Money in and money out
Left: where the General Fund's money comes from. Right: what it pays for. Band width is proportional to dollars. Hover over a band for the amount.
On a small screen the breakdown is shown as a table.
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Why you may have heard "$2.77 billion"
Why there's a budget gap every year
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Enrollment drives state funding. PPS counts about 2,900 fewer students in 2026-27 than in 2022-23.
Forecast years assume PPS keeps today's staffing and services. They show the gap PPS would have to close, not a plan. 2025-26 and 2026-27 are budgets, not final spending.
What's driving costs up
Growth since 2022-23, with each line starting at 0%. Benefits have grown much faster than salaries, while the number of students has fallen.
Can PPS borrow to cover the gap?
Not for day-to-day operations. Oregon's Local Budget Law requires each year's budget to balance, so PPS has to close a gap before it adopts a budget. Its cushion is its reserve, which is at the 5% minimum ($41 million).
PPS does borrow for other purposes: voter-approved construction bonds (which can only pay for buildings), pension bonds (issued in 2002, 2003, and 2021, and repaid through payroll costs), and short-term loans to smooth cash flow within a year. Its outstanding bond and other debt is about $2.1 billion (Volume 1, p. 23). PPS's finance office is the authority on exactly what the district may borrow for.
How PPS splits a reduction
PPS treats cuts and closure savings as two separate things. The gap is closed by reducing the budget. Money freed up by closing schools (PPS estimates $10 million to $12 million a year) goes back into the remaining schools rather than toward the gap.
Central departments are cut in proportion. PPS takes the part of the budget departments control, leaving out federal mandates, state directives, and grant programs, and reduces it by at least the district-wide target. For example, if central offices control $23 million and the target is 8%, they cut at least $1.8 million.
Contracts and outside services
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Cost per student and school size
Each dot is one school. PPS gives every school a principal, an office assistant, and a support position regardless of size, so those fixed costs are spread over fewer students in a small school. Schools with more students from low-income families also receive extra federal Title I and equity staffing.
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"Dollars per student" is PPS's figure from the Individual School Reports: the school's General Fund, Title I, and grant dollars divided by its enrollment. It leaves out staff PPS assigns centrally (special education, English language development, nutrition, custodians), so it is lower than the full cost of running a school. Central staff serve every school, so PPS budgets and cuts them separately (see how PPS splits a reduction). Enrollment is PPS's 2026-27 projection, the number it used to staff each school.
What closing schools might save Estimate, not a PPS figure
PPS estimates closures would free up $10 million to $12 million a year, a rough figure its business office is verifying. It leaves out teachers and other licensed staff, since PPS expects many to move with their students (about 36 licensed positions for every 500 students). PPS says its final recommendation will include costs by school. Until then, this chart is our own rough estimate from PPS's budget numbers: the staff and building costs that go away when a school closes.
How closures and the budget gap connect
On paper they are separate. PPS closes the gap by cutting the budget whether or not any school closes, and it puts closure savings back into the remaining schools instead of counting them toward the gap.
In practice they overlap. Falling enrollment drives both: it lowers state funding, which is set per student, and it leaves buildings that cost about the same to run with fewer students in them. When schools take their share of the cuts, reinvested savings offset part of it, so closures change what the remaining money pays for (fewer principals and buildings, more classroom staff) rather than the size of the cuts. PPS itself says the two could be seen as one and the same.
PPS says the reinvestment is permanent and goes mainly to school staffing, including the move of students and staff to their new schools. Some new costs are expected: the state reimburses about 70% of transportation costs, so longer bus routes would still cost PPS something, and other transition costs should be one-time. As enrollment keeps falling, schools will still have fewer teachers.
How it's estimated (2026-27 dollars, per year):
Not included:
- Added costs at receiving schools, such as an assistant principal when a school grows past PPS's staffing thresholds, or longer bus routes (the state reimburses about 70% of transportation costs).
- One-time costs: moving, building closure, and transition support.
- Savings from filling partly empty classrooms at receiving schools, which could be larger than the teacher estimate here.
- Program moves, boundary changes, and grade changes in the scenarios.
- State funding follows students, so closures don't change revenue directly.
Methodology & sources
Sources
How the numbers were put together
- The money-in and money-out figures are the 2026-27 adopted General Fund (Volume 1, pp. 103 and 107-108). Uses are PPS's accounting function codes, grouped and renamed in plain language. Two lines PPS books as negative district-wide adjustments are folded into their groups; the instruction one ($4.0 million, function 1100) is spread over the elementary, middle, and high school classroom lines in proportion to their size. Classroom lines include teachers, aides, substitutes, their benefits, and classroom supplies, but not special education, English learner, or principal's office staff.
- "Revenue" in the gap chart is each year's General Fund resources minus the money carried over from the year before. "Spending" leaves out the required reserve. The forecast is PPS's own (Volume 1, p. 113), and the shortfall labels are the amounts PPS prints.
- Average cost per position is General Fund salaries plus benefits ($680.5 million) divided by budgeted General Fund positions (4,481 FTE). It mixes teachers, custodians, and administrators, so it is a rough figure.
- School figures come from Volume 2, which is the May 2026 proposed budget. The adopted budget changed some school allocations, so a few schools may differ slightly from their final 2026-27 numbers.
- Contracts and outside services are General Fund object 300, "purchased services" (Volume 1, pp. 109-110), grouped and renamed in plain language. The groups add to the subtotal PPS prints for each year.
- Scenario markings use PPS's October 2026 draft rightsizing scenarios, as on the main dashboard.
What this page doesn't show
- PPS's savings for each scenario. PPS gives a district-wide estimate ($10 million to $12 million a year) but no per-scenario or per-school figures; the savings section is this site's estimate from budget figures, and building operating costs (utilities, upkeep) are not broken out by school in the budget.
- Bond-funded construction, which voters approve separately and can't be spent on teachers or programs.
This site was built with an AI coding assistant (Claude Code). Every figure comes from the public sources listed above.