Parents posted signs on the doors of Roseway Heights K-8 school, for visitors to see as they attended a meeting on Nov. 18, 2015, about Portland Public Schools' proposed boundary and building changes.
Rob Manning / OPB
In fall 2015, before Portland Public Schools was embroiled in a lead in the drinking crisis, parents were filling school auditoriums to question school boundaries plans.
Those plans were to reconfigure schools from K-8 grade programs established more than a decade ago. It would split them into elementary and middle schools, which they'd been before becoming K-8s.
Related: Renewed Search For PPS Superintendent Shows School Board Divisions
Unlike the rancor over lead, which united parents against the school district, the debates over school structures pitted school communities against each other and against the district.
Months after delaying plans to establish two new middle schools in North and Northeast Portland, interim Superintendent Bob McKean has rolled out a proposal this month.
Portland shifted toward K-8 grade schools over a decade ago, as part of an effort to close schools and deal with declining enrollment and shrinking budgets. But the combined schools proved hard to manage; and with enrollment and budgets in better shape for the time being, separate elementary and middle schools are returning.
Under McKean's proposal, seven schools in North and Northeast Portland would turn into elementary schools. Roseway Heights and Harriet Tubman school buildings would open as middle schools in 2018.
Bob McKean speaks at a community meeting at Portland Public Schools district office, before being named the interim superintendent.
Rob Manning / OPB
McKean's plan would follow through on familiar draft ideas.
Tubman would become the middle-grade destination for students from Boise-Elliot, King, Irvington and Sabin schools — all of which are currently configured as K-8 schools. Tubman is scheduled to be vacant in fall 2018, as students there temporarily would be attending a new Faubion K-8 building, starting in fall 2017.
Roseway Heights would change from a K-8 school to a middle school and would absorb the middle-grade students from Lee, Scott and Vestal schools, all of which are currently K-8s. The current elementary students at Roseway Heights K-8 would move to Rose City Park Elementary.
The two grades that Rose City Park currently houses from the Beverly Cleary campus would return to that school's other two school buildings. The ACCESS program for talented and gifted students would also leave Rose City Park, likely heading to the Humbolt School building.
The broad strokes of these changes have been in discussion since fall 2015, when then-Superintendent Carole Smith and the Districtwide Boundary Review Advisory Committee debated possible changes, potentially for this fall. But then the district discovered lead in school drinking water fountains, Smith retired amid the crisis, and when McKean took over, he shelved the reconfiguration.
Rose City Park School would become a neighborhood school under a proposal from interim superintendent Bob McKean.
Bradley W. Parks / OPB
The latest version of the changes from the interim superintendent drew immediate concern from DBRAC members, when district staff briefed them on the proposal June 1.
Members questioned the relative lack of boundary changes to balance out student enrollments among the new elementary school programs. The only suggested boundary changes relate to Beverly Cleary and Laurelhurst K-8 programs, to relieve overcrowding.
Committee members argued the district could be creating elementary schools with too few students to support strong elementary programs. Portland Public Schools generally funds individual schools based on how many students they have. Several members noted that the schools with the fewest students — and therefore the least resources — would be schools with a high proportion of students of color and low-income students.
Related: Lead In The Water
Committee members had similar questions about Vernon School, a K-8 program that has struggled with under-enrollment but is not slated to change under the proposal. Previous scenarios suggested making Vernon an elementary school with its middle schoolers attending Beaumont, or another area middle school.
District staff at the recent committee meeting attempted to keep members focused on the schools specifically involved in the proposal. But members argued the effects on surrounding schools — or schools in between, like Alameda and Vernon — couldn't be ignored. They also wondered at what point boundary changes might be considered to smooth out the enrollment imbalances. Staff weren't sure.
Committee members continued to raise questions that the changes had potential flaws, unanswered questions and were moving too quickly.
It appears the district is responding to at least one of the committee's biggest concerns: that getting board approval by the end of June is too fast for such significant changes.
PPS told OPB the decision is being delayed.
"Bob McKean has decided to postpone the decision on approving the proposal until the fall, so that there can be more opportunity for school and community input," said PPS spokesman Dave Northfield in an email.
A delay until fall would put the decision in the hands of the newly-elected school board and in the control of a new district leader, as McKean is scheduled to step down from the interim position June 30.
Northfield said more details on the timing of changes will come before DBRAC at its next meeting, June 8.