In 2025, lawmakers made a 20% cut to Oregon Outdoor School funding for the 2025-27 biennium. We had hoped for a legislative fix during the 2026 short session. Legislative sessions that take place in even calendar years are often used to make legislative corrections. Unfortunately, that did not pan out.

This school year, we were able to draw on reserve funds to minimize cuts. Unfortunately, we will not be able to sustain the same programming next year. 

We hosted several listening sessions earlier this spring with classroom teachers, Outdoor School staff, school district leadership, student volunteers and elementary parents. Program decisions driven by cuts at the state level were grounded in the values uplifted in these sessions:

• Equity in Access: Community members and families should not be expected to pick up the costs for attending Outdoor School. This opportunity needs to be accessible to all, regardless of resources.
• Safety and Supervision: We considered a split-week model, meaning two back-to-back overnight sessions for six days in a row for about two months in the fall and two months in the spring. Listening session participants were concerned this would lead to staff burnout and poor supervision by fatigued educators.
• Student Leader Participation: Our ability to recruit high school student leaders will be impacted by the model. Specifically, running programming at four sites instead of five will likely benefit our ability to recruit adequate numbers of student leaders, but running the split-week model would likely make it more challenging to attract student leaders.

Next year, schools will have the option to select a 3-day program or, at a higher price, a 4-day program. We will only operate at four sites instead of five and with 20 fewer employees. We will no longer host our program at Camp Arrah Wanna in Welches, Oregon.