Portland Public Schools has announced a hiring freeze, claiming it's because of shrinking enrollment and uncertain funding.
In a letter sent to parents on Tuesday, the district says they have 3,000 fewer students enrolled now than they did before the start of the pandemic
PPS also said they expect to lose around another 500 students next year.
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The district stated that pandemic relief funds have started drying up and that they have not received a strong indication of adequate funding from the state.
The hiring freeze will start in the central office, where they will also sweep unused central office funds and evaluate how to operate with minimal central infrastructure.
Meanwhile, PPS intends to prioritize direct student services and teaching in its budget decisions. It also promised every school at the K-8 level will have a coach to support teachers.
READ THE FULL PPS LETTER BELOW:
Dear Portland Public Schools community,
Oregon has experienced consecutive years of “dramatic, unprecedented enrollment decline,” and Portland Public Schools is no exception. We have 3,000 fewer students since the onset of the pandemic, and we project to lose approximately 500 more next year – a far more precipitous loss than what we projected.
The pandemic also fueled an array of disruptions that we’ve addressed using tens of millions of one-time relief funds. Those funds have paid for targeted support – online learning systems, last summer’s Acceleration Academy, and additional staff to work with specific students needing learning acceleration. We’ve improved our systems for counseling and social work, and for supporting mental and behavioral health needs.
We’re pleased to have early indications that we made good investments. Last week, we announced our graduation rate had increased. We outpaced the state, and registered an increase among our Black students that was twenty times greater than the statewide increase. We bucked state and national downward trends when our standardized test scores remained flat. Our summer programming offset summer slides, helping many students close pandemic-related gaps. And we’re seeing evidence that our early literacy investments are setting our students up for long-term success.
We’re now beginning to plan our 2023-2024 school year budget. Our funding picture is incomplete, but we have not heard any strong indication that we’ll receive adequate funding from the state. Compounding this state outlook, our federal one-time pandemic relief dollars are winding down. Bottom line: we must find ways to continue operating while building on our progress and successes to date with fewer funds.
Given this outlook, we want to share that we’re planning a leaner budget. You can expect that we will continue to prioritize a commitment to high-quality teaching and learning, and protect direct student services and school supports as much as possible.
To mitigate rising expenses and limited revenue, we will freeze central office hiring, sweep unused central office funds, and identify the minimal central infrastructure we need to support the work in our schools moving forward. We’re planning to align classroom staffing with our student population, and continue investments in high-quality professional development and summer programming.
As we make decisions, we’re also responding to feedback from our school leaders. We’ll grow school-level capacity by ensuring every elementary, middle, and K-8 school has a full-time instructional coach to support our educators. We’re also planning a fund so that school leaders and their communities can make investments that will support specific school improvement efforts aimed at raising student achievement.
And we are sincerely hopeful that state leaders will recognize the need for additive investments in Oregon’s school districts. Portland Public Schools and a coalition of public school advocates continue to make the case for more investment in education – and we hope you’ll join us. But unless there are shifts in enrollment or new sources of state funding, we anticipate that some worthy aspects of our district’s work will go underfunded.
Although we are very early in the planning process, and we will not have final numbers for several more months, we want our community to understand the priorities that will drive our decision making. We welcome your input via our budget survey or, more broadly, through our annual Successful Schools survey. We will plan to keep the broader PPS community informed as our budget outlook becomes more clear. We are on track, per our budget development calendar, to submit a 2023-2024 Superintendent’s Proposed Budget to the school board by the end of April.
Sincerely,
Guadalupe Guerrero
Superintendent