Portland, OR – Layoffs are now on the table, along with the earlier proposed school closures, as Portland Public Schools wrestles with a $65-million-dollar budget deficit.
At a Monday press conference, ahead of a Tuesday night school board meeting, Portland Public Schools’ Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong said as many as 450 FTE positions may be cut from the schools and the central office. About 223 positions would be teachers or school staff. “We always look at reductions furthest away from the classroom knowing that every single position that we have impacts what happens in the classroom, but we do start off with central office first,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong defended the layoffs and plans to close as many as 14 schools next year. “Our student enrollment continues to decline, and because our funding is largely determined by the number of students we serve, fewer students means fewer dollars coming into our district, even as the costs of operating our schools continued to rise.”…