With some of the lowest required instructional hours in the country — and math and reading scores to match — Oregon’s students may be paying the price for time lost in the classroom.
[Editor’s Note: PPS declined to be interviewed for this feature, and instead referred PDX Parent to its online press releases for information.]
When Portland Public Schools (PPS) announced a series of employee furlough days that resulted in three calendar days cut from the end of the 2025-2026 school year for students, tensions were high. Parents had panicked flashbacks to months of balancing telework and virtual school during 2020 and the PPS teachers’ strike in 2024. Teachers were watching their paychecks get negotiated away and recalculating their own family budgets. And politicians were crunching numbers and pointing fingers over a $14 million budget shortfall. The pressure extended past these immediate effects, however — reviving a long-simmering debate about school year length as Oregon has continued to drop in nationwide education rankings. (When adjusted for demographics, Oregon’s 4th- and 8th-grade reading and math scores rank between 47th and 50th nationwide.) Now parents, educators, legislators and education advocates are looking for answers: How do we balance the budget and ensure all Oregon students are getting a high-quality education?
Oregon is one of ten states (including Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin) that doesn’t have a set number of school days required for each school district. Oregon is also one of 22 other states that allow noninstructional activities (like parent-teacher conferences, teacher professional development and recess) to count toward the total number of instructional hours. Although Oregon’s required instructional time of 990 hours per year meets or exceeds the requirements of 12 other states, a 2024 EdWorkingPaper study used teacher and principal surveys to estimate that actual instructional time for students in Oregon ranks above only three states: Maine, Nevada and Hawaii. It should be noted, however, that even with the furloughs, PPS students were in the classroom more than the minimum 990 hours for the school year.
Oregon having some of the fewest instructional days for students greatly concerns Sarah Pope, executive director at Stand for Children Oregon, a local branch of a national nonprofit founded in 1996 that advocates for public school funding and educational equity. When her team realized there was no good data on school year length, they went through every district one by one in order to do the math. Stand for Children recently worked with education research nonprofit ECONorthwest to explore how increasing Oregon students’ time spent in school — through lengthening the school year and improving absenteeism — might be able to affect student outcomes in math and reading. In their models, increasing the school year by 10% could improve student outcomes by 12% in five years’ time. Even more drastically, decreasing absenteeism by 10% could improve student outcomes by nearly twice that in the same amount of time.
Education policy and research can be tricky, because the choices about funding are often based on research that shows correlation, not causation. Even Stand for Children’s own research is very clear — while there may be a correlation between more school days and higher achievement, this is not a direct effect. Of the 10 states without a required number of school days, four rank in the bottom 10 for 4th- and 8th-grade reading and math — yet four others rank in the top 10. This divide persists across other measures: Some states with both the fewest mandated and estimated instructional hours have the lowest reading and math scores, while others have the highest. This includes Massachusetts, which ranks in the top five in all 4th- and 8th-grade reading and math categories. In short: Just because a state has lower-than-average requirements for instructional time does not automatically mean students will have worse educational outcomes.
The Cost of Increasing Classroom Time
Any proposals about increasing school year length comes with a cost, however. According to Angela Bonilla, the president of the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT), keeping PPS running with its current annual budget comes with a price tag of upwards of $4 million a day. Increasing the current number of school days in PPS by 10% would add approximately $68 million to the annual budget — an amount that seems insurmountable after this school year, when a $14 million deficit required the implementation of four furlough days for PAT-represented teachers. This resulted in three calendar days cut from the end of the school year for students and five furlough days for senior leadership and administrators. The 2026-2027 budget projections are even more grim, with PPS predicting an over $50 million deficit. It’s also not the only district implementing furloughs — Reynolds, West Linn-Wilsonville and St. Helens all have taken furloughs this year, and Lake Oswego and Beaverton have several nonpaid nonwork days for teachers already built into their calendar. When it came to balancing the 2025-2026 budget, Bonilla reported during negotiations with PPS, the teacher’s association preferred furlough days instead of layoffs. But with a 28% increase in PPS’ budget deficit for the 2026-2027 school year, furloughs might not be enough. In fact, in early June, the school district issued layoff notices to at least 82 teachers ahead of the coming school year; PAT says at least 77 of those notices violate collectively bargained layoff procedures and have filed a grievance.
Bonilla and her team want the district to look at more creative solutions to keep schools open — without sacrificing student-teacher ratios and laying off educators and key support staff. And going forward, Bonilla and her team also want the district to look into contracting costs — particularly with ed tech companies like iReady (which is still being used in PPS for K-5 math classes despite being involved in a class-action lawsuit in California for student data privacy breaches). Teachers are getting creative about staffing, taking on extra work like multiple part-time positions spread across different campuses. And PAT extends their advocacy beyond school- and district-focused changes — advocating for revenue reform, recalculating the kicker (Oregon’s biannual tax rebate program, paid out when the state has a revenue surplus), and increasing the corporate income tax by 1% to be funneled directly into public education.
The Problem with PERS
Another big challenge Bonilla wants legislators to tackle: Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System, better known as PERS. Both educators and staff along with school districts have to pay into PERS — typical for similar systems in other states. However, in Oregon, the state allocates funding to school districts, but then requires the districts to turn around and spend that funding toward their PERS obligations; other states separate this obligation from education funding, leaving more money in the hands of school districts. Additionally, PERS is running at a deficit statewide, leaving school districts to reach further to cover costs, contributing $250 to $290 per $1,000 of every state employee’s salary, nearly double the national average. All of this, Bonilla points out, is going to pay for current retiree benefits, not toward future needs. Worse still, these costs continue to rise while districts are cutting budgets. Pope agrees that PERS spending is a major issue, creating an education system that continues to spend beyond its revenue.
Bonilla and Pope may disagree on the causes of and solutions to PPS’ budget struggles and low student achievement — including debates over teacher benefits, staffing levels, and where to cut or increase spending. But both agree that budget mismanagement and inadequate state education funding are at the root of the crisis. Bonilla points to an increase of administrative staff since 2018, while instructional staff and funding have been cut year after year. Pope also points to the ending of one-time funds, received mostly during the COVID-19 pandemic, that were spent on staffing and have now expired, leaving unsustainable budget gaps. When budget reports came out before the mid-year furloughs were being discussed, PPS had a deficit equivalent to almost 14 student days.
Neither Bonilla nor Pope have gotten a satisfactory answer to the question of what really caused this deficit beyond rising costs. While the state of Oregon increased education funding in the past legislative session, “Fundamentally, the issue is still that the state is funding a short year,” Bonilla asserts, “and they want folks to reduce their staffing instead of reducing the year.” Pope is equally concerned about the structural issues in funding — and what PPS has done with the funding they asked for and received, yet have been unable to maintain a more robust school year. “We’re at a point where we’re spending above [the national average] and performing below it,” Pope says. And she’s right: Oregon spends about $500 per student more than the national average, and yet the state’s test scores, when adjusted by demographics, are near the bottom.
What’s the Path Forward?
Parents and students are caught in the crosshairs of these debates. Ashley Shoefield is the PTA president at Bridlemile Elementary School and a member of Communities and Parents for Public Schools, a local chapter of a national network supporting parent involvement in public education activism. She names this bind explicitly: “Our schools are suffering, our kids are suffering — we’re all just sick of everyone blaming everyone else for the problem.” When it comes to discussing shortening or lengthening Oregon’s school year requirements, “it’s a no-brainer,” she says. “We want our kids in school longer.”
But laying off teachers to avoid furloughs is an impossible choice. Parent advocates feel pushed into a corner, and like their kids are stuck in the middle. Stress levels around scheduling and finances have spiked for Shoefield and the families she knows. “It’s absolutely burdensome,” she says, referencing the 2025-2026 adjusted school year length. “It’s going to be burdensome for every family, no matter your resources.”
Beyond the logistical and financial stress, Shoefield wants advocates to consider what students are missing — both with a shortened school year and with educator lay-offs. Pope and Bonilla agree, both pointing to bigger projects — for example, implementing high-quality literacy curriculum with fidelity and making time for teachers to give high-quality student feedback. “One thing that we’ve talked about for years as a teachers union,” Bonilla says, “is that we want a better year before we have a longer year.”
The questions of Oregon’s instructional time requirements and systems for funding education weren’t clearly answered in the 2025-2026 school year — and parents might feel more disheartened the deeper they dig into budget spreadsheets, deficit calculations and education policy. Shoefield encourages PPS families to get involved in Communities and Parents for Public Schools, and to be on the lookout for public advocacy events throughout the school year. “I think about the things we’re missing,” she says. “Not just getting to the baseline, but dreaming bigger for our kids.”