Why some people are very nervous already.

Right.

So, um, if you have kids at PPS, unless you've been living under a rock, you probably already know that the school district has been in pretty dire budget straits for years.

But, um, you also maybe know that, um, enrollment has plunged, um, an estimated 12% or so since prior to the pandemic, and it's just expected to keep going down, maybe as much as 15% more over the next 15 years.

So- You know, put those two things together and what you wind up with is a conversation about do we have too many school buildings for the amount of students that we're serving, and what does it mean for the children, um, the students, if we continue having this number of school buildings? How does it impact their education? What can we afford to offer and what can't we afford to offer? So the district has said that its plan this year is to propose scenarios that would, um, close, consolidate, merge, change its attendance boundaries, impact between, well, closure of between 10 and 20 schools.

Personally, I think that 20 is a little bit of expectation management.

I think it's more likely that you'll see that number around the, the, the lower level.

Yeah.

[laughs]

Not so much.

Um, it turns out that, like, the noise about cell phone use in school was, was really drowning out a rising concern about educational technology, or you can shorthand it edtech, like the cool kids do.

And this is really, you know, about, like, the Chromebooks that are issued or iPads that are issued to students and how much time they spend using them in schools, right? So there's, like, a national movement that is really, um, ramping up in Portland to reduce the amount of time that kids are spending on screens in schools, because it's a lot.

Like, I've heard stories about...

Like, a parent at a local school district told me about, uh, you know, her, her, her kid's teacher doesn't read to them so much anymore.

They'll sort of, like, turn on the-

Mm-hmm.