Fresh off the news of the passage of the Sweet Home School District’s $40 million School Bond, district Budget Committee members on May 20 approved 1 $93.6 million budget for 2026-27.
District Business Manager Kevin Strong emphasized that the actual spending level for the upcoming fiscal year, beginning July 1, is projected at $63.6 million.
Strong had prepared two drafts of the proposed budget, one based on the success of the bond measure and the other in case it did not pass in the May 19 election, literally the day before the budget meeting.
Budget Committee members are the nine School Board members, Mike Adams (at large), Amanda Carter (Liberty), Chris Hiaasan (at large), Dale Keene (Sweet Home), Dustin Nichol (Holley), Rachel Maynard (At Large), Jenna Northern (Crawfordsville), Mary Speck (Foster) and Robert Webster (Cascadia), as well as Kevin Hill, Jason Redick and Mike Reynolds, all former board members. Northern was absent and Carter participated remotely.
Approval of the proposed budget was unanimous, and it will now go to the School Board for final approval on June 8.
Supt. Terry Martin thanked voters for passing the measure.
“This investment will allow the district to improve school safety, update facilities and strengthen career preparation opportunities for Sweet Home students,” he said in his budget message.
Martin noted that districts, statewide, are facing “a challenging financial environment.”
“Daily, there are news reports regarding mutli-million dollar shortfalls, layoffs, furlough days and program reductions. I am encouraged to report that Sweet Home’s 2026-27 budget does not include cuts like those occurring elsewhere,” Martin said.
The result, he said, is “largely a status-quo budget,” though he cautioned that the district is “not immune from the same financial pressures affecting districts across Oregon. The gape between state funding and rising operational costs continues to narrow.”
Summarizing some of the district’s strategies, Martin said that Sweet Home has tried to keep its administration “lean,” compared to other districts of similar or slightly larger size.
Sweet Home does not have an assistant superintendent, and existing staff cover multiple areas of responsibility, such as separate directors of human resources, executive operations, technology, communications and other departments.
“By limiting administrative overhead, we are able to direct more resources toward schools, classrooms and services for students,” Martin said.
Also, he said, the district is “working diligently” to maximize non-tax-revenue sources, such as investments.
“During the 2024-25 fiscal year, Sweet Home generated more investment earnings on a per-student basis than other school districts in the state,” Martin reported.
Further, he said, budgeting is “conservative” and is planned into the future.
“We avoid using temporary resources to create permanent obligations,” he said. :We review staffing, programs and operating costs on an ongoing basis and have tried to make gradual adjustments before financial challenges become more disruptive.”
Martin said the focus “remains on helping students succeed.”
“A status-quo budget does not mean the district is standing still.”
He said Sweet Home is continuing to focus on early literacy, academic intervention, attendance and career-connected learning – all important “because they directly affect whether students are prepared for the next grade level, graduate on time and leave Sweet Home schools ready for college, career training, employment, military service or other postsecondary opportunities.”
The proposed General Fund which is the primary operating fund for the district and accounts for all revenues and day-to-day expenditures that are not required by law to be tracked in separate, specialized funds, is $39,508,487, an increase from the $38,744,351 General Fund for 2025-26. Spending in the approved budget proposal includes $19,307,846 for instruction, and another $15,516,047 for support services from the General Fund, which are also funded with additional spending of $6,248,612 for instruction and $3,007,184 for support services coming from the Special Revenue Fund.
Most of the other spending and funds in the budget are from grant money or are funds for savings and other district financial transactions.
Strong outlined some of the elements of the $63.6 million in projected spending in the budget:
- $12.3 million in first-year bond spending as the district plans to move quickly to begin planned improvements to Sweet Home High School, particularly in meeting CTE needs, though he cautioned that administrators don’t want to move too quickly.
“One of my goals will be that we design buildings that will serve Sweet Home students well into the next century,” he said, adding that the quality – polished concrete floors versus vinyl tile that will need to be replaced, or metal roofs to match those already on the new sections of the high school, which also last longer, will depend on costs.
He said how fast the district starts spending money will also depend on interest rates.
- $1.8 million to fund the district’s nutrition program, which includes free breakfast and lunches for all students, as well as the summer lunch program and meals for the Fire School conducted by the Oregon Department of Forestry and the U.S. Forest Service.
- $2 million in pass-through funds for Sweet Home Charter School.
- $2.9 million in Student Investment Account funds and High School Success funds to provide enhanced mental health services, expand Career and Technical Education (CTE) opportunities, eliminate pay-to-play fees, reduce class sizes and strengthen overall student support.
- $800,000 budgeted as a placeholder in case the district is awarded additional grants between now and the end of the 2026-27 fiscal year.
- $1.5 million in student activity funds for use by student organizations.
- $600,000 for operations and maintenance costs for the community swimming pool.
- $2.5 million for debt service on the district’s outstanding general obligation bonds.
- $2.4 million for debt service on the district’s outstanding PERS pension bonds. In response to a question from Slater, Strong said the district is paying 30 cents to PERS for every payroll dollar employees get – and that is less than others are paying to backfill PERS after the state retirement fund’s managers chose to make investments that performed poorly in comparison to other options they could have chosen.
“Promises were made to people decades ago and not enough money was set aside decades ago to keep those promises, so we have to make that up now,” he said, adding that he’d much rather divert those funds to kids’ needs.
- $2.3 million for student transportation services.
- $300,000 for potential bus replacements. Strong and Redick discussed the fuel outlook for the district, Redick predicting that fuel costs will remain high in the western United States due to the situation in the Middle East and the recent shutdowns of refineries in California.
“Energy prices are going to drop, but how much are they going to drop?” Redick asked.
Strong responded that the thought of purchasing electric vehicles “did cross my mind.”
- $2.2 million allocated through federal and state grant programs for designated funding purposes.
- $1.6 million in Long Term Maintenance funds that are available for facility improvement projects if approved and directed by the School Board.
- $30.1 million net of the ending fund balance, swimming pool, and student transportation operating costs for the General Fund, which supports day-to-day operations and extra-curricular activities.
Martin told the committee the district is strongly considering offering online learning in the upcoming school year in response to interest from parents and the proliferation of online learning in other districts that suck dollars out of Sweet Home.
“This is not something we want to have a ton of,” he said, noting that families have indicated interest due to medical needs “or whatever.”
“When we, as a district, came out of COVID we had online, but we did not continue that because we wanted the kids to come back,” he added.
In response to questions from the committee, he said online students would still count as district enrollees.
If online learning is added, it would require one additional staff position, Strong said.
Hiassen, a retired Sweet Home teacher and administrator, asked: “What would make this program better than other programs? There are a lot of programs out there.”
Martin responded that local online students would have the benefits of counseling, co-curricular activities, “all those things our families and students benefit from by being in our community, our schools.”
In response to another question regarding the district’s Planned Reserve Balance, money carried over from the previous year’s budget that will be available for emergencies and can be used as a starter for the following year’s budget.
Strong said the planned reserve for 2026-27 is at 9.1%, which, he acknowledged, is higher than it would have been in some years, say, coming out of the Great Recession, he said.
He said that having a strong reserve will help the district’s credit rating and lower its interest costs, as well as providing cushion in an unstable economy.
Martin credited Strong’s leadership to committee members as the meeting concluded, as well as Facilities Director Josh Darwood’s role in recent upgrades to schools, calling the recent renovations at Oak Heights Elementary, which were largely completed during one summer and by school staff and local contractors, “a concert.”
“What we’re looking at here is an orchestra,” Martin said, in reference to the work that will be funded by the newly approved bond. “We are in on the beginning of the first piece of an orchestra. This is very high-level and Kevin does it very very well.
“This is a master class on budgeting. I would not be doing my duty if I did not recognize Kevin’s expertise in this. He knows this in and out.”
Strong responded by crediting School Board members who have repeatedly taken actions over the past two decades in response to his recommendations to improve the district’s finances in such was as creating side accounts to reduce the district’s PERS obligations and making moves to lower bond payments for taxpayers.
“I am so thankful to live here, to send my kids to school in Sweet Home, thanks to you,” he said.