Summer vacation starts early for Oregon students
Students will be released from classes 17 days earlier than normal.
By Julia Silverman
Associated Press Writer

HILLSBORO, Ore. – The scene at Glencoe High School in Hillsboro is classic two-days-before-school’s out – debris from just-emptied lockers litters the floor, students in flip-flops roam the halls, sun streams in through open windows.

There’s just one thing missing: June.

Students all over Oregon are getting out of school early this year, after severe state budget cuts led almost 100 of the state’s school districts to cut days from the calendar to save money.

And nowhere are students being sprung earlier than in this leafy, wealthy suburb of Portland, where officials chopped 17 school days from the calendar, which made Friday the last day of school. The cuts have left Hillsboro with one of the shortest public school years in the nation.

“I think we have lost a lot more than 17 days,” said Hugh O’Donnell, who is retiring this year from teaching at Poynter Middle School. “The kids that are looking forward to getting out of school, they probably checked out two weeks ago.”

While some students at Glencoe furiously crammed for advanced placement classes and worried about any fallout on college applications, there were also some this week who skipped class to tan outside on school grounds.

“People say, oh, we’re cutting 17 days, we’ve got to cram it in, but this week we’re not doing anything – we’re playing games in class,” said 15-year-old Melissa Taylor, who was soaking up the sun outside Glencoe on Wednesday.

The 17-day cut has drawn national attention. It was caricatured in Doonesbury and detailed by a New York Times columnist.

At first glance, Hillsboro seems an unlikely place for such woes: the town is home to a division of computer chip maker Intel, Oregon’s largest private industrial employer, and has a median household income of $51,737, about $10,000 above the state average.

Most everyone agrees that the state’s budget crisis is a key factor in Hillsboro’s education funding troubles. Oregon schools are dependent on the state for about 70 percent of their budget dollars. But the economic downturn and high unemployment rates have cut income tax revenues far below forecasts, forcing budget cuts, including $15 million from the Hillsboro district.

Besides the state budget cuts, there are other factors at work in Hillsboro. The town is at the heart of Oregon’s Silicon Forest and its seemingly stable, well-paying high-tech jobs were once the envy of the rest of the state. But the town has also taken a large hit from the burst bubble of the tech industry, with Intel scaling back local operations and expenses.

The district also spent furiously in the 1990s, building new schools and hiring staff to keep up with a population explosion that added 5,000 more students, 3,000 of them of Hispanic background. That didn’t leave much money to sock away to offset any future cuts, superintendent Joe Rodriguez said.

Persuading voters to approve any local property tax increases for schools is a tough sell, because the district draws students from unincorporated, more conservative areas and from poorer immigrant families that have moved in over the last decade, Rodriguez said.

“During those years when we had money coming in, schools tended to spend it,” said Rodriguez. “We added staff, we bought textbooks. But when the money from the state disappears, which way do you go?”

The 17-day cut has led to plenty of frustration in town. There’s a petition circulating that calls for Rodriguez’s resignation, and angry letters to the editor have appeared in the town’s weekly newspaper.

O’Donnell, the teacher, was just elected to the school board, after a race spent criticizing the status quo. He said there’s tension over the money the district spent on a brand-new district building, dubbed the “Taj Mahal” in town, and over the $1.2 million the district’s been ordered to shell out to teachers after it lost a labor lawsuit over scheduling issues.

“It is so hard to get information about how money is spent at the district level,” he said. “We just suspect things.”

The debate has left teachers, students and parents weary, and in some cases ready for the early summer break.

“My brother’s math teacher called in sick this week, and no sub showed up,” said 14-year-old Tyler Young, who said he’d been to class only sporadically during the final week. “Finally, after 25 minutes, the vice principal came up and unlocked the door and they just sat there.”

Two Glencoe students, seniors Ian Atkins and Amanda McFadden, are lobbying legislators to cough up more money for schools. They visited the state capital to press their case while planning for the prom and a graduation ceremony that will take place three weeks after school lets out.

“May 23rd is a really scary day to get out of school,” Atkins said. “But maybe it’s the wake-up call our area needed. I’d hope that it’s getting through to people who haven’t been involved in schools for awhile. It’s embarrassing to be nationally recognized, but maybe we needed it for ourselves.”

AP-ES-05-24-03 0246EDT

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