Medford School Board members predicted they will face “difficult decisions” and asked about the possibility of teacher and staff cuts Thursday night after hearing a presentation on an anticipated $15-million district budget shortfall over the next two school years.

Inadequate funding in the face of inflation, decreasing enrollment/birth rate trends, increased state mandates and the end of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding are all factors, district administrators said, pointing to a $9.49-million shortfall for the 2024-25 school year and an anticipated $5.82-million deficit during the 2025-26 school year.

“This obviously isn’t great news, but it’s important to be transparent about it,” Medford School Board member Michelle Atkinson said before thanking presenters Brad Earl, assistant superintendent of operations, and John Petach, the district’s finance controller.

Board member Suzanne Messer listed off challenges the district has attempted to solve, ranging from class sizes limits to addressing student misbehavior, before she posed a rhetorical question about the budget.

“(These measures are) unfunded, now we’re short all of this money and now we’re going to cut teachers and cut staff and cut all this stuff in order to make this stuff work?” Messer asked.

Board member Michael Williams said he believed the board will have to make “difficult decisions” and asked Earl about using reserve funding to remedy the shortfall.

Earl said he did not want to forecast any use of reserves because the district is still working on a proposed budget.

Aside from their own budget preview, Earl and Petach noted challenges facing other Oregon public schools, including the Salem-Keizer Public School District’s announcement Thursday that more than 400 employees will lose their jobs at the end of this school year.

Thursday’s Medford School Board discussion, which did not include public comment, was a preliminary one. The district will bring a specific plan to its budget committee May 2 to begin addressing the current and projected deficits as part of creating the fiscal year 2024-25 proposed budget. 

“In that budget, just like these other districts, we’re going to be figuring it out,” Petach said at the meeting, “and that means cutting costs to live within the revenue that you are provided.”

The budget committee — comprising the school board and seven appointed community members — plans to hold meetings May 2, 16 and 30. All meetings will include public feedback and potential budget amendments. The committee will then vote on a proposed budget for the school board to review. The board is scheduled to vote on the budget on June 27, just days before the June 30 deadline set by state statute.

On Thursday, Medford schools Superintendent Bret Champion referred to the committee’s process when Atkinson asked how the school board can make cuts while supporting district families and schools.

“This isn’t a question of if this needs to be done … it’s a thing; it needs to be done,” Champion said. 

The district, he said, will try to present a budget that preserves key priorities, including school security and learning via school choice.

“Those are the lenses through which we are looking at next year’s budget and what potential cuts might look like,” Champion said.

In an interview, Earl, who has been with the district since 2010, said the last time there was a shortfall was during the 2011-12 school year. He said the challenge for board members at this point is to not think too much about solutions until the budget committee does its work. 

“It’s their nature, and it’s human nature, frankly, to want to jump to solutions,” Earl said. “It’s too early to tell the board, ‘This is the solution we’re going to propose.'”