QuickTake:

A 24-member Bethel committee presented its recommendation to the Bethel School Board that the district close Shasta by the end of the 2025-26 school year. The team also recommended that Shasta students be absorbed into the remaining middle schools.

Bethel School District is closing Shasta Middle School as a cost savings measure.

In its Nov. 10 meeting and work session, the Bethel School Board gave superintendent Kraig Sproles the direction to shutter the middle school at the end of the academic year in order to help close the district’s $1.8 million budget deficit. The district, like many across the state, is dealing with enrollment decline, rising staffing costs, inadequate state funding and the end of COVID-era relief funding.

Bethel’s long range planning team presented their recommendation to close Shasta during the meeting. 

Board members followed the team’s guidance, voicing their preference for closing the school by the end of the 2025-26 school year instead of waiting until the end of the 2026-27 school year. They also favored moving Shasta students and staff to other middle schools in the district rather than moving sixth graders into elementary schools and making Cascade Middle School exclusively a seventh- and eighth-grade building.

The district will be hosting community meetings with Shasta families and staff to share information in the coming months. There are 259 students attending Shasta this year.

While it is not the board’s role to vote on school closures, board members will eventually vote on the budget, which will include the cost reductions of the closure. Because of this, Sproles needed their direction in order to move forward on the closure.

The long range planning team was a superintendent’s committee of 24 members that had been meeting since the spring to make a recommendation about the future of middle school programming to the board. Classified and licensed staff, parents, community members, the equity committee, the school board, unions and administrators were represented on the team.

Even though the district is closing Shasta, superintendent Kraig Sproles said layoffs may still be necessary. Cuts would be district-wide, however, not targeted at Shasta staff.

Concerns about Shasta’s closure

The board weighed several complications of Shasta’s closure in their work session.

The closure will mean a couple of years of crowding in the remaining three middle schools due to the district’s large sixth grade class. There are currently 408 Bethel sixth graders, which is 36 more students than the district’s fifth-grade class and 39 more students than their seventh-grade class.

The district plans to purchase portables for Cascade to create additional temporary space as this class moves through middle school. Portables, plus the building’s currently unused space, could increase Cascade’s enrollment by nearly 200. Prairie Mountain School and Meadow View School, both kindergarten to eighth-grade programs, also have the capacity to accommodate about 50 more students each.

The other concerns from board members and the long range planning team about Shasta’s closure were the impact on Shasta’s music program and life skills program, which serves the highest-needs special education students.

Sproles said there will be a separate committee formed to make a plan for the life skills students.

Board member Brian Hynd has children who attended the now-closed Clear Lake Elementary School and now attend Danebo Elementary School. He said even with the district’s proactive approaches to a smooth transition, he’s seen the struggle to combine school communities after a closure. Hynd also is concerned about how students would be affected if tight-knit student groups, like the Shasta jazz band program, get split up.

“One of the things we’ve really tried to do with the past few years is build affinity groups and build a sense of belonging with different activities,” Hynd said.
”And breaking them up and trying to put them back together again is, as I’ve seen with my own kids, it’s really quite difficult.”

Stabilizing Bethel’s budget 

Due to declining enrollment and rising employee costs, Bethel has been spending more than it has been taking in since the 2023-24 fiscal year, dipping into their reserves to cover the gap. This year, the district’s reserves went below the board’s reserve target of 12.5% of the operating budget. The reserves currently stand at 11.34% of the budget.

School districts need reserve funds in order to pay employees and bills while they wait on reimbursements from the state. Bethel keeps enough reserves for two months of payroll. Reserves also serve as discretionary funds for hiring more teachers after the beginning of the year to accommodate unexpectedly large class sizes and keep staff if state funding changes midyear due to legislature decisions.

Andrea Belz, Bethel’s business service director, walked the board through the different scenarios of closing the school in 2026, closing it in 2027 or not closing it at all.

Closing it in 2026 offered the most cost savings to the district — $1.4 million of general fund money per year and somewhere between $1.9 million and $2 million long term, the equivalent of 11 full-time licensed teachers. This would stabilize the district’s reserves to between 11% and 12% of the operating budget. Waiting until 2027 to close the school would spend down more savings, reducing the reserves to between 9% and 10% of the operating budget.

Sproles said administrators will present to the board any necessary staff layoffs after the state’s Nov. 19 budget forecast. The forecast will give the district more insight on any adjustments to state funding that may occur.

This story has been updated to include additional information from the Nov. 10 school board meeting and work session.

Lilly is a graduate of Indiana University and has worked as a journalist at the Indianapolis Star and in Burlington, Vermont, as well as working as a foreign language teacher in France. She covers education and children's issues for Lookout Eugene-Springfield.