Oregon's Quality Education Commission says the state's schools will need $13.8 billion for the 2027-29 biennium just to keep doing what they're doing now, and $16.2 billion to meet new accountability and attendance targets. Lawmakers approved $11.3 billion for 2025-27, a record at the time. That's $2.5 billion more just to stand still, or nearly $5 billion more to hit the targets.
Oregon is asking to spend far more on a shrinking student body. Federal enrollment data shows Oregon public schools enrolled about 572,500 students in 2017-18 and roughly 539,600 by 2024-25, a loss of nearly 33,000 students, or 5.7%. The state is among the states losing students, part of a national enrollment decline that's already forcing districts elsewhere to close schools.
Run the per-student math and the ask gets concrete. The current $11.3 billion works out to roughly $10,500 per student per year from the State School Fund. The $16.2 billion request would push that past $15,000, before any local or federal dollars. Oregon already spends about $19,700 per student all-in, against a national average near $18,800, and its students still rank near the bottom nationally in reading proficiency once demographics are accounted for.
The Legislature convenes in January facing falling revenue and rising public health care costs after federal cuts, and the commission's 27-year-old model has been losing credibility with the people who can approve the budget.
Even the chair says money isn't the answer
The most striking criticism comes from inside. Tricia Mooney, superintendent of Hermiston schools in eastern Oregon and the commission's own chair, told the Oregon Capital Chronicle that asking for more is not a strategy.
"We can't keep going to the Legislature and say: 'Give us more money.' More money alone doesn't do it," she said. "I think that this further illustrates the fact that we can't keep doing what we've always done and think we're going to get something different." She wants the model rebuilt. "We have to rebuild. What we're doing is not working, right?"
Mooney also pointed at costs the Legislature creates and doesn't fund. Paid Leave Oregon and expanded unemployment benefits have cost Hermiston about $250,000 this school year, on top of rising pension obligations. Personnel compensation is what the report calls the paramount driver of school spending, eating roughly 85% of the State School Fund money that reaches districts.
The Oregon Department of Education helped build the cost model and asked for 19 more staff to work on future modeling, then referred every question about the report to Mooney, a full-time school superintendent serving on the commission as a volunteer.
The unions read the same numbers as proof of long-term underfunding. Efren Zamudio of the Oregon Education Association acknowledged the sticker shock and defended the total. "A quality education for 540,000 students across a large, diverse state is costly," he said, listing attendance, literacy gaps, mental health needs and facilities. Alisha Chavez, new president of the Portland Association of Teachers, said the union is open to reworking the model as long as educators and families are at the table, and that it should account for state-mandated services that currently go unfunded.
Two lawmakers tried to end the commission outright this year. Sen. Janeen Sollman and Rep. Ricki Ruiz, who co-chair the joint education appropriation committee, proposed handing the analysis to the Legislature's nonpartisan research office working with an outside firm. The proposal died under pressure from unions and administrators who said a one-month session was too short for it. Sollman then lost her primary, partly because the state teachers union backed her opponent, and she leaves the Senate in January. "Confidence in the Quality Education Model has been eroding for some time, and this year's report will only deepen that skepticism," she said.
So the state heads into budget season with a funding panel whose chair says the model is broken, an education department that won't speak for its own numbers, a departing senator who tried to abolish the panel, and unions defending a request that everyone involved expects the Legislature to reject.
Sources
Oregon Capital Chronicle: Oregon education funding committee recommends increasing school spending by $2.5B to $5B
Enrollment figures and per-student calculations from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data, school years 2017-18 and 2024-25.
