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When Portland Public Schools announced it was closing the high school grades at Metropolitan Learning Center, a K–12 alternative school in Northwest Portland, those affected reacted with fury and outcry.
For months, PPS has telegraphed its intention to reduce its 81 schools through consolidations and closures. And the district, under Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong, has prided itself on conducting robust community engagement sessions for everything from filling Jefferson High School to its budget. But there wasn’t any indication that MLC’s high school was slated for closure until an abrupt announcement on Feb. 10. The district had even accepted new families to the program just weeks before, and had to rescind newly minted offers.
Supporters of MLC have said the high school’s closure violates a Portland School Board policy—specifically, Resolution 6.10.030-P. The 2003 resolution outlines a number of criteria that must be met to close a school, including board approval and the production of a School Closure Report that analyzes financial and equity impacts. Those haven’t been provided to the School Board.
But at a Feb. 25 board meeting, Armstrong and the district’s legal team told board members that after consulting with legal counsel from the Oregon Department of Education, they’d determined that closing the high school portion of MLC was a programmatic change, not a school closure.
The only body that could push back on that determination is the school board. And it was clear on Tuesday that the decision is placing new strain on the board’s pledge to stop micromanaging administrative decisions.
The district says that closing MLC’s high school would save $1.1 million next year, when it faces a $50 million budget deficit, and that it’s justified in doing so because the school is severely under-enrolled, at 41 students. (And as The Oregonian reported Wednesday, the district is staring down an unexpected additional $10 million budget deficit in the middle of this school year.) It appeared on Tuesday that, because the change was ruled as programmatic, the School Board would not independently vote on the high school closure. Instead, it appears, for now, that the high school closure will go in front of the board as part of a broader district budget for approval in June.
The majority of the Portland School Board, which underwent some major changes after the May 2025 election, have seemingly embraced philosophic change set by its leadership, School Board Chair Eddie Wang and Vice Chair Michelle DePass. Back in September, the two told WW that they want to prioritize the bigger picture in their governance. Years of nitpicking contracts and small choices, Wang said then, had stalled PPS from charting any meaningful progress. In practice, that’s meant the majority of the board has marched in lockstep with Armstrong’s administration, even when members have hesitations. (A prime example of this is the approval of contracts for Texas-based construction firm Procedeo.)
At the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting, most board members appeared to be trying to hold to that philosophy.
Comment after comment on the abrupt closure opened with members’ personal ties to MLC or a school like it, and many members spoke to the value of alternative education, especially for kids who’ve tried everything else. And then the tone would shift. School Board members told the crowd that PPS is in a budget deficit, and that it was the responsibility of state legislators to fund schools fully in Oregon.
“Your community is in pain, you’re experiencing a tremendous loss and we, and our superintendent, are the people here to hold this,” School Board member Rashelle Chase-Miller told the crowd. “But we’re at a point where we don’t have options.”
MLC community members have drummed up a firestorm in the weeks since PPS first announced its decision, packing a listening session at the school on Feb. 18 and multiple School Board meetings. They have argued that by closing MLC, the district is losing a valuable model for education, one that is supporting some of the district’s most vulnerable students. (MLC serves large percentages of neurodivergent, transgender, and LGBTQ+ students.)
Despite many board members’ initial instinct to blame the closure on a lack of state funding, there were signs that some of them had an appetite to test the waters around PPS’s decision. School Board member Patte Sullivan asked about what would happen if MLC was able to recruit more students to its high school ranks, as supporters have argued that it is a lack of marketing that has resulted in low enrollment. Board members Virginia La Forte and Chase-Miller asked questions about the opportunity for a cost analysis, as outlined in the school closure policy. And La Forte and student board member Ian Ritorto told district administrators they would have voted no, had this closure appeared as its own stand-alone resolution.
Toward the tail end of the discussion on MLC, multiple board members argued that the decision to close the alternative high school deserved a public process, perhaps in conjunction with the broader conversation on consolidations and closures PPS is set to embark on in the coming months.
“The result may end up being the same,” said Board member Stephanie Engelsman. “[But] we owe that to our constituents, our people, our families, our students to make this a process that they understand and they see and they don’t feel like rugs are being pulled out.”
Armstrong contended that the school district had followed the appropriate process in closing MLC; she said PPS has worked to engage the principal and informed the MLC community before everyone else, in line with its attempt to patch its large budget deficit. “I wonder not necessarily about whether something was done wrong or right,” she said. “I think it’s more of a policy question.”
“If the board feels as if our interpretation of your policy was incorrect or misaligned, we are prepared to hear that,” Armstrong told board members. “We believe that we were operating within policy, within law, but if there is some other interpretation now would be the time for us to know so that we can go a different direction.”
At least one board member wanted that. “I’m not as concerned about what outside counsel tells us about whether or not we’re following the law,” La Forte said. “I’m more concerned about the spirit of our board resolution and I feel like we’re way outside of that.”
Wang and DePass, however, didn’t appear to entertain ideas of saving the high school. Wang said he was worried about changing policy in response to this particular situation, noting that the School Board has often bent to the loudest voices in the room.
“This is not directed at the MLC community at all, this is in general,” Wang said. “What we have seen historically in the past is that oftentimes there’s bends [of] rules or relooking at the policy, especially when certain communities come out in full force. That often leads places that serve historically disadvantaged families feeling unheard and unseen.”
Wang argued that the best way to determine cuts is for district staff to engage school leaders and make equitable cuts across the board. “I am very concerned where this discussion is going is veering away from perhaps an equity-based system,” he said. “I’m bringing that up because decisions here have consequences later.”
