Going into the 2025-26 school year, Eugene School District 4J had approved $20 million in budget cuts that would result in licensed staff layoffs and staffing redistributions. This was publicly shared with all 4J employees early in the school year. However, in mid-March, it was released that the budget cuts had been miscalculated and the actual deficit was around $16 million more than the original $20 million shortfall. Now 4J staff are starting to feel the reality of these cuts as the first round of layoffs rolled out in the beginning of April.
This unexpected new layer of debt, on top of the previous deficit, came as a shock to 4J faculty, parents, and students alike. Along with this concern, questions have arisen surrounding how this $16 million could get lost at the district level, and how the district can possibly close this nearly $40 million gap. Both students and staff are dealing with increased levels of anxiety as talk surrounding estimated layoff numbers, possible furlough days and now who has been part of cuts is surfacing.
According to South Principal Kee Zublin, as a consequence of the new debt numbers, 4J superintendent Dr. Miriam Mickelson ended up taking faculty cuts all the way to the ceiling of what she had asked the board to approve; this meant cutting 269 full-time licensed staff across the district. Along with this, in an attempt to ensure they wouldn’t exceed the highest number of cuts Mickelson proposed, 4J also utilized the funds from the sale of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Eugene, roughly $2.9 million, to lower the deficit. Finally, the district agreed to access one-time reserve funds to soften the blow of the new budget shortfall numbers. But this does still leave the issue of what will have to be reassessed and further cut in the following school year (2027-28).
“If you use one-time funds,” Zublin said, “you’re not addressing the shortfall. So you’re still not addressing the fact that you’re overstaffed for your budget. Whatever they use [from] the one-time funds to cover this year, that will become budget cuts in probably the next year.” said principal Kee Zublin.
According to Zublin, this error came in part because of who is subject to these layoffs, highlighting the financial increase that comes with prioritizing senior faculty members over new hires. When calculating the costs, the district failed to take into consideration the fact that by cutting the newest faculty members, they would be cutting the staff members with lower salaries than the average licensed staff member, meaning less money gets saved..
Zublin also noted an important factor playing into the overall deficit within the district at large is the growing gap between enrollment (number of students) and licensed staff (number of teachers). During the Covid-19 pandemic, the district received Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, which they put largely into hiring staff. These one-time funds ended after the pandemic, leaving 4J with too many licensed staff for the budget. To make the problem worse, 4J, along with many other districts nationwide, is facing an overall enrollment decline.
“It could be attributed to lower birth rates,” Zublin said. “People just aren’t having as many children locally. I would also attribute it to the cost of housing here. If you were to look at K-12 enrollment, you would see that numbers are getting smaller and smaller because fewer and fewer young families are able to live around here.”
According to Zublin, the district’s enrollment is projected to go down by about 1,000 students next year;for a district of 15,000, this is substantial. The loss of onetime ESSER funds, coupled with the overall enrollment decrease, has led 4J down a path of overspending their budget by considerable amounts.
These things combined are resulting in new and even some mid-career staff members losing any sense of control as they face the reality of possible layoffs. Even if these teachers aren’t laid off, another possibility they face is being reassigned to a different class, subject, or even another school to cover staff that have left. This reassignment of roles, mainly due to seniority, is called ‘riffing,’a version of the acronym for Reduction in Force.
“The riffing process is a time consuming one because it’s like dominoes,” Zublin said. “You’ve got a senior person that you’re looking to place, and then this person gets displaced, but they might have more seniority than this person over here. I’m not anticipating that all of it will get resolved for quite some time.” Staff are expected to get a clearer picture in May of what their new roles may actually look like. But for now, staff are trying to remain patient and steady during a time of financial uncertainty.
Article by Maggie McMillen