Parents in the Boardman area frequently argue that state funding formulas favor urban districts, leaving local schools underfunded even as the county's industrial tax base grows. Are Oregon's rural school children getting a raw deal?
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Add your commentMy grandparents farmed outside Boardman. My parents worked the feedlots. I drove trucks for 22 years out of Umatilla. Three generations in this corner of Oregon and every single generation has had this same conversation about Salem not caring about us. At some point you gotta accept it ain't gonna change unless we make it change. Run for the school board. Show up to budget meetings. Stop waiting for Portland politicians to feel bad for us.
Born and raised in Boardman, graduated from Irrigon High back in 2003. This isn't a new problem. Rural kids have ALWAYS gotten the short end of the stick from Salem. What kills me is that we have massive wind farms, potato processing plants, Amazon data centers — the tax base here is not nothing. So where is that money going? Not to our kids, I'll tell you that much.
Conspiracy or not, my son's school still doesn't have a full-time counselor. One counselor splits time between two buildings. In 2024. Tell me again how the formula is fair.
okay so I just moved here from Portland last year for work and honestly the school situation shocked me. I assumed it would be underfunded but seeing it up close is different. My daughter's class has 29 kids and they're sharing outdated textbooks. 29 kids! her old school in Portland had 22 per class and way more resources. something is genuinely broken here
Fun fact: Amazon pays basically zero property taxes for the first several years because of enterprise zone agreements that the county itself approved. So we literally handed away the biggest potential revenue source for our schools in exchange for jobs that mostly dont require a high school diploma anyway. great trade guys. really nailed it.
Here's what people get wrong about this whole debate: Oregon's funding formula is actually based on Average Daily Membership, which should help smaller districts proportionally. The real issue is that Morrow County's assessed property values are artificially suppressed by agricultural exemptions, so the local match is low and the state has to make up the difference — but the formula caps how much it will make up. THAT is the actual problem, not some conspiracy in Salem against rural kids.
Someone above said the funding formula is based on Average Daily Membership — I actually looked this up and I'm pretty sure Oregon switched to a Quality Education Model formula years ago that also weights for poverty, English learners, and other factors. Morrow County actually has significant numbers of students who qualify for those weights. So if anything the formula should be sending MORE money here than a straight per-pupil count would suggest. Can anyone actually confirm what we're receiving versus what the formula says we should get? Has anyone filed a records request?
I'm going to push back a little on my fellow Boardman folks here. We also need to ask hard questions about how the district itself spends what it does receive. I've seen the budget reports and there's administrative overhead that makes me raise an eyebrow. Blaming Salem is easy. Demanding accountability locally is harder but also necessary. Both things can be true at the same time.
lol at the people acting surprised. Oregon has been a tale of two states forever. Willamette Valley gets the attention, the money, the politicians. Everyone east of the Cascades is basically a tax colony. We exist to generate revenue and receive crumbs. Nothing new here folks.
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