Budget Recap

2009

In 2009 Corbett was faced with a tough choice. Neighboring school districts were going to stop allowing transfers out of their districts and Corbett had about 100 students currently enrolled. The choice was either to open the Corbett Charter School, or suffer an “absolutely crippling” loss. And so the Corbett Charter School, something that Bob Dunton and Randy Trani had been working on for five years, quoted as saying here, was quickly voted and passed by the Corbett School Board.

“Under state law, * districts can’t prevent their students from transferring to a charter school, which must select students based on a lottery… Dunton didn’t advertise the charter school, hoping that the 100 out-of-district students would all make it in. All of them did, as well as 245 other students. Many of those new students were home-schooled or enrolled in private schools before, but 17 are from the Reynolds School District. ” [ Oregonian Article 4/12/2009 ] * This law has changed as of 1/1/2012 – Read here.

2010

The 2010 shortfall was more of an unexpected emergency. It was explained by Randy Trani at an informational meeting on 9/14/2010. The result this time was a 3 million dollar levy on the fall ballot that did not pass. Here is one article online prior to the election.  The result was that the Corbett Charter School was expanded and its contract extended until 2014. In addition parents were asked to send in donations to help meet our funding gap. You can read more about this here.

2011

Still in a budget crisis and projected to be almost $600,000-$754,000 short for the 2011-2012 school year. In response our school board applied for a one million dollar loan for the first phase of creating more classrooms in Corbett School District at the Historic Springdale School, to bring in additional students for revenue from out of district.

Select here for the latest vision that will mean another expansion to our district population of up to 225 additional out of the area students.

In March of 2011 the Corbett School District School Board voted 5-2 to extend the current Corbett Charter School until 2014 and allow it to bring in up to 510 out of district students to help with revenue for our district. For online discussion on this topic select here. The Corbett School District School Board also voted to cut 10 school days and charge in-district parents for full day kindergarten, $2500.00 per year, among other plans that didn’t all end up being necessary by the end of the year. [ Link]