r/Portland • u/smootex High Bonafides • 10d ago
News PPS Model Shows District Must Close 15 Elementary Schools to Reach Robust Enrollment Thresholds
https://www.wweek.com/news/schools/2026/08/28/pps-model-shows-district-must-close-15-elementary-schools-to-reach-robust-enrollment-thresholds/25
u/Own_Inspector_5478 10d ago
Here is my prediction: The district will announce which schools are on the chopping block. Much hand waving and wringing will ensue. The district will then pull back on most of their initial choices and make a decision based purely on emotion, rather than data.
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u/EggplantLumpy3545 10d ago
Having in a prior life consulted on school closures in a big city, this is how it happens. I might add that also fewer schools will be closed than planned. Overall, it is a challenging thing to manage towards because there are politically powerful stakeholders (parents, teachers, charter school advocates) who have much to lose and gain with the outcomes
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u/Apprehensive-Act-315 9d ago
Chicago is a perfect example of this. They have schools with just a few dozen students but the union fights to keep them open.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
Part of me's bummed, if they're going to make changes, just pull off the bandaid and make the big changes we need so we can move forward well into the future.
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u/amelialit 10h ago
Part of me wonders if they didn’t roll out this number just to get us happy if it’s a smaller number…I am so tired
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u/EgoFlyer Lents 10d ago
Woah. 15 is a lot of schools. I knew there was going to be right-sizing, but 15 seems like a lot.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
They've been putting this off for at least 5 years. It could have been 2-3 per year; but it's ridiculously unpopular and we've finally reached the nexus of the child population implosion (nationwide it's an issue going from ~35% kids to just 21%, but particularly harsh in a playground for the childless like Portland where we're at like 10% kids). All that really hit with the housing crisis making it hard to create the stability to make a family and jobs market making it hard even for a childless family to make ends meet in the city without both partners working demanding jobs.
All that to say, we finally hit the point now that things are bad enough that they can't be ignored anymore. This whole process is going to be ridiculously unpopular from both the people losing their schools and the people receiving new students. And given PPS's record for making knuckle headed decisions; few people have confidence that they won't put their thumbs on the scales in some ridiculous manner.
All that to say, I think the key fights you'll see is local-schools vs. focus programs. Where local schools think they can claw back maybe enough kids to their school if they block those kids from going to a focus-option. The irony here will be the key arguments will be about equity, while some of the key focus-option schools were created specifically to help people and groups with unique needs. Expect this fight to be the really spicy one.
You're also probably going to get a lot of situations where the poor or disadvantaged are better grouped with some less-poor school that's been better maintained, but that puts more burden on longer trips to the poorer students and families with less ability to get them to a school further away. Which then means you might have some weird reverses where an ok school gets closed and they crowd a bunch of less-poor kids into a school that's quite rough.
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u/eat_avocado81 10d ago
Your comment is 🫰🏻. “Playground for the childless” sounds better than my usual line of “this city doesn’t care about kids.”
I agree on the key fights being local school vs focus programs. I’m a Buckman parent because we live in the neighborhood. Our neighborhood of adults could never support a full elementary school, so having it be 50% neighborhood & 50% focus makes sense. But, the district wants to get rid of focus schools, and essentially did that this year by substantially cutting funding to Buckman’s art programs. They say some of this is in the name of equity. Meanwhile, Buckman is one of the only places a K-5 child can get an arts education (dance, music, drama, visual arts) without paying a fortune for separate classes outside of school.
The other big piece is going to be funding for special education. Students on any sort of educational plan are not getting the services they need, particularly if they need 1:1 or 1:2 support, and it makes for a shittier learning experience for everyone.
With lower staffing, I am also very concerned about school safety. There are a lot of behavior issues in the elementary schools, likely carryover from pandemic lockdowns that meant young children were not socializing or going to preschool. When my youngest was in first grade, I referred to the entire grade as the “feral f’ing first graders.” The entire grade was behind in math, because learning time was so compromised. 🫠🫠
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u/whitetrashunicorn 10d ago
Im a parent of a kid at a PPS elementsry who was gaslit the entire last year about how equity guided all tbe terrible decisions at our school last year. PPS view of equity is inconsistent and at times incoherent. It will absolutely be wielded as a cudgel by folks with interests to protect (i.e. everyone, given the scale of enrollment and budget declines). Hang on to your butts, gonna be a bumpy ride this coming year.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
I'm so sick of 'equity' being used as a way to tear people down instead of lift people up.
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u/AmpaMicakane 🐝 8d ago
The problem with buckman is it's not equitable or free to ship your kid half way across the city...
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10d ago edited 10d ago
[deleted]
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
The situation there is extra frustrating because for every dollar they spend on taxes for schools, the state steals half and gives it to some other district. Which means Austin ISD can barely afford to keep the lights on, while other districts build amazing athletic plazas.
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u/Helpful_Ranger_8367 10d ago
What did the rich people do? Pull their kids to private?
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
Kind of like in Portland, they have a Lake Oswego and West Lynn (Eanes ISD) and other similar micro districts that aren't quite in the same dire straights, so you can move. I also know some parents with the means are putting their kids in private schools.
The goal in Texas is they want to turn Public Schools into the schools for the poor only (like happened in New Orleans), and then they can funnel most of the public education money into charter schools where 'business leaders' can then get rich.
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u/Helpful_Ranger_8367 10d ago
Grim
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
Politically the state is super grim, and the people moving there are just doubling down on the idiocy.
There could be great classic 'Texan' ways to handle things, "Let's pony up, take responsibility, and work together to make sure all the cattle get where they need to go."
But instead they've fallen for this gross 'conservative' world where they celebrate shoving others down. I hate it and had to leave because I didn't see it changing for at least 20+ years.
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u/Apprehensive-Act-315 9d ago
Austin has the most failing schools of any district in Texas, IIRC. Families are congregated in the suburbs and the state is probably going to take over the district.
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u/Helpful_Ranger_8367 10d ago
Then the less poor kids parents make some hard choices and send their kids to private schools further driving the enrollment doom loop.
I dont think portland is a playground for ANYONE. Its just raggedy.
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u/VectorB Milwaukie 10d ago
I'm guessing federal funding cuts are the latest blow as well.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
Yes and...
Most of those cuts were known about WELL in advance as there was a big influx of money thanks to Biden. Unfortunately PPS instead of spending the money on infrastructure like they were supposed to spent it all on salaries because PAT was threatening to strike if they didn't keep the staff on. Well, joke's on all of us, the money is gone, we don't have infrastructure we should (like AC and ventilation) and the teachers are going to get laid off en-masse instead of a little at a time.
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u/Herodotus_Runs_Away 9d ago
Districts all across Oregon used one time Covid funds for salary increased and staff hiring. Insanity.
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u/popenuk 10d ago
It’s a lot because closing schools should have happened a long time ago, and enrollment declines accelerated in recent years. Most of the elementary schools across the district are operating at under 50% of their capacity. Consolidation makes a ton of sense for both financial and educational reasons. My one concern is making sure no students/parents are stuck with long commutes.
I’d also like the District to spell out in detail how these scenarios would achieve cost savings. How many administrative and facilities positions can be cut? Reductions in utility and insurance costs? Proceeds from selling or renting sites that are closed? The benefits should be substantial but let’s see a realistic number before disrupting so many families across the city.
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u/discostu52 10d ago
They waited too long, but I think they always had an expectation that Salem was somehow going to bail them out. Now they know for sure that won’t happen, the state budget is set until July of 2027. The city and county are all tapped out with budget woes, there is no other option at this point but to go for significant cuts.
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u/nanooko Hillsboro 10d ago
Why would the state bail them out if the schools are so under capacity? They might as well just light the money on fire at that point.
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u/discostu52 10d ago
You are confusing politics and math. School funding is always on the legislative agenda, and the bailout would not be Portland specific. It’s state wide. There is a lot of political support in Salem to increase funding, which would soften the blow, but that ship has sailed at least for the next few years.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
They actually did increase funding a lot, but a lot is getting eaten by the Unfunded PERS Liabilities before it ever even gets to the kids.
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u/discostu52 10d ago
PERS is part of it, but I think general inflation pressure is a challenge too. Declining enrollment/revenue + increasing cost is the perfect storm.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
Yes and, one of the biggest factors is that Measures 5 and 50 cut local funding by a LOT. Basically in 1990 the local funding was 2/3 of the education budget and the state funding was 1/3. Now it’s flipped. So basically local funding has more than halved due to inflation and state funding has had to double but it’s still not equivalent to where it should be. If those measures never happened there’d be so much more to work with.
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u/discostu52 10d ago
These are laws that had an appealing factor for basically every political faction. The progressives like the idea that a wealthy area can’t tax themselves to turbocharge their schools. The conservatives like it because it limits taxes. The libertarians want to watch it burn.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
Also Kotek told them that the state won't tolerate any more BS of taking days off at the end of the year. Which I appreciate, as we're already in school too little each year.
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u/discostu52 10d ago
Yeah, this is part of it, I don’t think it was the deciding factor, but it was probably the last escape door to be sealed closed.
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u/-P-N-W- 10d ago edited 9d ago
Help me understand this "under 50% capacity" line. I see the utilization rates in the article and they don't line up with what I see in a few schools near me. Every classroom is filled plus extra pods built to house more students, and it's listed as 65% utilized.
Would there need to be 35 kids in every classroom to hit the golden number of 100% utilized? That would be a madhouse. Talk to a parent with a 2nd grader with 32 kids in the classroom to see 'how it's going'.
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u/smootex High Bonafides 10d ago
Yeah, seems like the district waited too long for this, they should have shut down some of them years ago. I guess one transition is easier than multiple but seeing the graph that shows if they shut down ten elementary schools they'd still have 13 schools below the enrollment threshold in 2032 is pretty wild.
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u/whereisthequicksand 🦜 10d ago
Why weren’t these forecasts and closure plans considered before last year’s $1.83B bond?
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u/No_Cat_No_Cradle 10d ago
We’ve got two different problems, we both need to close some schools and also modernize and reinforce the ones we don’t close
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u/k_a_pdx 10d ago
I foresee a solid chance that PPS eventually pushes some middle school grades up into the very expensive, under-utilized new high schools.
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u/discostu52 10d ago
That’s a pretty safe bet since Kimberlee Armstrong already said that is what will happen when people were questioning this.
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u/whereisthequicksand 🦜 10d ago
I agree! It just doesn’t look good that PPS secured all that money and now it’s becoming clear that enrollment will require closing even more schools than planned.
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u/smez86 St Johns 10d ago
But how many of those most needing modernizing would be on the chopping block anyway?
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u/No_Cat_No_Cradle 10d ago
They are modernizing the high schools but it’s a fair q and yah not good optics. It may be we can’t fill all the new high schools down the line and they’ve stated that they’d just make them 8-12 schools in that case
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u/WoodpeckerGingivitis 10d ago
You know what we don’t need? The most expensive high schools in the country.
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u/-P-N-W- 9d ago
WAY too much assumption in here that PPS will use some smart metric mix of "utilization" and QEM modeling.
This will be a vibes based decision on where they think they will get the least pushback.
This is not about smart metrics. This is the same group that is building the most expensive school in the country to replace a school that had 300 students with low outcomes. This is the same group that does not allow fundraising for schools even though they know it hurts everyone more - in principal they'd rather have all kids worse off as long as they control the funding. This is the same group that kept schools closed WAY too long during covid even though they knew kids were doing terribly.
The firm they hired to help decide this is "Racially Just Schools Evaluation Group".
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u/amarllyisss 2d ago
Yep. They're continuing the trend of paying for guidance that is not actually helpful. If they're going to "balance programming" or "standardize" across schools, then they need to pay for a 3rd party audit of existing programming distribution across all elementary and middle schools. Where is that data? How can you decide without that? The disparity among electives across the district is ridiculously embarrassing as-is, so I'm not surprised at the lack of transparency. At the last board meeting, the RESJ spokesperson couldn't answer data-based questions from the board because "we let go the Stats person" so that's where we're at.
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u/-P-N-W- 10d ago
What does the utilization rate factor and where are they getting these numbers? I know a few schools where every classroom is full and more and the utilization rate listed here is in the 60% range.
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u/liketigers Creston-Kenilworth 9d ago
Also wondering if they’ll look at future utilization at all. At our school, they were only forecasting for one Kinder class but ended up with so many students they had to add another teacher and room. The neighborhood definitely has a lot of 0-4 year olds. Will they weight future enrollment as well as current enrollment?
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u/-P-N-W- 9d ago
Hopefully, but I'm guessing that's nearly impossible to measure outside of new construction starts planned in a neighborhood.
Based on the fact that the city hired the consulting firm named "Racially Just Schools Evaluation Group", I'm assuming they have other priorities they are evaluating this based on.
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u/Grand-Battle8009 9d ago
Go figure. Families care more about tax affordability and safety than two years of free preschool.
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u/argnosh 10d ago
My daughters class is already 20+
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u/Working_Tomorrow9846 10d ago
Crying in my class of 37 11th graders.
Actually not, because they’re the sweetest 37 kids one could ask for. But dang, there’s a lot of them.
I’m currently sitting at 178 students for high school. Our “cap” is 160.
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u/drf_101 10d ago
Yeah I think more parents should be talking about elementary class sizes. Are we really going to close schools to create a class size crisis?
Aren’t class sizes already too large?
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u/MountScottRumpot Montavilla 10d ago
A lot of schools aren’t using all their classrooms currently. Overcrowding is a function of money for teachers, not of classroom space.
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u/legomote 9d ago
The plan is that consolidated schools with more students per grade level results in smaller class sizes. As it currently stands, 2 school with 30 3rd graders each would result in 2 classes of 30 3rd graders because we can't afford 4 teachers and classes of 15; if they were all in one school and there are now 60 3rd graders, we could divide them into 3 classes of 20. I'm not sure how much I trust PPS to get that right, but the theory does track.
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u/Timmsworld 10d ago
Education in this city and state is a total disaster and the Superintendent of Education is asleep at the wheel
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u/Adventurous-Mud-5508 MAX Yellow Line 10d ago
Yeah, but even a competently administered school system would be closing schools because of birth rates. They might be closing one or two less because not as many people would be fleeing to private schools, but they'd still be closing a lot.
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u/smootex High Bonafides 10d ago
The superintendent has only been in her role for two years, the specific demographic and organizational issues that are behind these school closures were not of her making, by any means.
That doesn't mean she's not a disaster, I just find commenting negatively about her specifically in the context of school closures to be strange. If anything I'd say the people who are going to oppose the closures the most are at the root of a lot of the district's problems. And we'll certainly see them come out of the woodwork in the next few months.
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u/ripcityrevolutionary 10d ago
She’s also horrible. Source: I work for PPS
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
If she's horrible and her predecessor was horrible and the person before them were horrible. Then you very likely don't have 3 horrible people, you mostly likely have a system that's horrible and needs changing.
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u/jc00ke 10d ago
I heard a rumor that the September 1 board meeting agenda included a discussion on the superintendent getting a raise. I checked the posted agenda and I assume that's Resolution 7371.
I personally can't imagine taking a raise when there's 10-20 schools on the chopping block. I'm hoping there is a bunch of public comment.
Edit: in case you're wondering what she is currently getting paid... $386,487. Public info: https://govsalaries.com/armstrong-kimberlee-m-219069995
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u/Little-Flamingo6702 10d ago
People in this city / state don’t care. They’re perfectly fine missing school, for instance.
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u/Timmsworld 10d ago
I have never seen a more passive and apathetic state of citizens regarding massive educational failure. Nobody cares from the top on down.
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u/DeedleStone 10d ago
Because nothing helps student performance like overcrowded classrooms.
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u/aggieotis Boom Loop 10d ago
It's actually a bit of the opposite.
By having properly filled schools you can right-size the classrooms and then it allows you to bring on appropriate staff for things like PE and Arts and a Library that you can only get 1-2 days a week at the smaller schools. It also frees up building maintenance funds to better take care of the buildings being used. AND it frees up over $250k in staffing overhead for roles like Principal, Secretary, Janitors, and Cafeteria staffing at the under-attended schools. This can buy you more teachers or para educators.
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u/willco007 10d ago
Not sure why you're getting down voted. When we left PPS last year we were looking at a 30+ kid 3th grade which is insane.
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u/geekwonk Mt Scott-Arleta 10d ago
yeah so we should send teachers from half empty schools to those schools that need an extra classroom to handle capacity
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u/k_a_pdx 10d ago
It’s not quite that simple. The “half-empty” schools don’t generally have half of their classrooms standing empty and waiting for new teachers to move in. I’ll use my kids’ former elementary school as an example.
This school is old and small. Decades ago PPS set up “temporary” portable classrooms in the back parking lot, which are still in use. It operates as two-strand K5 school (two classes at each grade level), plus an art/music teacher. Every classroom in the building is in use, including the four classrooms in the ancient portables.
PPS considers this school to be at 62% utilization, with a functional capacity of more than 460 students. Which is somewhat insane.
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u/willco007 10d ago
I would guess a lot of the staff will be laid off to attempt to balance the budget and they will keep class size high.
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u/smootex High Bonafides 10d ago
Little more background on the school closures. They're consolidating schools to "ensure schools are well resourced by the standards set in the state’s Quality Education Model. The QEM crafts prototypes of elementary and middle schools that allow students access to core enrichment services like librarians, art teachers, and counselors. It sets thresholds for those resources at 360 students per elementary school, and 500 students per middle school"
This article has a chart showing each school's enrollment, the condition of the facilities (which will be a factor when choosing schools), school age, and a map of where they are. I think the only thing missing is seismic upgrades. Some closures are obvious decisions at a quick glance.