Oregon Public Broadcasting

With Congress back in session Tuesday, the Oregon school community is holding it collective breath. School leaders hope Senators will approve a school bailout bill that's already made it through the U.S. House of Representatives. If federal money doesn't materialize, school leaders will have to finalize cuts totaling nearly $240 million. Rob Manning reports.

The David Douglas school board hasn’t decided how it’ll close a nearly $4.5  million budget gap.

Barbara Rommel retired as superintendent at the end of June. Her idea to cut librarians fell flat. She says it’s still probably a more popular idea in Southeast Portland, than say, cutting music.

Barbara Rommel: "I think it would be an extremely challenging move to cut the music program at David Douglas to any great extent."

Rommel spoke while visiting a music store, where she accepted a national music award.

One other Oregon school district won a similar award from the National Association of Music Merchants: Pendleton. Assistant Superintendent Tricia Baker says in spite of the national reputation for its music program, Pendleton had to reduce its music staff.

But she says students shouldn't feel it.

Tricia Baker: "Part of the reason we were able to reduce that is looking at a different scheduling structure at both the middle and high school, and how we're offering courses. So we were able to find some efficiencies within our own system, and not eliminate that program."

Pendleton also avoided cuts to music by cutting elsewhere — namely, the school calendar. Pendleton board members voted a year ago to cut 10 days.

After hearing last month that the state budget was shrinking further, district and union leaders in Pendleton agreed to take more days off the calendar.

Tricia Baker: "Actually between the '09-'10 and '10-'11 school years, we'll have taken 14 less days."

Districts like Pendleton and La Grande made big cuts before last school year. They were planning ahead, on the assumption that lawmakers were overly optimistic in estimating how much tax revenue would come in.

That eastern Oregon pessimism means those districts may avoid the kind of big budget cuts this summer now facing places like Portland Public Schools.

Board members in Oregon's largest district face a $19 million hole. District leaders have recommended deep cuts to physical education in the early grades.

Drew Mahalic with the Oregon Sports Authority is a leading opponent.

Drew Mahalic: "We believe that to single-out physical education teachers, as opposed to any other subject — it's not a balanced approach, it's short-sighted, and it really is something we can't accept."

There was a brief flurry of good news last week, when a few Oregon schools learned they were getting a bundle of money.

Portland superintendent Carole Smith celebrated a multi-million dollar federal grant for long-suffering, Roosevelt High.

Smith: "Needless to say, we're extremely excited on behalf of the Roosevelt community to be receiving the grants that are being awarded to Roosevelt here today. Seven point seven million dollars is an incredible amount of money and an incredible investment in this school."

The $34 million in grants for struggling schools came out of the last stimulus bill.

School leaders throughout Oregon hope Congress provides another $10 billion bailout for public schools. Oregon's portion of that would fill about half of Oregon's education shortfall.

But one stumbling block may be that the Obama Administration doesn't want to divert money from its education reform initiatives — like the one that sent millions to Roosevelt. 

Still, some school leaders are maintaining optimism. Portland board members said in a statement there was a "ray of hope" of an education jobs' bill passing in the U.S. Senate.

Roger Woehl with the suburban West Linn-Wilsonville district is hoping for the same thing.

Roger Woehl: "Clearly, if there's revenue from the federal program, which we, we think that's going to happen, we're very hopeful of that. But we'll also be looking at ‘are there are other places within the current budget, that we can say let's not do that this year, let's stop that expenditure'."

Superintendent Woehl says West Linn-Wilsonville plans to fill its budget gap much the way Pendleton is doing it — largely by cutting school days.

There can be legal consequences, if cutting days puts a district below the state's minimum number of instructional hours.

The decision can be tense, locally, too. Eliminating school days saves money by reducing staff salaries. And such reductions need union approval.