News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Already wounded by cuts made this spring, Sisters schools may be slashed still deeper due to a decline in property tax revenues in the state.
The state overestimated the amount of revenue to be collected from property taxes and will now cut back state funding by as much as $43 per student this year and between $40 and $42 per student next year, according to schools superintendent Steve Swisher.
That puts Sisters schools about $50,000 deeper in the hole this year and next.
The Sisters School Board and budget committee began wrestling with the district's financial crisis on Monday, April 10.
Swisher told the committee that, with rising salaries and expenses, the district would need $7 million to maintain the program and staffing it had before the spring break cut.
The district budget is at $6.6 million. According to Swisher, salaries and benefits compose 86.1 percent of the schools' budget.
The district has already cut temporary staff, laid off two teachers and a custodian and staff and administrators are taking two days of unpaid leave. Together, these cuts make up $200,000 of the shortfall. With the bad news about property taxes, the district still has $50,000 more in cuts to make this spring.
"We may have to go into further layoffs as we go into spring," Swisher told the board.
The district could also cut more days from the calendar. However, cutting more than one more day would put the district out of compliance with laws regarding hours of instruction.
The district still faces a $250,000 shortfall next year.
If the personnel cuts made this spring are continued next year -- if teachers, aides and custodians aren't replaced -- the district will make up roughly $145,000 of that shortfall.
That leaves another $105,000 to be cut -- probably from staff and programs.
Sisters resident Tom McCaffrey urged the committee to be conservative going into next year to avoid another round of mid-year cuts.
"I think tough choices have to be made up front," McCaffrey said. "You may have to make some tough choices about programs in the schools."
McCaffrey and others expressed dismay at the sudden layoff of middle school music teacher Jill Storie.
McCaffrey, who has two children at Sisters Middle School, told The Nugget he thinks the abrupt loss of the teacher was disruptive.
"You can say life goes like that, but they (music students) didn't need that," he said. "And it's disruptive for the teachers, not just for the one teacher that got fired."
However, school board member Jeff Smith and high school principal Boyd Keyser noted that, while the district lost a teacher, they were able to save the music program by shuffling staff.
The move reverberated across the district.
Elizabeth Renner, who was teaching choral music and Spanish at Sisters High School moved to the middle school to teach music. Janice Quiros left behind some counseling duties to pick up Renner's Spanish courses.
Michelle Herron was required to scale back her advisor role to take on health classes and Lora Nordquist put aside some curriculum development duties as a temporary high school teacher was laid off.
Similar adjustments may be difficult to pull off as cuts go deeper and the district runs out of room to maneuver. With still more reductions to come, the budget knife looms over school programs.
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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