Black Butte School: Smaller is sometimes better

John Sheldahl won re-election to the board of Black Butte School District last week. His 12-vote victory over challenger Doug Curtis wasn't exactly front-page news, even in Central Oregon. In fact, the district rarely makes headlines anywhere, and many residents like it that way.

This preference stems partly from gratitude that the district continues to exist. By normal odds, it shouldn't. One of the smallest districts in Oregon, it defies conventional educational wisdom that the best schooling is provided by systems large enough to offer a full K-12 curriculum. Black Butte offers K-8.

The bigger-is-better notion has propelled two major rounds of school consolidation in Oregon. The most recent, triggered by 1991 legislation, cut the number of districts in the state from 300 to the current 201.

Black Butte was nearly caught in the merger net. But it used a combination of charm and political clout to help push through an exemption that allowed about 20 small districts, mainly east of the Cascades, to stay independent. Half a dozen Black Butte students and their teacher, Toni Foster, were in the crowd smiling over Gov. John Kitzhaber's shoulder in 1995 as he signed the exemption bill that preserved their district.

Despite its name, Black Butte School District has nothing to do with Black Butte Ranch, the famed residential resort just up Highway 20. Black Butte School District covers 194 square miles, with far more trees than people, in the southwestern corner of Jefferson County. It serves Camp Sherman and the surrounding community that stretches along the Metolius River in the shadow of Black Butte, the mountain.

The district has 224 registered voters. By contrast, neighboring Sisters School District has about 4,400.

John Sheldahl, 61, came to Camp Sherman as postmaster in 1988 and was appointed to the school board soon afterward. As he prepares to embark on his fourth term, he and his board colleagues face two major problems, one old and one new.

The older, almost perpetual problem is maintaining enough enrollment to run a good program. The two-room concrete block school just across the bridge and up the road from the Camp Sherman Store has only 19 students this year. Seven years ago it had 37. One reason is that as Camp Sherman area property values keep rising, it becomes harder for middle-class parents of school-aged children to buy in.

But Sheldahl is philosophical about it: "Historically, (enrollment) varies so much. It depends on who moves into town and who leaves. This last year we were down but it will come back up."

The second problem facing the district is that Toni Foster, who personifies the school and has been its Head Teacher since 1980, is retiring. This year, she is not just the Head Teacher, she is the school's only teacher.

In fact, Foster has already officially retired, prompted in part by worries over the future of PERS (the Public Employees Retirement System.) She is working on an indefinite contract now, but the board hopes to find a replacement during the coming year.

All Camp Sherman students in kindergarten through grade six study at Black Butte School. Those in grades seven and eight are given the option of staying or going to middle school in Sisters. All of the high school students go to Sisters. Black Butte pays the tuition for all of its students who attend Sisters schools and counts those students as its own for purposes of state support funding.

If schools still depended primarily on local property taxes as they did before Measure 5 turned Oregon's fiscal world upside down in 1990, Black Butte would be one of the wealthiest districts in the state. Its taxable assessed value per student is about $1.2 million, compared with $780,000 in Sisters, $480,000 in Bend and $290,000 in Redmond.

Because of its property wealth, the district has a low "permanent" property tax rate of $3.01 per $1,000 of assessed value. The rate in Sisters is $4.09, in Bend $4.76 and in Redmond $4.09.

This fiscal muscle has kept property taxes low in the past but doesn't do the district much good in the new era of statewide equalization. It receives the same $5,000 per student that other districts receive from the state. But one result of its local assets, and its tradition of frugality, is a collection of reserve funds that protect it from a variety of eventualities. This year's general fund is about $340,000 but the district holds reserves of more than double that amount.

Black Butte students are blessed with a rich educational environment. The school stresses parental involvement, but does not have to twist arms to get it. Volunteers, a number of whom are retired teachers living in Camp Sherman, are a constant presence. Parents sign a release at the beginning of the year authorizing Foster to take their children on field trips whenever and wherever an opportunity arises, which is often.

Foster runs "a very rigorous work-sample program in which students have to do 10 work samples a year and submit three to community assessment teams."

Foster is a big fan of the Internet, and her school is equipped with ample means of exploiting it.

"There's anything you'd ever want on there; it's incredible the kinds of things we have access to. We offer kids high school Spanish I and Spanish II, and my crop of seventh graders this year, most of them have had two years of Spanish so they're taking Latin."

The Latin class is new this year, beamed in from Kentucky. The Spanish classes come from South Carolina.

"People in the district feel strongly about art, they feel strongly about music, they feel strongly about foreign languages and they feel strongly about reading," Foster said.

How do the students do? Quite well, even though the school doesn't show up on annual state assessment reports because it rarely has six students taking a test in a given subject and grade. Black Butte buys its own assessments from a testing company.

An informal gauge of success is provided every year by the performance of former Black Butte students at Sisters High School. Foster says they do very well but doesn't want to give out grade averages for fear of appearing to brag.