Leaders in the Newberg-Dundee school district began formally unveiling painful proposed budget cuts this week.
The grim announcements came a month after Stephen Phillips, the district’s superintendent, went on medical leave when an estimated $13 million hole in the district’s finances came to light only days before the end of the school year.
In his absence, the district’s former superintendent, Paula Radich, volunteered to serve without pay as its interim leader.
At a school board meeting this week, Radich pulled no punches. Given the dire financial situations, the cuts were going to seem “ruthless” and would “come as a shock,” she said.
To patch up the deficit, which constitutes about a quarter of the 4,000-student district’s $56 million budget, she proposes to:
- Negotiate with all employee groups on salaries, benefits, potential furlough days and what Radich called “a very strong look at leaves of absences and substitute costs.” Radich said the money spent on substitutes last year was “unconscionable.”
- Reduce administrative positions at every level.
- Lease space in one of the district’s elementary schools to George Fox University and dental equipment manufacturer A-Dec, both based in Newberg.
- Reduce contracts with outside providers by 50%, which could save around $1.5 million.
- Find other savings, such as cutting electricity costs.
But there is no way around laying off many employees, considering the drops in enrollment, in a district that has lost about 800 students since 2019, Radich said. That will come on top of around 30 previously announced layoffs, she said.
“Our additional reductions are going to be significant,” Radich told school board members this week. “Some of those reductions should have been made years ago. What we are dealing with is an accumulation of significant overstaffing and not enough funds to pay for that. We are talking about reductions across all specialty groups and all classifications.”
Principals and union leaders learned specifics of the proposed cuts on Thursday, and parents in Newberg said they were bracing for the news.
Claudia Stewart, a district spokesperson, said an exact figure of how many employees were facing lay-offs was not yet available. Principals are working to see if they can share staff across buildings and Radich and labor unions are negotiating furlough days, retirement incentives and other potential concessions, she said. Staff who are on the layoff list will likely be notified starting on Friday, she said.
But speaking to board members this week, Radich singled out educational assistants who work in special education as an area where the district is “especially overstaffed.”
She also called for a forensic audit of staffing levels, questioning why, for example, middle schools with around 500 students needed four secretaries and why the number of special education assistants was allowed to grow unchecked, without anyone from the district’s budgeting department raising a red flag.
The budget cuts are the latest sign of turmoil in a district that is hoping that things can only get better. In fall 2021, a group of conservative-leaning school board members voted as a block to ban teachers from displaying Pride or Black Lives Matters flags in their classrooms, saying they were seeking to avoid “political distractions” on school property. The board eventually rescinded the ban after a Yamhill County judge ruled that it was unconstitutional.
Their actions touched off a series of lawsuits and the dismissal of Phillips’ predecessor, helping to spark a new state law that mandated that superintendents who had negotiated for a “no cause” firing clause in their contract must to receive a full year’s notice should a school board decide to terminate them. The controversy eventually led to an almost complete turnover of school board members. But Phillips remained in his $215,000 a year role until June, when the full scope of the budget deficit came into focus and he took medical leave.
Under Oregon law, an employee may not be fired for taking medical leave if they have worked for their employer for at least three months.
Phillips came to Newberg with a checkered employment history. He resigned as a deputy superintendent in the Beaverton School District in 2018 after he retweeted an incendiary statement that claimed “illegal aliens” were responsible for the deaths of thousands of American citizens, touching off a community outcry.
He then spent several years as the superintendent of the Jewell School District. In March 2024, a former student identified only as “Jennifer Doe” filed a lawsuit against the district alleging that Phillips and other administrators knew that a teacher was sexually abusing her when she was 14 and didn’t promptly intervene, eventually allowing the teacher in question to quietly transfer to a different school district.
— Julia Silverman covers education policy and K-12 schools for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach out to her via email at jsilverman@oregonian.com or follow her on X.com at @jrlsilverman.