Salem-Keizer School Board Adopts $1.1 Billion Budget for 2024-25 School Year

The adopted budget is the culmination of a year-long process of Oregon’s second-largest school district mitigating a known and unavoidable budget crisis.

At its regularly scheduled meeting on June 11, 2024, the Salem-Keizer School Board of Directors voted to adopt the 2024-25 budget after the approval of the district budget committee, which totals $1,123,489,612.

While Salem-Keizer Public Schools serves nearly 39,000 students, this 2024-25 budget reduces FTE in response to limited revenue and increasing costs. 

The district spent this past year in open community dialogue around the known budget challenges and implemented tight fiscal management to mitigate necessary reductions. The 2024-25 budget reflects the reductions made through the board-approved reduction in force.

Salem-Keizer's budget represents a predicted moment in Oregon and across the nation: the final, grim intersection of flawed and failing school funding policy and school systems attempting to meet the rapidly escalating needs of their students.

Budget Breakdown

Even though reductions were necessary, the adopted budget prioritizes the following areas as much as possible based on community feedback, established board goals and district initiatives

• Strategies and efforts toward the following five long-term goals:
  • Improving regular attendance
  • Third grade students reading at grade level
  • Ninth grade students on track to graduate high school
  • Four-year cohort graduation rate
  • Student sense of belonging
• Extracurricular experiences (e.g., performing arts, athletics)
• Career and technical education opportunities
• Rigorous secondary instruction and course offerings (e.g., AP and IB courses)
• Special education services
• Mental and behavioral health services
• Compensation and retention of multilingual educators and staff
• Dual language program continuation and expansion
• Community and family connections through specially trained and culturally competent staff

Our students deserve the best conditions possible and this budget simply cannot do it all. This next year will require tireless creativity and relentless advocacy for the needs of Salem-Keizer students and for fair funding for students in Oregon.
Superintendent Andrea Castañeda

The 2024‐25 Budget Timeline

After nearly nine months of critical budget discussion and feedback from the community, the board approved a reduction in force resolution on April 16, 2024. 

The superintendent’s budget message was presented to the budget committee on May 7, 2024. 

Budget committee public meetings were held on May 14 and May 20 to receive public comment on the proposed budget and to discuss, deliberate, and recommend an approved budget for school board adoption.

On May 20, 2024, the budget committee recommended an approved budget to the Salem-Keizer Public Schools Board of Directors

The school board’s public hearing on June 11, 2024, fulfills the legal requirement to receive testimony on the approved budget and to take action to adopt and appropriate the budget and resolution to impose and categorize taxes for the ensuing fiscal year. Six board directors voted in favor of adopting the budget and one board director opposed.

*Please note the Adopted Budget for the 2024-25 school year will be available on the Budget web page as soon as possible.