By State Representative Rob Nosse
Part of my job is reading and replying to emails from constituents on a wide swath of issues, ranging from supporting community solar, stopping ICE raids, opposing data centers and so much more. Lately these emails are mostly about the Portland Public Schools (PPS) “rightsizing” process. There are several variations of that email from: slow this down, keep my school or program open, fund schools better or stop the whole thing outright.
Most of you know the PPS school board is vetting two proposals and is hoping to decide what to do by December. There are two approaches. Under both the A and B proposals, the area I represent includes the closure of Buckman and Creston elementary schools and Sellwood Middle School. The whole list of closures for Scenario A includes Beach, Buckman, Creston, Irvington, James John Lewis, Maplewood, Marysville, Peninsula, Rose City Park, Sabin, Sellwood Middle School, Stephenson and Woodmere. The MLC (9–12) high school program would also close.
Then there are program changes. Spanish immersion programs that are all over the city would consolidate. In SE Portland, Atkinson’s Spanish immersion would move to Lents.
The Creston Deaf and Hard of Hearing program, which is a resource for the whole region, would be transferred to Glencoe. Odyssey moves to the MLC site.
There are middle school changes too. Laurelhurst ceases to be a K–8 and their middle school grades would be transferred to Mt. Tabor. The Sunnyside Environmental K–8 would also become a K-5 and likely lose the environmental focus with their middle school grades being transferred to Hosford.
Several events are driving the superintendent to propose these options. First is that PPS faces a $65 million shortfall for next year. Yes, PPS will have to make more cuts to their budget in the coming year. Please know I am committed to trying to fund a school budget that would prevent those cuts from being needed. Easier said than done, but along with a longer school year, that is among my top priorities.
The other challenge is declining enrollment. PPS has already seen a drop of roughly 6,000-6,700 students since the 2018–2019 school year, bringing total enrollment down to roughly 42,622 students for 2025–26. According to forecasts from the Portland State University Population Research Center, PPS is projected to lose an additional 3,400-5,200 students over the coming decade, with some long-term forecasts pointing to a total decline of about 14 percent to roughly 36,763 students by 2035–36. It is driven by falling local birth rates, high housing costs and slower rates of family in-migration. This is happening in other school districts around the state as well.
I hate that we find ourselves and our school district here. It is not any fun trying to figure this out and it is not what anyone wants to do. I am very mindful of my role in all this, and I am also mindful that the state’s budget challenges are pretty significant and it is making me reluctant to promise to do better when so many other vital programs like rental assistance, support for addiction treatment and health care in general, roads and bridges and wildfire mitigation are struggling for the financial support they need. Higher education is underfunded in this state too.
I don’t have easy answers for the cost of housing, the job market, the addiction that plays out in our streets. Oregon is also saddled with a tax structure that is terrible but can only be fixed by ballot measure with any fix confronting a tax-weary electorate who feel overtaxed or underwhelmed by how their government is deploying the resources they have been given to address problems. I don’t have easy answers for population decline either. Hopefully, by the time many of you read this, the US Congress is headed in a different direction. That will at least be a start.
In one of the emails I received, the PPS Superintendent, Kimberly Armstrong, wrote back and included this in her reply.
“I agree that schools are the heart of our communities. The relationships, traditions and sense of belonging you describe matter deeply. Closing a school carries real consequences, and we must take those seriously. But we must also ask: What is the alternative, and what would it mean for students? PPS is a public school system built over more than a century. It grew to serve more than 80,000 students across more than 100 school buildings. Today, we serve approximately 42,000 students. Who is harmed when a school remains open but lacks consistent access to counselors, librarians, enrichment and student support? Keeping a building open does not, by itself, preserve the educational experience children deserve. Previous generations of district leaders faced difficult closure decisions, community opposition and requests to stop and reconsider. Those decisions helped shape the system we have today. Our responsibility is to examine what our students need now and sustain it for the future.
“Proposals deserve examination and feedback, and any alternative must show how we will provide adequate staffing, address declining enrollment and operate within our resources. Maintaining the current footprint with a pause also has consequences for children. I welcome ideas that meet those responsibilities while preserving neighborhood connections. Our shared goal must be a stable public school system where every child receives the support they need.”
I look forward to helping and trying to mitigate all this as best as I can.
