Our View: Springfield Public Schools gets a failing grade on budget math

What does budget malpractice look like?

It looks like what we’re seeing play out in Springfield Public Schools, where 27 teachers were let go last month in a mid-school-year layoff with little precedent.

Painful decisions like position cuts and school closures have become all too common in Oregon, largely driven by declining birth rates that have pushed enrollment numbers down in districts across the state. Personnel costs have risen, too, and COVID-relief funds that propped up school finances for several years have faded.

But what happened in Springfield is different, and far more damaging.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the decision-making that preceded the district’s Jan. 8 announcement that 27 teachers would be out of jobs at the end of the month.

But a few basic bits of information are clear: Somehow, Springfield Public Schools leaders failed to imagine a budget that included raises known as cost-of-living adjustments for teachers, despite being in the middle of contract negotiations with the Springfield Education Association, the district’s union for licensed employees. 

The district’s Board of Education turned this failure of imagination into official policy by passing a no-raise budget for the current school year, while district negotiators were hashing out terms with the union that reportedly included annual raises of at least 2%. According to union estimates, the Springfield Education Association hadn’t agreed to a pay freeze since around 2011, when districts were still dealing with the Great Recession’s budget impacts.

And all parties knew while these negotiations were unfolding that Eugene School District 4J’s most recent contract included a 5% annual salary increase for teachers. 

So when the district reached an agreement last month that included a 4% raise for Springfield teachers, it came at the cost of the 27 teachers’ jobs. It also left students and parents to deal with disruptions to their learning.

One has to wonder if anyone in the district has ever been part of a contract negotiation before?

When Springfield Public Schools adopted its 2025-26 budget last June, chief operations officer Brett Yancey said the $3.7 million in spending cuts didn’t account for any cost-of-living adjustments the district might make in its negotiations with teachers.

Mid-year school layoffs are not completely without precedent. But districts typically do everything possible to avoid them. A similar threat by the Reynolds School District east of Portland to institute mid-year teacher cuts was averted after both sides realized the harm that cuts in the middle of the year would have on students. The agreement they reached included — you guessed it — cost-of-living raises for teachers, and the district instead laid off several non-classroom positions. Still a blow, for sure, but far less disruptive for students.

Was the Springfield district’s budget process an attempt at gamesmanship to strong-arm the union into accepting a contract on its terms, or was it simply a case of bad planning that no one caught? Whatever the reason, Springfield Public Schools leaders clearly presented a flawed budget to the board. And as the district’s policy-setters, the school board deserves blame, too, for allowing these bad decisions to move forward.

With the board now racing to fill a vacancy and appoint an acting superintendent following current superintendent Todd Hamilton’s announced resignation, this poor decision-making has added yet another layer of upheaval onto staff, students and parents who are likely already wondering why things are going so wrong.

There are painful lessons to be learned from the series of controversies that have overshadowed the good work being done in Springfield Public Schools.

The biggest of them all? Budgets are moving targets, and budgeting without accounting for predictable outcomes will lead any organization to the place the district is in today. We hope the leaders tasked with the next round of budget discussions in Springfield learn that lesson soon.