The math isn't so hard when it comes to the faculty of the Tigard-Tualatin school district.

This year, the district employs 640 teachers on a full-time equivalent basis. That's 56 fewer teachers than than a year ago. That's also 55 more teachers than the district would have had without the stimulus money provided by the federal government and dispensed by the state Legislature.

"We're really grateful for that federal funding," said Susan Stark Haydon, a spokeswoman for the suburban district southwest of Portland.

She and her district are hardly alone. The biggest share of spending from the federal economic stimulus package has gone to pay teachers, in Oregon and elsewhere.

But while the stimulus spending from what's called a "stabilization fund" has kept a couple thousand Oregon teachers in the public elementary and secondary classrooms, it hasn't brought stability to the school districts and probably couldn't.

The hit Oregon state government took in revenue during the Great Recession was, proportionally, one of the largest in the country, and the largest single part of the state government's budget is school aid.

A recent stimulus report from the U.S. Education Department listed Oregon among six states that suffered "catastrophic budget shortfalls." The others were Arizona, California, Florida, New Jersey and Wisconsin. To patch Oregon's budget, Oregon legislators spent stimulus dollars and raised taxes on business and wealthy people.

Even so, a survey conducted by three groups of school administrators found that as state school aid fell by 4 percent, the number of teachers employed in Oregon classrooms is down by 6 percent and class sizes are up by about two students each.

"Even with those stimulus dollars, we still had layoffs," said state Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo. "Without them, we would have had even more."

In many cases, Oregon school districts said in reports to Castillo's department that the stimulus dollars forestalled cuts: They didn't have to cut last school year short, or they didn't have to lay off as many teachers as expected, such as in Tigard-Tualatin.

How that played out varied from district to district.

In Ontario in Eastern Oregon, for example, a successful program that uses specialists to coach teachers of reading and writing courses was on the chopping block during the budget-writing earlier this year. The program had begun a few years ago with a federal grant, said spokeswoman Sidni Mordhorst. When the grant ended, school leaders were impressed with the results, so they worked the expense into its regular budget.

As a new expense, though, it was vulnerable when school leaders started making the current budget.

Then along came the stimulus money. It saved the six positions, Mordhorst said.

"Tooth and nail, we were holding on to those positions that make such a vital difference in the way we do business," she said.

The stimulus program counts jobs either "saved" or "created." In the general run of teachers, staff and administrators, most Oregon schools were holding on to jobs as best they could, as in Ontario.

In that category, the state Education Department counts 2,811 jobs saved or created. Continued...