While the biggest school bond on the ballot seems to be passing in Tuesday’s special election, Oregonians appear to be split in their support of education-related bond measures that would fund school building construction, maintenance and other improvements.
OPB editor Rob Manning joins us to give us a picture of how many of the education-related votes fared in this week’s election.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Portland voters said yes to a school construction bond, although not without some drama. Voters in other districts appear to be somewhat split in their support for education-related bond measures that would fund school building construction, maintenance and other improvements.
Rob Manning is an editor here at OPB who covers education among other big topics. And he joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.
Rob Manning: Sure.
Miller: So I want to start with the largest school money measure that was on any ballot, the $1.83 billion for Portland Public Schools. The bond did pass. Can you just remind us, first, what this money is earmarked for?
Manning: Yeah, well, a lot of it is going to rebuild three high schools. They’re the last three that haven’t already been rebuilt: Jefferson High School, Cleveland and Ida B. Wells. If you look around the city, you’ll see Lincoln High School downtown’s already been rebuilt. Up in Northeast, you’ve got Grant, Benson and McDaniel that have all been rebuilt. Franklin in Southeast has been rebuilt. Roosevelt in St. Johns has been rebuilt.
So these are the last ones, and those are the big costliest things. And then in addition, there’s the usual spending at individual schools to do things like safety, technology upgrades and seismic improvements.
Miller: This was not a tax increase for Portland area property owners. It was a continuation of a 2017 property tax rate. But there was more drama about this vote than previous ones. Why?
Manning: Yeah, a few reasons. I mean, one is there just seemed like a lack of specifics about what exactly was going on, what money was going to go towards. There were some who felt like there wasn’t a clear enough commitment to the seismic work and the seismic danger that these unreinforced masonry buildings pose for children. And there have been cost overruns in the recent past. There were problems with the contractor that was fairly high profile. So I think all of those led to some skepticism, not to mention there’s a lot of things going up in costs these days. And I think people generally have economic and financial worries.
The seismic piece, the district was able to make some commitments about doing that work, which particularly reassured the group Safe Structures PPS, and the lack of specificity was an issue expressed by The Oregonians’ editorial board when they gave an initial “we’ll recommend voting yes, but we’re really not happy about it” kind of opinion.
Miller: Did the board do anything in response to that? I mean, this is the state’s most prominent print publication, saying we’re not sure, we don’t know if we have faith in you, largest school district.
Manning: Yeah, they did. I mean, this is pretty unusual, I think, to go back and be like, OK, well, you want us to be more specific, we’ll be more specific. So they took some steps … And I remember this actually happened as our reporter Natalie Pate was doing her story on the bond. I was reading through what she’d done and I was like, “huh, there are some specifics here.” Turns out the district … the board had worked with staff and kind of brought some more specifics to bear. So then The Oregonian went back and offered a stronger endorsement in favor of the bond.
Miller: Sticking with Portland Public Schools, how did the makeup of the school board change after the Tuesday election?
Manning: Yeah, well, the most notable change is the one incumbent who was running for reelection, Herman Greene, was defeated. So people may remember that he was a fairly prominent figure during the Portland teacher strike and this is the first election since the teacher strike happened. So he lost to Rashelle Chase-Miller. And there’s going to be three new people on the board.
Miller: The Portland Association of Teachers, the PPS Teachers Union, spent tens of thousands of dollars on this election, on candidates that they preferred. How successful was their effort?
Manning: They got three out of four, which is pretty good. Christy Splitt, who is already on the board in an appointed role, she won her race. Stephanie Engelsman also won her race for the zone covering much of Southeast Portland. And as I mentioned, Rashelle Chase-Miller, who was the person who ran against Herman Greene and won, she also had the backing of the Portland Association of Teachers. The one who didn’t win was a high school student at McDaniel, Jorge Sanchez Bautista. He lost to Virginia La Forte, a Northeast Portland parent.
Miller: Although, it wasn’t a landslide.
Manning: No, that was a close race.
Miller: That was a senior in high school who got something like 45%, 46% of the vote.
Manning: Yeah, he did pretty well. He was also somewhat of a known … he’s been an advocate. He’s been at school board meetings. People kind of know who Jorge is.
Miller: So let’s turn to some other money measures – where does a bond for Mt. Hood Community College stand right now?
Manning: This one’s amazing. There’s one of these, or sometimes more than one of these, every one of these little special election cycles. It’s right now winning by 11 votes. And there’s like 40,000 ballots that were cast in this race. So it’s really, really close.
Miller: It’s just something that the election Gods do to remind people that every vote matters, I suppose.
Manning: Exactly. Yeah, you’re looking at that ballot on your shelf that you never made it into the ballot box. Well, here’s what happens. So, yeah, if they can get it to pass, they have struggled six times that they have not gotten a ballot to pass. And if it’s actually going to go through this time, basically, they’ve got a lot of old maintenance to do. I mean, they’ve got years and years worth of building improvements that they need to do. They’ve got a lot of work to do. I mean, the folks in that community, certainly at the college, really hope that those that little razor-thin margin hangs on.
Miller: What stands out to you in other school money measures across the state?
Manning: Well, there are a few that are really, really close, which is interesting to watch. I mean, it’s a reminder again: people, you need to vote. And when just a few people vote, it can make a big, big difference. So not just Mt. Hood, but Chemeketa Community College was also getting their bond to pass by just a little bit. At one point on election night, it was within 35 votes out of, again, 40,000 more ballots that had been cast. Tigard-Tualatin, their bond was actually failing Tuesday night, but it looks like now that it is going to pass. And that’s, again, within 100 votes out of 13,000.
But you look around and there are places where bonds have a habit of not passing. And often that’s a result of both an electorate that is skeptical of tax measures, has maybe politically conservative or has a high bar for saying yes to tax measures, and in some cases, that’s combined with just a pretty low level of tax value. So you’ve got to ask people for a pretty high rate on a home they own. So that can mean a pretty big bill that you’re considering. For instance, Gladstone’s $70 million bond was failing. Based on their tax rate, a house assessed at $250,000, it was gonna be an $80 a month bill. That’s a pretty big bill for folks. So that one didn’t pass.
Other ones that didn’t pass in Central Linn and Junction City, Southern Willamette Valley districts. But there are some places that were able to get them to pass. Of course, on the Oregon Coast, Lincoln County, and the Tillamook School Districts both got their voters to say yes to bonds.
Miller: I want to finally turn to a statewide issue. The legislature, we learned this week, could not come to an agreement on a bill that would ban cell phones in schools statewide. Up to now, this has been a district-by-district question or set of policies. But Governor Kotek’s office confirmed yesterday that an executive order is on the table.
So a double barreled question, I guess, for you – as a longtime education reporter turned editor, what does the governor have the authority to do unilaterally here? And do you have any sense for what kind of order the governor might actually put out?
Manning: Yeah, it’s hard to predict what kind of order she might put out. Years ago, we changed the Oregon Constitution to make the governor into, officially, the superintendent of public education. So she has a fair amount of power, not just as the governor but as specifically the superintendent of schools. And she supervises the Department of Education, which has a lot of influence over how school districts are run.
So there are levers and there are tools at her disposal to basically strongly encourage, if not outright require, that school districts take steps in this direction. I suspect that she’ll do something like that. It’ll be some kind of guidance, which is gonna feel to the school districts not so much like guidance, but something that they better do. And I think that she was in favor of the legislation, so I would imagine what she’s gonna do, as an executive order, is gonna be kind of coming as close to that legislation as she can with the authority she has.
Miller: Rob, thanks very much.
Manning: You’re welcome.
Miller: Rob Manning is an editor for OPB news.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
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