January 7, 2025
Mr. Eddie Wang
Chair, PPS Board
501 N. Dixon Street
Portland, OR 97227
Re: January 7 meeting, Agenda item #9, Resolution 7038
Dear Chair Wang:
I have watched or attended every PPS bond planning meeting since January 2024. Based on the limited information provided to date, I believe Resolution 7038 is unlikely to be approved by voters.
The process by which the Board has arrived at this point has been deeply flawed. There has been no stakeholder advisory committee, and few opportunities for public comment.
From January to June of last year, the size of the bond changed every month, nearly doubling in cost. Then it was chopped down in November and December in order to align with polling data, with no reference to any defensible cost methodology.
It’s stunning that after a year-long discussion of Jefferson, Wells and Cleveland, where the cost estimate per school consistently ranged from $435 million to $491 million, the staff now puts forth a generic list of “Modernizations” totaling only $1.15 billion, inclusive of these schools plus unnamed elementary and middle schools.
In the words of tennis great John McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!”
The 2019 audit by Sjoberg Evashenk confirmed that the 2017 bond estimates were misrepresented to the Board by staff. I fear that the appropriate lessons have not been learned from that experience.
Since the statutory deadline for approving a bond measure is February 28th, I suggest you move this measure back to committee, with direction to return with a proposal limited to the following parameters:
- Construction funding for Ida B. Wells and Cleveland high schools, with budgets roughly pegged to the inflation-adjusted cost of Lincoln high school in PPS and Beaverton high school in the BSD
- Approximately $79 million for athletic field improvements, as described in the current proposal
There should be no funding for curriculum or technology, and no additional support for Jefferson, as it was fully funded in the 2020 bond.
To address other needs such as “deferred maintenance,” PPS should seek a legally defensible way to reallocate the $60 million in the 2020 bond that was set aside for the never-launched CBSE. The Board should also consider reclaiming some or all of the $55 million in contingency funding assigned to Jefferson, by reducing the size of the school to accommodate 800 students.
In the pages that follow, I offer a detailed critique of the bond proposal, as well as related real estate projects that PPS has mismanaged. The picture that emerges is of a school board with a serious credibility problem. I hope you will agree that PPS needs to regain voter trust and that a short list of popular, high-impact projects for the May bond vote would be better than a long and costly list of amorphous projects that Board members themselves are having trouble understanding.
Why does PPS have a credibility problem?
