Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic 

Administration's proposal represents small bump from current year spending, includes teacher cuts

Newberg School District administrators introduced a proposed budget for the 2018-2019 school year for the first time at the May 1 budget meeting and are projecting $49,719,464 in expenditures.

That represents a 5.1 percent drop from the 2017-2018 adopted budget of $52.4 million, but is a slight increase (0.5 percent) over what the district projects its will spend in the current school year ($49.5 million) after it cut staff in response to an unexpected enrollment drop in September.

After working with its various unions to cut the school year by four days, the administration had been projecting that it would have to cut upwards of 25 FTE (full time equivalent) from its licensed teaching staff.

That number came in at 23.52 FTE, but according to Director of Finance Ilean Clute, the cuts to licensed staff that can be considered as "classroom instruction" amount to 16.96 FTE. The rest are instructional facilitators (1.96), English Language Development (ELD) teachers (2.0) and reading and benchmark support (2.0), with the latter two being elementary-level positions.

The 23.52 FTE in licensed cuts represents 66.9 percent of the total staff the district is cutting (35.16 FTE), which trimmed $2.55 million from the budget.

All three employee groups (licensed, classified and administrative/CPST) saw their FTE reductions fall pretty closely in line with their respective percentage of the district's labor costs, including licensed (68.3 percent).

The district is also cutting 6.64 FTE in classified employees, which represents 18.9 percent of the cuts compared to licensed staff accounting for 19.3 percent of labor costs.

Administrative and CPST (certified, professional, supervisory and technology) staff account for 12.4 percent of labor costs, but the 5.0 FTE cut from the district office leadership team accounts for 14.2 percent of the staff reductions.

The expected result of the staff cuts is a rise in classroom size, which is expected to be felt most at the middle school level. Clute presented a historical budgeting figure or average of recent years for classroom sizes in grades K-5, 6-8 and 9-12. When adjusting to reflect instructional time, which is more accurate for middle and high school, the district is expecting to budget middle school classrooms at 31.71 students per teacher, an increase of 2.54 students over the historical figure of 29.17. The high school rate will rise to 31.04 (adjusted), a bump of 1.29 from the recent funding average, while elementary classrooms will be budgeted at 25.74, a smaller bump up from 25.0.

The budget also features a $1.146 million ending fund balance for the current year, which represents 2.3 percent of the budget. The district is projecting a small increase to $1.25 million after 2018-2019, with $1 million planned to be categorized as unappropriated to fall in line with the board's recently updated policy on ending fund balances.

The budget committee is set to convene for a "detail meeting" from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday to review the budget's alignment with the district's strategic plan, provide detail at the school level, request additional information and hold discussions.