PORTLAND, Oregon — Portland Public Schools, Oregon's largest school district, announced a three-year renovation plan for next year that will require to relocate Jefferson High School students to Marshall High School in southeast Portland, 11 miles away. Both students and parents are frustrated about the plan.
Originally, PPS planned to keep students on campus while the school was under renovations. But after months of working with the community on that plan, the school district changed the plan. In a letter to Jefferson parents, PPS said the original plan would add another year on to renovations and be more costly.
Students are worried the plan will significantly alter their daily routines.
"It's gonna be super hard because I live on the whole other side,” Galen Burns, a freshman at Jefferson said. “Which means I'm going to have to change up my bus routes."
In the letter, PPS said it will transport students to Marshall. But parents and teachers think the students should be able to stay at Jefferson, with the district paying the extra money.
"It's completely unfair," Jenn Latu, president of Jefferson’s Parent Teacher Student Association said.
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Latu said students at other schools, like Lincoln High School in southwest Portland, were able to stay on campus during renovations.
"It is another avenue to divest from a community school that's predominantly Black," Angela Bonilla, the president of Portland Association of Teachers said.
Many are concerned that students learning will suffer from the three-year change.
"I wish we could go to a different place, instead of Marshall that's all the way in southeast," Jayla Farrakhan-Davis, a junior at Jefferson said.
One alternative presented was for the students to instead be taught at Portland Community College-Cascade, just a few blocks from campus. Many Jefferson students already attend classes at PCC. But district officials told families that option wasn’t realistic, because of zoning restrictions.
In the letter, PPS said PCC-Cascade isn’t zoned to be used as a high school. They said zoning could take years to change.
But when KGW reached out to the city of Portland, a spokesperson for the zoning department said that they could likely make an exception. They haven’t done so, because no one has asked them to.
Still, PCC officials said they don’t have the room for students. In a statement, spokesperson James Hill said PCC doesn’t have the 15 segregated classrooms required to house Jefferson students. He said PCC would have to decrease its own student body to accommodate high school needs, like a cafeteria, P.E. classes and science labs. They would also have to alter the schedule of PCC-Cascade’s basketball teams.
PPS does admit that transporting students to Marshall is not what they hoped for. But they do expect higher attendance at Jefferson High once renovations are completed.
All high schools that have been refurbished have seen a rise of at least 20% more students at the respective schools.
Last year, Jefferson had just around 600 students, by far the lowest of any high school in the district. PPS said the school could hold 1,700 kids after renovations.
But students said that instead of their classmates going to Marshall, they expect many will transfer or drop-out.
"It's not gonna be that much people at Marshall," Farrakhan-Davis said.