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Opinion School budgets appear brighter
School budgets appear brighter
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Thanks to increasing or stable enrollment in most Northeast Oregon school districts, and to an additional $200 the state will provide per student in 2008-09, the school finance picture overall looks rosy. That’s a great relief. For the past decade, it seems, the news has been grim — jobs on the chopping block, declining enrollment, emergency measures to cut back school days and reduce costs in myriad other ways. Northeast Oregon school districts can heave a collective sigh of relief over the summer before next fall rolling up their sleeves and getting on with their critical mission of preparing students for the global and locally challenging economy. This is not to say that schools don’t have plenty of needs. The La Grande School District, for instance, is weighing the possibility of putting before voters a scaled back bond measure this fall. Anyone who has been on one of the many tours the district offered will tell you the district has many dire infrastructure needs. But even that fails to dampen the temporary glow in local schools’ budgets. We can thank good and courageous management that helped the districts get through lean times. Many have prepared well for rainy days that they knew would come. At Imbler, for instance, the setting aside of a healthy reserve fund that is now being tapped into was wise indeed. Challenging, competitive public schools are important to Northeast Oregon. It seems like a no-brainer, but we must constantly remind ourselves that education needs to be a priority over prisons. An investment in education now saves higher costs later. We need to continue our commitment to excellence in education, and that means adequately funded schools. A free public education can open many doors. It helps make good citizens and good workers. When we make generous investments in public education, we should expect in return the students, teachers and administrators to rise above mediocrity and get outstanding results. Of course, there will be the occasional failure. That is inevitable. But overall we need to hold educators and ourselves up to high standards in educational performance and funding. As is often repeated, strong schools attract business. Placing schools high on our priority list is important toward having any hope that local economic development efforts will pay large-scale dividends. Face it. Northeast Oregon is remote. We need to get rid of the obstacles we can that might keep an industry with clean family wage jobs from locating or relocating here. Making sure our schools are top notch is one less reason for entrepreneurs to spurn the area. That’s just one more reason why a rosy budget picture for schools is sweet for all of us. |
