Most Oregon school districts and the hundreds of thousands of students that they serve, once again, will not benefit from any additional summer school funding from the state this year.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek at a ceremony where she signed $30 milllion summer school funding bill. It was about $20 million less than she had advocated state lawmakers pass.
Courtesy of Gov. Tina Kotek / Oregon Capital Chronicle
The Oregon Department of Education recently released the list of 48 school districts and 24 charter schools that will have access to a portion of $30 million allocated for summer school during the short legislative session in February. The selected districts have until May 3 to submit their plans to receive their allocated money or to decline.
The state is allocating $20,000 to $1.5 million to each of those 48 districts, depending on the number of students served. The state’s 19 education service districts this year will also each get between $20,000 and $80,000 to help support multiple districts within their boundaries, but overall, only about one-quarter of the state’s 197 school districts will get additional funding. An estimated 48,000 students will benefit, according to a news release from Gov. Tina Kotek. There are more than 547,000 students enrolled in Oregon public schools.
Districts that get additional money will be able to pay for more credit recovery programs, tutors and other classes that can help students get caught up in key subjects and grade-level knowledge this summer. Others will likely have to limit some offerings.
The Oregon Department of Education prioritized allocating money for districts with high proportions of historically underserved students, and it focused on helping small and rural districts and spreading out payment based on geographic diversity, according to Marc Siegel, a spokesperson for the agency.
Adjusting offerings
Portland Public Schools is on a waiting list for $1.5 million, as are some of the largest districts within different parts of the state, including the Medford, Eugene and Bend-La Pine school districts.
“As the largest district in the state, estimated to serve more than 3,000 focal students this summer, we are disappointed that we will not likely have an opportunity to apply for the funding passed by the Legislature this spring,” said Sydney Kelly, a spokesperson for Portland Public Schools.
She said the district found one-time funding sources to help this summer and will adjust offerings to account for the lack of money, but she said the district needs sustainable funding from the state to offer summer school going forward.
The $30 million allocation from the Legislature is significantly less than the hundreds of millions that districts received in the two years immediately following pandemic school closures and the $50 million that Kotek wanted lawmakers to pass this session. Advocates for summer school had hoped the Legislature would continue a higher level of funding to get students caught up following more than a year of school closures and to address behavioral health issues exacerbated by the pandemic.
“It is important to note that the $30 million allocated under House Bill 4082, while substantial, is significantly less than the $200 million and $150 million provided during the peak of federal pandemic aid in 2021 and 2022, respectively,” Siegel said in an email. “Those exceptional amounts reflected the temporary availability of federal resources, which are no longer available.”
Most Oregon school districts have spent their portion of the $1.6 billion of pandemic aid money sent to Oregon from the U.S. Department of Education. About $319 million remains to be spent before the funding expires in September, according to state data.
During the summer of 2023 lawmakers did not allocate any additional money for summer school or community-based summer learning programs. Some programs that were staffed in 2021 and 2022 shut down in 2023. School districts and larger groups such as YMCA and Boys & Girls Club cut field trips and other offerings. A survey from the Oregon Afterschool & Summer for Kids Network, or OregonASK, a nonprofit network of educational groups, found that despite increased demand statewide, about half of community groups were forced to scale back programs without the additional state funding.
Districts are allowed to partner with nonprofit community groups and to use the money to collaborate on programming. Whitney Grubbs, executive director of the nonprofit Foundations for a Better Oregon, said she expects a “meaningful” level of district funding to reach community-based organizations, but that they’ll need more in the future.
“It’s an important start, but still nowhere near enough,” Grubb said in an email. “Students in every community deserve access to summer learning, and many school districts and community-based organizations are spotlighting the overwhelming desire and need to do more.”
This story was originally published by the Oregon Capital Chronicle.
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