Skip to main content
One of the Portland elementary schools the district has short-listed for closure in both of its contraction scenarios received significant seismic upgrades using state economic development dollars, which state officials tell WW would place the district at risk of default.
The school in question is Marysville Elementary School in the Foster-Powell neighborhood of Southeast Portland. Its $7 million seismic retrofit was completed just last month, as KGW-TV first reported. Now WW has learned that $2.5 million of that retrofit work was funded by the state of Oregon’s Seismic Rehabilitation Grant Program.
The seismic grant program is facilitated by Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency. It awarded Marysville $2.5 million in 2024 under the condition that PPS continue operating it as a school for the next decade. (The state program funds upgrades for school projects and emergency service projects.)
“During the Project and for a period of ten years after the Project Completion Date, the Project must be used for its existing purposes,” reads the district’s contract with Business Oregon for seismic improvements at Marysville, which the state agency shared with WW. In other words, PPS is on the hook to use Marysville until 2036.
At an Oct. 6 board meeting, district officials announced their intention to delay Marysville’s closure, if approved, by one year to fall 2028. That process is unrelated to seismic concerns, and instead because some students attending that school have been displaced by boundary redraws previously. (Other schools on the closure list would close in fall 2027, if the Portland School Board moves forward with the process.)
Nathan Buehler, spokesman for Business Oregon, tells WW that closing a school before that 10-year-period concludes “has potential to be considered an event of default.” Potential remedies for defaulting that contract are outlined in the Marysville contract—the most dramatic perhaps being that the district would be held to fully repaying that grant. But Buehler emphasizes that those consequences are not automatically applied.
“We’d want to work with any district that is facing shortfalls and considering building closures to talk through options should a closure of a grant-funded building actually happen,” Buehler says. “We’d work with any grant recipient to talk through options and the situation together.”
PPS has not yet made any school an official part of the list of schools it intends to close. The School Board’s members are engaged in discussions about the scenarios and await PPS Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong’s recommendation in mid-November. The School Board will decide if it moves forward with a scenario, modified or not, in December. The board also has the option to preserve the status quo.
In a statement responding to WW’s inquiry, a PPS spokesperson wrote: “If a school closes, PPS will develop a process to evaluate how the building could be used in the future. This work will follow school board policies for the use or sale of district property. Compliance with grant agreements and retention of grant funds would be one of the factors considered in determining preferred uses of district property.
“We intend to cooperate with our partner organizations like Business Oregon,” the spokesperson added, “to continue prioritizing wise stewardship of public investment in our facilities.”
Lewis Elementary School, another school targeted for closure on Scenario A but not on Scenario B, also received $1.5 million for retrofit work in 2017 from the state. Buehler says that while the agency could “technically” hold PPS to its agreement and consider it in default of the contract, it probably won’t, given that a decade has basically gone by.
“That close to the end of the 10-year stipulation, and with the district completing all the other aspects of the agreement, I think it unlikely we would pursue a default remedy there,” Buehler says. “We’re here to work with the customers using our programs, not seek out the first opportunity to pull the rug out from under them.”
