2024-25 Budget

Dear RSD Community, 

The 2023-24 school year has brought challenges and successes to the Reynolds School District. I want to thank all staff for their dedication to serving the students and families of Reynolds. As we look to the next school year, it is our intention to focus investments on our schools and in programs that directly support students.  

This budget is the result of aligning resources to the priorities of the district’s Strategic Plan, the Board’s budget goals, and extensive community outreach as a part of implementing the Student Investment Account (SIA).  

 This budget is built on the following financial assumptions and adheres to Board Policy:

• Projects September 2024 non-charter enrollment of 9,450
• Includes step, benefits, and cost of living increases across all employee groups 
• Estimates a 2023-24 ending fund balance of $18.5 million   

Over the past several years the District has received significant one-time funds from the federal and state governments. This is the first budget in recent years that does not utilize ESSER funds and required a reduction of $18 million to our General Fund from current staffing and programs levels. Reductions of this size necessitated the reduction of licensed and administrative positions, as well as a 20% reduction to school and department discretionary budgets in order to align spending with resources.

Staffing Highlights:
Overall, this budget reflects a reduction of 81 licensed FTE and 12 administrative FTE from the 2023-24 budget. These reductions were made with a focus on limiting the impact on classrooms. We expect class sizes in elementary to average 24 students in K-3 and 28 students in 4-5, which are historically lower than at any time prior to the district receiving ESSER or SIA funds. 

Under this budget, every elementary school will maintain licensed music, PE, and library/media specialists, library media assistants, counselors, and reading specialists. Additionally, all elementary schools will continue to have a full-day, full-year educational assistant in every kindergarten classroom. The investments we made in early learning and literacy are showing great promise. We continue to work to provide all students with a solid foundation in school readiness and literacy instruction to achieve our goal of all students reading at grade level by the end of third grade.  

 This budget maintains our commitment to supporting the social and emotional well-being of all students. It provides a total of 14 social workers across our district and 28 counselors. One social worker will be assigned to each middle school and one at RLA, and two at Reynolds High School. Eight social workers will support our 11 elementary schools with additional support services provided by our SUN School community partners. 

We will continue to provide staffing for block schedules at HB Lee, Reynolds Middle, Walt Morey, and Reynolds High School. The effectiveness of the block schedules at both the middle and high schools is meeting our expectations. For example, it was just one year ago that Reynolds Middle had to shift to distanced learning in response to student safety concerns, and RHS struggled with students leaving campus and community safety issues. I’m happy to report that this school year, student behavior referrals at RMS have dropped by 46%, and major safety violations have all decreased at Reynolds High School. I want to thank the tireless efforts of our educators, support staff, coaches, and administrators for all their work on behalf of our students. 

Other Highlights
Looking forward to the 2024-25 school year, I’m proud to announce that Reynolds High School will be starting two new CTE programs: Cosmetology, and Business and Entrepreneurship. These programs are designed to provide students with engaging and meaningful programs of study that will lead them to opportunities for small-business ownership and economic empowerment. We have had over 300 students forecast for each of these programs, many who have never taken a CTE course before. 

This budget provides opportunities for the continuation of LETRS training as well as robust summer programs. In addition, funds will be allocated to the technology replacement cycle for student devices, renovations and repairs and upgrades to improve health, safety, and access at school facilities. 

This budget continues the focus of the Student Investment Account on supporting socio-emotional learning, mental health, and academic achievement, specifically among students of color, students experiencing disabilities, emerging bilinguals, students in poverty, students experiencing homelessness/living in foster care, and other historically underserved students. 

This budget provides cost of living and benefit increases for all bargaining groups aimed at attracting and retaining a diverse, skilled workforce. Additionally, the district is working with the Reynolds Education Association to reestablish a new teacher mentoring program to provide needed support to all first-year teachers and other teachers who have experienced a significant change in teaching assignment.  

Central Office Restructuring 
It is clear from years of feedback that we needed to take immediate action to improve how the district office supports schools. I’m proud of the steps we’ve taken this year to improve the support of schools and to reduce expenditures and overhead at the district level.

The Finance, HR, and Operations departments have made tremendous strides in improving operational efficiencies. Looking ahead, this budget reflects these ongoing efforts as well as a share of the budget reductions that are necessary, including a reduction of executive level positions.

Conclusion 
In closing, I want to thank the School Board, educators, support staff, administrators, and the Reynolds community for their dedication and hard work in preparing the proposed 2024-25 budget. Many thanks to the Budget Committee for your attention in reviewing the proposed budget. We’ll continue to move forward and meet the challenges of educating our children in these uncertain times. We’ll continue to advocate at the state level for not only our students but all Oregon students. We’ll continue to look for ways to innovate and improve. And we’ll continue to partner with our community to ensure that all students succeed. 

 I am pleased to propose a budget that centers students and schools and continues significant investments to meet the needs of our students. Thank you for your consideration of the 2024-25 proposed budget.

Frank Caropelo

 Superintendent

April 18: Budget Committee Work Session / Training Presentation

May 2: Budget Committee 1 Presentation

May 9: Budget Committee 2 Q&A Document

Budget Committee Meetings will be held at:

Reynolds Edgefield Campus

2408 SW Halsey, Building I

Troutdale, OR 97060)

Written Public Comment can be submitted here at anytime. Spoken Public Comment will be available at the May 9, 2024 meeting. A sign-up sheet will be available and must be filled out prior to that start of the meeting.