While many economists and politicians have already declared the economic recession over, the road back to fiscal health is likely to be a long, gradual climb for public education systems in the Pacific Northwest, as in most of the country. The current school year, and the planning leading up to it, has already been one of the most challenging in decades. The latest issue of Education Northwest Magazine (formerly Northwest Education) offers a sampling of how school districts in our region have answered that challenge.

Although the federal government is pouring an unprecedented amount of money into education, via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, federal dollars remain a relatively small percentage of public education funding. The majority of that funding still comes from state and local budgets, which in most of our region have been decimated by a rapid decline in tax revenues. As a result, school districts have had to cut thousands—and in the larger districts, millions—of dollars from their operating budgets, while still trying to deliver the best education possible to their students.

In Idaho, for example, the state was forced to cut 5.3 percent from its current education budget—the first time it has ever funded education at a lower level than the previous budget cycle. As a result, one in five districts in the state had declared a financial emergency by the start of the current school year.

The Twin Falls School District, which is profiled in this issue, has so far escaped that fate. Its combination of fiscal responsibility, good planning, strong leadership, and collaborative decisionmaking mirror the efforts of other districts whose stories are told in this issue.

Among those stories is that of Vernonia, a rural Oregon district that has had to deal with both the recession and the aftermath of a massive flood. Also in Oregon—a state hit as hard as any in the region—the much larger Springfield Public School District had to cut more than $15 million from its budget. A dynamic superintendent and a good relationship with the labor union has helped it stay on track.

Other district stories include Washington state’s Federal Way School District, which has managed to protect its most important projects by making strategic cuts, and Great Falls Public Schools in Montana, which has used federal stimulus funds to implement a cutting-edge technology project in one of its middle schools.

This issue also includes an overview of the funding crisis and the federal effort to help states recover, as well as a conversation between Karen Hawley Miles, the executive director of Education Resource Strategies in Boston, Massachusetts, and Diana Oxley, a program director at Education Northwest. “Tough times make it possible to take on tough issues,” observes Miles. Her big-picture view of the current economic crisis as an opportunity for groundbreaking reform may prove to be the most lasting legacy of this difficult historic moment.

Visit the Education Northwest magazine online to download a copy of this issue, read Web site exclusives, and view previous issues of the magazine.