Corvallis School District: 2025-26 Budget Update and Staffing Changes

Background

Since the beginning of this school year, we’ve continued to share that our district is experiencing a steady decline in student enrollment, which will result in less funding in the 2025–26 school year. We’ve also shared that more difficult financial decisions are on the horizon. 

Last year, we shared information with staff, families, and our community about how enrollment affects our budget, how we develop the budget, and the decisions we faced. This year, those challenges have deepened. Declining student enrollment and the need to reduce our budget have led to tough decisions. We must reduce our district budget by $2.98 million for the upcoming school year to balance projected funding with expected expenses.

Factors Influencing These Changes:

• Student enrollment: Like many school districts, we are seeing fewer students in our schools. We expect approximately 240 fewer students in the 2025-26 school year. We have more 12th graders graduating than kindergartners coming in. This change directly impacts our resources and staffing allocations because the number of students we serve directly determines our school funding.
• State funding: State funding for public education is not adequate. This requires us to make careful decisions about resources to operate within our budget while maintaining essential programs and services.

Input and Considerations

Input

In response to last year’s feedback, we built in opportunities this year to hear from staff, families, students, and the community before making any budget or reduction decisions.

• We held listening sessions with high school students to discuss how district funds are used at their schools and to hear how funding impacts their experience.
• All district departments and schools received a budget presentation at their staff meetings, which allowed them to ask questions and share feedback about the budget.
• The district shared a survey for staff, families, students, and the community to submit a budget question or provide input on the district’s budget for the 2025/2026 school year.

Considerations

The district responded to questions submitted through the survey by adding answers to our Budget FAQ. We compiled community budget suggestions into a detailed report on our website in the Listening and Learning Budget Input Report.

Part III of the report includes submitted budget reduction recommendations. Each of the recommendations was reviewed and categorized as:

• Green: These ideas are possible to implement without significant challenges or are already in place.
• Yellow: These are ideas that could work but may require adjustments to other aspects of the budget.
• Red: Unfortunately, these ideas are not feasible due to constraints such as state mandates, district policies, contracts, or logistical limitations.

The report explains why the district placed each suggestion in its specific category.

In addition to those considerations, the district also made decisions knowing we need to adjust class sizes to align with current enrollment, and with a priority to hold elementary access to art, music, library, and physical education each week for every student.

Decisions

As a result, the district will implement the following changes for the 2025-2026 school year.

We are reducing department support positions at the district level by consolidating responsibilities. Additionally, we are reducing an administrative position by consolidating roles.

To adjust class sizes to match current enrollment, we are reducing 17 classroom teaching positions at the building level and six positions to part-time through partial layoffs.

• We are making these reductions because approximately 240 fewer students are expected in the 2025-26 school year.
• We made decisions about these reductions based on seniority and union contract rules.

While students will still have a special every day, we are reducing elementary music from two times a week for 30 minutes to one time a week for 45 minutes. Our elementary music teachers will work across two school buildings rather than just one.

This change helps us keep as many staff members as we can by having them work in more than one school. It also lets us keep art, music, and PE in all our schools.

• While the Local Option Levy provides funding to support these subjects, general district funds also support these positions. 
• The Local Option Levy allows our district to provide these subjects at a higher level than general funds alone, and than other districts in Oregon can. 

The district has finalized staffing plans for the 2025-26 school year, and supervisors shared information directly with staff whose positions were reduced or who are receiving a different placement for the 2025-26 school year. Building principals also shared information about upcoming changes with staff in their building.

We understand that many families have expressed concern and frustration about not hearing from the district before staffing cuts were announced or about which staff or positions were being cut. We first needed to speak directly with staff whose positions were impacted by these reductions. Please also know that this time of year often sees a lot of changes, with retirements, transfers, and other staff shifts happening daily. So while some changes are certain, others may still adjust based on these types of changes. We know that staffing changes can create uncertainty, and we want to assure you that our main goal is still to provide a high-quality education for all our students.

Community Questions

Recently, the community has circulated many questions about enrollment, transfers, and district office staffing. We want to share accurate information and data on these topics.

Enrollment/Transfers

Question: The number of students transferring to other districts or enrolling in private schools, homeschools, or charter schools.

While many families choose educational options like private schools, homeschooling, or transferring to other districts, we also have a significant number of families from outside our district boundaries who actively choose to enroll their children in our Corvallis schools.

Data:

• For the 2024-25 school year, 48 students transferred to Corvallis from outside the district. 
• For the 2024-25 school year, 87 students within the CSD boundary transferred to other districts or online programs.
• We also currently have 377 students who attend our schools who do not live within our Corvallis boundary. 
• Looking specifically at private schools, since the 2018/19 school year, CSD enrollment has declined by 770 students. Private school enrollment has increased by 230 students. These students live in multiple school districts while attending a private school in our district boundary. Based on date from area private schools, we estimate that 60 more students attend private schools than before the pandemic.
• Looking specifically at Santiam Christian (the largest private school in CSD boundaries) with 780 students:
  • 26% (202) live in the Corvallis or Philomath boundary.

More information on enrollment and transfers is in the enrollment section of the Budget FAQ.

District Office Staffing

Question: How many district-level administrators do we have compared to the number of students and to other districts? 

The Budget Committee discussed this topic at the April 24 Budget Committee meeting and updated this question in the staffing section of the Budget FAQ document this week. To understand how our district-level administrator staffing compares, we used data that reflects both student needs and staffing capacity.

• Instead of examining just enrollment, we used ADMw, a measure that accounts for students who need additional support, giving us a more accurate view of our population.
• We also measured staffing by FTE (full-time equivalent), not headcount, because not all administrative positions are full-time.
• Finally, we compared ourselves to nine similar districts—those with a comparable number of schools, student demographics, and a local option levy—to ensure a fair and meaningful comparison.
• We also examined the number of students per FTE and the average salary per administrator.

Data:

This data shows that our administrator FTE per student is just below the average comparison district, and just above the average comparison district for average salary. 

The complete table with more information, including comparing academic success metrics for comparison districts, is available in the District FTE Comparison Report. 

District Budget Process

The next budget committee meeting is on Thursday, May 15. This meeting is at the District Office Board Room at 6:30 pm and can also be viewed on the district YouTube channel. 

At any time throughout the year, staff, students, families, and the community can provide input to the school board through written information, email, or public comment at school board meetings. More information here: School Board – Provide Input. There is always the opportunity for public comment at regular board meetings.