By Naomi Inman
Cascade’s President and CEO, John Charles, emailed a Memo Monday to the Portland Public School (PPS) Board members in anticipation of the October 14 meeting to approve final designs for Jefferson, Cleveland and Wells high school modernization plans.
His Memo references the recent 5-page Bond Accountability Committee (BAC) Report which audits PPS construction bonds and projects and makes data-informed recommendations. In the BAC’s conclusion, they made the following statement.
“The BAC would like to share the opinion that the district should not be building such large high schools when there is not the student body to justify it. Given declining enrollment and decreasing birth rates this issue is even more pronounced given the project budget issues.”
The failure of PPS to use enrollment data in properly sizing future high schools coupled with the reality of declining enrollments and decreasing birth rates in the Portland area is becoming an increasing concern in the face of the District’s fiscal crisis and the public is finally beginning to take notice.
If schools are built under the current design plans for Jefferson, Cleveland and Wells high schools, PPS is projected to have approximately 3,000 empty desks in its high schools by 2030-35. That’s the equivalent of two empty high schools. Do we want $1 billion in construction bonds going to build empty classrooms? As one example, Benson High School has about 900 students in a building with capacity for 1,700 students.
The PPS Bond Accountability Committee meets quarterly to review bond funded projects and offer advice to the School Board. They are making the correct observations. Will the PPS Board ever get the memo and save PPS from a fiscal catastrophe?
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Read the Memo from John Charles to the PPS School Board.
From: John Charles
Date: Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Subject: October 14 meeting
To: schoolboard@pps.net>
Dear PPS Board Members:
I am writing to comment on several agenda items for the October 14th meeting.
Agenda item #10, BAC Quarterly Report
The most recent BAC Report includes the following statements on page 5:
“The BAC would like to share the opinion that the district should not be building such large high schools when there is not the student body to justify it. Given declining enrollment and decreasing birth rates this issue is even more pronounced given the project budget issues.”
BAC members have no political agenda. They are appointed by you to ensure that bond funds are spent appropriately. I believe you should have a public conversation about the BAC recommendation before approving the school design plans for the next three high schools.
The district has been fixated on building all schools for 1,700 students, despite the obvious lack of need. The simple way to address this issue is to build for smaller enrollment but leave space for future expansion.
This is what the Beaverton school district is doing with the modernization of Beaverton high school. They are building a three-story building with 300,500 SF of space for 1,500 students. They plan to demolish the existing high school except for the cafeteria. In future years the cafeteria could be replaced with another three-story building if enrollment goes up.
All three PPS high schools could be designed for enrollments anticipated in the next five years and expanded later if necessary. You would save hundreds of millions of dollars from the 2025 bond, which could be used for other construction needs.
Agenda item #11, Jefferson High School modernization project
The staff memo notes that the Board decided in December 2023 to add $150 million in construction costs by keeping students on-site during construction.
In four previous high school modernization projects the students were moved to the former Marshall High School campus in order to reduce construction time. For political reasons the Board decided not to do that with Jefferson.
Subsequently the new Benson High School opened and is only using about 900 of the 1,700 seats. If the Jefferson students and faculty used Benson as a swing site it would reduce construction time by a year, saving $150 million. It would also allow students to avoid spending three years navigating dangerous and noisy construction equipment.
The Board has never had a public discussion about using Benson as a swing site. Before you vote on the Jefferson design plan you should at least consider the possibility.
Agenda items #11 and #12, climate policy and solar installations
The Board has decided to spend at least $30 million (and probably more) on building all-electric high schools, without even trying to conduct a cost-benefit analysis.
The only estimate of cost ever provided in public was the Cornerstone report, which used a ballpark figure of $10 million per school. But no details were provided, and no estimate of benefits.
Over the past 18 months I have filed a public records request with PPS, asked key PPS contractors for data, and watched two different PPS board members inquire about the cost of going all-electric, yet the information has never been provided. Why not?
When this topic was briefly discussed at the April 8 meeting, Superintendent Armstrong cautioned the Board that the all-electric mandate would require a “pretty significant” cost and had never been done in another school district in the U.S.
Director Hollands was adamant that the opportunity cost of the “climate crisis” policy was too high, especially considering the number of parents who were demanding earthquake resiliency retrofits that the Board could not afford.
As he put it directly, “Who’s going to care about all-electric buildings when our elementary and middle schools collapse in an earthquake? We cannot do it all.”
This discussion about the Board’s “all-electric” policy took place from approximately 3:18:00 to 3:24:30 of that meeting (on YouTube). If you’re a new board member and you’ve never watched the video, I suggest you take six minutes to do so.
The discussion was ultimately cut off by the Chair without any resolution, but the issues deserve more attention. It’s not enough to say that the district is attempting to address a global concern. You report to Portland voters, not citizens of the world.
What will the local benefits be; and how do those benefits compare to the local cost?
Finally, the 1.5 percent premium for solar energy is an utter waste of money. Other school districts have ignored the state GET mandate without consequence because it’s unenforceable. You should do the same.
Canceling the solar projects would free up at least $18 million for other projects that are much more pressing.
Conclusion
This is a character-defining moment for each of you. The voters have approved the largest school bond in state history, and you need to demonstrate that you are willing to carry out your fiduciary duty.
If you approve the staff recommendations for these oversize and over-priced schools, you will accelerate the district’s slide into the fiscal crisis that is already here.
Sincerely,
John A. Charles, Jr.
President & CEO
Cascade Policy Institute
