Portland Public Schools Overhaul of K-8 Schools Probably Delayed Until 2017

Portland Public Schools has been talking for more than a year about redrawing its primary school boundaries to balance enrollments. The district's been talking for more than six months about dividing its K-8 schools into separate elementary and middle schools.

But the major overhaul of PPS K-8 schools may have to wait until 2017, Superintendent Carole Smith announced Thursday.

Speaking to a meeting of the Districtwide Boundary Review Advisory Committee—the group advising her on changes to K-8, elementary and middle schools—Smith said PPS needed a year to plan curriculum and to prepare buildings for major changes.

"I'm saying if what you're talking about is major grade reconfiguration…in my head right now, I would probably look at that start being in 2017," Smith said. "What is the big concern? It's can we implement with integrity, right?"

In "high-urgency" cases, Smith added, PPS could move faster based on committee advice.

For more than a year, the boundary review committee has been at work redrawing the map of where Portland kids go to school. Portland's growth has left schools lopsided—with some overcrowded and others starved for students and the funding that follows them. The vast differences between schools have parents on edge over any changes to school boundaries.

But the yearlong boundary review has focused on the fate of the K-8 schools since at least May, when Smith signaled she was ready to abandon them.

Created a decade ago by then-Superintendent Vicki Phillips, the K-8 schools were largely located in North and Northeast Portland as well as other lower-income neighborhoods. For the most part, the city's higher-income neighborhoods kept their middle schools.

Phillips, for whom Smith served as chief of staff, took widespread heat for failing to prepare for that change, and those failures have given even fierce advocates for middle schools reason for pause.

A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation, where Phillips now works (until the end of the month), declined an interview request earlier this month.

Because the K-8s enrolled fewer students, particularly in the middle-school grades, they were starved for funding and often could offer very few electives and only limited if any advanced courses. The disparities were the subject of a 2009 WW cover story called "Left Out."

Under two possible proposals that were given public airing this fall, either 16 or 22 of the K-8 schools would convert to elementary and middle schools. DBRAC earlier this month asked PPS staff to start work on developing a third possibility for converting even more of the K-8 schools, though the exact number remains unclear.

Smith's statements to the committee Thursday are the first concrete indication that she is taking a more measured approach.

Smith set a deadline of the end of January for the committee to come to a decision on how many K-8 schools will be divided, so that she can make the budget requests for staffing during the yearlong preparation as well as for changing buildings, she said.

Smith also asked for the the committee to give her their rationale if they decide to keep some K-8 schools and how they would work in a school system with elementary and middle schools.

To meet the end-of-January deadline, Smith asked the committee to figure out which elementary schools will feed into which middle schools, but not necessarily specific boundaries.

"Then let us work on, OK, how do we actually apply the things you're giving guidance on," she said.

Willamette Week