Businesses understand the cost of investing in education. In 2022, business taxes significantly jumped as the Corporate Activity Tax, which was the payment mechanism for the Oregon Student Success Act, was implemented. Even as this added cost of doing business still stings, businesses understand the importance of well-funded, high-performing schools to our bottom line and our employees. Supporting the future workforce comes with the territory for employers.

To that point, the Bend Chamber of Commerce supports the Bend-La Pine School District Levy 9-167, appearing on the May primary ballot. Setting aside the importance of investing in our children, the Chamber’s support highlights how we view the connection between our workforce and the need to prepare our students for their futures.

Schools are one of the leading talent attraction and retention tools we have in Central Oregon. Put simply, they are a significant part of the pitch to potential employees and companies alike. If we don’t have good schools, we risk losing employees who are parents and future parents. Particularly with our cost-of-living challenges, our schools and natural environment are the foundation of recruiting new businesses and our workforce.

We also support investing in Career and Technical Education (CTE) which is included in this levy. Our trades are at a critical breaking point as much of this workforce is retiring while demand is increasing. This dynamic is decimating the construction, healthcare, childcare, automotive, and other essential industries that are pleading for labor. These industries shouldn’t be the only ones worried about this.

Citizens have an equal vested interest in increasing the trades workforce. The Chamber wants even more funding to be invested in CTE and urges the school district to lean into this need in our community.

What are often called soft skills are a hard necessity for employers, and schools are where these skills are learned. Employers count on students who have received a well-rounded education that includes foreign languages, arts, music, debate, and other extracurricular opportunities to learn how to pursue interests and work in teams. These skills are essential to a balanced and productive employee.

The levy also addresses the need to maintain environments where students can learn. This is yet another hard lesson from COVID as students have continued to struggle to regain social, learning, and behavioral ground after the impacts of isolation. The levy hopes to achieve productive teaching and learning environments, including keeping smaller class sizes and services that enable students to get the most out of their education, including higher grades. We see the direct connection between class size and individual attention to highly functional and happy adults and employees.

Like most essential professions, the barrier of affordability in the Bend area has impacted our teachers. We are grateful a new agreement between the teachers and the school district has been reached and hopeful this will help address some of the cost-of-living challenges we have in Central Oregon.

Now it’s time to pay that bill or risk future layoffs that frankly would undo all that this levy hopes to achieve.

I’ll close with where I started. Adding another cost to your property taxes is hard. We in the business sector know this keenly with the CAT tax adding significant costs. Even harder is the fact that these CAT tax collections are distributed through a state process that we can’t control. Levies aren’t an absolute answer to our school funding needs, but unlike the Student Success Act, they are 100% applied to our school district. Our schools. Our students. Our future employees. We can’t say no to that.