A scheduler in a network element may include a dequeuer to dequeue packets from a set of scheduling nodes using a deficit weighted round robin process, where the dequeuer is to determine whether a subset of the set of scheduling nodes is being backpressured. The dequeuer may set a root rich most negative credits (MNC) value, associated with a root node, to a root poor MNC value, associated with the root node, and set the root poor MNC value to zero, when the subset is not being backpressured, and may set the rich MNC value to a maximum of the root poor MNC value and a root backpressured rich MNC value, associated with the subset, and set the root poor MNC value to a root backpressured poor MNC value, associated with the subset, when the subset is being backpressured.