Seen a Rogue on the loose? Get in touch with our Roguemeister: JOHN SCHRAG jschrag@wweek.com (503) 243-2122 FAX: (503) 243-1115 If you want a textbook example of how to lose friends and alienate people, look no further than the Portland French School, which this week earns a special bilingual edition of our Rogue de la Semaine award. Alert newshounds may recall that after leasing the old Terwilliger School site on Southwest Corbett Avenue from Portland Public Schools in 1998, the French School erected a fence and hedge to keep the hoi polloi away from its fields and playground. Of particular concern was le dog poop. Neighbors protested that this was the only public greenspace in the vicinity. After a lengthy battle before the City Council, PFS was allowed to keep its fence, but not lock it. All summer long, school administrators delayed implementing the agreement, keeping the playground locked so contractors could install new equipment. Neighborhood kids waited patiently until Sept. 6, the first day of school, when 160 PFS students spilled into the playground to frolic on the new equipment. But after the students went home, the gate was locked again, leaving the neighborhood kids to gaze longingly from afar at the gleaming new jungle gym. Why the delay? Jeffrey Boly, president of the PFS board, says the school is preparing signs to mark playground equipment intended for kids over 5. It also wants to keep neighborhood kids from trampling on new sod laid down by the school. But here in Rogue Central, we don't see why PFS can't just slap some cardboard signs on the jungle gym and put up another one saying "Keep Off The Grass." "There was no grass-growing exemption to this neighborhood agreement," says Marc Abrams, vice-chairman of the Portland Public Schools board. "So their crap doesn't stink and their kids don't trample grass? ... I mean that's just bogus, that is not the way this is supposed to go. We had a deal." Sad to say, the Portland French School already starred as Rogue of the Week in February for failing to get a child-care license as required by state law. Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.