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Portland Public Schools’ teachers levy collected almost $5 million less than expected this year, the district’s chief financial officer, Michelle Morrison, told the Portland School Board on Nov. 18.
The property tax levy, which collects $1.99 per $1,000 of assessed value, funded about 650 full-time teaching positions last year. (That number has declined over the years as teacher salaries have risen.)
In the presentation to the School Board that night, county economist Jeff Renfro explained that decreasing values on commercial properties, such as downtown office space, and the resulting compression of property taxes have contributed to a dip in revenue from the teachers levy over the past three years.
“Typically, we would consider 3% to be the floor of growth for assessed value,” Renfro said. “For PPS, it’s been below 2% the last couple of years, which is extremely low. It rivals the level that we saw right after the financial crisis.”
The shortfall from the levy is just one reason PPS faces a $50 million budget shortfall in the upcoming school year, bad news for a district that has already stripped its central office and made numerous cuts to classrooms over the past few years. It faces deep uncertainties both this year and next, especially as federal cuts affect state budgets. The findings about the levy only add to those questions.
Proceeds from the levy go straight to funding licensed full-time teaching positions, Morrison said. “That’s part of the fragility that I’ve been trying to describe around our current-year budget.”
