Portland Public Schools dodged its own fiscal reckoning by a whisker this month — and the real lesson isn't that reason prevailed, it's how close a majority came to making everything worse. Meanwhile, 2,000 miles away in Sycamore, Illinois, a former school board member is asking the same question parents everywhere should be asking: who is all this administrative hiring actually serving?
The stakes are straightforward. Every dollar that goes to a new chief operating officer is a dollar that doesn't fix a crumbling high school. Every position added during an enrollment decline is a layoff waiting to happen — and when it does, the board members who created the problem will scramble to protect the system, not the student.
Portland's $56 million shortfall didn't materialize from thin air. As The Oregonian's editorial board acknowledged, the district added new positions even as enrollment dropped. Expenses grew far faster than revenue, driven by state mandates, generous pension policies, and PPS's own hiring choices. When Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong finally proposed a budget to bring things back into balance — including $13 million in layoffs of teachers, aides, and other student-facing staff — three board members revolted. Stephanie Engelsman wanted to simply order the district to restore all $13 million. Rashelle Chase-Miller proposed raiding the district's minimal savings, risking a credit downgrade that would make future borrowing more expensive. Virginia La Forte offered to halve Chase-Miller's number, throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Armstrong talked them down. The budget passed largely unchanged. But The Oregonian framed this as a
