Saxton: Outlook for Tigard-Tualatin School District budget a complicated mix
What can parents expect for next year’s school district budget? District Superintendent Rob Saxton talked all about it Nov. 24
Tigard-Tualatin School District Superintendant Rob Saxton met with parents and faculty Tuesday night to discuss the state of the school district’s budget and what people can expect in the future.
And the answer is: it’s complicated.
Tigard-Tualatin’s budget hinges on three factors at the state level, the state’s revenue and two tax measures, which would raise taxes in the state by $733 million.
Oregon’s Department of Education initially allocated $6 billion to k-12 education for the 2009-11 school years, Saxton said. But with the current recession, funds are getting tighter and tighter.
That $6 billion includes $200 million that K-12 education will only receive if the state’s reserve fund stays above a $300 million watermark by June 2010.
The state’s reserves were at $312 million in the most recent quarterly revenue findings. The next will be issued in February.
An additional $285 million in the state’s $6 billion K-12 allocations stem from two tax measures on the Jan. 26 ballot, Oregon Ballot Measures 66 and 67, which — if they fail — would erase $285 million from what the state would be paying Tigard-Tualatin schools and others.
If both of the measures pass and the state’s revenue stays above $300 million, there are no problems, Saxton said. But if just one of them fails, the K-12 allocations could drop to anywhere from $5.8 billion to $5.5 billion.
Tigard-Tualatin schools expected some of this, and decided not to budget themselves at the $6 billion level, as some Portland area schools did, instead budgeting themselves at the $5.6 billion level, which means that the district is in much better shape than many Oregon schools.
“It’s an interesting and scary issue,” Saxton said. “The vast majority of students in Oregon, the 10 largest districts budgeted themselves either at the $5.8 billion or $6 billion level.”
Those districts include Portland Public Schools, and the Beaverton, Salem and Eugene school districts.
If anything happens to the state’s budget — either the reserves drop below that cutoff point of $300 million, or one of the two tax measures fails in January — those schools will not have enough money budgeted to maintain the level of programs that they are currently offering and will have to make serious financial decisions.
“Our district chose to budget on $5.6 billion. I don’t know if that was the right number, but I know that today I feel pretty good about that number,” Saxton said. “Especially because we had some funds put away that we can supplement it with.”
The school put an extra $5 million aside at the start of the year, in the event that something happened with the state’s budget. That supplement came from the district’s Rainy Day Fund, as well as more than $1 million in concessions made by district employees.
If both tax measures fail, and the state’s reserves drop below the $300 million trigger, the district would need to draw $4 million from their own reserves, as well as raise an additional $1.46 million in order to maintain their current service level, putting their once double-digit reserve bank account at about $3.3 million.
“That’s a decision for the (school board) to make whether to do that or not, but I think that they want to see the same service level as last year,” Saxton said. “It could get pretty skinny.”
If one of the tax measures fails, or the reserves trigger is pulled, or some combination of the three, and the state ends up funding schools at the $5.8 billion level, the district will need to draw $1 million from their reserves.
If everything works out as planned, and the state funds schools at the $6 billion level, the state will see an additional $3.14 million come their way.
But there’s no knowing what will happen until the January ballot measures are decided, and the February quarterly revenue forecast is released, determining if the state’s reserves have dipped beyond that $300 million trigger, Saxton said.
“I probably didn’t give you anything that you can hang your hat on, but I don’t have anything either,” Saxton said. “Because the district decided to budget on $5.6 billion and not $6 billion, we were able to offer a lot more programs this year than we would have been able to otherwise, and I feel good about all those kinds of things.”