Salem-Keizer Public Schools leaders told the Salem Chamber of Commerce on Monday that middle schools are the district's next likely target for closures, as a wave of smaller elementary classes works its way toward secondary school in the coming years. Chief Operations Officer Paul Odenthal delivered the warning just weeks after the district recommended shuttering six elementary campuses.
Leaders Lay Out the Numbers at the Chamber
Odenthal said plainly that, “in the next few years, the district will look to close middle schools,” according to Salem Reporter. He made the comments alongside Superintendent Andrea Castañeda and Board Chair Lisa Harnisch, who addressed the chamber at the Salem Convention Center. The trio's remarks centered on the district's ongoing school closure efforts, the outlet reported.
The district is currently receiving about 2,300 new kindergarten students, compared with 3,300 graduating seniors, Salem Reporter reported — a gap of 1,000 students at the bottom of the pipeline that eventually works its way up through elementary, then middle, then high school. That imbalance is the core math problem driving the district's broader closure planning.
A Years-Long Enrollment Slide
The warning builds on a trend the district has been tracking for some time. A January enrollment forecast found Salem-Keizer could have about 4,500 fewer students by 2030, with total enrollment dropping to roughly 32,000 in the state's second-largest district, per the same outlet's earlier reporting. That forecast described the decline as the equivalent of losing a full elementary school's worth of students every year, and was intended to inform decisions on renovations and closures in the years ahead.
The losses aren't new. District enrollment had already fallen by about 6,000 students, from roughly 42,000 in 2019 to just under 36,000 this year, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive. A 2022 demographic study from the Portland State University Population Research Center had already projected district-wide enrollment out to the 2041-42 school year, noting that longer-run forecasts shift depending on migration patterns and how many kindergarten-age residents actually enroll in district schools.
Elementary Closures Already in Motion
The middle-school warning follows a summer announcement that set the current closure process rolling. In July, the district said it would look to close up to eight elementary schools before the 2027-28 school year, according to OPB, with officials saying at the time that a specific list would come in October and a final board decision would follow in December. That list arrived in October, when district leaders recommended closing Brush College, Candalaria, Cummings, Englewood, Liberty and Richmond elementary schools, with the closures proposed for fall 2027, OPB reported. The school board is expected to vote on those recommendations at its Dec. 8 meeting.
It was in that same October reporting that Odenthal first floated the idea of moving beyond elementary schools. “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,” he said at the time, per OPB. Monday's chamber remarks suggest that timeline may be accelerating, though the district has not named which middle schools could be affected or set a decision date for any secondary-level closures.
What the District's Closure Page Shows
Salem-Keizer's own closure-process webpage offers a glimpse of how deep the planning has gone. The site lists projected district-wide elementary building use for the 2027-28 school year and invites public input to a Boundary Review Task Force, according to Salem-Keizer Public Schools. The district also held closure presentations at Claggett Creek Middle School on Oct. 15 and Crossler Middle School on Oct. 16, and has posted responses to 48 questions school board directors raised about the closure process, the district's site shows.
For now, the middle-school closures remain a stated intention rather than a finalized plan — no schools have been named, and no board vote or implementation date has been set for that next phase. The more immediate decision facing Salem-Keizer families is the fate of the six elementary schools already on the chopping block, which the board is set to take up on Dec. 8.
