Transforming Clackamas: Classroom by Classroom

In brief: The leaders of Clackamas Community College and the Oregon City School District shared how two voter-approved bonds are rebuilding local campuses, how career pathways now stretch from elementary school through apprenticeship, and why shrinking enrollment and unfunded mandates make the next few budget years the hardest part of the story.

Event Recap

The September 22 luncheon brought the Oregon City Business Alliance together to talk about education in Clackamas County, a subject central to Oregon City’s economic vitality and quality of life. Dr. Tim Cook, President of Clackamas Community College, and Dr. Sarah Crane, Assistant Superintendent of the Oregon City School District, walked through education funding, the investments made possible through recent bonds, the expansion of career and technical education, the workforce skills employers need, and how stronger partnerships among K-12 schools, colleges, and local businesses can create clearer pathways from education to meaningful careers.

Key Takeaways

• The demographic cliff is here. Oregon peaked at about 42,000 high school graduates last year and is projected to fall almost 20 percent, to roughly 33,000, by 2041. Fewer 18-year-olds means fewer students for colleges and fewer workers for employers, and both institutions are redesigning around it.
• Career pathways now run from elementary school to apprenticeship. The school district has grown from five career and technical education pathways to 14 in a few years, deliberately aligned with the college rather than duplicating it, and CCC trains about 1,400 apprentices a year while 22 percent of its students are high schoolers earning dual credit.
• Two bonds are transforming local campuses. CCC’s $130 million bond, passed in 2024, funds deferred maintenance, athletics and community spaces, and the Holden Natural Resources Center breaking ground in November, with OSU Extension bringing more than $15 million to the building. The district’s $163 million bond is renovating six elementary schools, adding air conditioning, and building new CTE spaces at Oregon City High School.
• The value of college is being questioned at exactly the wrong time. The share of Americans calling higher education very important has fallen from about 75 percent in 2010 to 35 percent, even as a Georgetown study projects three-quarters of jobs over the next decade will require some college, whether a certificate or a degree.
• Both budgets are under real strain. CCC has cut almost $5 million over the last couple of years, and the district projects $40 million of its budget going to unfunded mandates by 2027-28, up from $1 million in 1975. Both leaders asked the room to press legislators to prioritize education funding.
• Employers are part of the solution. Both presenters made direct asks: tell the institutions what skills you cannot hire for, offer internships and job shadows, join advisory groups, and help get kids to school.

The Speakers

Dr. Tim Cook has more than 36 years in higher education and became President of Clackamas Community College in 2018. A first-generation college student and Oregon City native who did all of his K-12 schooling in the Oregon City School District, he earned degrees at Western Oregon, Lewis & Clark, and Oregon State, and is also, as he put it, “that crazy runner guy” who ran across the state last summer, raising about $180,000 for student support. The college celebrates its 60th birthday this year.

Dr. Sarah Crane is Assistant Superintendent of the Oregon City School District, drawing on more than 20 years as a district executive, principal, special education leader, and university instructor. She grew up in northeast Oregon, in Wallowa and Baker counties, began her career in special education and behavior support around the country, and returned home to Oregon by way of the InterMountain ESD before moving to the west side. She presented on behalf of Superintendent Dr. Spitzer, who was unable to attend.

Inside the Presentations

Four Forces Converging

Cook framed the moment as four forces hitting education at once: fewer traditional students, a workforce being reshaped by AI and automation, growing skepticism about the value of a degree, and a regional imperative for talent with clear pathways to it. The demographic slide was the starkest: birth rates have declined for decades, and after peaking last year, Oregon’s annual high school graduating class is projected to shrink almost 20 percent by 2041. Universities built around 18-year-olds will feel it hardest, but community colleges, whose students run from 14 to 80, will feel it too.

His response is retention and reinvention. A data point he shared: if a student leaves college midway through, there is less than a 5 percent chance they will come back and finish. So the college is investing in advising, affordability, and wraparound support, and reengaging adult learners, the smartest response to the enrollment cliff. Seventy-five percent of CCC students attend part time, almost half of classes are online or hybrid, and the college is expanding credit for prior learning and keeping clear on-ramps and off-ramps for students who step away for work or family.

Pathways, Apprentices, and the Skills Ahead

Connecting learning to work anchored the rest of the presentation. About 22 percent of CCC students are high schoolers across Clackamas County earning dual credit, some finishing high school with more than a year of college credit. The college trains about 1,400 apprentices annually across 11 or 12 trades and builds stackable credentials so students can leave for a paycheck and return for the certificate: “We can’t keep welders for more than six months,” because they get hired before they finish.

On future skills, CCC starts its first cybersecurity degree cohort this term, and Cook summarized the college’s AI philosophy: “You may not lose your job to AI, but you’re going to lose your job to someone who can work with AI.” Alongside the technology, he pointed to the durable skills employers keep asking for: leadership, collaboration, resilience, and creative and analytical thinking. Keeping programs current, he added, depends on industry advisory groups, and he invited the room to join them.

The Value Question and the Budget Squeeze

One slide worried Cook more than the rest. In 2010, roughly 75 percent of Americans considered higher education very important; that number has fallen to 35 percent, while the share calling it unimportant has climbed toward a quarter. Oregon already ranks among the lowest states for college-going culture, yet a Georgetown study projects three-quarters of the jobs created over the next decade will require some college. His answer to the skeptics came from a slide of his own: “Not everyone needs to go to college, but we all benefit from those that do,” pointing to the engineers, tradespeople, and welders together building the Abernethy Bridge he drives over daily.

The bright spot is a surge of interest in the trades, though those are the college’s most expensive programs to run. The financial backdrop is rough statewide: Southern Oregon University needed emergency funding, Portland State is struggling, and Oregon State and the University of Oregon have announced reductions. CCC has cut almost $5 million over the last couple of years and is bracing for more as federal pass-through dollars shrink.

What the $130 Million Bond Is Building

Clackamas County voters passed a $130 million bond for the college in 2024, and much of it is going into unglamorous essentials, roofs and HVAC systems, to keep 60-year-old assets serving for another 60. The headline project is the Holden Natural Resources Center, breaking ground in November to house the water and environmental technology, horticulture, arboriculture, and wildland fire programs, whose faculty and students just returned from fighting fires in Washington. OSU Extension is relocating to campus with more than $15 million toward the project and will occupy about a third of the cross-laminated timber building, positioned to be visible from Beaver Creek Road.

Community-facing pieces are landing too: a new two-mile walking trail opened last week to immediate use, softball and baseball fields have been rebuilt, and the college is adding its first soccer field, an Olympic track, and a roughly 3,000-seat grandstand. The bond also secured about 30 acres on Beaver Creek Road between the horticulture program and the high school, where the college is exploring housing and a learning cooperative farm.

The District’s $163 Million Rebuild and 14 Pathways

Crane opened with gratitude for a bond she said the district barely passed: $163 million now at work across old buildings. Candy Lane Elementary students are spending the year at the King campus while their school is rebuilt, John McLoughlin Elementary has an expanded cafeteria, Holcomb Elementary has new classrooms, new turf fields are open to the community, and the first three of six elementary schools finish next summer before planning starts on the second three. The upgrade she highlighted most: air conditioning. Oregon City High School also gained new CTE spaces she encouraged attendees to visit.

The district’s career and technical education pathways have grown from five to 14 in a few years, with sequences that sometimes place the second or third course at CCC, deliberately avoiding duplication: the district does not need to build an auto shop when the college has one, and it helps cover tuition so students earn college credit. Business partnerships have produced BOLI pre-apprenticeships, including behavioral health with United We Heal, welding and construction with Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 290, the Western States Carpenters, and the local Machinists. A just-confirmed $121,000 CTE Revitalization Grant from the Oregon Department of Education will help develop a district property into a land lab supporting the new agriculture classes and FFA chapter, which showed a turkey and two steer at the Clackamas County Fair. She also flagged that the district enters year four of its four-year strategic plan and will seek community input this year on the 2027-31 plan.

Unfunded Mandates and the Enrollment Squeeze

Crane was candid that the budget is “really, really rough.” The State School Fund is the largest it has ever been, but it carries the most unfunded mandates it has ever had: $1 million of the district budget went to unfunded mandates in 1975, and the 2027-28 projection is $40 million, for good things like Paid Leave Oregon, unemployment, and PERS that arrive without funding attached. In the 2003-05 biennium, 45 percent of state taxes went to K-12; this biennium it is closer to 28 percent. Spring reductions in force were painful, though resignations and retirements let the district bring almost everyone back.

Enrollment pressure compounds it. Fewer children are being born, and students have been leaving for online and virtual charter programs, 70 from the high school alone last year, so the district launched its own online high school program this fall with 30 students enrolled, getting the model right before expanding to K-8. She also briefed the room on Senate Bill 141, the state’s new accountability system, which adds K-2 attendance and eighth grade math as measured metrics with escalating state intervention if districts do not grow; Oregon City chose career readiness as its local metric. Hence the attendance campaign, and her memorable math: “If you miss a day a month, you’ve missed 10% of the school year.”

Questions from the Floor

Q: What is the high school doing to prepare students for health care fields?

Crane said one of the district’s newest pathways is in health care, with courses approved by the board last year building toward certified nursing assistant style credentials that feed into CCC, and noted health is a major focus of the CTE bond work at Oregon City High School.

Q: Have you taken steps to ensure students aren’t cheating using AI?

“This feels like an arms race,” Cook said. The college buys detection software, with mixed success, and some faculty have returned to blue book essays: “If you really want to know someone’s doing their work, you have to actually see them do it in front of you.” Asked whether K-12 sees the same, Crane joked, “No, nobody uses AI,” then described the district’s approach: teaching students to use AI as a thought partner, digital citizenship curriculum from kindergarten up, and an AI think tank open to community members. Teachers, she added, are using it well themselves for differentiation and rubric building. Cook closed with perspective: calculators and cell phones each triggered similar panics, though “I don’t want to underplay AI because it is really of a magnitude that’s so much different.”

Q: What are your plans for the old Oregon City High School campus?

Crane said a long-term facilities planning team is evaluating every district building and property, including the Jackson campus. “I’ll have a better answer next year.”

Q: Any discussions about an aquatics program building with Oregon City?

“How did I know that was going to come up?” Cook confirmed the city has approached the college about the roughly 30 bond-secured acres on Beaver Creek Road as a potential aquatic and recreation center site. “I’ve been on the record saying I’m not a huge fan of pools, but I really see the value in something like this,” he said, describing an ecosystem shared by the high school, the college, and the community, contingent on the city passing a bond. Henderson pressed: so there’s a chance? “There’s a chance. I’d say that chance is probably a lot better than it was like a month ago.”

Q: At what grade do you teach basic personal finance?

Crane had good news: personal finance is a new statewide graduation requirement beginning this school year, and Oregon City students are actively taking the required half-credit course now.

Q: There’s a loneliness epidemic in Oregon and the US. How does this trend impact the student experience and success?

“That’s heavy, right?” Crane said the district kept its social workers through the budget crisis “because we have kids who are really hurting,” pointed to belonging in its strategic plan, and voiced worry about social media: “If you want to see depressing things, you can keep seeing depressing things.” Cook said the college offers counseling in person and online and shared a student survey comment that stuck with him: “I really appreciate my online classes. It really works for me, but I just really miss talking to people.” Faculty route isolated students to the college’s care team, and events like a 400-student kickoff aim to pull people together. Neither claimed a solution.

Q: You both mentioned getting involved. What specifically can people do if they have internships or opportunities for your students, and who is the best person to reach out to?

Cook pointed to the college’s career center, individual departments and faculty, or himself directly. Crane offered her own inbox, promising to connect writers with the district staff who build partnerships, and credited that work for growing the pathways from five to 14. Henderson said contact information will be posted on the OCBA website.

And here they are:

– Dr. Sarah Crane, Oregon City School District: sarah.crane@orecity.k12.or.us
  – Dr. Tim Cook, President of Clackamas Community College: tim.cook@clackamas.edu

Q: How do you plan to enforce attendance mandates? Consequences?

Crane noted one Oregon county has revived truancy fines and is seeing attendance rise, but Oregon City and the rest of the state have none. The research points elsewhere: “Telling them they have to do a thing and threatening them, it’s not usually the best way to get people to do things.” The district uses incentives, parent education on when a child is actually too sick for school (“If it’s a runny nose, you still go to school”), and individual family plans, down to giving out free alarm clocks.

Q: The cancellation of non-credit elective offerings in auto body and small engine repair upset the Oregon City community. Is there a chance these courses will come back?

Cook addressed it directly, acknowledging the protesters who appear on Beaver Creek Road. About 18 months ago the college cut almost $3 million and over 100 class sections, but “we did not cut our automotive program.” What closed were five non-credit evening and weekend classes, largely classic car restoration and small auto body courses taken by hobbyists, some for over 20 years. “It is not something that we can continue to afford to do,” he said, and with more reductions likely, restoring them now is not viable.

Q: Will you address the why for so many withdrawing their kids from public schools?

Crane cited the convenience of online options and noted some online programs pay families stipends for curriculum and extracurriculars: “There’s some incentive there that I’m not competing with.” The harder force is the national narrative against public schools. “I just wish people could see what’s happening in classrooms every day because it is remarkable,” she said, adding that schools remain safe and that a scuffle at recess is nothing new.

Q: Is the federal program that forgives loans for students in fields like teaching still in business?

Cook was frank that he has not tracked it closely: the program was pulled back, briefly reopened for a limited window, and “if it’s still happening at all, it’s really a very limited number of people” qualifying after the required years of public service.

Q: What are you doing to reduce your operating expenses?

Cook described bond-funded efficiency: the campus core has run on a single boiler and chiller since the 1970s, and building-by-building HVAC will let unused buildings shut down, supported by Energy Trust incentives. But 85 to 86 percent of costs are people, so cuts eventually mean positions, which is why he is building a metro collaborative with the presidents of PCC, Mt. Hood, and PSU to share services and faculty: “None of us can go out on our own anymore.” Crane matched the figure for the district and described scrutinizing fuel and service contracts, tightening building schedules, and eliminating district administration and classified positions not directly serving kids.

Q (moderator): When a big development goes in, social media asks how the schools will absorb the new students, yet state per-student funding and budget cuts keep constricting capacity. How do you get out of that circle?

Crane walked through the mechanics: the district projects enrollment each spring, even asking new apartment developments how many kids to expect, then waits for the tenth day of school, when unenrolled students are dropped and the real count lands. “The whole cabinet will be like, what’s the number, what’s the number?” Roughly every 30 additional students funds another teacher or staff member. Pressed on projections showing fewer children, she pointed to districts around the region already closing schools, and when Henderson asked what she would tell a hypothetical state senator in the room about budgeting, she answered: “Prioritize education funding and come talk to us. We’ll show you so many graphs if you want them.”

Q (speed round): Status of German at Oregon City High School? A resurgence of cursive, fact or rumor? Books versus online reading?

German survives: students who forecasted for it will take it in person this year. Cursive: “I think it’s a rumor. It’s not in the standards yet,” though Crane noted the research on what cursive does for the brain. And on reading: “Books, books, books.”

Get Involved

Both presenters left the room with assignments. For the college: share your hiring gaps and skill needs, host job shadows, internships, and site visits, join program advisory groups, and invest in tuition support for employees. For the district: offer student experiences, watch for the strategic plan input process this year, put up an attendance lawn sign when offered, and press legislators heading into the long session to make K-12 and community college funding a priority.

Next month, OCBA turns to federal policy: the October 27 forum will dig into HR 1 and the changes taking effect January 1, and what they may mean for local businesses and residents.