School Board Adopts Budget
Thursday, June 21, 2018 14:02
Budget plan includes full school year • steady class sizes • counselors at every school • more elementary PE • high school success • behavioral supports
The Eugene School District 4J Board of Directors has adopted the district’s budget plan for the coming year. The budget was unanimously approved on June 20, with votes of 6–0 by board members in attendance.
Eugene School District 4J’s general fund budget for the 2018–19 school year is $213.8 million. The budget reflects the goals of the district’s 4J Vision 20/20 Strategic Plan while recognizing the continued resource challenges the district faces. The budget plan maintains recent key improvements, invests in supports for student learning, and targets resources to support student behavior needs, while planning ahead for growing costs.
Superintendent Gustavo Balderas notes, “We are fortunate to be able to make targeted, carefully planned investments in our educational systems, aligned with our strategic plan. While our limited resources still can’t fund everything we want for kids in our schools, the improvements we are investing in will make a real difference for our students.”
The 2018–19 budget:
Continues key investments
- Maintains a full school year with no furlough days, now with a consistent calendar for all schools
- Holds the line on class sizes, adding teachers to keep up with growing enrollment and balance oversized classes in the fall
- Provides full schedules for 9th and 10th graders, to help students get a strong high school start and stay on track to graduate
- Maintains new full-time counselors at elementary schools to support students’ emotional and behavioral needs
Invests in strengthening our educational system
- Supports high school success with expanded career and technical education programs, college-level coursework, and ninth grade transition and success supports (Measure 98 plan)
- Adds physical education teachers and maintains music teachers to enrich students’ learning and provide more prep time for elementary teachers to prepare for quality instruction
- Supports student behavior with targeted resources to more effectively address students’ behavioral needs, while supporting a slope down over time of educational assistant staffing temporarily added using one-time resources
- Makes modest budget investments in targeted areas, including school safety and emergency preparedness, middle school mentoring program, world language and elementary math curriculum implementation, high-quality professional development, and Japanese and Spanish immersion in the North Eugene region
Plans ahead to balance growing costs and projected deficits in future years
- Restores a general fund reserve level of 5 percent (about three weeks of operating expenses), per board policy, providing some cushion against unexpected cost increases or revenue reductions
- Sets aside some reserves to balance rising costs in the next few years, including expected PERS rate increases, to prevent the need for draconian cuts in the years ahead
The district’s budget committee received and examined the proposed budget on May 7 and approved it on May 21 to forward to the school board. The school board held a public hearing on June 6 and adopted the budget on June 20. The budget is for the year July 1, 2018–June 30, 2019.
