PPS Schools: Where Are They Now?
Dear Honorable Mayor Adams, City Commissioners, Superintendent Smith, School Board Directors, Planning Commission members, and Community:
I understand from Mrs. Dixie Johnston, Collins View Land Use Co-Chair, that at a Jan. 11 meeting with community members regarding PPS zoning code and City School Policy violations, you requested information on PPS schools which have sold, leased, or been repurposed.
Pursuant to your request, I have done the research for your offices, and am providing you with the information in my attached article entitled “PPS Schools: Where Are They Now?”
I request that you and your staff study it carefully. Future school closures, sales, leases and repurposing will lead to the same troubling outcomes for this City: PPS has already wasted millions on outside consulting firms, real estate consultants, unnecessary transportation, and trailers to replace shuttered school buildings.
Please do the GREEN thing by stopping high school redesign on Monday. You can do this by enforcing the City’s own zoning code.
Thank you for your consideration.
Zarwen
PPS parent and taxpayer
For the past 18 months, PPS has been working on a project they are calling “High School Redesign.” One major aspect of the redesign involves closing one or more high schools, something that hasn’t happened since 1981. However, there have been at least a dozen elementary and middle school closures in the past decade, and over two dozen over the past half-century. I thought it would be interesting to go down the list and find out what became of those buildings.
So, the short answer to the question, “Where are they now?” is, of 32 closed schools: 17 sold, in whole or in part; 6 leased to outside parties; 8 repurposed by the district for its own use; 1 reverted to the original owners; and 1 that no public action has been taken regarding.** Of the “New Buildings” since 1960 that remain open (several are on the “Closed” list), one was a direct replacement for a vacated site, and another has never housed schoolchildren at all. When deliberating on the latest round of closures, PPS School Board members testified that enrollment had decreased by 40% since the 1960’s, but the district’s “footprint” had decreased by only 6%. Board Resolutions 3488-3495 mention a total of 36 “facilities” (not all of which were schools) that were closed between 1963 and 2001; 3 of the neighborhood schools that were newly built during the same period are still open (see below). I was able to document 112 PPS neighborhood schools open in 1971. 25 of them were closed by the end of 2001. I don’t know the square footage of the individual buildings, but the number of schools therefore had decreased by about 22%. The Board Resolutions of May 2006 resulted in the net closures of 7 more schools (8 were actually closed but one was replaced), bringing the overall reduction to about 29%–not too far off from the enrollment decrease.
Just within the past few months, the PPS School Board has approved up to $11.2 million (see http://www.pps.k12.or.us/files/board/121508_All_Documents.pdf bottom of p. 13) for purchase, installation, and hookup of portable trailer-style classrooms to house students at overcrowded schools, so far including Maplewood, Rieke, Laurelhurst, Rigler, Scott, Astor, Lee, Llewellyn, and Sunnyside. A “feasibility study” for another group of schools to receive trailers has already been funded. Not only that, but every single one of the schools receiving trailers is near a closed school. This is proof that too many schools have been closed. Furthermore, there were many better uses for these millions of dollars than trailers—teacher training and instructional materials, for example. Or how about toilet paper and copy paper?
So, why not reopen schools? Looking at the list below and noting how many times I see “SOLD” or “LEASED” makes me start to think that PPS is in the business of real estate brokerage rather than education. Yet recent events have shown us how handy it can be to have a few extra buildings lying around: within the past decade, shuttered buildings have been reopened due to the Marysville fire, the condemnation of “New Whitaker” (originally Adams), and the overcrowding of West Sylvan. The “Closed” list does not even include non-school properties, which have been sold at an accelerating rate over the last decade. For example, PPS bought at least five sites in the SW hills in the 1950’s for schools that were never built (Dakota, Dickinson, Columbia Primary, Maricara, Spring Garden); at least four of those sites were sold between 1996 and 2008. It is especially noteworthy that, even in a sagging economy, PPS properties appreciated over $4 billion (yes, that is BILLION with a B, not a typo) in value just from 2006/7-2008/9, even though the overall acreage decreased during that time (see Ball and “Old Whitaker,” below). (Documentation of assessed property values can be found here: http://www.co.multnomah.or.us/orgs/tscc/financialinfo.html)
Given that level of appreciation, should we infer that PPS is trying to cash in on public lands? Certainly the district received some money for the properties, but that money is now long gone along with the lands, and neither is coming back. Land was available 50 years ago, but Portland has changed immeasurably in that time, and large vacant lots are not to be found, nor are they easily affordable any more. (It took the cooperation of several agencies to procure the land for Rosa Parks School.) Where will we build schools for the influx of a million or more new residents (surely some of them will be, or will later have, children!) expected in the next 20 years? Furthermore, the current Comprehensive Plan clearly states:
“Agreements for shared use of City and School District properties reflect the knowledge that the City and the District share the same constituency. The same public has bought and paid for the facilities operated by both the City and the Portland Public Schools. Public buildings and lands should serve the people, not the agencies under whose names the buildings or lands are managed.”
So, when the PPS School Board is voting to close high schools, it isn’t a far stretch to think that the building(s) may be sold. PPS has been trying to sell Washington for nearly a decade, and Concordia University wants the old Adams site (see below). In the meantime, the only thing these sites have attracted is urban blight; take a drive by either one, and you’ll see exactly what I mean. School closures are a self-perpetuating spiral, as they drive away families who want to live near vibrant neighborhood schools. The way to keep a city’s neighborhoods, and therefore the city, vibrant is to keep its schools open.
**The details of what happened to each property are listed below. I concentrated on the properties that have changed ownership, or usage, or both; I did not include those that are still in use as Portland Public Schools, even though they may not be serving their original constituents. My thanks to Sue Hagmeier, former PPS School Board member, for generating the original list, as it was my starting point; and to everyone who helped me with the research.
Closed schools (since 1960):
- Adams HS, 5700 NE 39th—opened in 1969; closed in 1981; reopened two years later as Whitaker Middle School; closed again in 2001; building torn down, property vacant; adjacent track site SOLD to PP&R; Concordia University has expressed interest; see http://djcoregon.com/news/2008/11/24/portland-city-council-passes-cullyconcordia-action-plan/
- Applegate, 7650 N. Commercial—opened in 1954; closed in 2005; repurposed as Early Childhood and Family Support Center
- Ball, 4221 N. Willis—closed in 2006; building torn down, property SOLD to the city; now the future site of the planned Bridge Meadows housing development; see http://www.bridgemeadows.org/our_future_home.html
- Barlow, 3700 SE 92nd—closed in the ‘70’s; SOLD to ODOT, who uses it for a regional office; see http://egov.oregon.gov/ODOT/MCT/offices.shtml
- Clarendon, 9325 N. Van Houten—opened in 1970; closed in 2006, now vacant; future uncertain
- Collins View, 9806 SW Boones Ferry—closed in the ‘70’s; SOLD to Riverdale School District, who reopened it as Riverdale HS in 2002; see http://riverdale.schoolwires.com/1527107312434403/site/default.asp?
- Columbia, 716 N. Marine Dr.—previously named Faloma School, this was an independent K-8 until annexed by PPS in 1964; later served grades 4-8 until it closed in 1978; since then it has been repurposed several times and now serves as a special ed. site for HS students
- Edwards, 1715 SE 32nd Pl.—opened in 1960; closed in June 2005; LEASED to MESD Early Childhood Program since August 2005; lease currently approved through 2013; see http://www.mesd.k12.or.us/ece/index.shtml
- Foster, 5205 SE 86th—opened in 1962; closed in the ‘80’s; LEASED to Mt. Scott Learning Centers as MS special ed. site since 2007; see http://www.mtscottlearningcenters.org/centers.htm#MiddleSchool
- Glenhaven, 8020 NE Tillamook—closed in the ‘80’s; repurposed as Vocational Village* from 1991- 2004; SOLD to Banfield Pet Hospital, who tore it down to make room for parking; see http://www.banfield.net/hospital/view/1740; *Vocational Village relocated to Meek Elementary, which had closed in 2001
- Green Thumb, 6801 SE 60th—opened in 1974; one land parcel SOLD; building repurposed for the Community Transition Program; since then, portable trailer-style classrooms have been added
- Holladay, 1343 NE 9th —closed in the ‘70’s; SOLD to Lloyd Corp.; torn down to make room for a parking garage
- Holbrook, Lower Columbia River Hwy (Burlington area)—PPS annexed this school in 1967; closed in 1977; held onto it until 1988, when ownership reverted to the Holbrook family (the Kelly family made a similar deal when they donated the land for what is now Cleveland HS)
- Kellogg, 3330 SE 69th—closed in 2007; repurposed as a storage facility
- Kennedy, 5736 NE 33rd –closed in the ‘70’s; SOLD to McMenamins in the ‘90’s; see http://www.mcmenamins.com/427-kennedy-school-home
- Kenton, 7528 N. Fenwick—closed in 2005; long-term LEASE to De La Salle Catholic HS; see http://www.delasallenorth.org/aboutaii.htm
- Kerns, 2610 NE Everett — closed in the ‘70’s; SOLD to a private alternative HS in the early 90’s; see http://www.pcrest.org/contact/index.php
- Linnton, 10425 SW St. Helens Rd. —closed in the ‘70’s; SOLD for condos in the early ‘90’s; see http://www.linntonschoolplace.com/
- Markham Annex, 9730 SW Capitol Hwy—closed in the ‘70’s; SOLD to Capitol Properties LLC, who tore down the school for a parking lot adjacent to a 3-storey office building around 1984
- Mt. Tabor Annex, 511 SE 60th—closed in the ‘70’s; SOLD to PP&R, who currently leases it to the YMCA; see http://www.ychildcare.org/yschoice.html
- Multnomah, 7688 SW Capitol Hwy — closed in the mid-70’s; SOLD to PP&R in 1978; operated as Multnomah Arts Center since 1982; see http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?action=ViewPark&PropertyID=292
- Normandale, 909 NE 52nd— opened in 1960; closed in the ‘80’s; SOLD to the Early Head Start Family Center, a lessee since 1985, in 2002; since then the site has been taken over by Albina Head Start; see http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/HeadStartOffices#map-home
- Rice, 6433 NE Tillamook—opened in 1955; closed in the ‘90’s; last open as temporary home of Whitaker (Adams) area 6th-graders 2001-3; now repurposed as an administration building
- Rose City Park, 2334 NE 57th–Closed in 2007; temporarily repurposed to house Marysville students; future uncertain
- Sacajawea, 4800 NE 74th –opened in 1952; closed in the ‘70’s; repurposed as district Head Start main office
- Shattuck, 1914 SW Park—closed in the ‘60’s; SOLD to PSU; see http://www.pdx.edu/architecture/
- Smith, 8935 SW 52nd—opened in 1958; closed in 2005; LEASED to Riverdale Elementary since June 2009; see http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us/1527106271655563/blank/browse.asp?a=383&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&c=55704; lease expires in August 2010, future uncertain
- Terwilliger, 6318 SW Corbett—closed in the ‘70’s; LEASED to the Portland French School since 1998; 10-year lease renewed in 2008; see http://www.portlandfrenchschool.org/english/fees_contact.htm
- Washington HS, 531 SE 14th—closed in 1981; repurposed as Child Services Center; closed in 2003 and one parcel SOLD to the city in 2004—sale of other two parcels (including the building) to Beam Development LLC fell through two years ago; future possibilities include leasing to PP&R or sale to a different developer
- “Old” Whitaker, 5135 NE Columbia Blvd.—opened in 1953; closed in 1983, repurposed several times, then reopened to house students displaced from “New Whitaker” (Adams) from 2001-5, then SOLD to NAYA Native American youth program/school in 2009 after they had leased the building for three years; see http://www.nayapdx.org/about/contact.php
- Wilcox, 833 NE 74th—opened in 1959; closed in 2001; LEASED to Columbia Regional Program; see http://www.crporegon.org/contact
- Youngson, 2704 SE 71st—opened in 1955; closed in 2001; repurposed as a special ed. site
New buildings (since 1960) not currently closed or sold:
- BESC, 501 N. Dixon—opened in 1976 for warehouse and administration; has never housed any school programs; a small portion was LEASED for 99 years to Multnomah County in 1999
- Forest Park, 9935 NW Durrett —opened in 1998
- Holladay Center, 2600 SE 71st—opened as a special ed. site in 1970
- Jackson, 10625 SW 35th —opened in 1964 as a high school; closed in 1981; later reopened as a middle school
- Rosa Parks, 8960 N Woolsey—opened in 2006 as a replacement for Ball (see above)
- Stephenson, 2627 SW Stephenson —opened in 1964
6 comments
Thank you Zarwen, for the incredible information gathering, research and hard work evident in this piece. We support you in your statements to the Mayor and your treatise. It seems that all of our work in Portland has shifted from supporting public education to protecting and defending its very existence. Thank you for fulfilling the Mayor’s request, and doing all this hard work for our students and neighborhoods.
Here are the statements of Ronald Webb, Lynn Schore and Mary Ann Schwab from the Zoning Code hearing at City Council on Thursday. Sam Adams was sick for that meeting. There were a number of neighborhood association chairs at the meeting in support of our position, along with Cal Henry, the President of the Oregon Assembly for Black Affairs.
I hope that everyone can take the time to write to the City Council and Mayor and ask them to:
1. Make no changes to the Zoning Code. Stakeholders in six school districts in this City do not want K-12 schools!
2. Instead, after two years wait, immediately enforce the Zoning Code on behalf of all our children and neighborhoods.
3. The Superintendent, School Board, Mayor and City can not move forward with High School Redesign until the zoning code violations by PPS have been prosecuted.
4. The City should immediately inform the District that it will prosecute the zoning code violations made by PPS. This will have the effect of stopping the high school redesign.
Thanks again Zarwen, your piece could not be more thorough or timely!! Lynn Schore and Steve Linder
Ronald Webb
Speech to City Council re Zoning Code Violations by PPS
4/22/10
My name is Ron Webb. I live in the Piedmont neighborhood, and I graduated from Jefferson High School 54 years ago. I’m a member of the Jefferson High School Site Council and Jefferson High PTSA.
I am a zoning code complainant at ten Portland Public Schools, based upon grade reconfigurations that are illegal under the Schools and School Sites Chapter of the Zoning Code, or Chapter 33. I do not have Internet access, and I have NOT been notified of this meeting by mail or phone. It has been nearly impossible to keep up with PPS’s zoning violations and the City’s response because I have not been notified of meetings.
The City of Portland is in violation of its own Zoning Ordinance. Because the City has for two years refused to enforce the Zoning Ordinance, the City of Portland is now accessory to worsening segregation and discrimination at 11 PPS schools. The City of Portland has received 198 valid Zoning Code complaints regarding PPS’s illegal and discriminatory activities at these schools. The students, families, schools and neighborhoods affected have thus far received no remediation after two years. Children have a very short time in which to get their education.
I would like to contribute by giving historical backdrop to these monumental changes to the zoning code.
1) The original design of Portland Public Schools (PPS) infrastructure was built to be sustainable, with a very low carbon footprint. The design by the great Lloyd T. Keefe and Dr. Amo DeBernadis, sited parks & schools adjacent to one another within each neighborhood, so students could walk to school.
2) PPS closed over 30 schools since 1960, preferring instead to warehouse children in substandard trailers and bus them back and forth across town wasting both student time and fossil fuels.
3) In 2005-06, PPS closed 6 more schools, arguing diminishing student population to get them closed. Most of these neighborhood schools were seismically upgraded, in great condition, academically successful, with active parental involvement.
4) Today PPS is claiming there is a population ‘bubble’ of children, and that now PPS must purchase $11.2 million in trailers to house children, rather then employing sustainable practices and reopening closed neighborhood schools.
5) Portland claims it is a world leader in sustainability and environmentalism, but its PPS magnet program has an exceptionally large carbon footprint, due to need to drive children all over town. This is a waste of resources; it increases pollution; discourages physical fitness in students; and inhibits active parental engagement at school.
6) PPS and the City are simultaneously selling off valuable real estate and liquidating public school infrastructure for short term financial profit. PPS is wasting resources, and employing unsustainable and wasteful practices, directly contrary to Portland’s goal to lead the world in green practices.
7) Taxpayers are already being asked to construct new schools in places like the Pearl, when there are serviceable school structures that could be redeployed. The schools that are planned will be so large they will in effect warehouse children. The destruction of these beautiful school buildings and their historic legacy is not in alignment with our city’s mission for sustainability, green building practices, and for recycling buildings & building materials.
Portland residents rightfully expect their investments, old and new alike, to be properly protected and maintained.
I urge that the Portland City Council to make no changes to the “Schools and School Sites” Chapter of the Portland Zoning Code. Instead, I urge that you immediately begin a process that should have begun two years ago, to look at the grievances of these children and schools and get them fixed! This Amendment will weaken the zoning code and embolden PPS to segregate further.
Lynn Schore and Mary Ann Schwab
4/22/10 statement to Council
My name is Lynn Schore, my husband and I live in the Ashcreek Neighborhood in SW Portland, and my children attend Hayhurst and Jackson. I’m a proud member of the Oregon Assembly for Black Affairs and Jefferson High School PTSA.
City Council takes pride in sustainability and strives to be a world leader in this area. Portland Public Schools was essentially designed to be a group of twenty-minute neighborhoods. If you change code, the city will facilitate PPS’s ever-larger carbon footprint, wasting resources, and stressing our shrinking tax base to warehouse children … after unnecessary vehicle rides to transport them. Real estate values will shrink in neighborhoods without schools and Portland’s livability index will deteriorate. In the name of improving public education, enforce the zoning code! End segregation in PPS! Reopen Portland’s small schools; help students walk and bike to school, save money, improve fitness, and reduce the carbon footprint and auto pollution.
Discrimination against Portland’s children is occurring on City land in PPS schools. It is unconscionable that the City of Portland would contemplate sweeping changes to the zoning ordinance in order to give PPS retroactive immunity from activities that are illegal under federal, state and city law, city charter and the Comprehensive Plan. I implore you to make no changes to Chapter 33 of the Zoning Code at this time. Instead, immediately enforce your own code.
The August 2009 release of Oregon educational data bolsters my community’s arguments regarding these 11 schools. The data evidences poor academic performance at 10 of 11 schools with zoning code violations. Three PPS schools with zoning code violations (Ockley Green, Portsmouth, Roseway Heights) are on the NCLB watch list, and missed performance targets for the first time. Fernwood is the only school that is currently not evidencing poor performance in test scores, but teachers tell me that Fernwood students are now getting seven weeks less algebra per year than neighboring Beaumont Middle School students. That gross inequity will soon be documented in test data.
Does our Council know that not one Portland resident, from schools complainants to Grant Park safety complainants, ever asked for zoning changes? The zoning ordinance was perfectly clear, thus the valid violations for both groups as verified by Eric Engstrom in 2008. For two years now, complainants have asked Portland to enforce it own zoning Ordinance.
The City of Portland’s “Refinement Project” has been unnecessary and had predetermined outcomes. The predetermined outcome of this project was to provide retroactive immunity to PPS for Zoning Code violations against children, resulting in lack of equal access to education. We could NOT know that the City would negate sixty plus years of zoning history, and would introduce at the 11th hour a zoning code change which would allow K to 12 schools in all Portland districts: PPS, Centennial, Reynolds, David Douglas, Parkrose, and Riverdale. Why has there been no notification of this extreme system to stakeholders?
The only “stakeholders” who want zoning code changes are the ordinance violators (PPS) and those who have failed to enforce the ordinance (City of Portland). If the City of Portland changes code to give PPS retroactive immunity from zoning violations, this means the City of Portland deliberately wants segregated schools in Portland. It means that the Mayor and Council now sanction K-12 schools, which is illegal under state law without express Department of Education permission. Why suggest zoning changes which do not comport with state law? How could this benefit the children?
{The truth shall set us free. What is truth? The law documents our shared common values. In a free democratic society, law protects citizens and children from harm, authoritarianism, and anarchy. The law is the basis of a civil society, and allows for checks and balances. Civil society allows for public involvement before laws change. Justice should be tempered with mercy.} Justice, particularly with regard to children’s education, should be swift. Where is our children’s justice?
MRS. SCHWAB
We’ve called the Real Estate Trust PPS’s own Halliburton, because the Trust is a private outsourcing of essential City and school functions, can hide its actions because it is a private corporation, and can avoid public oversight. The Trust and Innovation Partnership are not representative of the interests of the Portland community, when they actually stand to profit from enrollment declines! When PPS let the Trust take over property management, the rationale was PPS had lost the ability to manage their properties and needed help. The Trust’s main argument was that they brought real estate experience to work on “persistent community problems” like “cumbersome PPS real estate.” We wondered if the District’s violations of law during closures were due to ignorance of the City School Policy. Yet several individuals who have led school closures throughout this century actually helped author the City School Policy, Ordinance 150580.
We proved that PPS intermittently followed the zoning code, and went through required conditional use reviews depending on relative wealth of the neighborhood, so it’s difficult for PPS attorneys and City staff to feign that the zoning code is unclear.
Saying that the term “elementary” does not define state-mandated grade levels is like saying the term blue does not define a color. The State of Oregon defines an elementary as any combination of grades K-8. It is not complicated, it’s about the health and safety of our children.
An elementary school has specific requirements, different from those at a middle or high school. For the safety of young children, elementary schools are typically single story to make emergency evacuation safer. Elementary schools in Portland are tucked into neighborhoods, whereas high schools need easy access to large parking lots, and generate more traffic with inexperienced and distracted teen drivers. We don’t want elementary kids near high school parking lots – that’s one of the many reasons for the current zoning code! If high school and elementary school are combined, will young children have access to playfields large enough to meet state acreage standards?
Elementary schools must have restrooms and lunchrooms designed for small children, while high schools have their unique requirements. Most parents would be reluctant to have their five-year-old wandering a high school campus, at times unsupervised, with a broad section of young adults. After the K-8 travesty, you would give a green light to K-12? If you pass this zoning change, you will own all these problems.
These are public lands. They belong to the public at large, not the Mayor, not the City Council, not the Real Estate Trust, not the Center for Innovative School Facilities. There should be a golden rule of architectural preservation: treat the work of past generations with the same respect you would want given to your good works.
If you enforce your zoning ordinance, you will stop high school redesign on Monday. You have a duty as a City to protect and educate the children within your city. You need to be aware of what the school district is doing at all times, or else you abdicate responsibility for the children.
Finally, in the City That Works, I would like to end with a reading of the schools that have closed in Portland Public Schools since the first Earth Day:
Adams High School; Applegate; John Ball; Barlow; Brooklyn Neighborhood; Buckman Neighborhood; Clarendon; Collins View; Columbia (Marine Dr.); Columbia Prep site; Edwards; Foster; Fulton; Glenhaven; Green Thumb; Holladay; Holbrook; Kellogg; Kennedy; Kenton; Kerns; Linnton; Maricara site; Markham Annex; Meek; Mt. Tabor Annex; Multnomah; Normandale; Rice; Richmond Neighborhood; Rose City Park; Sacajawea; Shattuck; Smith; Spring Garden site; Sunnyside Neighborhood; Terwilliger; Washington High School; “Old Whitaker”; “New Whitaker”; Wilcox; Youngson.
Enforce your zoning ordinance NOW: stop high school redesign on Monday!
Thank you, Zarwen, for your hard work on this! It’s a bit frightening to see how shortsighted the district has been (and is being) when it comes to properties. As you pointed out, large parcels of land are hard to come by within Portland’s city limits. This is by design of course: it’s a major objective of our urban growth boundary policy, and it’s not news to anyone who has lived or done business here since the seventies. Unlike most other urban cores, ours remains vital because sprawl is limited. As a result, property values have continued to increase, unlike many other urban cores. I don’t understand why PPS would be so eager to liquidate an asset that can only go up in value. And to liquidate them at pennies on the dollar is just crazy.
Jackson High opened in 1966, not 1964 (I was there as a Freshman when it opened). You found some that I missed, though.
The good news in all this is that when they close Marshall High, all the low income students will get to transfer to Lincoln! Equity at last!!
What are you talking about? Transfers are over–that what this whole thing was all about.
Well, the prediction I made in my next-to-last paragraph is already coming true. By “repurposing” Marshall as a Focus Option, PPS clears the decks to lease space in the building to David Douglas. It is only a matter of time, then, until DDSD takes over the building completely.
Then there is the “Middle College” deal between Jefferson and PCC. We all know where THAT’s going.
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