Budget cuts in Portland

In early April, the Portland Public Schools board and Superintendent Carole Smith announced that across the district, 110 teaching positions were to be cut before the 2012-13 school year begins. This news has shocked many parents, teachers, and students, and some are still recovering from the $20 million budget reduction last year. In high schools, this could possibly result of the loss of entire departments and increases in class sizes, which would shorten the abilities of even the most capable teacher.




Public rage has led to accusing and asking “How could this happen to our children’s schools?” The answer is in the source of the district’s budget, a combo of local, state and federal funding that was thrown off balance by a certain number of misguided ballot measures passed during the peak time of the Oregon taxing in the 1990s. It all started with the ratification of Measure 5 in 1990, a change to our state Constitution which would take property taxes, a major source of school financing at 1.5 percent and the burden of school funding from local to state government. This would majorly decrease the amount of tax revenue available to the district, but worse was still to come. Bill Sizemore, the famed Oregon political activist who pleaded guilty to three felony counts of tax evasion last year, proposed the passage of Measure 47 in 1996, a ballot initiative that would further decrease statewide property taxes by 10 percent and limit annual property value appreciation to 3 percent.



Measure 47, also known as the "cut and cap law," would continue to exacerbate the tailspin of PPS' funding and increase the district's annual budget deficit. After being only further reinforced by the subsequent enactment of Measure 50 the following year, Portland Public Schools has found itself in increasingly dire straits. If denunciations will be made, someone should consider that it isn’t the superintendent or the school board that has created this situation, but rather the electorate who decided that it valued the amount of its money over their children's education.



But all is not lost. Thanks to the democratic structure of our state and federal government, we can use the same system that allowed these laws to be passed to ensure that they are repealed. I’m a middle school student,and I have a feeling that there will be higher class sizes and less courses will occur again next year.
 
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