Lake Oswego School Board approves 2024-25 budget

After two busy weeks of graduations and celebrations, the Lake Oswego School Board finished its annual budget adoption process by voting to approve the 2024-25 fiscal year budget on Monday, June 17.

The budget amounts to $321,155,004 for the district and $330,000 for the Lake Grove Swim Park.

The adopted 2024-25 budget is $13 million smaller than last year’s and dips into reserves to avoid budget or staffing reductions next school year. The school board adopted a policy in 2015 to keep the fund balance between 8-15% of general fund expenditures. In 2023-24, the anticipated reserves in the adopted budget were $94,969,999, this year the reserves were budgeted for $64,604,999 — a change of $30 million.

The budget is broken down as follows:

$132,540,002 for capital projects$127,130,002 for the general fund$36,250,000 for debt services$11,510,000 in grant funds$4,100,000 in student activity funds$3,025,000 in food services funds$2,500,000 in community contribution funds$2,250,000 in self insurance funds

The adopted budget maintains the current permanent property tax rate, at $4.47 per $1,000 of assessed property value, and the current local option levy rate, at $1.64 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The budget approval also continues the permanent property tax rate for the swim park at $0.042 per $1,000 of assessed property value.