Skip to main content
A report from Portland Public Schools’ citizen budget advisers, presented May 12 to the School Board, contains some fiery commentary on how the district has approached its budget process for the upcoming 2026–27 school year.
PPS faces a $56.3 million deficit and its superintendent is proposing 336 layoffs as a consequence. The Community Budget Review Committee is a body of seventeen volunteers including parents, staff, community members and students who are meant to provide community input on the superintendent’s proposed budget.
The CBRC’s report offered several notable warnings, including that the district was making “unrealistically optimistic assumptions” about key revenues and expenditures, specifically by forecasting “a 1% cost of living adjustment for employees that is significantly lower than any COLA the district has negotiated with its labor partners in recent memory.”
The CBRC also noted that some proposed reductions, like those to English Language Development, are cutting staff even as there is growing need for services. And its members said spending on contracted management services and non-instructional personal and professional services have dramatically increased.
In response, PPS spokeswoman Valerie Feder says the COLA assumption was “part of a strategy to avoid deeper reductions and additional school restaffing in 2026-27” and that the vast majority of the relevant purchased services are from outside the district’s general fund, but instead in its capital projects fund.
More broadly, CBRC members voiced frustrations around transparency. They wrote that PPS’s budget could do much better in parsing out expenses and revenues, so that parents and community members could better understand where money is going across the district. Committee member Anne Cherry, a parent at PPS, told board members that an opaque budget would hinder efforts to build trust across the district.
“We know that families and staff of the district are the most important advocates for improvements in school funding,” Cherry said. “But they can only advocate effectively and they’re only going to be motivated to do so when they can understand where the money goes and how it’s being spent.”
CBRC members also noted that PPS had deprived them of a timeline adequate to assure public accountability, giving the committee nine working days to evaluate the budget. (Feder says this has been customary, but that officials plan to improve the process next year.)
“The district faces a structural deficit, declining reserves, and significant reductions to student-facing services,” committee members wrote. “Budget oversight that cannot be conducted thoroughly risks becoming symbolic rather than substantive.”
