While the Beaverton school board has yet to give an official stamp of approval to the 2025-26 school year budget, it appears teachers will be spared of cuts or layoffs. 

That’s the word from Mike Schofield, associate superintendent for business services for the Beaverton School District, who says the deficit for the upcoming school year has been narrowed from an estimated $30 million earlier this year to about $19 million. 

“We stayed away from the classroom and made reductions mostly centrally,” excluding teachers, Schofield said.

As examples, Schofield said the district cut about $750,000 out of the district’s teaching and learning department. Schofield said the teaching and learning cuts do not involve staff, but focuses on such items as reducing professional development time and delaying the purchase of new science text books.  

Another approximately $1 million was sliced from operations, such as maintenance and repair work.

“That’s a bit of a gamble,” Schofield said. “We’re hoping things won’t break. Thanks to our community, we passed a capital construction bond, so we’re replacing Beaverton High School, we’re replacing Raleigh Hills elementary. That eases the burden on the general fund a little bit.” 

About $600,000 was trimmed from central departments, reducing a couple vacant positions in transportation and reducing nonsalary items in the Human Resources Department. 

Of the approximately $140,000 from the school’s nonsalary budgets, Schofield said principals will be deciding on budget costs for items such as copiers, papers and photo copy costs. 

District reserves are expected to help out

The district is helped along by leaning on reserves to patch up deficits. 

“All told, we got that $30 million deficit down to about $19 million,” he said. “We’re still running a deficit, but because we’ve got reserves in the district, and they’re pretty significant, we’re going to spend down part of those reserves to fill that deficit next year.” 

Schofield notes that since enrollment is declining, there have been some reductions in staffing. 

“That will generally be dealt with through attrition,” he said, noting the district is projecting it will be down about 600 students next year. 

“As we staff our schools, we have a staffing model,” Schofield said. “We run it through that staffing model, so we’ll have fewer teachers and some other staff in the district next year than we had this year, but it will be due to enrollment, just to align our enrollment.” 

An enrollment decline,  and state money remain challenges for district

An enrollment decline isn’t the only challenge facing the Beaverton district. 

“Money from the state hasn’t quite kept up with what it costs to run the district in terms of contracts with our licensed and classified staff,” Schofield said. “We’re running a little bit behind there.” 

Glancing ahead to next year, Schofield says deficits could continue to grow. 

“We’ll get through the 2025-26 school year OK, but we’re headed to a point where we’re going to have to make some decisions around that deficit and start to shrink it,” Schofield said. “We’ll be looking at that next fall in terms of staffing, delivery of services. That deficit is actually projected to grow if we don’t do anything.” 

With budget committee approval of the budget May 27, the school board will hold a hearing June 10 to adopt the budget.