Small districts struggle for funds.

Byline: RANDI BJORNSTAD The Register-Guard

Preliminary enrollment figures for the area's smaller school districts this fall show a mishmash of ups and downs, but school officials say the overall trend seems to be a gradual decline.

With the weak economy, some officials worry about the adequacy of future school funding and even the long-term survival of the smallest districts.

None of the school districts in Lane County or northern Douglas County posted a significant increase in student populations.

The Marcola district made the biggest gain with a 5 percent increase, adding 16 students since last year for an early fall enrollment of 317. Mapleton gained 4 percent, enrolling 283 students this fall.

Meanwhile, several other districts - among them Creswell, Fern Ridge, Junction City, South Lane and Yoncalla - stayed nearly the same as last year in their initial enrollments.

In the loss column, Oakridge took the biggest hit, dropping about 10 percent below last year's level, to 753 students, with the McKenzie district close behind with a loss of 9 percent.

North Douglas, Crow-Applegate-Lorane, Blachly, Pleasant Hill, Oakland, Lowell and Siuslaw declined in the range of 4 percent, with Elkton holding almost steady with a dip of only three students from last year, to 213 this fall.

Kathy Hill, business manager for the Fern Ridge School District, said Fern Ridge has consistently lost an average of about 40 students per year for the past several years. The district had 2,000 students in 1995, compared with about 1,800 now, she said.

"I'm a perfect example of the reason for this decline," Hill said. "I had five children, and they all went through school in the district. But they grew up and moved away, and I'm still here with no kids or grandchildren in our schools."

High housing costs prevent many young families from moving into the community, and that brings enrollment down, she said.

"We're seeing fewer children coming in at the lowest grades, which means that as the upper grades graduate, our enrollments will decline further unless we make it possible for more young families to live here," she said.

Like other districts, Fern Ridge has experienced the double whammy of declining enrollments and diminished state support for education and now faces cutting $500,000 from its budget between now and June 30.

With many smaller districts losing students, some have begun looking for creative ways to ward off possible disaster. Often, that takes the form of discussions with adjacent districts about sharing programs and faculty and even consolidating some schools.

Mike Sowder, superintendent of the Yoncalla School District, said schools there actually have nine more students this fall than they did last year, but that minor jumps in enrollment don't ensure either stable student bodies or adequate funding in the future.

So, since last spring, the school boards from his district and North Douglas, which serves the Drain area, have been talking about combining their high schools and asking voters to share the cost of a new building that would split the five-mile distance between the two small cities. The two school boards met jointly earlier this month to talk about it, and they plan another work session on the subject on Jan. 10.

"Drain is down to about 130 students this fall, and we're at about 140," Sowder said. "There's definitely a diminishing return when you get to this level, in terms of staff-student ratios. But if we combined, we would have close to 300 students, and we would start gaining some of those benefits back."

Both districts have worn-out school buildings "with lots of maintenance issues," Sowder said.

"We can't do some of the career-to-work programs that the state wants us to do, or the high-tech connections that our students need for using computers."

So far, both school boards and community members seem to favor the consolidation idea, he said. A new building probably would cost about $9 million.

"Our communities are just about identical in many ways. We have nearly the same property tax base, local tax rates and numbers of students," he said. "It would be a really easy adjustment, and this seems like the right time to explore it."

Each community would keep its own elementary school under consolidation, Sowder said.

Declining enrollments in Pleasant Hill and Lowell also have generated some discussion about sharing programs or facilities, but so far consolidation does not appear likely, Lowell Superintendent Roy Williams said.

"We met together last (school) year to talk about it, but it appeared at that time that achieving the cost savings would mean closing Lowell, and this community does not want that," Williams said. "We've had to do some cost-cutting. As staff people have retired, we haven't refilled their positions, and our teacher-to-student ratios have increased."

He lays blame for many of the district's problems on the state Legislature for failing to come to grips with the need to provide schools with adequate and stable funding to serve student populations regardless of size.

If per-student support had increased even at the rate of inflation during the 1990s, "we'd have $6,500 per student in state support right now instead of $5,299," Williams said.

"If we had that, we'd be in great shape instead of struggling to provide what our students need."