PPS's Real Estate Slush Fund; Closure Costs and Transportation

This is a statement we made to the School Board on 6/27/05 after last year's closures. The community was unable to obtain additional bus stops for children from the closed Applegate School who were sent to Woodlawn, though Superintendent Phillips promised that student safety after closures would be a priority.

6/27/05 Statement re Transportation Issues Post School Closures, and re Real Estate Slush Fund (Lynn Schore and Steve Linder)

I was surprised when I first learned you wanted to close our neighborhood school, the exceptional, well-attended, efficient school to which our children could walk or bike. Smith School, the best elementary school I have ever known. I was surprised when I learned you wanted to BUS our young children 70 minutes a day to and from a school miles from my house.

I WAS surprised. Several months have passed, and I've had the opportunity to investigate the sordid history of this closure plan and the history of Portland School funding, and I am not surprised you are closing my neighborhood school.

Some people were surprised when you, the School Board, endorsed the Karen Minnis' so-called "Stable School Plan." The plan you endorsed would permanently slash the money we get back from the state for our schools to even less than today's inequitable levels. You agreed to worsen the legislature's short-changing of the Portland area, lowering the fraction of taxes we get back from the state. Portland tax money is supporting small schools in rural Oregon, but not in Portland. Why would you agree to this and why am I not surprised?

I'm not surprised because at some point around the turn of the millennium, the Portland Schools Foundation and its Innovation Partnership decided they could fund PPS by liquidating large, valuable school lands. Initial attempts by PPS to sell off school lands were crude, and met strong opposition, so PPS developed other reasons to close schools.

You left North and Northeast Portland out of the boundary task force process. You manipulated the West Side Boundary Task Force to make early closure recommendations. The West Side Task Force repeatedly told former Superintendent Scherzinger:
"Given the other charges put before it, the Task Force did not have sufficient time to conduct a full School Closure Report as called for in Section II (2) of the District's School Closure and Initiation Policy (6.10.030-P)."

You manipulated the public task force findings with bogus enrollment and demographic data, and worst of all, you used focus option schools to take down neighborhood schools. For example: Smith School was closed based on capture rate data from one year only, the same year the Odyssey program was added to a near by school. Using capture rate data from one year only went beyond a lack of due diligence: it showed the Board targeted Smith for closure. Of course, Smith proved at the Wilson hearing that our true capture rate was 80%.

The Board states that school closures and the resultant busing are NOT about saving money. I agree, this isn't about how much money you can SAVE by closing neighborhood schools and busing children all over the city. It IS about how much money you can MAKE by selling off the equity and vision of past generations.

The Board is entering an agreement with HAP that it says will be the model for future development of new schools. These quasi-public new schools will not be owned by the public, and may be paid for by parasitizing existing historic schools.

Let me be clear about this: the New Columbia School that the Board refers to as FREE must be paid for in only seven years, and must be paid for with capital money, which will most likely come from the sale of neighborhood schools.

The six neighborhood schools you are closing represent a new sort of slush fund. PPS administration can dip into this new "real estate slush fund" without asking for money or permission from anyone. This real estate slush fund will grow in December 2005, when you announce more neighborhood school closures.

When did the community decide to operate our schools by liquidating our neighborhood gems, and busing our children to big box schools? Where was the public discussion of this extreme system, which will result in the privatization of the Portland Public Schools? Why was this system put in place behind the people's backs?

I know why. The vested interests controlling the Board put this system in place. Since Measure 5, this Board has been losing power to the Portland Schools Foundation management.

We know you are becoming the reluctant puppets of the Foundation. Let us help you cut the strings of influence extending to the Foundation, the Innovation Partnership, and the Real Estate Trust! Stop these puppet masters who are targeting schools for closure based on land value, and who are selling off OUR neighborhood schools! These schools belong to the neighborhoods, not the Real Estate Trust!

Stop the busing that results from destructive school closures! Stop the privatization of the Portland Public Schools! Save our neighborhood schools! Thank you.