Rightsizing Facts

Part 2 of 5

PPS Hasn't Said What Closing Schools Would Save

Published

Portland Public Schools faces three serious, well-documented problems: a large budget shortfall, years of declining enrollment, and academic results that many families find disappointing. So when the district unveiled a "rightsizing" plan that could close up to 14 schools and convert seven K-8s into K-5s, it was natural to assume the plan was built to address those problems.

It mostly isn't. And the district has said as much.

What the district says rightsizing is for

When the scenarios came out in October, Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong said the closures were not about the budget. Her stated goal was consistency: making sure every school can offer the same baseline of staffing and programs. In her words, the district is closing schools because it is "spreading our resources too thin."

By November 2, the framing had shifted. At a press conference about a projected $65 million deficit for 2027–28, the district presented rightsizing alongside possible cuts of up to 450 positions. Whichever framing you take, the key number is still missing: the district has not published how much the closures would save.

The consistency concern is real, and it deserves a real hearing (we take it up in Research Doesn't Show Small Schools Hurt Students. Thin Staffing Does.). But it is a different problem from the three that dominate most families' worries. It's worth checking the plan against each one.

Problem 1: The budget shortfall

PPS says it has already cut $171.8 million in services between 2023–24 and 2026–27, and now projects a $65.2 million gap for 2027–28. The superintendent says about $40 million of that gap comes from rising state pension (PERS) costs alone, a cost that closing buildings does nothing to change. If rightsizing were a budget fix, we would expect a published estimate of net savings.

So far, no such figure has been made public. And the broader evidence suggests savings would be modest anyway. An education researcher told KATU that the savings from rightsizing processes "are not very large." KATU also reported that newly vacant buildings carry their own costs (about $70,000 in one year at the closed Smith School), and district policy disfavors selling school buildings and prefers public buyers when it does.

Any honest accounting would also include the costs of the transition itself: moving programs, redrawing boundaries, added transportation, and staff time.

Problem 2: Declining enrollment

Consolidation doesn't bring families back. At best, it adapts the district to having fewer students by putting them in fewer buildings.

The risk runs the other way. At public meetings, families at affected schools have said plainly that they would leave PPS if their school closed. The superintendent has acknowledged hearing this. Her counterargument is that doing nothing has costs too: without changes, she asked, "how will we continue to be able to support at the level we need to?" The district has not published any estimate of how many families closures might drive away.

What we can say is that a plan that triggers departures would make the enrollment problem worse, not better.

Problem 3: Academic standards

Nothing in the rightsizing scenarios changes curriculum, instructional expectations, or how student progress is measured. The academic case for the plan is indirect: the idea that fully staffed schools, with single-grade classrooms and full-time specialists, will teach better.

That's plausible. But it depends on staffing actually following students into receiving schools, and the district hasn't published commitments showing that it will. As we explain in School Closures Rarely Help Students. Here's What the Research Shows, research on school closures gives little reason to expect academic gains when the closed schools aren't low-performing to begin with.

So what is rightsizing actually solving?

The plan does address real operational problems:

Those are worth fixing. But they are narrower than the problems most families think the district is trying to solve, and they are partly a product of how PPS allocates staff, not just how many buildings it has. The cost of this particular fix (closures, long commutes, broken-up school communities) is large and certain. The benefits are smaller and depend on promises not yet made.

The question the board should answer before voting

The superintendent is due to present her recommendations on November 17, and the board is expected to vote December 15. Before then, families deserve an answer to one question:

What is the projected net savings of each scenario, after transition, transportation, and vacant-building costs, and where will that money go?

If the answer is "not much" or "we haven't calculated it," then the case for rightsizing rests entirely on the claim that consolidated schools will be better for kids. That claim should be backed by staffing guarantees and evidence, not assumed.

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