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The Portland School Board on Tuesday night voted to approve furlough days for four of Portland Public Schools’ labor partners.
The costs saved from furlough days the district’s union partners opted to take are key to helping PPS patch a $22.5 million budget hole it found itself in midyear. (The number of furlough days vary by union, and the district estimates each furlough day will save $3 million.) The district was able to identify about $10.5 million in savings by placing mid-year controls on all discretionary spending from March to June, though that number is an estimate, said chief financial officer Michelle Morrison. Furloughs at school and central office levels will help save about $12 million.
With four furlough days, the Portland Association of Teachers will take the most of any union in the district. Their furloughs mean PPS students will lose three instructional days and that school will end on June 5, instead of on June 9 as previously planned.
The Portland Federation of School Professionals, which includes staff from paraeducators to career coordinators, will take three furlough days. Members of PPS’s Service Employees International Union and Amalgamated Transit Union will each take one furlough day prior to the end of the year.
Adjusting the district calendar and cutting instructional days “is the worst-case scenario and thing that districts look to do last,” PPS Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong said Tuesday night. “We’re acknowledging that bringing forward a change to the school calendar in the middle of the school year is not something that we take lightly. We know how serious it is and the impact that it brings.”
The variances in days were an attempt to more evenly distribute the burden of lost wages between union members. “I want to lift up that the labor partners worked together to make sure people that are on the lowest income scale take fewer furlough days,” School Board vice chair Michelle DePass said Tuesday night.
But unions have continued to call on Armstrong, among other top district staff, to take more furlough days. (In March, Armstrong announced she would take six furlough days, and many top officials will take five.)
School Board members approved all furlough agreements, and a change to the district’s calendar, by a 6-0 vote (member Christy Splitt was absent from the meeting). Morrison told board members the district’s quarter three financials were “on target.”
Morrison added that the district’s projected $50 million budget shortfall for the upcoming 2026–27 academic year is the minimum based on current data. That’s affected by falling revenue from the teachers levy and higher than expected expenses. There will be a more detailed proposed budget available in April, she said.
School Board member Virginia La Forte said the responsibility for the unexpected midyear shortfall should be on the School Board moving forward. “We’re responsible for working with the money that we have,” she said, calling for monthly budget check-ins that appear to be in progress.
“Our kids need this full year. We’re talking a lot about the grown ups in the room and not as much about our students who are going to miss multiple days of learning because of what happened,” La Forte said. “I just find the whole thing just devastating and nauseating, and don’t want to be here again next year.”
