PENDLETON — With the state telegraphing big cuts to its budget, the Pendleton School District is scaling back its ambitions for the 2020-21 school year.

On the same day Gov. Kate Brown announced that she was asking state agencies to plan for a 17% budget cut, Superintendent Chris Fritsch told the Pendleton School Board on Monday why district officials were modifying a plan to significantly bolster staff next school year.

In March, the board approved a $2.4 million Student Investment Account application, which would give the district access to the new revenue created by the state’s Student Success Act.

In light of expected revenue shortfalls caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Pendleton’s revised application effectively halves the district’s ask to $1.2 million.

That means that instead of hiring people for 36 new, full-time positions, the district now intends to create 13 new positions.

The district was able to salvage several new positions for K-3 teachers, elementary behavioral specialists and middle school counselors. But other expected jobs like an elementary music teacher, a high school dean of students and a secondary success coach were left on the cutting room floor.

Given that the state doesn’t know how much it’s going to have to cut from its budget, Fritsch warned that nothing was too definitive at this point.

“There’s so much ambiguity of where we should be,” he said.

The board approved a new collective bargaining agreement with the local Oregon School Employees Association — a union that represents classified employees like instructional assistants and secretaries — but Fritsch said both the classified union and the teacher’s union have language in their contracts that allows both sides to return to the bargaining table should the need arise.

Michelle Jones, the district’s director of business services, said she has created several district budget scenarios based on potential outcomes for the state’s education budget, up to a 17% reduction.

Pendleton will have a better idea of what numbers they’re working with when the district holds its first budget committee meeting May 21, which will happen shortly after the state announces its budget projections.

By then, Jones said the district will also know if Pendleton voters approved a five-year property tax levy that raises $300,000 per year for general operations.