about 110 pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade students in buildings leased from Sisters Community Church on McKinney Butte Road. Tuition ranges from $1,060 for pre-kindergarten (three-year-old) students to $4,179 for those of junior high age.

Denzer said the school is at something of a “crossroads” today and will probably be trying to recruit more students. It could absorb significantly more students without increasing its teaching staff or budget today.

The program that has

caused the Sonrise budget problem first came to public attention in December when Sisters School Superintendent Ted Thonstad announced that he had suspended an arrangement under which the district has paid portions of the salaries of some Sonrise teachers. He later said the district paid out $140,000 for this purpose last year (2003-04) and in turn would receive $260,000 in state reimbursement for the students taught by the affected teachers, presumably all in secular subjects.

At the district’s request and with the encouragement of the Sonrise board, the Oregon Department of Education is reviewing the program to check its conformity with state regulations, especially those dealing with the separation of church and state.

 

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