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QuickTake:
Shrinking enrollment and growing staffing costs are the main culprits driving the budget gap, officials say. Springfield also is projected to spend down its reserves by about $6.8 million this year, and district leaders do not want to spend more.
Springfield Public Schools is projecting steep budget cuts for next school year.
The district needs to cut $10.4 million from spending in order to maintain a healthy level of reserves. Brett Yancey, chief operations officer at Springfield Public Schools, presented his financial predictions at the district’s Thursday, Feb. 12, budget committee work session.
“We only have so much capacity, and there will be things that have to stop,” Yancey said. “When you’re looking at a 10-and-a-half-million-dollar budget (reduction), there will be programmatic impacts, absolutely, no question about it.”
The district is contending with the same issues many Oregon schools are facing: heightened staffing costs, increased state pension contributions due to state investment failures, falling enrollment and the end of COVID-era relief funds that propped up school budgets in various ways.
Yancey said the Springfield district used much of its COVID-relief money to pay for more than 700 new heating, ventilation and air conditioning units. It also used some money for staffing, which grew as student enrollment declined, Yancey noted last year.
Springfield is on track to spend about $6.8 million in reserves in the current budget year, Yancey said at the Thursday work session, which is less than previously projected in January. It would mean the district’s reserves would make up around 9.8% of its projected general fund, above the board’s 5% minimum.
Yancey said he recommended keeping the reserves at about 10% of the general fund. The Government Finance Officers Association recommends keeping the equivalent of no less than two months of district expenses in reserves.
Yancey included the $6.8 million in reserves used this year in the next year’s budget deficit projection because the expenses that it covered still exist and will need to be covered again. He noted that reserves should be used for one-time costs because they are a one-time source of revenue.
Yancey is projecting another 300-student drop in enrollment in fall 2026, close to the decline the district saw this past fall, according to information shared in January’s budget committee work session. The district shed an additional 171 students by Dec. 19.
Enrollment is dropping in schools across the state for a myriad of reasons, the primary one being a decline in the birth rate. An enrollment drop means less state funding, as money is allocated on a per-student basis. Yancey is projecting a $482,293 loss in state funding this coming year.
He is also projecting a loss of $536,500 from the “miscellaneous/other” revenue category that primarily comes from investments, Yancey said.
The district’s additional expenditures for next year include $3.9 million more in salary, payroll and benefit costs and a 10% increase in property casualty insurance, adding $205,782 to spending.
Springfield Public Schools recently laid off 27 teachers midyear to plug a $2.34 budget gap caused by a new teachers union contract, which the district did not account for in its 2025-26 budget.