Fourth grader Evie Wiman wants to hold a fundraiser for her school, Garfield Elementary in Corvallis.
The Corvallis School District, facing a $10 million shortfall, is cutting at least 40 certified positions, including one of Evie’s favorite teachers. She also has been told that library staffing cuts could end Oregon Battle of the Books at her school.
“It makes me feel like I’m going to enjoy school a lot less,” Evie said.
After years of adding staff to address students’ needs and raise graduation rates, school leaders across Oregon are dealing with their first major staff reductions since the Great Recession’s aftermath. The numbers are disheartening as districts from Ashland to Portland, from Astoria to Lake County, consider hundreds of staff reductions.
Rising costs, falling enrollment and disappearing federal pandemic support have created tight or declining budgets for much of the state. School leaders are looking at the available funds and trying to decide what education staffing in Oregon can and should look like.
Their deliberations are shaping funding discussions heading into a potentially pivotal 2025 legislative session.
“This is the most intense, hardest budget committee I’ve attended ever,” said Astoria School Board Chair Heidi Wintermute, who has been on the committee since 2018. The school board makes up half of the budget committee. She said the budget had no wiggle room, and it felt like “squeezing blood out of a turnip.”
Wintermute said Astoria leaders spent two years meeting with community members to develop district priorities. Lack of state funding is derailing those goals just as they are getting started, she said.
“It kind of just feels like all that planning, all that input we got from our community, all the things they want are being put on the back burner because it’s not considered a priority at the state level,” she said. “It’s just sad.”
Astoria is cutting a little more than 26 positions, half of them certified and some of them classroom teachers. The budget plan, though, is dependent on staff contract negotiations, said Wintermute.
Contract negotiations have been rattling budgets everywhere. Legislative analysts in 2022 estimated personnel costs would increase 5.45% in the 2023-25 biennium. Unions, though, have demanded far more than that to keep pace with inflation.
For example, Salem-Keizer’s personnel costs will increase 14% over that time, according to a letter by the Salem-Keizer School board. Portland Public Schools settled its teachers’ strike with a 13.8% cost of living adjustment over three years, plus other benefits. Smaller districts report similar increases as well.
More than 80% of school districts’ budgets are devoted to personnel. When staff cost more, schools can afford fewer of them.
Legislators and Gov. Tina Kotek’s office are working with education advocates, including OSBA, on 2025 legislation to improve Oregon’s school funding approach. OSBA Legislative Services Director Lori Sattenspiel said that no matter what changes are made, Oregon needs to increase its overall school investment to address current staffing needs.
Rep. Courtney Neron, the interim House Education Committee chair, said the Legislature has a responsibility to fund the high-quality public education Oregonians expect and not merely continue the status quo.
“Current service level needs to equate to quality education; currently they are quite different,” she said. “We need to keep every educator we have. Our kids deserve that.”
The pandemic has only increased the need, educators say. During the pandemic, schools adjusted their budgets to address crisis levels of lost learning time. They added teachers and education assistants to give students more individual attention and counselors and support staff to promote social and emotional health.
The federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund money has nearly run dry, but the pandemic-related needs haven’t gone away.
Salem-Keizer Superintendent Andrea Castañeda gives the example of kindergarteners who are entering school without the basic socialization and self-care skills they had 10 years ago.
“You meet the needs of students with staff,” she said. “We don’t have enough adults in our buildings for the kids we have. It’s not about the number of kids; it’s about the needs.”
Mark Witty, the Grant School District superintendent, has spent 37 years in Oregon education, much of it in the district around John Day and the Baker School District. He said the pandemic amplified a trend of more challenged and challenging students. In 2001, Grant had around one counselor for 900 students, and now it’s around five.
“We need to have more people to manage the situations we see on a daily basis,” he said. “We’re still not able to meet the demand.”
The range of demands has grown as well.
Witty said schools, especially in rural areas, are often providing much more than just academics. The school is sometimes the only available source of mental and physical health care, job training and other social needs such as providing food.
Schools are also required to provide more security, special education programs and career and technical education among other things.
“It’s dramatic how much more schools are held accountable for certain aspects that weren’t even considered in 1986,” he said. “If we don’t provide these supports, we are not going to be successful with the core mission of providing a high-quality education for the 21st century.”
Salem-Keizer’s total budget increased by 3.4%, but that falls about $70 million short of what the district needs to meet current costs. The district announced earlier this month it would cut the equivalent of 377 positions. Like other districts, attrition will account for most of the reduction, but Salem-Keizer still had to notify 112 employees they would be laid off.
With each hole created, staff from a different classroom, a different building or a different role must be shuffled around, severing relationships that might be key to some students’ success. The stress on staff and students from all those changes makes it harder to be present, compounding the disruption.
“A reduction of our workforce has two pain points: the loss of people and the churn of multiple moves,” said Castañeda. “Reductions shatter and spread throughout our system, causing stress, loss and transition everywhere they land.”
Lisa Kensel, the Oregon PTA president, said parents around the state are lamenting the staff losses.
“Parents are saying we were just starting to move the needle,” she said. “Our students are the ones who are really suffering with the cuts that are coming.”
– Jake Arnold, OSBA
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