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The Brookings-Harbor School District has begun gathering public input as it determines how to spend an extra $1.1 million to $1.2 million it’s expecting to receive this year.

The K12 district is expected to receive those extra dollars through Oregon’s Student Success Act, which Governor Kate Brown signed into law this summer.

The law invests $1 billion into education each year and asks communities how they would use that money to add services or build on existing programs to reach certain subgroups of students, Brookings-Harbor School District Interim Superintendent Chris Eberhardt told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Monday.

Those demographics include students of color, homeless students, those who haven’t scored well on tests or who don’t have high graduation rates and other populations that have been marginalized, Eberhardt said.

The Brookings-Harbor School District is gathering that input via a survey that will be available for people to access until Sunday, according to Eberhardt. District staff will also be visible in

Brookings-Harbor’s largest supermarkets, he said, and will canvas areas that aren’t “represented very well.”

“What we have to do is gather input from stakeholders in our district, develop a continuous improvement plan, and that continuous improvement plan must be based on our current state of how things are going,” Eberhardt said. “An example of where we have received feedback from stakeholders is they’d like more options for students that are maybe not experiencing academic engagement at a level they would if we had additional offerings.”

School district staff will come up with a plan for addressing the community’s concerns and comments and present it to the school board next month, Eberhardt said. That plan will then be submitted to the Oregon Department of Education in December.

The school district will then develop programming for carrying out that plan in January and February and submit an application for funding in the spring, Eberhardt said.

“Some of these things can be planned for and you can start programming and receive funding in arrears,” he said. “(If) we need to make some safety improvements next semester, we could use some moneys now and receive money from the state to offset some of the costs we incur sooner instead of later.”

According to the Oregon Department of Education, when it’s fully implemented, the Student Success Act is expected to generate a roughly $2 billion investment in education.

At least 50 percent of those dollars is expected to fund programs that meet students’ mental and behavioral health needs and to increase academic achievement for students in the following categories: Economically disadvantage; from racial ethnic groups that have historcially experienced academic disparities; students with disabilities; English language learners; foster children; homeless students; and other groups that have experienced academic disparities.

On Monday, Eberhardt told WRO that some of the community’s concerns include reducing class sizes, expanding its career-technical education classes and implementing new technology in certain areas. Reintroducing music and PE at the elementary school level and implementing social and emotional supports for students were also concerns the community wanted to see addressed, he said.

“There are a variety of investments that we can do with the money,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Brookings-Harbor School District has also implemented a questionnaire as it continues to search for a district superintendent. The questionnaire will focus on qualities the community would like to see in a candidate for the position. The community is also asked to identify the district’s strengths and areas that could use improvement, according to an email from Public Information Officer Nancy Raskauskas-Coons.

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