Estimating costs for applications
Each spring/summer, a district submits a single application for funding for the upcoming school year. This single district application requests funds for all schools within the district that plan to participate in outdoor school. We created a tool to help schools estimate their outdoor school costs prior to submission of the district’s outdoor school application.
For the 2025–2026 school year, all schools across the state are subject to a maximum funding cap, following the Oregon Legislature’s decision to reduce outdoor school funding for the 2025-2027 biennium. You may use the Estimating Costs worksheet to help plan for your application; however, any request that exceeds your school's individual funding allocation will not be accepted.
Cost estimating tool
This tool is intended to:
- Support districts in gathering information needed to complete the funding application — specifically, estimates of anticipated outdoor school costs for each school.
- Encourage early planning for outdoor school — especially related to identifying anticipated barriers to student participation and requesting funding for resources to support full participation.
- Reduce the need for changes to funding requests after the application period.
- Districts will still be able to request additional funding after they have submitted their application, if needed, for unforeseen expense changes and additional student support.
- To minimize these requests, the district will need to show that it used the cost estimating tool and followed steps one and two above.
