News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
An agreement between the Sisters and Redmond school districts may open the door to greater school choice for Central Oregon families.
Under the arrangement, the Redmond School District will receive partial state funding for five students who live in the Redmond School District but attend school in Sisters. The students' parents had been paying full tuition in Sisters, to the tune of $1,000 per month.
Sisters School District will receive 80 percent of each student's state "average daily membership" (ADM) funding; Redmond will receive 20 percent. The students' families will make up the 20 percent to Sisters in the form of a tuition of about $900 per year.
Before this arrangement, the state funding for those students stayed in Salem, according to Sisters schools superintendent Steve Swisher. Now, state funding will stay in Central Oregon, and the tuition burden on families is reduced.
Swisher believes this kind of arrangement is likely to spread, giving families who work in Sisters and live in Redmond or Bend the option of putting their children in Sisters schools.
"Central Oregon in general will continue to look at these arrangements and, frankly, within five years, the way this works in the state will look different," Swisher said.
Sisters has a variety of tuition arrangements with local districts. Camp Sherman sends its seventh through 12th grade students to Sisters on a negotiated contract.
"They're a K-12 district, but they basically go out and contract to get their 7-12 education done," Swisher said.
Redmond also sends five students to vocational train- ing at Sisters Technologies (formerly Desertronics).
"They (the district and parents) think that's the best placement for them," Swisher said.
According to Swisher, ADM for those students is calculated on a student-by- student basis.
Sisters schools benefit from the extra students and extra funding and "as long as we have the capacity, we welcome them with open arms," Swisher said.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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