Budgeting Butcher-Style: on the planned staffing cuts in Portland Public Schools

On February 15, Portland Public Schools building administrators announced during staff meetings that student enrollment across the district is projected to decrease, and that this will lead to a reduction of staff next year. On February 16, Deputy Superintendent of Instruction and School Communities, Cheryl Proctor, and Deputy Superintendent of Business and Operations, Claire Hertz, emailed this announcement to PPS staff. Their message states: 

"Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, our district has seen a significant decrease in student enrollment, and we are projecting that we will be down more than 3,400 students next school year, a decline of 8%. . . The most significant enrollment decline has come at the elementary school level, with a projected decrease of 3,999 students (21%) from pre-pandemic 2020 to 2023. Because of this, we expect to see a reduction of about 65 homeroom positions in K-5 classrooms. . . The decline in enrollment has been driven by several factors, including decreasing birth rates, enrollment patterns, school re-configurations and choices families have made during the pandemic. We know it’s not just us, but a reflection of statewide enrollment numbers (a decline of 21,000 students in Oregon from pre-pandemic to now) and the national trend as well."

Meanwhile, earlier this month, PPS School Board approved a $2 million+ raise for administrators and the Superintendent.

Forecast Factors

To justify its "downsizing" plans, the district is using pandemic data from a time when many felt unsafe to send children not yet eligible for vaccines in person as the basis for its forecast. When school buildings reopened last fall with a full five-day a week schedule in contrast to the spring optional hybrid program, there was no viable option for families who wanted their children to remain online. The district's only remote program, the Online Learning Academy, had hundreds of students on the wait list and would not hire teachers for the advertised positions or open up more student spots as the district had promised. This left hundreds of students with no safe learning option within the district.

Curiously, PPS also asserts that it is slated to lose approximately 7 percent of teachers due to attrition this year, including retirement and resignations. PPS has already been understaffed for the past year, unable to fill scores of positions. Why then the cuts?

In addition to pandemic attendance data--so atypical it should not be used as a data point for future forecasts at all, the district used a population forecast by Portland State University's Population Research Center for its enrollment forecast. The reasons given for the projected student enrollment decline are: declining birth rates, slower net in migration, and lack of post pandemic "bounce back" which was predicted to happen in October 2021, "assuming the pandemic would be over." 

In its methodology, the Center relies on migration estimates from the Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The PPS forecast is based on a net migration estimate from the years 2000-2010 which also happened to have the slowest rate of in-migration to Oregon in two decades. 

In contrast, the March 2022 forecast by the Office of Oregon's Governor Brown states that in-migration will be the main source of the state's future population increase. The Office "calls for a rebound in migration this year and next," saying that "already the state is seeing a strong increase in the number of surrendered driver licenses at the DMV, which has traditionally been a good leading indicator of migration." Even though population growth slowed in 2020 and 2021, the Governor's Office expects growth "to rebound after 2021." 

Interestingly, statewide, the Governor's Office predicts the field of education "to see strong gains in the near-term as school related employment remains below pre-pandemic peaks." Although the demographics for K-12 are "stable to slightly declining," which will overall likely be reflected in "stable to slightly declining employment in education in the decade ahead," Portland's population is expected to grow. 

The Governor's Office states: 

"Transportation, warehousing, and utilities have been booming with the continued rise of e-commerce and big increase in goods spending during the pandemic. There have been multiple announcements of future 11 distribution centers, primarily in the Portland region that are built into the outlook. Industrial and warehousing vacancy rates are very low, and new construction should bring more capacity and future growth online." 

The report continues: "Portland’s regional economy is home to the state’s largest concentration of Professional and Business Services, and above average shares in Wholesale, and Transportation, Warehousing, and Utilities. All are expected to grow strongly in the years ahead."

Overall, the Governor's Office report remains optimistic about the state's population growth: 

"The current COVID-19 pandemic has caused dire economic and employment situations and has caused slow population growth. The population growth is expected to rebound after 2021. Based on the current forecast, Oregon’s population is expected to reach 4.589 million in the year 2030 with an annual rate of growth of 0.81 percent between 2021 and 2030."

The report does predict a decline in K-12 population (aged 5-17) across the state in the coming years but not the drastic decline that PPS claims is to be seen. The Governor's Office says that school age population growth is predicted to be "very slow or negative," which will translate into slow growth or even decline in the school enrollments of -0.7 percent annually. If this holds true for Portland, our student numbers would only decrease by approximately 316 students next year, not the 21%, of students PPS claims.

Teacher Cut Pro

Prior to PPS, Claire Hertz, one of the main architects of the upcoming teacher cuts, worked as Chief Financial Officer for the Beaverton, Oregon district, where she presided over a scandal that, similarly, began with a faulty forecast which cost the district $12 million and the threat of layoffs of hundreds of educators. Just a year after plunging the Beaverton district into fiscal chaos and causing an uproar, she was hired by Portland Public Schools for her current position.

The 2018-19 fiasco was not Claire Hertz's first rodeo. She was already Chief Financial Officer in Beaverton when the district announced it would eliminate 344 teacher positions in 2012. 

Adam Sanchez wrote in SocialistWorker.org back in 2012:

"The crisis facing Oregon's schools is political, not financial. As a new report by Our Oregon points out, over the last five years, tax breaks for corporations and the rich have grown by 12 percent while school funding has dropped by 5 percent.

Beaverton, where the cuts to schools are most severe, is where sports giant Nike is headquartered. The mammoth multinational corporation paid a state income tax of 4.9 percent from 2008 to 2010. Precision Castparts, the other Fortune 500 Corporation headquartered in Oregon, paid a state income tax of 2.9 percent.

In fact, the CEOs of these companies could singlehandedly save our schools. Nike cofounder Phil Knight is the 60th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $13.1 billion. He could fill Oregon's entire $3.4 billion budget deficit, double the salary of all teachers in Oregon (roughly $1.48 billion per year) and still be a multibillionaire."

Over the past ten years, Hertz has clearly perfected her expertise at eliminating educators, those school district employees who make the most difference in students' learning.

The Union Responds

Last week the press reported on the planned PPS staff cuts, with Portland Association of Teachers president, Elizabeth Thiel questioning the need to eliminate 121 middle and elementary school teaching positions when the district is receiving more than enough funding from federal, state, and local sources. 

In her message to PAT members, Thiel wrote: 

"The District’s plan to cut staff is even more outrageous given all the additional funding coming to the District which can and should be used to reduce class sizes:

The Student Success Act, the result of our collective action, including tens of thousands of educators rallying statewide on May 8, 2019, will bring PPS about $35 million for next school year. These funds are specifically meant to reduce class sizes and support students’ behavioral and mental health needs. 

In addition to that new funding, PPS has received over $116 million in federal ESSR funds, much of which remains unspent. These funds must be used by September, 2024 or be returned to the Department of Education.

On top of federal and state funding, our community has shown up again and again to support schools by voting for the Teachers Levy and the Arts tax, which together provide over $100 million to PPS. Both funds are expressly for the purpose of increasing the number of educators in our schools.

With the combination of all these funds, PPS should be investing in our students by dramatically reducing class sizes and caseloads. Instead, they plan to cut up to $18 million dollars in direct services to students, in a system that is already stretched beyond the breaking point."

Intended Effects?

The planned teacher cuts will have the effect of larger class sizes which correlate to worse outcomes for students. The mere announcement has already created an atmosphere of increased stress and instability in an already stressful and unstable year during which staff morale is possibly at its lowest ever.

These cuts fit with the pattern of the neoliberal strategy of manufacturing a crisis and using "butcher knife"-style policy to make strategic cuts. This type of shock doctrine-style treatment applied to public schools can be seen locally and nationally. Those who value free public education must raise their voices before public schools are dismantled using faulty forecasts that justify predetermined agendas.