Urgent Message-Portland City Council hearing on zoning code changes this Thursday

    PORTLAND, OR- April 20, 2010-On April 22 at 3 pm, the Portland City Council will discuss monumental changes to the Portland zoning code as it pertains to schools and recreational fields. If the ordinance is passed, Portland Public Schools will be allowed to establish schools with any grade range from Kindergarten through 12^th grade. In addition, by passing this ordinance the City will exonerate Portland Public Schools from previous violations of the existing zoning code at eleven schools when it closed and reconfigured schools in the past decade. This has led and will continue to lead to segregation within the school district. It will also enable the sale of public schools, parks, and the lands around them to private investors and real estate developers.These code changes are in response to the actions of a citywide group of Portland families who filed zoning code complaints against Portland Public Schools starting in April 2008. Led by Lynn Schore, a Southwest Portland legal assistant and mother of two PPS students, Portland residents filed 198 valid zoning complaints related to school closures and reconfigurations.The complaints centered on Portland Public Schools’ failure to follow the Schools and School Sites chapter of the Zoning Code, which defines legal grade configurations in school buildings in Portland.  That chapter provides simple definitions for elementary, middle and high schools.  Particularly in lower income neighborhoods, PPS ignored those simple grade level definitions during the school closures and reconfigurations. The School Board, Superintendent and PPS attorneys failed to follow the city zoning code at 11 schools, most often failing to apply for a conditional land-use review as required. PPS reconfigurations and closures that are in violation of the zoning code (because PPS did not perform the legal land use reviews) include:

• Jefferson High School (added grade school grades to high school)
• Madison High School (added eighth grade to high school)
• Franklin High School (added eighth grade to high school)
• Ockley Green Middle School (added elementary grades to middle school)
• Tubman Middle School (added high school grades to middle school)
• Gregory Heights Middle / Roseway Heights (added elementary grades from closed Rose City Park to middle school)
• Fernwood Middle School (added elementary grades 2 through 5 to middle school)
• Portsmouth Middle School (added elementary grades to middle school)
• Whitaker Lakeside (placed NAYA school on land zoned industrial without land-use review) and
• Binnsmeade Middle (added elementary grades to middle school)

Lynn Schore and the other zoning code complainants contend that PPS:

• violated city, state, and federal law since at least 2005, resulting in increased segregation, concentration of poverty, and inequity in Portland Public Schools
• did not follow its own school closure policies,
• did not follow the detailed nine-month school closure process laid out in City Ordinance 150580, the City School Policy.

Instead of redressing the harm done to Portland’s children, the zoning complaints were held in abeyance two years, while the Portland Bureau of Development Services, Bureau of Planning, PPS attorneys and Board members devised a zoning “Refinement Project.”  If Council passes the “Refinement Project” and allows K-12 schools it will:

• not provide any redress for the harmed students and neighborhoods,
• give PPS retroactive immunity for previous zoning code violations,
• violate current zoning ordinances, state law, and the will of the people.

Schore, an award-winning researcher for the Oregon Assembly for Black Affairs, helped unearth the City School Policy, and did extensive research into the Portland zoning code. She studied the work of Lloyd T. Keefe, Portland’s world famous urban planner who for five decades pioneered work in neighborhood, downtown and regional planning, including the development of the first comprehensive plan and zoning code for the City, and the Neighborhood Schools Plan for Portland known as “Land for Schools.”

Research also focused on the Innovation Partnership, the Real Estate Trust, and Center for innovative Schools Facilities, three closely linked groups of highly paid real estate consultants to Portland Public Schools. Schore has continually pointed out that the three organizations are packed with people who stand to profit from the purchase of school and park lands, and/or from building new schools, like the Rosa Parks School in North Portland.

In formal objections made to the State of Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, the citizen group challenged the role of Doug Capps, a PPS administrator and Real Estate Trust attorney.

“Isn’t it a conflict of interest for the City of Portland to take legal advice from PPS employee and Real Estate Trust attorney Doug Capps, when PPS is the zoning code violator in this matter?” Schore, the mother of two PPS students, asked. “The charges regarding the resulting harms to kids are so serious.   Shouldn’t this matter have been to the City attorneys and Department of Justice a long time ago?

Schore also points out that PPS closed schools citing dropping enrollment, when in reality,  there is a baby boom and grade school population bubble right now. PPS’s solution has been to buy trailers to use as classrooms at overcrowded schools, instead of reopening closed schools. In a City that purports to be green and sustainable, PPS recently bought 11. 2 million dollars worth of trailers, while great schools sit shuttered.

If the code refinement goes forward and the City’s gives retroactive immunity to PPS for zoning code violations, nothing will be done to address the damages done to the students, who are the victims of discrimination, and are not allowed equal access to education as mandated by federal law.

“If this ‘refinement’ goes forward, you are telling citizens that if you have power and affluence in Portland, you can break the law,” the citizens wrote in their formal Objections.  “And if you get caught breaking the law by the citizenry, you can have the law changed retroactively to suit your original purposes, no matter the harm to people.”