Portland Public Schools starts plans to cut $40 million for next school year

Cutting $40 million isn’t easy. But leaders in Portland Public Schools say they have to.

“Due to rising costs, limited funding and declining enrollment, we are facing $40 million in reductions,” PPS Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday. Officials gathered to share their first draft of proposed cuts for the 2025-26 school year.

District budgets will depend heavily on how much state lawmakers invest in the State School Fund for the upcoming biennium. The Oregon Legislature’s 2025 session began earlier this week. But Armstrong already knows they need to cut tens of millions of dollars.

“Through this process, we remain committed to students and staff,” she said, “and we’re going to protect as many essential services as we can.”

School districts across the region have been struggling with budget cuts, and Oregon’s largest district is no exception. Armstrong says she wants to start the conversation about next year’s budget now to be more transparent and better understand the best options.

The proposed reductions are just that — a proposal. They’re a draft of possible cuts that will be presented to the PPS school board this spring. The cuts, as presented this week, would reduce about 230 positions districtwide.

The proposal outlines $12.2 million in cuts from the district’s central office, including money that would have otherwise been spent on things like travel, professional development and security, to name a few. The central office cuts would eliminate 23 positions.

The programs that serve multiple school levels would see the largest cuts under this proposal, with more than $17.1 million in reductions that primarily cut licensed supplemental staff. These employees include instructional coaches, interventionists, social-emotional support workers and “school site instructors.”

The district did not have many details on the impacts to individual schools as the budget estimates are fairly broad. Still, many cuts are expected at local sites:

• Elementary schools would be scaled back by $2.5 million
• Middle schools by $2.4 million
• K-8 schools by $1.2 million
• High schools by $4.9 million

The cuts to “specialized programs,” in this case, staff working in English language development, also account for $1 million.

The grand total of this proposal would save the district $41.3 million.

Last year — though Armstrong was not the superintendent at the time — there was a lot of criticism around the transparency of the district’s budget process and some of the specific cuts around special education and bilingual support. Without additional federal money, which was provided during the height of the COVID pandemic, staff in districts across the region expressed frustration that they’re supposed to do more with less.

Armstrong said they are starting the process early this year to get as much input as possible before presenting a budget packet to the school board. The district plans to host feedback forums and live webinars for community members to ask questions and share their thoughts, while also maintaining advocacy in Salem.

“And let me just be clear that this isn’t just a wish list or that we’re handing out or holding out a bucket saying, ‘Give us more funds,’ ” she said, speaking to getting more money from the state. “We know what needs to be done to advance our learners, and we don’t have enough resources.”

Portland Public cut $30 million last spring. Major reductions were anticipated after a new contract was settled with the Portland Association of Teachers to end the 2023 strike.

Declining enrollment threatens to be an ongoing problem in the district. PPS Chief Accountability and Equity Officer Renard Adams said updated projections from Portland State University’s Population Resource Center predict Portland Public Schools’ enrollment will decline for the next 14 years.

However, Armstrong said the district thought they were actually in better shape than expected — only needing to trim $20 million when the state increased current service level spending — until they got the PERS numbers in the fall, which brought them back to needing to save $40 million.

“[M]any of the positions that you see listed would have been saved until we got our PERS number in late November,” Armstrong said.

That said, Armstrong said they hope to save most of the positions from layoffs through natural attrition, which occurs every year. Remaining deficits may be made up by moving people around or through cost-saving measures like reducing the hours of some positions. She stressed that they’re still in the early stages of figuring out those logistics.

PPS school board member Herman Greene said he knows no one wants to have this conversation, himself included, and that the cuts will hurt.

“This is the time for us to rally together,” he said. “This is the clarion cry to say, ‘Listen, if we want to change this, then let’s all come together. Let’s all get on the same page. Let’s all go down to Salem, where the difference can be made, and say we need more. What you’re giving us is not enough. We need more.’ ”

Separately, Portland will have a $1.8 billion bond measure on the May ballot. This money is specifically for buildings — think renovations, modernizations and addressing deferred maintenance. The money in the school’s general budget goes toward operations.

The board will undergo the budget process in April and May. The state budget will likely not be finalized until late June. Learn more about the district’s budget process here.