Salem-Keizer Public Schools leaders are recommending six elementary schools for closure due to declining enrollment in Oregon’s second-largest school district.

The district published the list of schools Friday afternoon and will present its plan to the school board Tuesday. The board is expected to make a decision on the school closures at its Dec. 8 meeting.

The schools proposed for closure are: Brush College, Candalaria, Cummings, Englewood, Liberty, and Richmond. The district’s plan proposes closing the schools in fall 2027, with coinciding boundary adjustments across the district. Those boundary adjustments will not be finalized until February 2027. District officials say changes, including the boundary adjustments, will affect five percent of students in the district. The district says 250 staff members will be “impacted” through the closure proposal.

“If there were a way to avoid this, we absolutely would. We absolutely would,” Salem-Keizer superintendent Andrea Castañeda said in a call with reporters Friday morning.

“We just see no path to avoiding it because the context around us is bigger than any of us.”

That context includes declining birth rates and families choosing options other than public school for their children. Castañeda acknowledged the reality facing not just her district, but districts across the country.

“We would actually have to reverse declining birth rate in order to change this,” she said.

“Sometimes institutions have to respond to the reality around them and do it with as much care and empathy as possible.”

The announcement from Salem-Keizer comes the same week Portland Public Schools presented scenarios to close as many as 14 schools. Portland’s proposal drew hundreds of students, families, and staff to school district offices earlier this week. Salem-Keizer’s will likely bring a similar amount of pushback. Both districts have seen declines of thousands of students in the last five years, resulting in slowly emptying schools that officials say cannot adequately serve students.

“We will have to reduce staffing and supports to those smaller schools because we will no longer be able to afford them,” said Olga Cobb, Salem-Keizer’s deputy superintendent for elementary schools. She pointed to the district’s gains on state tests, and said more “fully-enrolled” schools will help continue that progress. On the other hand, Cobb said allowing schools to continue to shrink would be “negligent” on the district’s part.

The district will offer a chance for students to apply for a “continuity exemption” for families affected by boundary changes.

Like Portland, Salem-Keizer will host engagement sessions to hear from families and respond to questions, with meetings next week at several middle schools. The next two board meetings will start at 4 p.m., two hours earlier than usual to allow more time for public comment. Castañeda said the district is working with staff to provide “clarity” about next steps in this process.

Also similar to Portland, superintendent Andrea Castañeda is a part of Chiefs for Change, a national nonprofit focused on leadership development. Portland Public Schools superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong has denied that her membership in the organization has anything to do with her proposal to close schools.

Castañeda called the claims “patently absurd”.

“I think that the tin foil hat cottage industry of Portland is alive and well,” she said.

The reality of schools today is that enrollment has dropped significantly, and will likely continue to decline in the future. In Salem-Keizer, Chief Operations Officer Paul Odenthal said there may be other closures in the future.

“Not next year, but down the road we’ll need to talk more in the very near future about additional closures as well as moving to the secondary level, potentially,” Odenthal said.

To make matters worse, Salem-Keizer faces another large budget deficit for next school year: $46 million. Research shows that school closures do not tend to save districts money, but having fewer schools can make operating them more manageable and cost-efficient.

Castañeda said the budget challenges are coincidental to the enrollment challenges, but they are not the same.

“They are coincident in that all of these pressures are falling down on and compounding on districts all at one time,” she said. But Castañeda says she is aware of community concerns and trying to close buildings with sensitivity.

“There is such a thing as a good proposal to close schools,” Castañeda said.

Read more about Salem-Keizer’s plan here.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/10/09/oregon-education-salem-keizer-schools-elementary/