This year, the Gresham-Barlow School District was forced to make even more budget cuts. In order to fit the required budget programs, teachers and school days have been cut.

This year the school was required to cut 7.43 full-time teaching positions (FTEs). To be able to fill this requirement the Options, Woods, and business programs were cut along with a few teaching positions and small cuts to other programs and school days.

Deciding which programs and teachers needed to be cut was a hard decision for administrators to make.

“There’s not much left to cut,” principal John Koch said.

Because of the cuts that were made, class sizes will increase both in core classes and electives as well.

“[In] our core classes, English, math, social studies, science, the numbers are getting so large, and those are required classes where students need to have those particular kinds of credits to graduate and they need to demonstrate essential skills now to graduate in reading, writing and math,” assistant principal Danelle Heikkila said. “Those are really key to students being able to graduate from high school, and we had to protect those classes so that students would be able to graduate and move on.”

In making budget cuts, administrators avoided making drastic changes to the core classes because they are such a priority in high school and the class sizes are so large already.

It has been determined that there will be four budget cut days next year. By cutting days, teacher positions and programs can be saved, however, teachers may not receive as much pay and students will have less seat time in school.

“If you count next year, we will have taken budget reduction days four years in a row. We took eight days then we took five days and now we are taking four days,” Cyrus Harshfield, the High School President of the Gresham-Barlow Education Association, said.
“So I guess if you graph that, it’s getting better, but clearly there is something wrong with the system in terms of funding if we have to reduce the budget every single year for multiple years in a row.”

In regards to the cut programs, the decisions were made based on what classes had least amount of students enrolled in them and how many similar classes already exist. If a class has a low enrollment, it is more likely to be cut since it will not affect as many students. Similarly, if it is not one of the main, required classes or a popular elective, it is also likely to be cut since it has less of an appeal than classes like band and art. The Woods, Options and business programs were small and as a result of that they were cut. However, these classes were among some of the more unique, and do not have similar programs that will be available next year.

“We try to sort of balance out what we have left in the school for the kids to do,” Heikkila said.

Though this year the budget cuts were about the same as they have been in previous years, they have taken a heavier toll because so much has already been cut.

“To run a school we need a certain amount of resources, and right now, because of the budget, we just aren’t there and terrible choices have to be made to meet that budget,” Koch said.