Monthly Archives: June 2023

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The Cost of Sending Kids to Portland Public Schools is More Than You Think, a Lot More

How much does Portland Public Schools spend per student?

It’s complicated. 

Is it 14,829? That’s what the National Center for Education Statistics  estimates was the per pupil expenditure in Oregon’s K-12 public schools for 2019-20, their most recent figure.[1]

I asked the district if that number still holds. 

The district said the average of budgeted per pupil expenditures for next year (2023-2024) is $11,000 per student. 

“This represents standardized site services. (teachers, principals, counselors, etc,” the district explained. “It does not include services like transportation, nutrition, SpEd, ESL or other central office supports and operations. “

The district did not clarify further.

So, is $11,000 the answer, then?

Nope. 

“Once you include services like transportation, nutrition, SpEd, English as a Second Language Programs (ESL), other central office supports and operations, from a whole system perspective the budgeted per pupil expenditure number doubles and is closer to $22k/student (this is both GenFund and Special Revenue and does not include bond dollars).,” the District said..

So, is $22,000 the answer, then?

Nope.

It’s not so much a lie as an obfuscation, a deceit, an exercise in willful ignorance. People just don’t want to think about the massive amount of money going to public education that is producing such abysmal academic results.

A lot of things PPS spends money on are not counted in calculating spending per student. When all spending is thrown into the pot, the spending per student jumps up substantially.

Let’s look at the 2022-2023 school year.

PPS served 41,470 students that year. At $22,000 per student, that would translate to total spending of $912.3 million. But the District’s 2022-2023 budget is actually $1.883 billion.

Why the huge difference?

Put simply, the $22,000 doesn’t take into account all funds that support the District each year. The table below, provided boy the District, shows all resources available to the district for the school years 2018-19 through 2022-23.

This table shows that all funds available to the District in the 2022-23 school year actually totaled $1.9 billion. divide that by 41,470 students and per student expenditures comes out to $45,533. That’s right, $45,533.

And that was more than the District spent per student in the 2021-22 school year, even though the number of students served declined.

In the fall 2021, the District enrolled 45,005 students in grades K-12, a decrease of 1,932 students from fall 2020. The net loss was even greater than the previous year’s loss of 1,716 students.

A recent “Portland Public Schools Enrollment Forecast” by Portland State University’s Population Research Center projected that the District’s enrollment will likely continue to fall throughout most of the forecast’s horizon, declining to a low of 39,123 in 2035-36.  

In the meantime, the story will likely be more money for fewer students who are unaware of their rights and obligations as Americans, can’t read, and don’t know how to calculate the square footage of a room, comprehend the ebb and flow of American history or write a coherent and compelling story.

And the beat goes on.

[1] According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the $14,829 of per student expenditures comprise expenditures for the day-to-day operation of schools and school districts for public elementary and secondary education, including expenditures for staff salaries and benefits, supplies, and purchased services. General administration expenditures and school administration expenditures are also included in current expenditures. 

Expenditures associated with repaying debts and capital outlays (e.g., purchases of land, school construction, and equipment) are excluded from current expenditures. Programs outside the scope of public prekindergarten through grade 12 education, such as community services and adult education, are not included in current expenditures. Payments to private schools and payments to charter schools outside of the school district are also excluded from current expenditures. The Center says researchers generally use current expenditures instead of total expenditures when comparing education spending between states or across districts because current expenditures exclude expenditures for capital outlay, which tend to have dramatic increases and decreases from year to year. Also, many school districts support community services, adult education, private education, and other nonelementary-secondary programs, which are included in total expenditures. These programs and the extent to which they are funded by school districts vary greatly both across and within states and school districts.

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Some of the High Priority “Budget Needs” Oregon’s Legislators Seem To Think We Need (or don’t need)

SB 5506 – $100,000 to the Criminal Justice Commission to study the advantages and disadvantages of decriminalizing the crime of prostitution and provide a report on the study to the Emergency Board and relevant interim committees related to judiciary, no later than September 2024. 

HB 2757 – A new tax that Salem politicians want added to Oregonians’ phone bills to fund the state’s new 9-8-8 suicide prevention hotline. Establishes 9-8-8 Trust Fund for improving the statewide coordinated crisis system. Imposes tax of 40 cents per line per month on consumers and retail subscribers who have telecommunications service or interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service and 40 cents per transaction for prepaid telecommunications services, to pay for crisis services system. At least 44 other states have thus far funded their call centers without adding a new tax on consumers. A tax of $.03, not $.50, should suffice to cover basic costs of the 9-8-8 hotline. 

SB 611 – Caps cap rent increases at no more than 10% annually, Oregon’s current rent cap limits yearly rent increases to a base of 7% plus consumer price index (CPI), which is set annually by the state’s Office of Economic Analysis. Because of inflation, the 2023 CPI was set at 7.6% which brought the total allowed increase to 14.6%. Bill would only be effective in years where CPI increases more than 3%.

HB 2426 – Would allow gas stations to make half of their pump units to be self-serve so Oregonians could stand out in the rain, wind and sun to pump their own gas.

HB 2004 – Would create a statewide ranked choice voting scheme for Oregon. Establishes ranked choice voting as voting method for selecting winner of nomination for and election to offices of President of United States, United States Senator, Representative in Congress, Governor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer and Attorney General. Would require all voters to have a high level of information about all the candidates in order to choose preferences. If you only vote for the candidate you prefer and don’t rank all the rest, you are effectively disenfranchised if your candidate doesn’t come in first in the initial ballot count. Jeff Jacoby, an award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe, calls the RCV process “democracy on the Rube Goldberg model”, where  ideas that supposedly simplify people’s lives wreak havoc instead.

HB 2049 – Allocates just $4.9 million for a proposed Cybersecurity Center of Excellence – about one-third of the original request from a joint legislative technology committee, intended to help government agencies monitor cybersecurity, train specialists and respond to data breaches like the one at Oregon’s Department of Motor Vehicles affecting 3.5 million Oregonians. The League of Oregon Cities, which represents municipalities of all sizes in the state, is concerned about the limited funding.

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Oregon’s Traditional Public Schools Are Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’

Thank goodness for Mississippi.

Only Mississippi lost a larger share of K-12 public school students in the 2022-2023 school year than Oregon. 

Oregon’s public schools have lost 30,000 students since the fall of 2019. lowering total enrollment by 5% to 552,000 students in the fall of 2022.

Ethan Sharygin, director of Portland State University’s Population Research Center, told The Oregonian a switch from public school to private school represents about one-quarter of the “missing” students, many left to be homeschooled and some simply dropped out or weren’t enrolled in kindergarten when they reached the age of 5. Smaller slices of the loss are due to families moving out of state and to a gently declining birth rate.

Portland Public Schools (PPS) have been hit particularly hard by declining enrollment. The PPS website says “…With more than 49,000 students in 81 schools, it is one of the largest school districts in the Pacific Northwest.” But that’s far from reality. 

In the 2022-23 school year, total enrollment was actually  43,023 and a Portland Public Schools Enrollment Forecast 2022-23 to 2036-37, Based on October 2021 Enrollments   projected enrollment will continue to fall throughout most of the forecast horizon, reaching 42,047 in 2025-27, 39,561 in 2031-32 and 39,123 in 2035-36. 

Under a “low growth scenario” enrollment could go down further to 37,350 in 2035-36.  The difference is primarily due to different assumptions about the levels of net migration (the net movement into and out of the District) of the District’s population.          

Every single one of the missing children will represent a loss of revenue to the school district. That’s because Oregon school districts receive (in combined state and local funds) an allocation per student, plus an additional amount for each student enrolled in more costly programs such as Special Education or English Language Learners.

If a departing student shifts to homeschooling, there is no money transfer to families at this point, but the student’s school still loses that student’s funding allocation.

If a student shifts to one of Oregon’s 132 public charter schools, whether a brick-and-mortar institution or an online entity, the money the traditional school got for that student goes to the district sponsoring the charter school. Oregon law then provides that a sponsoring district must pass on to its charter school at least 80 percent of its per-pupil grant for K-8 students and 95 percent of its per pupil grant for grade 9-12 students.

Charter school enrollment in Oregon rose steadily from 1.7 percent of total public school enrollment in 2006-07 to 8.2% (46,275 students) in 2020-2021, then slipped slightly to 7.7% (42,668 students) 2021-2022. Charter school enrollment rose again in the 2022-2023 school year, however, to 11.9% (46,278 students) with 30,578 attending brick-and -mortar schools and 15,700 attending virtual public charter schools.

Right now in Oregon, once a school district has 3% or more of its students enrolled in a virtual public charter school outside the district, it can generally start denying requests. But school choice advocates have been pushing to eliminate that cap. Legislative efforts to remove the cap have failed to date, but that may not hold.

The outflow of students to charters may also accelerate if a movement in Oklahoma is replicated in Oregon. Many parents abandon traditional public schools because they want a more religious-oriented environment for their children. In early June, Oklahoma approved America’s first religious charter school.  The Archdiocese of Oklahoma won approval to launch an online charter school that would embrace Catholic doctrine.

Some advocates of religious schooling have been suggesting that any effort to stop charter schools from being religious is a form of discrimination against religion. Ultimately, this issue will end up in court, perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Another potential problem could come from the increasing public pressure for more school choice. 

The Cascade Policy Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Oregon, is at the forefront of Oregon’s school choice movement. “Oregon’s public schools, largely controlled by teachers’ unions, are a one-size-fits-all system that leaves many students behind,” the Institute argues. “Traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, online learning, private and parochial schools, homeschooling, and tutoring are all paths to success for students. All options should be valued, and parents should be empowered to choose among them to help their children succeed.”

Cascade is particularly enamored of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), where a percentage of the funds that the state otherwise would spend to educate a student in a public school is deposited into accounts associated with the student’s family. The family may use the funds to spend on private school tuition or other educational expenses. 

There are currently voucher and similar programs in 32 states and the District of Columbia, according to EdChoice, a free-market organization that promotes public money for private education. Voucher programs often are characterized in state legislation as “scholarship programs,” but whatever the name, the policies result in a transfer of public money to private institutions. Some even subsidize home-schooling.

In Arizona, the school choice movement has secured a school voucher program which has exploded since it was signed into law in 2022. 

Arizona’s voucher program allows any child in the state to receive roughly $7,000 each year of their K-12 education while getting instruction at home or attending private school. The Arizona Department of Education recently estimated that enrollment in the program would continue to skyrocket and cost $900 million next year, nearly $300 million more than expected, Public school funding would have to go down to pay for it. 

More students have applied for Iowa’s state-funded education savings accounts than expected as well, meaning the cost of paying for the private school scholarships could exceed what the state budgeted.

As of June 13, 2023, 17,520 applications had been submitted for the program, which will provide eligible families with $7,600 per child in state money to be used solely to pay for private school costs such as tuition and fees. A nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency had earlier  estimated  that 14,068 students would be approved to receive education savings accounts in the program’s first year. Families still have until June 30 to apply for the program, meaning the number of applications is likely to increase further.

Imagine the hit to traditional public school funding if similar programs were enacted in Oregon.

Regardless of the specific school choice options adopted, the prognosis for public school enrollment in Oregon is grim. How Oregon adapts in managing the enrollment decay is going to be a challenge.

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More Identity Museums:When Will It Stop?

Everybody seems to want a museum.

Former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao an Asian American, thinks Asian Americans don’t get enough attention and respect.

“Our story is inextricably linked to America’s story,” she said in a May 30 Washington Post column.. “Yet our history is too often overlooked, our contributions to this nation are sometimes forgotten, and our right to be here is too often questioned. Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) history is American history. And it is time for it to be recognized as such. “

Her solution? Yet another museum on the national mall in Washington, D.C., a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture. 

It used to be that the national mall, the public lands around and between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol, was a place to celebrate the nation as a whole. Its initial structures included the Smithsonian “Castle” (1855), the Washington Monument (1884), the National Museum of Natural History (1910), the Lincoln Memorial (1922), the National Gallery of Art West Building (1941), the National Museum of American History (1964) and the National Air and Space Museum (1976). 

The mall began to turn to celebrating specific segments of the national population when the National Museum of the American Indian opened in 2004. Then came the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016. 

President Biden set in motion Elaine Chao’s vision on June 13, 2022, when he signed into law a bill (H.R.3525) authorizing a commission to examine how to make a National Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Museum a reality and whether to make it part of the Smithsonian Institution.

One problem is that Asian Americans are far from a monolith. Instead, they have a complex history and cultures.  Even the term encompasses dozens of ethnic groups of Asian descent. Just Southeast Asians, for example, includes Filipino, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, Hmong, Laotian, Burmese, Indonesian and Malaysian. 

 An analysis from Common App, a nonprofit that allows prospective students to apply to more than 1,000 member colleges using one application, noted that the term Asian American can refer to around 50 ethnic groups. “While Asian American was a term established by activists in the 1960s as a means to build political power, it’s also been criticized for obscuring the immense diversity among those it purports to cover…,” notes a Vox article, part of an Asian American identity series.

If built, it would supplement the National Museum of the American Latino. Legislation calling for the Smithsonian to establish that museum passed in Dec. 2020. 

“The new museum will be the cornerstone for visitors to learn how Latinos have contributed and continue to contribute to U.S. art, history, culture, and science.,” according to the Smithsonian. “Additionally, it will serve as a gateway to exhibitions, collections, and programming at other Smithsonian museums, research centers, and traveling exhibition services.”

The next battle is likely to be whether to call the new structure the Latino, Hispanic or Latinx Museum.

Then, of course, where all these museums will be planted in in an already crowded mall is unknown. 

Some might argue that recognition of America’s diversity through such museums is a good thing. I’d offer a “Yes, but”. There’s no question that education about our multifaceted country can combat stereotypes and misconceptions, but excessive focus on identity is not such a good thing when it exacerbates divisiveness and encourage a splintering of the populace.

All this identify politics also leads to even more minority designations. As Amy Chua says in Political Tribes. “Once identity politics gains momentum, it inevitably subdivides, giving rise to ever-proliferating group identities demanding recognition.”

What are craven politicians going to endorse next? A German Museum, an Irish Museum, a Hungarian Museum? The high immigration numbers in the 1800s were largely fueled by German and Irish immigrants. The Hungarian revolution in 1956 led to a burst of Hungarian refugees coming to the United States.

The 1959 Cuban revolution drove hundreds of thousands of Cubans to the United States. Given their concentration in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis and other politicians seeking the Cuban vote could probably be counted on to endorse a Cuban Museum on the National Mall.

At the rate things are going, today’s pandering politicians, who, as Blake Smith, says, eagerly “offer cultural victories instead of substantive ones,” will eventually advocate the creation of museums for every single racial or ethnic group in America. We’ll need another National Mall.