Local ESD funding has been rising

Statewide equalization of school funding has been the bane of some affluent Oregon school districts. But the experience of the High Desert Education Service District illustrates the good side of equalization.

Based in Redmond, the High Desert ESD encompasses Crook and Deschutes counties.

Its superintendent, Dennis Dempsey, is a former Sisters High School principal.

Dempsey appeared at the February 14 Sisters School Board meeting to obtain the board’s approval of next year’s menu of 13 “resolution” services to be offered by his organization. These are funded by the state on a per-student basis.

Dempsey reminded the board that six years ago the Legislature made a commitment to equalize support for the state’s 20 ESDs. At the time, what was then called the Crook Deschutes ESD received $52 per student, one of the lowest amounts in the state. The allocations to other ESDs ranged up to $2,100 per student.

The amount that the local ESD receives from the state has climbed steadily since, reaching $242 per student in the current year, 2004-05. Dempsey expects it to reach $286 per student in 2005-06, the last year in the equalization process.

By then, all of the ESDs are expected to be in the range of $285 to $300, a much narrower range than when the process started.

“Obviously, it’s been a big boon the last four years…for our local school districts,” Dempsey told The Nugget last week. “We’ve been able to provide a lot more services and help them out over those years because of this.”

There are roughly 28,000 students in the school districts served by Dempsey’s organization, which means that the state allocation this year is close to $7 million. Ninety percent of the state money goes for the services to member districts.

That is only about a quarter of the total ESD budget, however. The larger portion of money the district receives comes from grants, contracts, and other sources. It supports a wide assortment of contracted services, many of them for school districts outside of High Desert ESD boundaries.

It’s possible, of course, that by next year the list of ESDs will look significantly different.

There is a strong push in the current Legislature to consolidate these districts and reduce their number.

A Senate bill would let all school districts with more than 10,000 students opt out of ESDs and merge the remaining ESDs into a total of eight.

Countering that, the Oregon Association of ESDs is offering a plan that would reduce the number of these organizations on the basis of factors including services, numbers of students, numbers of school districts and geography. The result would probably be an array of 12 to 15 ESDs compared with the present 20.

The Senate Education Committee has appointed a work group composed of legislators and educators to draft a bill for the committee. Bend School Superintendent Doug Nelson is a member of the group.