From Oregon Journalism Project: Oregon’s Education Workforce Climbed While Student Enrollment Slid

This time around, they have more staff to cut: Over the past five years, the number of full-time employees at the state’s 197 school districts has grown by nearly 17%, according to an analysis of Oregon Department of Education data. 

At the same time, student enrollment has shrunk nearly 3%.

The staff growth — 11,740 full-time equivalent employees, according to state data — is the product of more than $1 billion a year in additional funding from 2019’s Student Success Act. The landmark legislation is mostly paid for by a corporate activity tax.

Since state funding is calculated per student, fewer students, significant federal funding cuts, and a lagging state economy have shrunk the pool of money available for school districts, and some education leaders fear cuts of 2% to 5%.

But if decision makers look at where staff growth took place since 2020–21, they will find increases in instructional assistants, administrative staff, special education and student support roles.

The number of teachers during that period barely budged, increasing 1.7%.

These additional jobs were used to address behavioral and emotional needs of students following the pandemic, says Andrew Dyke, senior economist specializing in education at ECOnorthwest, a Portland research firm.

The investment of the Student Success Act, which in part supported rising salary and pension costs, finally brought the state above the national average for per-pupil K–12 funding. Oregon now ranks 19th in state funding for K–12 education, according to the Education Data Initiative.

But this didn’t slow years-long declines in elementary reading and math scores.

Dyke, however, says it’s premature “to expect to see immediate, stunning results after just a couple of years of increased investment.”

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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project (oregonjournalismproject.org), a nonprofit investigative newsroom for the state of Oregon.