Strapped Oregon school districts shouldn’t try to cushion the blow of upcoming budget cuts by reducing school days, a new report warns, particularly because the state already has one of the shortest public school years in the nation. School districts from Portland to Beaverton to Eugene are p lanning now for budget cuts for the 2026-2027 school year and could choose to balance their books by lopping even more hours off the school calendar, allowing them to avoid at least some job reductions. Already, the Reynolds School District in Troutdale cut six days from the current school year in order to avoid disruptive midyear layoffs. “We cannot cut more school days,” said Sarah Pope, executive director of Stand for Children’s Oregon chapter. “We cannot repeat Oregon’s history of balancing budgets on the backs of students.” Instead, the new report by researchers at ECOnorthwest, which was commissioned by Stand for Children, found that if the state wants to reverse its stagnant academic outcomes, it should increase mandated instructional time by about three weeks and double down on efforts to curb rampant student absenteeism. Taken together, those efforts could help catapult Oregon to at least the middle of the national pack in math outcomes and to the top tier in reading, their research suggests. Oregon is one of 19 states that does not specify how many days students must spend in school every year. Instead, the state sets minimum hours that districts must offer: At least 900 instructional hours for elementary and middle school students, 990 for ninth through eleventh graders and 966 for seniors, who typically graduate a few weeks before the end of the school year. There is an additional loophole that further reduces the amount of direct instructional time that students receive in some school districts. Current rules allow districts to choose whether to count up to 30 hours of professional development time for teachers as instructional time, and up to 30 hours of parent/teacher conference time as well. Additionally, for grades K-3, districts may count up to 60 hours of recess as instructional time. The Oregonian/OregonLive asked 16 metro-area school districts to detail how many instructional hours they offered per grade level, and whether professional development, conferences, or recess counted toward those totals. Eight of those districts responded by Thursday afternoon: Hillsboro, Beaverton, Portland, North Clackamas, Tigard-Tualatin, Lake Oswego, Centennial and West Linn-Wilsonville. The results show that students who go to school just a few miles apart are getting markedly different amounts of face time with their teachers. For example, among those districts, only Hillsboro, Beaverton and Portland do not count teacher training toward instructional hour totals and only Hillsboro, Beaverton and Tigard-Tualatin do not factor in time for parent-teacher conferences. (Portland counts 18 hours of conference time towards the instructional hours total, not the full 30.) West Linn-Wilsonville, North Clackamas and Centennial all count up to 60 hours of recess time for kindergarten through third grade students as part of their instructional hours, while Hillsboro, Beaverton, Portland and Tigard-Tualatin do not. The Lake Oswego School District allows 30 hours of recess time to count towards the total number of instructional hours for kindergarteners, and 60 hours for its first through third graders. State Rep. April Dobson, D-Happy Valley, who also sits on the North Clackamas school board, said she’d like to see an end to that wiggle room. “That means kids can be out of the classroom, they can be out of the state, they can be out of the country, and we still pretend that learning is happening,” Dobson said during a Thursday press conference hosted by Stand for Children to present ECOnorthwest’s research. “That’s a flaw in the system and we need to fix it so it isn’t exploited by districts during periods of financial distress.” Dobson is also a co-sponsor of a bill that lawmakers will take up in the session that begins Monday that would require the Oregon Department of Education to report data on student absenteeism four times a year. Under the current system, the agency releases absenteeism data annually, and only long after the school year during which the data was collected has ended. More up-to-date tracking of absenteeism information can not only help focus attention on the issue but also help the state figure out how and where to focus early prevention efforts aimed at catching students before they slide off an attendance cliff, Dobson said. This article was originally published by The Oregonian/OregonLive and is reprinted with permission. Contact reporter Julia Silverman: [email protected]. STORY TIP OR IDEA? Send an email to Salem Reporter’s news team: [email protected]. LOCAL NEWS DELIVERED TO YOU: Subscribe to Salem Reporter and get all the fact-based Salem news that matters to you. Fair, accurate, trusted – SUBSCRIBE The post Cutting school days to balance budgets is a risky strategy for Oregon students, a new report warns appeared first on Salem Reporter. ...read more read less