Enrollment across Oregon’s public school system continued its slow and steady slide this school year, new data released Thursday from the state Department of Education shows.
The state is educating about 5,450 fewer students right now than at this time last year, according to the report, which is based on attendance data measured last October. That works out to 539,644 public school students, a 7% drop from 2019’s pre-pandemic levels of 580,000.
And losses in nearly all the state’s 10 largest school districts, including in Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro and Tigard-Tualatin, outpaced the overall drop of 1% statewide.
Most of the declines are caused by fewer and fewer younger children in early elementary grades. The state has 47,481 seniors in this year’s graduating class, but only 34,586 kindergartners.
Enrollment declined steeply during the pandemic, as parents sought alternatives to shuttered school buildings. Since then, the declines have leveled off, but not rebounded, a change driven by the state’s low birth rates and sluggish pace of in-migration, alongside rising interest in homeschooling and virtual schools.
Notably, this school year is the first in five years to see a decline in the population of Latino/Hispanic students, who make up about 27% of the overall student population in Oregon.
The decline was small — about half of a percentage point — and it is not yet clear whether it is tied to increased immigration enforcement efforts by the federal government. But a handful of superintendents from the Portland area and the Willamette Valley have said their internal data shows more Hispanic and Latino students withdrawing from school this year amid the immigration crackdown.
The number of white and Asian students also declined, while Black and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander student numbers grew slightly and the number of Native American/Indigenous students stayed steady.
In Oregon, enrollment is tied directly to per-pupil funding and districts where declines outpace state averages feel the pinch accordingly, particularly if they do not have significant reserve funds to help cushion the blow.
The Beaverton School District, the state’s second largest, saw an enrollment decline of 2.3% year over year. The district has announced that it needs to trim $25 million from next year’s budget. Portland’s enrollment decline was 1.6% and the district sent staffing plans for next year to all principals this week that reflect $50 million in planned cuts.
Among other large metro-area districts, enrollment declines were largest at the Tigard-Tualatin School District, which is educating 3.6% fewer students this year than last year, and the closest to stable at the North Clackamas School District, where enrollment was down only three-tenths of a percentage point.
Even as school districts have shed students in the past five years, most have added staff, many to help with increased social, emotional and behavioral needs in the pandemic’s wake. State breakdowns show that the additions are concentrated in student support positions, like school counselors, learning interventionists, educational assistants, and social workers, as opposed to classroom teachers.
For example, in the 2018-2019 school year, Beaverton had more than 40,000 students and just over 2,900 staff members. Now, the district is educating around 37,000 students, but employed more than 3,100 people in the 2024-2025 school year, the most recent year data was available.
