Multiple senior-level employees who work in administrative roles for Portland Public Schools were told Monday that they will have to reapply for their jobs for the upcoming school year — and that there will not be enough positions to go around.
To help close a $50 million budget hole at the state’s largest school district, Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong unveiled an overhaul of the much beleaguered central office’s organizational chart, a move she said would save up to $2.75 million by eliminating duplicative positions.
“We are reducing 13 licensed administrative roles and consolidating responsibilities across the [academic] division, resulting in nearly a one-third reduction of central office academic administrators,” Armstrong wrote in a memo to central office staff.
Multiple positions from the new organizational chart, copies of which were shared with The Oregonian/OregonLive, had no names attached, including six roles for senior directors of instructional leadership, who supervise building principals districtwide.
Via her memo, Armstrong told employees who were currently in such jobs, along with those in positions that supervise math, literacy, social studies and sciences, that they could reapply for one of the new positions, with interviews scheduled over the next few weeks.
Special education was the sole area to go untouched.
Armstrong also announced that to help offset a midyear budget shortfall that’s now pegged at about $14 million, she would take six furlough days, including four working days and two holidays and that senior-level managers would take five furlough days. That should save about $1.2 million, she wrote.
How the school district will close the remainder of its midyear budget gap remains the subject of intense negotiations with the Portland Association of Teachers and other labor unions. Over the weekend, union president Angela Bonilla told her membership that they’d been asked to take four furlough days or risk losing up to 200 jobs before the end of the school year.
“It is clear that much greater clarity is needed on PPS’ financial situation before any agreements can be made,” Rachel Gumpert, a spokesperson for the Portland Association of Teachers, said in a press release. “Per our contract, there is a 60-day notice required before any layoffs of teachers can occur. We plan to use the next 60 days to do an expedited forensic analysis of PPS financials.”
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