Tax measure will affect Sisters schools

State Measure 30 will make an $800-million difference to the state budget during the current (2003-05) biennium. Ballots for the measure went to voters in the mail last week.

City of Sisters services will be basically unaffected and Sisters will only feel any impact from state or county cuts indirectly.

But Superintendent Lynn Baker says Measure 30 will make a $600,000 difference to Sisters schools, with about one-third of the impact being felt this year, 2003-04, and two-thirds next year.

If the district has to cut roughly $200,000 this year and double that amount next year, where will the cuts be made?

"We know that we need to look at three general areas of our budget," Baker told The Nugget. "They are, of course, personnel, programs and the length of the school year. So we will be examining all of those. I know that in the past employees have taken the brunt of the cuts by losing days. They've done that several times. So we're going to be looking at everything, not just days."

Does that mean possible layoffs? Yes, Baker said.

"Right after days (length of school year), our next biggest savings potential, because it's 85 percent of our budget, is personnel," he said.

"I'm very averse to giving somebody a pink slip in the middle of this school year but I would certainly be looking (at possible staff reductions) at the end of the year for next year."

The district has 148 employees, about half of whom are teachers or administrators.

Last year, fiscal 2002-2003, the district saved about $175,000 by cutting five days from the school calendar. The school board purposely delayed the start of school by four days, anticipating further shrinkage of the state funds upon which schools rely for two-thirds of their money.

When Measure 30's smaller ($310 million) predecessor, Measure 28, was defeated in January 2003, the Sisters board deleted a fifth day of school.

On the advice of then-Superintendent Steve Swisher, the board was similarly cautious in budgeting for the current year, first year of a new state biennium. Even though the 2003 Legislature officially appropriated $5.2 billion for schools in 2003-05, those who follow these matters knew that $414 million of that was uncertain because it was part of an overall $800 million in state appropriations that depended on a package of temporary new taxes and tax increases.

As expected, opponents of those taxes easily gathered enough signatures to refer the package to the voters in the form of Measure 30. All statewide polls to date indicate that the measure is likely to be defeated.

Looking down this dark and twisting fiscal road, the Sisters School Board last spring assumed a state school appropriation of $5.0 billion and set its 2003-04 general fund spending at $8.4 million, about $300,000 less than if it had assumed a full $5.2-billion state appropriation.

But if Measure 30 is defeated, the state is expected to drop its school fund back to a biennial total of $4.8 billion, leaving Sisters in need of making more cuts. Because the district is halfway through the current school year, the superintendent is guessing that the district will try to absorb the larger share of the reduction next year.

All such calculations are subject to change, of course. The Legislature might go back into special session after the election to try to soften some of the spending reductions or rearrange the targets.

It did so after Measure 28 was defeated. A debate is already underway among legislators and Gov. Ted Kulongoski over whether the Legislature should reconsider some of the "automatic" cuts it built into its tax legislation in the event of rejection at the polls.

Another complicating factor locally is that the current teachers' contract extends through the current school year. The two-year contract provided salary increases of 2.1 percent in 2002-03 and 2 percent in 2003-04.

Bargaining on a new contract normally would have begun by now. But the district and the Sisters Education Association are holding everything in abeyance until they learn the outcome of the voting on Measure 30.

That outcome "will put parameters on everything we do," Baker said.

The results will be known the evening of Tuesday, February 3, the official date of the mailed-ballot election.