KUOW News
www.kuow.org

04/13/2009

In a year of budget cuts, nothing is sacred. The Oregon School for the Blind has weathered many financial storms in the past. But this year could be different. With every dollar under scrutiny, Oregon lawmakers today (Friday) gave initial approval to a plan to shut the Oregon School for the Blind down in a matter of months. The money would serve blind students elsewhere.

June Kramer is legally blind and uses a cane to get around. She came to the Oregon School for the Blind because she wanted to learn something more than her local high school could provide.

Kramer: "Budgeting, banking, basically daily living skills like doing your own laundry."

And learning how to cook. That’s what she’s doing now behind the counter of the school’s coffeeshop.

Kramer: "Order up! Burrito!"

The work is part of the school’s life skills curriculum. Does your local high school have a talking cash register?

Cash Register: "One–Five–Zero. Department One."

Kramer is 20 years old, so regardless of what happens in the Legislature, she’ll soon be leaving the Oregon School for the Blind.

Kramer: "I hope to be in my own apartment, getting a job somewhere like in a music store or whatever and basically be a successful woman in life, if possible."

Even though she’s moving on, Kramer says she’s worried that other visually impaired students in Oregon won’t have the same opportunities she did. And she’s not alone in her concerns.

Members of the blind community have been protesting at the Oregon capitol. They’re here lobbying against a bill that would close down the School for the Blind. Joe Carter attended the school for three years as a teenager. He says it was a life–changing experience:

Carter: "For the first time I actually knew other blind people. For the first time, I had friends. For the first time, somebody actually suggested that I could do stuff. I could go places on my own."

Advocates for the blind say those are the kinds of things that will be lost if visually impaired students are dispersed back into their local school districts. On the other hand, the vast majority of blind students in Oregon are already educated by local public schools. Fewer than three dozen still attend the Salem campus. That’s one reason the cost per–student to operate the School for the Blind exceeds $125,000. Democratic Representative Sara Gelser says it’s money that could be better spent elsewhere:

Gelser: "So what we have is a program that is much loved by the people that are there, but we are spending an extraordinary resource for 31 students, and at the same time not giving them access to K–12 curriculum, and they are not learning in an accredited environment."

In other words, students at the School for the Blind learn life skills, but they won’t get a diploma there. Gelser says she acknowledges the sense of loss that students and their families are facing. But she says the goal is that they’ll be better served in the end:

Gelser: "This plan does not save a dime. What it does instead is directs these resources, redeploys them for the benefit of 840 children who are blind and visually impaired. And I can go to my colleagues and say ‘In a time of budget cuts, let’s make a positive policy decision that’s focused on how do we make the best use of resources that we already have."

Gelser chairs the House Education committee, which has now approved the plan to close the school. Republican Representative John Huffman supported the proposal, but he says he’s worried that blind students won’t get the services they need when they return to their home districts:

Huffman: "I will be quite angry if I hear of those situations of kids being brought into the school district and stuffed into a closet, out of sight out of mind. I don’t want to hear about that."

Committee chair Gelser says she’ll hold hearings later this year to investigate claims by blind students of mistreatment by teachers and administrators in the mainstream school system. The bill to close the School for the Blind still has to clear several Legislative hurdles before it would take effect. I’m Chris Lehman in Salem.

© Copyright 2009, OPB

By Nick Budnick / The Bulletin Published: April 04. 2009 4:00AM PST

Tentative figures for 2009-11

$17.1B
General fund budget to maintain existing services

$4.4B
Legislature’s prediction for general fund shortfall

$2.58B
Budget shortfall if all reserve funds are used

A few possible cuts

100 State troopers laid off

3 Days per week courts would close

20% Length cut from school year

At the root of the new development is the worsening economic situation and a projected decline in personal and corporate income taxes.

A formal announcement won’t come until later this month, but the tentative estimate is that the state’s next general fund budget will total $12.7 billion, about $4.4 billion less than what’s necessary to pay for existing state services.

On Friday, the heads of the Joint Ways and Means Committee posted cuts on a new Web site to show what 30 percent cuts to agencies could look like and announced that a series of hearings would be held around the state, including in Bend on April 29.

Sen. Margaret Carter, D-Portland, said the potential cuts serve “as a reality check, the reality that Oregon is facing a great challenge. … It’s going to be very, very important that the people of Oregon help us to prioritize.”

The possible cuts include:

•Reduction and elimination of services for the poor, elderly, disabled and mentally ill.

•Layoffs of 100 state troopers.

•Closing courts as much as three days a week.

•Cutting the school year by 20 percent, or nearly two months.

•Repeal of last year’s Measure 57 tough-sentencing law.

•Closing 10 prisons, including Deer Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras.

Carter’s co-chairman on the committee, Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, said that overall, the average cut to state agencies would likely be closer to 15 to 18 percent range, thanks to $911 million in federal stimulus dollars and other reserves, including the state’s rainy day fund.

But some agencies would likely be spared the worst of it, meaning deeper cuts would have to be made to others, he said, saying closing schools early “scares the hell out of me.”

That said, he and Carter acknowledged that the budget deficit could grow even larger than the current $4.4 billion estimate.

Besides making cuts, lawmakers are considering raising revenue using new fees, increased cigarette, beer and corporate taxes along with a temporary income-tax surcharge on top-earning Oregonians.

Local officials are bracing themselves for potential reductions in state funding filtering down to counties and schools.

Bend-La Pine Superintendent Ron Wilkinson said that in “the best-case scenario we’re working with, we’ve got to cut quite a bit of money next year.”

In a worst-case scenario, “If you’re cutting one third of the budget, that could represent 20 percent or a quarter of the school year,” he said. “It would be devastating.”

Hillary Saraceno, the executive director of the Deschutes County Commission on Children and Families, receives more than $1 million to distribute to programs for parenting skills, runaway and homeless youth, and children at risk of abuse and neglect. At the upper level of possible cuts, “some programs would probably go away,” she said.

Ron Paradis, a spokesman for Central Oregon Community College, said that at a 30 percent level of cuts, “We’re likely talking $10 to $15 per year per credit tuition increases or cutting as much as 10 percent of courses each year,” he said.

As for the potential effect on plans to expand Deer Ridge, the Department of Corrections listed delaying adding new inmates to the prison as among its first options to be considered, saving about $23 million.

Complete closure of the prison would save another $42 million. However, that option was listed as a last resort, only to be considered if 30 percent cuts were made to the department’s budget.

“We’re like the other nine institutions, waiting to see what the Legislature has to say about how deep they have to go with their cuts,” said Parrish Van Wert, the community development coordinator for Deer Ridge.

Local lawmakers say the release of the potential cuts is an effort to make the best of a bad situation.

“It’s pretty drastic stuff,” said Rep. Judy Stiegler, D-Bend. “I think this is the kind of thing that people need to look at and mull and think, ‘Gee, is this the way we’re going to go?’”

Rep. John Huffman, R-The Dalles, said that while he approves of the way Democrats are publicizing the decisions to be made, he thinks the state needs to do more to trim salaries and payrolls: “As of yet, I haven’t seen anything out of leadership that gets into removing certain departments and programs. I think that’s the level that we need to get to.”

The final schedule of budget meetings, times and locations is expected to be posted next week.

For more details on the potential cuts, see www.leg.state.or.us/budget/.

Bulletin reporters Sheila G. Miller , Hillary Borrud and Lauren Dake contributed to this story.

Nick Budnick can be reached at 503-566-2839 or at nbudnick@bendbulletin.com.