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The school district expects that it will need to reduce expenses by an additional $10 million to $20 million in next year’s budget. The district had already cut $30 million during an earlier process.
Eugene School District 4J officials said they lowballed projected expenses for the 2026-27 year.
The school district on Thursday, March 19, posted on its website and sent an email breaking the news to families that $10 million to $20 million in additional budget cuts may be necessary, on top of the $30 million already announced.
The news comes after the district completed a months-long public process of mapping out the $30 million in cuts. The district has blamed its faulty budget forecasting on higher than expected costs for health insurance, public pension rates and unemployment insurance.
Kelly McIver, 4J communications director, did not go into detail about the additional costs the district is facing and why they were unforeseen. He said district leaders will share more information in the March 31 budget committee meeting when they present the official budget document.
“This news will understandably create anxiety for our staff and families, and we wish we had more to share now,” superintendent Miriam Mickelson said in the district’s post. “We wanted to be as transparent as possible and let people know what we might be dealing with as soon as we knew what these recent projections could mean.”
According to 4J’s post, the widening gap between revenue and costs became apparent when Mickelson and district staff received the staffing plans from administrators throughout the district, which included the board-approved elimination of up to 269 full-time positions.
Mickelson said she does not plan to make staff reductions beyond the 269 full-time positions, close a school or change school schedules besides the adjustment to middle school schedules that the school board already approved.
McIver said the district may now cut all of the 269 staff positions, a number that the district previously saw as an overestimate of the needed staff cuts to reach $30 million in cost savings. Other savings may come from one-time measures including transferring money from the facilities fund to the general fund.
“We had hoped to avoid one-time, stopgap measures because those tactics do not solve the recurring problem of ongoing expenses being greater than revenue coming in,” McIver said. “However, there is not time to create a balanced budget for 2026-27 and look at other savings such as building closures, school schedule changes or further position eliminations.”
The March 31 budget committee meeting will take place at 6 p.m. at the district office. Up to 10 public commenters are allowed to speak at budget committee meetings, following the regular structure of a 4J school board meeting. Those who wish to speak must put in their requests by 5 p.m. the day before.
The March 31 meeting is the first of three budget committee meetings through March and April to inspect and approve the district-prepared 2026-27 budget before it’s sent to the school board for formal adoption in May.
Districts statewide have faced significant budget cuts in recent years due to increased employee costs, enrollment decline and the end of COVID-relief funding that was propping up school budgets.
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