Just a quick reminder that the East Salem community is invited to a meeting tonight (March 16) regarding the new elementary school coming to your neighborhood. The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. at Scott Elementary School - 4700 Arizona Ave. NE. Childcare is provided.

At the meeting, you will get an update on the school site plan, the floor plan and the character/appearance of the school. Plus, you will have opportunities to ask questions and discuss the new school.

View full information about the meeting.  This meeting is open to the public. Anyone may attend.

Just wanted to send out a quick clarification on a breaking news item that was posted last night by the Statesman Journal regarding 121 positions being cut.

The 121 teachers reported in a headline update to be cut by the Salem-Keizer Board of Directors at last night's board meeting reflects the typical annual March non-renewal of temporary full and part time teachers in the district. This is not a reduction in force and is not related to budget matters.

Temporary teachers are teachers hired to fill a position of a permanent contract or probationary teacher who is on leave, fill a need for extra teachers after the start of the year due to unanticipated enrollment increases or due to an unexpected resignation and do not expect employment beyond the term of the temporary contract.

Again- this is not a reduction in force and is not related to budget matters.

As you may remember, the Oregon Legislature approved a funding level of $6 billion for two years when they met last spring, but left $200 million undistributed until June of 2010. The law stated that this additional $200 million would be distributed if the State had at least $300 million in reserves at the end of the fiscal year. Having this large unknown created a great deal of uncertainty for school districts throughout the State in creating budgets for the next fiscal year.

However, last week legislative leadership disclosed that they would distribute the additional $200 million as part of their budget balancing activities and that it would occur this week. While we have not seen a final action on this, we are confident that this will occur and that we will have a greater level of certainty in addressing the upcoming budget process.

So, what happens next:

Staff has been working diligently in reviewing current program funding and calculating the cost of providing existing services to students next year. In early March, we are scheduled to receive our first revenue estimate from the Oregon Department of Education. This estimate takes into account state funding as well as fluctuations in enrollment and local revenues in districts throughout the state. These factors have an impact on our share of the State School Fund. Once we receive this information, we will be in a better position to know where we are in relationship to reductions we may have to make in the upcoming year.

Even though there are significant challenges awaiting us in the next year, we are hopeful that this year’s budget process will not have us seeing the same level of reductions that we were dealing with in the last budget cycle.