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In addition to Veterans Day on Nov. 11, all staff and students in the district had a day off on Nov. 10 for a furlough day. It functions as a funding mechanism through canceling school and not paying the staff for one day.
While facing a $15 million budget cut for this school year, the school district announced that due to the cuts, there would be two furlough days, one in November and another on May 22.
Katie Crim, junior, is one of the many students who will be affected by this day off. Although Crim has found it as a way to take a break from school, she’s recognized that it’s not the same circumstance for everyone.
“It really depends [if no-school days benefit students], because a lot of people need in-class instruction or a more structured place where they can do work,” Crim said.
Although the decision was finalized by the district, resorting to furlough days was decided by the West Linn Wilsonville Education Association (WWEA), the district’s teacher union.
Andrew Kilstrom, the school district’s director of communications, has recognized the sacrifices the staff have made when facing budget cuts.
“They’re forfeiting their pay to help the system, and that’s not something that a school district would ever expect of its teachers to do,” Kilstrom said. “So it’s our job to be creative in budgeting, so this doesn’t need to happen. This shouldn’t be a regular occurrence, or something that needs to happen regularly in the future.”
Matt Bell, president of WWEA and social studies teacher, was part of the group that helped make this decision.
“There was a lack of responsibility at the state government level for the situation. So I think furlough [days] is like a last resort,” Bell said. “So that’s kind of why we felt like we had to do it. We tried to do all the other things first.”
85% of the district’s budget goes towards the school staff’s salaries. By implementing these two days off, the school was able to save around $500,000 per furlough day and now can pay 6.5 more teachers. Being able to prevent those layoffs was one of the motivators towards resorting to furlough days.
“I don’t know if it’s the best way we can [overcome budget cuts], but I think it’s a very valuable thing to do, because without them, they wouldn’t be able to pay more teachers,” Crim said.
With more educators in the classrooms, it can help minimize the already large class sizes. This year, the school is trying to keep the maximum to 32 students per class.
“If we don’t have enough teachers, if you don’t have enough support staff, schools aren’t functional, and we felt like that was the depth of [the budget] cuts,” Bell said. “[…] if you pack students in classes that are too full, you also harm student learning, and you also harm teacher workload and sustainability and the joy of work.”
Although it has prevented some teacher layoffs, at least 10% of the staff for this school year was cut. Many teachers who were cut were not replaced, leading to others having to take on new classes outside their department.
Both Bell and Matt Gottschling, social studies teacher, started teaching psychology classes for the first time this year after the previous psychology teacher was laid off. Although they’ve been given assistance from Ryan Jordan, Advanced Placement (AP) psychology teacher, it’s still different from teaching their usual courses.
“I think part of [facing budget cuts] is also teamwork amongst teachers to try to make the situation as good as it can be,” Bell said. “So, Jordan has been super helpful for both me and Gottschling. We both work together really, really hard to try to be like, ‘hey, how do we do the best we can with something we haven’t taught before?’ We’re qualified to teach it, but it’s different between being qualified and having done it.”
Although the school will face these furlough days this year, both the district and WWEA hope not to continue implementing them next year. The district is currently in the preliminary stage of creating the 2026-2027 school year budget plan. The budget will be finalized by the district in June and will determine whether furlough days will be on next school year’s calendar.
“It’s a huge thank you to the teachers union, and our administrators… [who] aren’t getting paid by the state on these two days, which contributes to that overall savings that was able to pay for those extra staff. So it’s hugely generous of those staff to making that sacrifice,” Kilstrom said.
