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Two Additional School Districts Join Lawsuit Against the State of Oregon
Contact: Kathryn Firestone, Executive Director, 503.704.0504, or Paul Kelly, 503.553.3230.
March 13, 2006 - (Portland, Ore.)-- Coos Bay and Corvallis join Eugene 4J, Crow-Applegate-Lorane and the Pendleton School Districts in a lawsuit against the State of Oregon for failing its constitutional mandate to adequately fund public schools. The effort is being supported by the Oregon School Funding Defense Foundation, a statewide non-profit corporation formed for the purpose of pursuing the litigation.
Coos Bay School District enrollment has decreased by 840 students in the last ten years to just over 3500 students. In order to consolidate costs and meet the needs of remaining students, the district has closed three elementary schools displacing over 700 students from neighborhood schools. They’ve eliminated four administrators and twenty-nine teachers along with nearly half of their maintenance personnel. The only staff increases Coos Bay has seen have been in classified staff (such as instructional assistants) to meet the growing number of students with disabilities. Coos Bay schools average sixteen percent special needs students -- five percent higher than the state contribution of eleven percent which typifies the average number of these students statewide. They will eliminate fourteen days of school between 2005 and 2006.
Also a declining enrollment district, Corvallis has eliminated 191 teaching staff since 1990, a forty-one percent cut. Additionally they’ve eliminated thirty-four classified personnel and thirteen administrators. During the same time period, enrollment has dropped by about 455 students though they are still responsible for educating nearly 6800 students. They’ve eliminated funding for current textbooks and reduced costs for both building maintenance and district administration. To further contain costs, Corvallis has closed three schools -- two elementary and one middle – and another elementary will close at the end of this school year. In 2004, voters denied renewal of a local option levy that had provided additional resources for the district.
These two districts further illustrate the impact faced by all of Oregon’s 198 school districts as a result of the legislature’s failure to fully fund to the quality goals established by law in 1991. It is anticipated that the suit will be filed in the next two weeks. The lawsuit would make Oregon the 39th state nationally to seek an answer in the courts for legislative failure to adequately provide funding for K-12 education. Of the thirty-eight states that have previously filed such litigation, twenty-one verdicts have gone with the plaintiffs. Another ten cases are pending.
The Oregon School Funding Defense Foundation board includes Chairman Paul Kelly, Attorney and former Global Director of Public Affairs for NIKE, Portland; Vice-Chair Arthur Johnson, Attorney, Eugene; Secretary Bruce Samson, Attorney and former General Counsel for NW Natural, Lake Oswego; Attorney Bill Deatherage, Medford; Attorney and Multicultural Director at Willamette University College of Law Marva Fabien, Salem; Attorney Dennis Karnopp, Bend, and former Oregon Supreme Court Justice Betty Roberts of Portland.