The Newberg School Board will hold its next meeting tomorrow, and according to the board agenda, there will be a discussion about “SIA.” The good news? The agenda suggests the discussion is “open for comments,” presumably from the public.
The bad news? The school board has yet to inform the public about what SIA is, how it impacts the school district, whether the board has even created a SIA plan, and what that plan looks like.
Which raises the question: How will people be able to make comments, if they have been given no information about the initiative and the district’s plans for up to $5 million (or more) of funding SIA might provide?
A bit of history: The Student Investment Account (SIA) funds are non-competitive grants available to all Oregon school districts. K-12 education funding in Oregon comes from state income taxes, lottery funds, property taxes, and federal funds. SIA funds fall under the Student Success Act (2019), which added $1 billion in funding per year for Oregon schools and students. According to the Oregon Education Association website, “This money could be used for additional instructional time, providing mental and behavioral health supports, reducing class size, implementing a more well-rounded education, fully funding High School Success (Measure 98), improving school safety and more.”
In past applications, Newberg has allotted its SIA funds for reading specialists, behavioral counselors, drug/alcohol counselors, and other learning support efforts. (You can read past applications here.) Given this board’s lack of transparency and its inability to follow well-established OSBA policies, it’s not clear whether Newberg schools will receive this money. Given how strapped the district is financially, and the rumored cuts to important programs, it seems like leaving millions on the table would not be the best idea.
The application itself requires significant community engagement, but the Newberg School District has offered no forums for engagement, beyond empathy interviews and youth surveys which were not rigorous nor equitable, and assuredly did not include representative populations that will be most served by SIA money: Spanish-speaking, special education, economically disadvantaged, and migrant families. For a board intent on providing “parents’ rights,” parents representing these groups have not been contacted, their needs not inventoried, in any systematic ways. The law which created the SIA funds requires school districts to use public input to create their plans, and school boards to provide a place and time for public comment on the district’s SIA plan. But there is no plan available on which the public can comment. By now, the board should have at least posted their application online and have a paper copy available at the district office for people to review. There should have been at least one, if not two, presentations to the board about the SIA application, and an opportunity for parents to provide input before a final draft is due to the state by March 31.
Now, the school board is asking for comments on an application no one has seen. There will be no opportunities to consider revisions to an application, if the community makes comments. With the application due at the end of March, and no more meetings scheduled this month, the community will have no idea what the final application looks like.
By way of comparison, Sherwood schools presented the first read of their SIA application in January, with the report and budget posted, and opened for public comments. Their budget is $5 million, and their planned apportion of the money is available on their website.
It’s not clear why the Newberg school board has not followed a similar process, why they have not been transparent about the process they have followed, and why they are risking millions of dollars that might help those needing educational support in our district. Is this another example of incompetence? Are they refusing the money because of a politically-motivated attempt to cut ties with federal funding?
As with many of the school board’s actions, this unwillingness to follow policy is baffling, especially with so much instructional money on the line.
So we want to know: will you weigh in?
At the meeting tomorrow night, of course, but also at the May election. Because with millions of dollars potentially lost, our kids lose, too.
Newberg Neighbors for a Better Community 