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Sisters school officials face the coming few weeks and student registration
with mixed emotions: No growth would be easier to manage, but additional
students would bring more revenue from the state.
Growth also got the district into trouble last year when enrollment in the
district exceeded 1,000 students. That caused the district to lose its "small
school correction," an extra allowance from the state.
The sacrifice of that allowance meant Sisters lost between $130,000 and
$140,000 in revenue for the current fiscal year. That hit the district in its
unappropriated ending fund balance, money the district carries over from the
previous year to keep schools in operation until tax dollars begin coming in
during November.
Since 1992 the elementary school has gained 11 students while the middle/high
school has 153 more students. Principal Dennis Dempsey said he is using 3
classrooms at the neighboring Baptist Church for math classes.
Dempsey said if the classes were to be kept in the high school, some labs and
specialty classrooms could not be used for what they were intended.
The middle/high school building is only five years old and already too small.
Asked what happened, Superintendent Steve Swisher said, (excusing the "field of
dreams" cliché) "build a school and they will come." Swisher said people
are moving to the district because of dissatisfaction with schools in other
parts of the state.
Dempsey said there are actually families in which fathers commute to work in
Portland and other cities in the Willamette Valley. They have chosen for their
families the Central Oregon lifestyle and the smaller schools in Sisters.
Swisher indicated that school facilities planners had not anticipated the high
rate of growth in the district.
Swisher suggested the disproportionately high growth in the upper grades
probably is attributable to the fact that younger couples with younger children
are not as able to afford the move to this area.
