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Portland Public Schools will face a $56.3 million budget deficit in the upcoming 2026–27 school year. Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong’s budget proposal, which she presented to the Portland School Board Tuesday night, would reduce 336 full time employees as a consequence.
Armstrong’s proposals recommend reductions of 112 school-based FTE, 101 in specialized programs, 48 in building supports, and 74 in its central office. (There is some variation, given rounding.) The presentation of her budget kicks off a series of public meetings, though school staffing changes have been applied across schools, and district officials have said changes to school based staffing will be challenging to make at this point. The district employs more than 8,000 people, Armstrong said.
The $56.3 million number grew from an earlier district projection that PPS would face a $50 million deficit in the upcoming year, and thus layoff proposals have also expanded from an earlier draft in January. The district faced—and patched, largely through furloughs—an unexpected $22.5 million deficit in the middle of the academic year.
The district continues to forecast rising costs, limited revenues and declining enrollment. (Student enrollment at PPS is declining at a much faster rate than declining enrollment statewide.) And the deficit persists even with increases in funding from the State School Fund, alongside some local and intermediate revenue gains, because expenses continue to outpace revenue. Adding to the crunch: declining revenue from property taxes, including from the teachers levy, and public pension obligations.
“We face a hard reality,” Armstrong told board members. “The hardest thing a district does is reduce the supports it knows that students need.”
Armstrong also dropped a second difficult piece of news on Tuesday: officials anticipate PPS will face a deficit of $65.2 million in the 2027–28 school year. The district has already reduced about $170 million in its budget over the last few years, starting with some central office cuts in the 2022–23 school year. Michelle Morrison, the district’s chief financial officer, says that’s attributed to what officials anticipate will be a “pretty significant cost increase.”
Morrison briefly outlined a “reset” plan to develop a new structural baseline for the district’s expenses, and said more details would be available in future meetings. The gist: PPS is looking to stop patching its budget deficits with one-time funds, and would set a new service level as a consequence. (It drained many of its reserves to patch a budget this year, draining one-time funds.) A chart in a budget presentation indicated that without a reset, the district would continue facing larger and larger deficits, hitting $169 million by the 2029–30 school year.
Members of the School Board, acting in their capacity as the Budget Committee, were grim as they took in the news. School Board Chair Eddie Wang floated developing a new staffing plan for the central office by reducing administrative “layers.” Other board members simply commented on the gravity of rising costs.
There are several community engagement dates scattered through May, before the final budget is adopted in June. WW will more closely detail the latest budget numbers in coming days.
