By Mike Van Meter
Bulletin Staff Writer
It's mid-May once again, and if you're in charge of an Oregon school district budget:
A) The sky is falling.
B) Flowers are blooming.
C) Well, the guess was right this year.
It no longer takes a calculator and accounting expertise to balance a school district's books as much as it takes green eyeshades, a set of dice (preferably loaded) and a craps table.
Lady Luck is the state of Oregon, its school funding formula and the variability of the factors in that equation. In determining how much money is sent to local schools, the Oregon Department of Education considers several things, including:
Student "weighting." This factor reflects the number of small schools in a district, pregnant and parenting teens, special needs students and socio-economic indicators that give a district more or less per student depend ing on the final tally. These conditions can change dramatically over the course of a year.
Enrollment. In an increasingly mobile society, this changes rapidly and is much more unpredictable than it used to be. On top of that, the department does not count bodies, but something called "average daily membership" that takes into account how often students show up in class.
Funding ratio. Districts receive funding on an "equity" amount based on the historical funding provided by a district's taxpayers. Where property taxpayers have paid less for schools than elsewhere, payments are less and payments are more where funding has been higher.
This amounts to a state-sponsored perpetuation of funding differences among local schools, which were decided years -- sometimes even decades -- ago by local voters. A process called "equalization" is intended to raise districts like Bend-LaPine to the levels of Portland, Tigard and other higher-spending districts, but progress has been incremental.
What makes the whole thing a crapshoot is the fact that every factor is a moving target -- creating a sort of three-legged stool with randomly operated telescopic legs. You never know when you're going to get knocked off.
"I wouldn't just say that it's just complicated," said Jim Kanoff, business manager for the Jefferson County School District in Madras. "The way it's set up there's so many variables that it's very difficult to hit.
"I think ... we'd almost rather have less money and have good information to build our budget the importance of it is that critical."
Final funding for the 1994-95 school year -- that's last school year -- was announced last Monday as part of what has become the dreaded "mid-May adjustment." At the same time, a fresh estimate for the 1995-96 school year -- just a month before it ends -- was passed along. And early estimates for next school year came in.
The mid-May adjustment follows estimates that are updated throughout the year. The latest projection was in March. Schools used that number to build their proposed 1996-97 budgets, presented to budget committees earlier this month.
This time around, three local school districts -- Sisters, Bend-LaPine and Madras -- were hit hard. Sisters and Bend in particular face deeper staffing cuts than they planned on just 10 days ago.
But purse strings sometimes swing the opposite direction: In February 1995, a $2.9 million positive change in Bend-LaPine funding estimates was credited with saving the jobs of 20 to 30 teachers.
Five years ago, state funding wasn't nearly as critical to school budgets. But 1991 was the year the Measure 5 property tax limit began taking effect; the final step of the phase-in was last fall. Part of Measure 5 required the state to take up school funding shortfalls left by lower property taxes.
In 1996, state income taxes rather than local property taxes supply the vast majority of school budgets, leaving funding to the whims of the Legislature and the complex formulas that give school district business managers stomachaches.
"That's the most distressing part of this to me," said Gil Stewart of the Crook County School District. "All of this stuff is totally out of our control."