Bend-La Pine School Board votes unanimously to send 5-year local option levy to May 21 ballot

(Update: Adding video, school board chair comments)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The Bend-La Pine School Board voted unanimously Tuesday evening to place a five-year local option levy on the ballot this May.

If approved by voters May 21, the levy would provide additional funding for school district operations for the next five years, with an emphasis on career-oriented programs, maintaining class sizes, advanced academic offerings, recruiting teachers and other staff, and other priorities.

The school district estimates the levy would provide an estimated $21.2 million in new revenue for the 2024-25 school year. This would allow the district to fill a state funding gap that limits what is dedicated to student programs and services.

Tracee Tuesday met with Melissa Barnes Dholakia, the school board chair, to discuss the proposal.

“What I really see in this potential local option levy opportunity is to really create a system that is great for kids, is great for families, and is really great for our community,” Dholakia had said moments before the vote.

The district said it would focus the proposed funding on new and expanded opportunities for over 17,000 students and their families, including:

• Strengthening and adding Career Technical Education pathways
• Protecting and maintaining class sizes
• Recruiting and retaining teachers and support staff
• Increasing advanced academic offerings for students
• Improving support systems for struggling students
• Enhancing elective offerings, including in music, art, technology, business, world languages

The proposed levy rate is $1 per $1,000 of assessed value. The median assessed value of residential properties in the school district is $238,750, according to the Deschutes County Assessor’s Office. For a home with that assessed value, the school levy would cost about $239 a year, or just under $20 a month.

Property taxes are calculated based on a home’s assessed value, not the real market value – what a property might sell for. The assessed value appears under “Net Taxable” on the property tax statement.

"With this levy, we're really looking at the future for our kids and for our community," Dholakia told us. "We want to make sure our kids have career pathways where they can actually afford to live and stay in Bend."

"We see this as a way of increasing opportunities for our kids, connecting them to the business environment of our local community, and then helping in turn our business, our economy and our community thrive."

New Oregon Department of Education figures show Bend-La Pine Schools has continued the declining enrollment seen in recent years since the COVID pandemic, a drop of about 300 students last year. So why the need for additional funding?

"School districts are actually funded by the number of students we have," she said. "And so when our enrollment goes down, our funding goes down. Now, we're going to right-size that, whether we have 4,000 students or 20,000 students, we're going to make sure that we staff appropriately.

"What this increase in funding is to do is to really create schools that our community wants, to really create the programs we are hearing that the community wants, and to really create the world-class schools that our students deserve."