Tax Cuts Bring Harsh Reality to Oregon Schools, Colleges and Universities : Education: Students face larger classes, fewer teachers, fewer choices. Tuition is going up and enrollment is going down in higher education.

After years of warnings about the dire consequences of a property tax limit that voters enacted in 1990, Oregon’s education system is feeling the pinch.

In school districts across the state this fall, students face larger classes, fewer teachers and reduced choices in subjects. And at Oregon’s state-supported colleges and universities, tuition is going up--and enrollment is going down.

Shanti Hansen, who has three children attending public schools in the Portland suburb of Sherwood, is alarmed by what she sees happening.

“You’re talking about bigger class sizes and less help,” Hansen said. “If I had enough money, I would put my kids in private school. The public schools are just being gutted.”

Ed Dennis of the Oregon Student Lobby, a group representing college students at the state’s eight-campus system, said many of Oregon’s brightest high school graduates are looking to private colleges or out-of-state schools.

“The perception is that there is a big problem in the state system,” Dennis said. “Why should they get on board that ship?”

Causing the money squeeze is Measure 5, which gradually lowers property taxes to $15 per $1,000 of assessed value by 1995. It requires the state to replace money that schools lose because of the property tax limit.

But that is forcing cuts in state agency spending this year, so the Legislature approved a basic school-support package for 1993-95 that is $500 million less than local school officials say is needed to maintain programs at current levels, allowing for enrollment growth and inflation.

John Marshall, a spokesman for the Oregon School Boards Assn., said that kind of reduction marks the beginning of a gradual deterioration of the public school system.

“We can minimally maintain buildings and cram kids into classrooms,” Marshall said. “But the overall quality of the system is going to erode.”

The chief sponsor of the property tax limit, health club owner Don McIntire, counters that Marshall and other school officials simply are crying wolf.

McIntire cites state Department of Education figures showing that teachers across Oregon have continued to get raises averaging 5% in the years since the tax limit passed.

“When in hell have we seen 5% or 6% inflation?” he said. “These people who are whining about the decline of education are really whining about the fact that the taxpayers are trying to slow down the exponential growth in the pay, perks and pensions given to teachers.”

But state School Supt. Norma Paulus argues that McIntire is understating the effect of Measure 5 on schools.

A recent survey by the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators shows that districts plan to lay off about 1,100 teachers this year, Paulus said.

The layoffs are coming at an especially inopportune time because Oregon’s public school enrollment is continuing to climb, she said. Enrollment was 530,000 in the school year just ended and increased by more than 20,000 this fall.

Middle schools and high schools are scaling back athletics and elective classes as a result of the Measure 5 money squeeze.

Paulus fears that Oregon is heading in the same direction as California, where residents wielded the Proposition 13 tax reform ax 15 years ago.

“Fifteen years ago, California had one of the best public school systems in the United States,” she said. “Now you have teachers being laid off, class sizes growing and choices narrowing. And that’s exactly what’s happening here.”

Dennis, the Student Lobby spokesman, said he has the same worries about Oregon’s higher education system.

The Legislature this summer approved a new two-year budget for the college system based on increasing tuition by 7% a year in each of the next two years for Oregon residents. Tuition already has been boosted by 40% in response to the state’s Measure 5 fiscal crunch.

“We are slowly pricing people out of college,” Dennis said.

The system also has been forced to reduce or eliminate dozens of programs at a time when enrollment at the eight campuses has dropped by more than 3,000 students, to 60,525.

Education backers hope Oregon voters eventually can be persuaded to approve an overhaul of the state’s tax system to raise more money for schools.

The Legislature approved a sales tax plan for the fall ballot, but it’s far from certain that voters will buy a sales tax, an idea that’s been rejected on eight previous occasions.

“The school system is wounded, but it’s not mortal yet,” said John Danielson, lobbyist for the Oregon Education Assn., the state’s largest teachers union.

“I don’t think Oregonians are going to stand by and watch their education system collapse,” he said.