Thursday’s executive order from Gov. Tina Kotek left teachers, school board members and superintendents confused about how the sweeping prohibition on cutting instructional time would work, as the end of the school year approaches and as school districts prepare to finalize budgets for the upcoming year.

Since the governor’s announcement Thursday morning, a few things have changed or been clarified:

• This executive order will not change the school calendar for any district that has already cut school days for financial reasons.
• Currently, Oregon school districts can count up to 30 hours of professional development and up to 30 hours of parent/teacher conferences as instructional time. Kotek’s order initially appeared to end that practice immediately. But that change will go through a more extensive regulatory process first, and will include opportunities for public engagement to the Oregon State Board of Education.

School communities across the state may appreciate the more careful look at how to factor in the time teachers spend receiving professional development or conducting parent-teacher conferences.

But Oregon’s education system is made up of over 200 school districts and education service districts. And in a state with strong local authority over education decisions, there are differences in both how much instructional time students get and how they will respond to this news. Here’s what we know right now.

The state doesn’t really know how many districts have cut days

After OPB reported last month on furlough days in four Oregon school districts, we learned of two other districts with furlough days on the calendar. In addition to Portland, Reynolds, St. Helens and West Linn-Wilsonville, the Canby School District has five furlough days this year and Gladstone has six.

When asked how many districts have cut instructional time this year, Gov. Kotek said at least a half dozen. The Oregon Department of Education does not collect this data. When OPB asked the Oregon Education Association (whose local unions often have to reach contract agreements with their districts to allow furlough days), their list was incomplete.

One thing Kotek’s executive order does is require ODE to report annually, district by district, how much instructional team students receive.

There are inequities among districts in instructional time and how they fill funding gaps

It might be obvious, but the school year doesn’t look the same in every district across Oregon. But the reasons vary.

Take Lake Oswego. Kate Lupton, who appeared at Kotek’s press conference announcing the executive order, has two kids in the school system there. Through a Lake Oswego levy that’s been renewed since 2000, Lupton said the district has avoided cutting school days to save money. She also credited Lake Oswego’s executive team with being good stewards of the district’s funds.

“We are able to keep everything the same,” she said. “It’s complicated, because not every district has that.”

She’s right. Almost every election, there are school districts that are unable to pass a levy.

But the number of instructional hours Lake Oswego students have is on average lower than others in the metro area. That’s according to Sarah Pope, executive director of Stand For Children. Her organization commissioned a report from ECOnorthwest to study instructional time district by district.

“It’s been great they haven’t had to reduce instructional time this year … they are on average lower than other districts in the metro area,” Pope said.

The ECOnorthwest district-by-district data is not available publicly yet. But Pope said the variability is “very extreme.” An analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive found wide variation of schools in the Portland area.

“We have regions in every quadrant of our state that are high and are low,” Pope said.

“And I think the question that we need to ask ourselves is, ‘How is that possible when we have supposedly equalized funding?’”

Some districts are taking Lake Oswego’s approach. Newberg School District is asking voters to pass a levy next month. According to the filing documents, Newberg projects a $4.5 million funding gap for next school year. They don’t have the reserves to cover it. They include five school days as a possible consequence of the funding gap. But should voters approve a levy, it would provide an estimated $6 million a year and ensure a full academic school year, the district wrote.

Riverdale, like Lake Oswego, has been going to voters for local funding since 2000. This May, the levy is up again.

“If approved, this measure would provide additional funding to support Riverdale’s instructional programs, staffing, and general operations,” district officials shared in their filing document. “If not approved, the District would need to reduce it’s 2026-27 budget by more than $1,000,000, the estimated equivalent of cutting seven teachers or 23 school days.”

Kotek says emergency funds is not an option

When Oregon legislators met in a short session earlier this year, they kept education funding at the same level they had set a year ago, at the beginning of the biennium. But the advocacy of school leaders, staff and parents for Oregon to tap into its Education Stability Fund for schools was not successful.

Kotek reiterated that during her press conference.

“I know there’s a call for tapping into the Education Stability Fund,” Kotek said. “That would take legislative leadership and decision to do that. I’m not hearing that from our legislators.”

Kotek said districts need to figure out their budgets without that additional money, and without cutting instructional time.

“When you tap into those funds, they would be distributed across all school districts,” Kotek said. “Not every school district is having similar budgetary challenges.”

Districts are still confused - and in trouble

As district leaders plan to present their budgets for next school year, confusion about Kotek’s executive order remains. In the Reynolds School District, where leaders are facing a $20 million deficit, district officials have already announced plans for cuts across the board.

“We are well beyond trimming the excess and belt tightening,” Reynolds superintendent Frank Caropelo told OPB. “These reductions will erode support and program options for students.”

To balance the budget for the current school year, the district implemented six furlough days, which save a total of approximately $5.3 million. The district has not made a decision for next year, though Caropelo said the district planned to return to a full school year.

The wording in the order about how districts should account for furlough days taken this year and next is confusing, and allows for two different interpretations based on two different parts of the executive order.

One part says districts need to “submit a plan to ODE detailing how the district will restore student instructional time to no less than 2024-25 levels no later than the beginning of the 2027-28 school year.” According to the Governor’s office, that means school districts need to return to a full school year by fall 2027.

But on the next page there’s a requirement titled “Restoration of Previously Reduced Student Instructional Time” that pushes districts to do more. It asks districts to present a plan “ensuring the full restoration of student instructional time.”

Caropelo said the district is figuring out how to pay for adding back the lost days.

“We are still evaluating the potential impacts of the Executive Order and options for compliance,” he wrote. “Adding the furlough days taken in 25-26 as six extra days of instruction during the 26-27 school year would require approximately $3.6 million in new funding or additional reductions from our proposed budget.”

Without the option of furlough days, and without more funding from the state, districts have difficult choices to make.

In a letter to the Oregon State Board of Education, Northwest Regional Education Service District Superintendent Dan Goldman shared information he said “may be helpful in understanding the implications of this policy”. In addition to sharing research about the importance of high-quality instruction, Goldman outlined the costs of that instruction compared to more time in the classroom.

“Extending the school year statewide would take a significant financial investment,” Goldman shared. “The estimate I have heard is approximately $50 million per day.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/04/17/kotek-oregon-schools-order-instructional-hours/