By State Representative Rob Nosse
I had a town hall in April with my colleagues, representative Mark Gamba and state senator Kathleen Taylor. Our city’s mayor Keith Wilson graciously moderated the event. There were a variety of topics covered: transportation, the results of the recent legislative session, the state of our city, immigration, the People’s Depot, the Blazers and the Moda Center, but the state of education and school funding dominated the conversation, and that’s starting to be the thing I ended up talking about with voters most.
Surely, part of what’s driving the renewed focus on education is the budget cuts that Portland Public Schools (PPS) is having to make for the next academic year (as are other school districts across the state), including the furlough days that were just announced due to some budget challenges happening in this academic year. Recent national news coverage of our state’s academic success compared to others is catching attention too.
I really know my stuff when it comes to health care and Medicaid, but not so much with education, even though my own adult children went through PPS and my grandchildren are doing the same. It is coming through loud and clear that it is one of the main concerns of voters.
Back in 2019, I was proud to vote for the Student Success Act, the largest tax increase enacted by the legislature in Oregon’s history, and it all went to schools. This was going to fix things. And then the pandemic happened. I cannot emphasize enough how that changed things to the point where it feels like that big increase in funding and support for schools has not done much. Students were out of the classroom, trying to learn at home on screens for too long. Education outcomes cratered during the “lost year” and Oregon now finds itself ranked near the bottom among 50 states in terms of graduation rates and literacy levels.
Meanwhile, the legislature routinely increases school funding, but most people think a lot more money is needed. Funding is hard to come by given the other essential things the state has to find money for, like housing and mental health.
There are also operational concerns and policy choices that our state has made over the years that people think need to be addressed as well. For starters, there are 197 school districts. That’s 197 superintendents, administrative staff, HR departments, etc. That’s also 197 school districts competing for the same pool of funds. That might be too many school districts. Maybe state dollars could be better allocated if the state didn’t have to focus on so many districts?
Another issue is that the amount of instructional time is too short. Did you know that teacher training days and parent teacher conferences count as instructional days for purposes of measuring students’ time with teachers in the classroom?
I am not sure if this would be popular but shortening the summer break would ostensibly mean more time in school, which eases up the summer slide—again, more time in the classroom should improve outcomes.
Absenteeism is a major issue. If you are not in school, you are not learning, full stop. The legislature could require all 197 school districts to implement best practices like adopting early warning systems, having school-based attendance teams and conducting home visits.
We could also couple that with exit requirements for third and/or fifth grade, as in, kids shouldn’t be advancing until they are ready to move on, particularly when it comes to math and reading skills. This would also be controversial.
I think some improvements could be made without more resources but many of them, like requiring teachers to use a science of reading approach to reading, smaller class sizes and high intensity tutoring for students who are struggling with a topic, all likely require more money. Certainly, staving off the cuts that PPS is having to make requires more funding. At the end of the day, many of Oregon’s education challenges are funding challenges. It will take more money to employ more people to help us get better outcomes.
Meanwhile, according to a national report from the Education Law Center, Oregon has a regressive manner by which our state funds schools. It claims that our approach results in school districts in poorer parts of our state getting less money per student than districts in richer parts of our state. That is not intuitive to me, as I know we have an equalization formula that accounts for richer districts (where more property tax revenue available to them) but this is something I need to investigate further.
Maybe we can finally get around to fixing the damage that was done by Ballot Measure 5 and Measure 50 from the 1990s. Both of those ballot measures capped property taxes and shifted the burden of school funding to the state of Oregon. I don’t see how we can fix education without addressing these two ballot measures, but that will not be easy. The politics of property taxes are complicated.
It is too early to predict what topics are going to dominate the 2026 fall election cycle and the subsequent 2027 legislative session, but based on what I am observing, I think school operations, learning outcomes and school funding are going to be topics that will be just as important as transportation or health care. Stay tuned as I like to say.
