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Medford school funds decline District faces cuts in staff, programs By VICKI GUARINO The Medford School District is bracing for a year of reductions, omissions and deferments. Declining state funding, coupled with a major purchase of new texts, will force the district to cut back on building maintenance and non-teaching staff, says Superintendent Steve Wisely. The district expects to spend $77 million in Meeting today What: Medford School District Budget Committee meeting When: 7 p.m. Where: South Medford High School cafeteria Who: Open to the public. The committee will review the district's $77 million budget; the school board is expected to adopt the budget June 19 general fund programs for some 12,800 students, up 2.7 percent over the current school year. Adding special grants, meals funding, scholarship trusts and other specially dedicated accounts, the total budget for 2000-01 comes to $87.1 million. The district budget committee will meet at 7 tonight in the South Medford High School cafeteria to review the spending plan. The school board is scheduled to hold a hearing and adopt the budget June 19. The tight budget has been anticipated for more than a year. "This biennium we knew was going to be difficult," says Wisely. "But this (coming) year is unique. This is the first time in at least a half-dozen years that we've had to make the reductions." The single largest proposed cut is $325,000 in building maintenance. Only absolute necessities will be done. Projects to be put off include annual summer painting and small remodeling jobs. Cuts were made to protect what district administrators say are priorities: a sufficient number of teachers to preserve small class sizes in the primary grades, and a long-planned text purchases. "There wasn't enough money to go around, so we had to establish priorities," Wisely says. He traces next year's tight budget to last year's state funding appropriation. The 1999 Legislature's two-year appropriation for public schools was expected to barely maintain programs in the Medford district. But subsequent funding adjustments have resulted in state payments to Medford that have been significantly lower than anticipated. In the current school year _ the first year of the biennium _ Medford has received about $1.5 million less than the $70.8 million anticipated. On top of that, revenue projections for next year already are nearly $500,000 behind original estimates. The adjustments are based on enrollment changes across Oregon, with the faster-growing school districts receiving larger shares of the state appropriation. The Medford district has grown at 1.5 percent to 2 percent a year, but other districts have gained significantly more students. For Medford, lower than anticipated revenue has opened an unprecedented gap between revenue and expenses. While state support is up by 2.7 percent, district wages alone are going up 3 percent. Wages account for 80 to 85 percent of the district's total budget, making the looming funding gap difficult to bridge. In addition to setting aside sufficient funds to maintain teaching staff, and classes as small as 20 in kindergarten and first grade, Medford is continuing large-scale textbook purchases. Administrators expect to spend nearly $500,000 on books this summer. Over the past several years, teachers and administrators have revised curriculum to match new state academic standards, and bought textbooks to match the new lessons. Other cuts planned to close the funding gap include non-teaching support positions including an elementary school dean (a vacancy that won't be filled), two music instruction coordinators and a district administrator. Existing staff will pick up the work load. Also, the district will continue spending down its cash carry-over _ a savings account of sorts collected from unspent revenue and held in reserve from year to year. The district has been using the fund to cover revenue shortfalls in the past several years. As a result, the fund has gotten dangerously low, Wisely says. The district began the 1995-96 school year with $4.3 million carry-over, amounting to 7.3 percent of the budget. The projected carry-over for next year is $721,187, a scant nine-tenths of a percent of the budget. The target carry-over for school districts of Medford's size is 5 percent of the budget. "That carry-over is just as significant as any other source of revenue," Wisely says. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA