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State budget clouds loom over Sisters
By Jim Cornelius

Sisters school officials are casting a wary eye toward Salem as they try to anticipate the local impact of an ongoing budget battle between Governor John Kitzhaber and the state legislature.

The outcome could mean cuts of between $200,000 and $450,000 in next year's Sisters School District budget, according to School Superintendent Steve Swisher.

The difference between the best-case and worst-case scenarios hinges on the fate of Ballot Measure 13 in the May election and on whether the legislature imposes new taxes on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages in a special session expected in June.

So far, the Republican-controlled legislature has resisted imposing any new taxes.

Ballot Measure 13 would allow the legislature to tap principal for the state's education endowment fund.

Sisters schools can absorb the $200,000 hit without deep cuts, thanks to the cushion provided by some $450,000 in "local option" tax funds approved by Sisters voters in November 2000.

"Right now, we've identified about $220,000 in cuts," Swisher said.

Those cuts come mostly through leaving positions unfilled when teachers take planned leaves of absence. Some custodial hours and other service hours would also be cut.

"We'll have to shuffle some people around and class size will go up a little," Swisher said.

Class sizes would climb from an average of 25 to about 26 in grades 7-12, according to Swisher.

However, if Measure 13 does not pass and if new revenue sources are not tapped, the shortfall in Sisters balloons to some $450,000. That would essentially wipe out local option and put the district into the position of cutting deeper.

"If we have to start going deeper, there may be some program impact," Swisher said.

Not everyone in the education community favors Measure 13, Swisher noted. The Oregon Education Association opposes the measure as a short-term fix that pushes budget problems back a couple of years without fixing them.

The Oregon Association of School Executives -- of which Swisher is president-elect -- is in favor of the measure, while acknowledging the need for long-term school funding solutions.

Pushing the budget crisis back another biennium could mean a shortfall of $800 million in 2003-05, Swisher noted.

By that time, Sisters' local option funds will run out, leaving the district vulnerable to brutally deep cuts.

"For Sisters School District, it would probably be better to face the crisis sooner rather than later, because of our local option," Swisher said.

Schools are not the only state-funded programs that are threatened by the budget crisis. Together for Children, a pre-school parent-child education program will be wiped out, according to Sisters area resident Ted Jones.

"We are planning on just cutting it out completely," Jones said.

His wife Edie runs the local program, which has served some 140 children in the Sisters area over the past 14 years.

The program receives $162,000 in Central Oregon ($300,000 overall). Under current cuts, that money will be gone.

"It's just devastating news," said Ted Jones.

"It will just wipe out the program -- hopefully not permanently, but at least temporarily."

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