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In May, Portland-area voters approved the largest school bond in Oregon history: $1.83 billion for Portland Public Schools.
Part of the bond’s overwhelming success came from a last-minute effort by parents and advocates to have the district earmark funds for seismic retrofits. A Portland School Board resolution in May set aside $100 million of the $190 million in deferred maintenance funds in the 2025 bond for “imminent risk” projects, but committed the remainder to seismic upgrades. (School Board members have emphasized cost savings from high school modernizations in the district should mean more money for seismic projects.)
An August report by Holmes Consulting Group, which PPS commissioned, identified and prioritized school projects based on seismic risk scores. That report determined it would cost the district about $118.6 million to retrofit unreinforced masonry buildings (the most at-risk structures) and about $902.9 million for all PPS schools.
The Oregonian first examined the new figures earlier this week. The numbers are a modest increase from the estimates WW reported in a March story that helped trigger parent advocacy. At the time, the cost to retrofit URM elements of 19 high-risk buildings was listed at $109 million, while completing seismic upgrades at all schools was estimated at $847 million. District officials warned then that costs would increase, and indeed they have.
The district is now in the last phase of determining how it will prioritize buildings. The Holmes report recommends two options: a campus-by-campus approach that would address the most at-risk buildings, or one that would retrofit the most at-risk parts of more buildings.
Staff in the district’s Office of School Modernizations recommend a hybrid approach that would allow the district to maximize available grants (up to $2.5 million to spend on one project, but the catch is that the money must be spent on one entire building) while doing the most good for the most students. Specifics were not immediately available in the memo. Presenters at Tuesday’s board meeting noted that the School Board will have to determine specific sites before it can go ahead with grant and permitting applications.
On top of Holmes’ seismic risk scores, PPS senior chief of operations Dr. Jon Franco wrote that the district would apply its own criteria to determine which schools to retrofit, confirming that PPS officials would consider “anticipated impacts of potential school consolidation” as they select buildings for upgrades.
For Portland School Board members on Tuesday night, coordinating seismic improvements with school consolidations seemed to be a top concern. Board member Virginia La Forte and vice chair Michelle DePass both agreed it was imperative to have the conversations overlap.
“It’d be great to have every single building in the portfolio,” DePass said. “But we’re not going to be inhabiting every single building.”
La Forte also presented a series of questions from Safe Structures PPS, the parent advocacy group that rallied for seismic improvements on the bond back in May. The group had a series of questions about the Holmes report, specifically around “risk scores” that the team developed when assessing different buildings.
Jennifer Eggers, a structural engineer at Holmes, did not directly answer questions about what “risk score” would mean a building was safe to inhabit (buildings were scored on a scale of one to 10). She said Holmes’ strategy would be to start from the highest scores.
The group’s questions also included one about why the report did not distinguish between buildings that, in the wake of an earthquake, could kill people, versus ones that would be rendered unusable. “How do we know which schools are the highest risk to preventing injury and death?” La Forte asked.
Presenters were not able to come up with a direct answer. “There’s a lot that goes into these numbers,” Eggers said.
