Sean C. Morgan
Jason Redick is beginning his second year as chairman of the District 55 School Board, and he thinks it will be just about as busy as the last.
“This last year was very, very busy for the board,” Redick said. “It wasn’t a regular year for board members because there was so much going on.”
A lot of it is tied to a shrinking budget.
Last year, the board had to negotiate salaries and benefits with both of the district’s unions. It went through a school closure process with Crawfordsville. It hired a new superintendent, and it helped guide and then approved budget cuts.
The district also had some good news last year when it was among the top three Oregon districts listed in a report on efficiency.
“You try to do what you can, and you always worry about it,” Redick said. “But to have someone outside recognize you’re doing it efficiently and effectively, it’s always nice to have someone say that.”
Redick is happy with how the board handled things last year, he said. With the superintendent, he was happy the board chose to get professional help in selecting and hiring Don Schrader.
Consultant Greg McKenzie of Window Leadership did a great job helping the board through the process, Redick said.
Closing Crawfordsville was a tough decision, he said. “It’s been a lot of hard meetings over a long period of time,” Redick said. “It wasn’t something any of us wanted to see, but something had to be done.”
There were too many reasons not to close one of the rural schools when it came to finances, he said. With shrinking enrollment, it was getting more expensive per student at the rural schools.
Redick ran for the board on this issue, he said. He opposed closing a rural school five years ago, and the discussion at the time piqued his interest.
“At that time, it was probably better to keep them open,” Redick said. The district’s finances bounced back fairly well after that discussion, and the district developed a policy to decide whether to close a school.
“Had we made a drastic cut at that point, I think we would’ve kicked ourselves,” he said.
Now, Holley, where Crawfordsville students will attend next year, is still going to be a small school, continuing to maintain the advantages of being such, Redick said.
“When it comes down to it, I think the community realized it was a decision that had to be made,” Redick said, and no one on the board liked that decision.
“I walked away from that meeting, and I felt miserable for weeks,” Redick said.
Redick is a little happier about how the budget for next year developed.
“The Budget Committee was pretty united around the fact we needed to have a higher ending fund balance,” Redick said. That was made possible by including four furlough days, which amounts to a pay cut for the year for district staff, saving about a quarter million dollars.
The ending fund balance serves as a contingency fund to cover the cost of emergencies, Redick said, and it helps start funding for the following school year.
Without the furlough days, the district would have had less than 1 percent of its general fund budget in its ending fund balance. The furlough days raise that to nearly 3 percent.
The district didn’t cut any programs entirely, but it did partially cut auto shop at the high school, Redick said. That was a building-level decision.
“It walks away from where I want to be with vocational tech education,” Redick said.
Next year, the board will continue to wrestle with the budget after tapping several one-time sources of cash and reserves. The board also will negotiate full contracts with both unions, and the board will forge a relationship with the new superintendent.
The budget is front and center beginning the school year.
“Where we end up this next year, it’s tough to say,” Redick said. He anticipates a year of debates about where to save money.
Schrader is proactive with ideas, Redick said. It’s hard to say what will happen, and at any point, the state can change things.
But Redick is sure that 2012-13 is on Schrader’s and the board’s minds.
“We’re going to have our plate full with the finances of the district. Just keeping the district financially stable is a huge job.”
He also is optimistic about the employees’ unions and their role in finances.
“In my conversations with the unions, with employees, I have felt good about their attitudes toward this district,” Redick said. “The four furlough days come right out of their pocket.”
They’ve also agreed to zero or nearly zero increases to pay and benefits.
“It goes right back to the fact we have good people working in this district,” Redick said. They care about the community, the children and the long-term health of the district.
He feels like the board will be able to sit down with the employees this year and have a good conversation about where the district needs to be, he said.
The board has one particular employee it will need to give attention next year.
“Obviously, we have a new superintendent,” Redick said. “It’s going to take some time to work out the relationship with the new superintendent. That’s going to be a big thing, I think, for us – helping Don get into a working relationship with the board and district.”
Following that, the board will need to support Schrader as he runs the district, Redick said.
As the new year begins, Redick wants to develop some sort of safety program to reduce the number of workman’s compensation claims.
The district’s worker’s compensation provider dropped the district this year, and the district has had to engage another because of the number of claims.
The board probably needs to hear more about it, he said.
“That’s serious money that the district has little control over. We do have a safety program, but the board never really hears about it.”