Multimillion-dollar budget deficits force Oregon schools to consider closures, layoffs

Oregon schools are scrambling to balance their 2025-26 budgets amid higher costs and lower enrollment – causing many to consider closing buildings and cutting jobs.

“Districts have to spread thinning resources out across too many buildings with fewer students year after year,” reports Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), noting the shrinking U.S. birth rate puts further pressure on enrollment numbers.

The writing was already on the wall, according to analysts, who note limited pandemic-era funding helped blunt the budget crisis.

“In many of these districts, these trends were already happening, but the COVID relief funds masked some of that decline,” said Marguerite Roza, research professor and director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. 

Because school funding depends on the number of students enrolled, districts such as Portland Public Schools (PPS) face amplified effects as their enrollment drops faster than the state average. 

“After hitting a recent high of more than 48,000 students before the COVID-19 pandemic, PPS has steadily lost students,” OPB noted in April. “According to the budget presentation to the board, PPS’s student enrollment has declined nearly 11% since 2020. Oregon as a whole is losing students, too, but at a slower rate of 6.5%.” 

As a result, the district is considering $43 million in budget cuts for the next school year. This includes a reduction of about 240 jobs, blending classrooms and setting minimum class sizes, according to Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong. 

‘We cannot effectively budget or allocate critical resources’ 

The tumble in enrollment comes after PPS has made national headlines over its political stances, from resisting immigration law enforcement to promoting anti-Israeli literature. 

The district’s board unanimously approved a resolution in January to provide “safe, inclusive learning environments” to all students – interpreted as keeping immigration statuses of students secret unless local authorities compel districts to do otherwise. 

However, other states such as Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas have taken opposing views, arguing mass illegal immigration poses national security threats and burgeoning costs to public schools. 

“Oklahomans are kind, hard-working folks, but their patience with being asked to foot the bill for the federal government’s failure has run out,” said Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters in an October press release. “I demand Oklahoma taxpayers be reimbursed for the impact illegal immigration presents to our state. We cannot effectively budget or allocate critical resources when we have no accounting of the cost that illegal immigration places on our schools.” 

Meanwhile, Missouri districts have struggled with an increase in enrolled foreign national students “from countries identified by the federal government as national security threats,” according to The Center Square. 

“While many claim illegal border crossers are families who want a better life, federal data shows the overwhelming majority are single military age men. … As illegal border crossings increased under the Biden administration, so also did crime.” 

The Portland school district also promoted what the local Jewish community called “highly inappropriate anti-Israel political advocacy” last summer in its social justice guidebook. 

“This (guidebook) is propaganda,” said Robert Horenstein, director of community relations and public affairs at the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland. “If this were used in the classroom, it could potentially make a Jewish student feel unsafe.”