One week left in legislative session: Tell our legislators to use financial reserves to prevent the harshest teacher, staff and programming cuts!

With the legislative session coming to an end on March 9, we are hearing that legislators are refusing to use educational fund reserves to support schools and students in a time when we are seeing cuts in districts across the state.  

Join us in calling on the legislature to release $100 million from the Education Stability Fund (state reserves) to schools to stabilize services for our students.  We have seen the proposed destabilizing impacts at Duniway.   Let's unite in telling our lawmakers that this is unacceptable.  Our schools cannot tolerate any more set-backs.  Our children deserve better. 

Contact your Senator and Representative today by filling out this form on the Oregon PTA website.

Oregon already has some of the highest teacher-student ratios nationwide and, as inflation drives up costs that are difficult to control for schools, many districts are facing dire budget situations and potentially teacher and staff lay-offs, in addition to school programming cuts. 

Mississippi, which has made great gains in student achievement, has 8% more teachers than Oregon despite having 25% fewer students. In order to achieve the same student-teacher ratio, Oregon would need to hire 11,025 additional teachers. If school districts have to lay off teachers, we’ll only widen the gap between our students and those in higher-performing states such as Mississippi.

We are asking lawmakers to make no cuts to education in the current session.  Instead we are asking them to allocate an additional $100 million in emergency funding from the state's Education Stability Fund (ESF) for school budget stabilization for the coming school year.  We are demanding to keep teachers in classrooms, staff in the school and children safe and learning. 

The modest ask of $100 million is less than 10% of the current Education Stability Fund balance and, since the fund is projected to receive $221.2 million from the State lottery in this biennium, the overall ESF balance would still increase for future use. The legislature authorized transfers from the ESF in 2003, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and the 2019-21 biennium to protect schools in times of need and should do so again NOW. 

Even though $100M won't be enough to reverse all planned budget reductions, it would give schools some breathing room to avoid the harshest cuts for our most vulnerable students. 

In solidarity for our children and our public schools.

Your Duniway Advocacy Committee