Many PPS families asking for a pause in school closures process

Fourteen neighborhood schools in Portland would close if the Portland Public Schools Board approves a district plan. The “rightsizing” plan also includes consolidating or eliminating programs, as well as major boundary changes. Parents, students and staff have been pushing back on both the process and substance of the plan, and are calling for a pause.

School Board Chair Eddie Wang joins us to share more details about the budget and the school closure proposals. And we’ll be taking calls this hour from those who would be affected by school closures and the other changes. Our number is 888-665-5865.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We’re going to spend the hour today talking about the proposal to reshape Portland Public Schools. Last week, district officials unveiled what they are calling their “rightsizing” proposals. Under the first scenario, 13 elementary schools and one middle school would close, along with major program consolidations and significant changes to school boundaries. Nearly 8,000 students in kindergarten through eighth grade would have to change schools. Slightly fewer schools would be closed under the second scenario. And the third scenario would keep the status quo, but that would not solve what district officials say is an innocent, escapable demographic reality: a drop in enrollment that is only getting worse.

Still, many students, parents and staff are not convinced. They have complained about both how the district came up with its scenarios and the scenarios themselves, and many are asking for a pause. Ultimately, the seven elected members of the school board will decide how to proceed.

I’m joined today by Eddie Wang. He is the chair of that board. We welcome your calls. We want to know how you would be affected by the district’s proposals, what questions you have for the board, and how you want the district to proceed, given that enrollment is expected to drop further.

Eddie Wang, welcome to the show.

Eddie Wang: Thank you. It’s been a lifetime dream to be on this show. I’m a huge fan. I just wish we could talk about more happy news, like unicycle racing.

Miller: Anything else than this? But here you are.

Wang: But here I am.

Miller: Thanks for spending an hour with us. For the big picture first, what went through your mind when you finally saw the school closure plan for the first time?

Wang: Shock. I mean, it is a lot of gut-wrenching changes. But at the same time, it’s an interesting mix of both sadness and excitement for what the future might hold in terms of stabilizing the system, so that all our kids can have what they deserve, which is fully enrolled, full course offerings for everything, supports that they need. So it was a mixture. I mean, I can’t say it’s all happy and giggles, but it’s a lot of sadness too. Yeah, I went through this process before with my daughter and in the school system. It’s scary, and I want to acknowledge that.

Miller: What stands out to you in the enrollment projections from the district and PSU?

Wang: I mean, here’s the crux of the issue. Our school system was built for 60,000 to 80,000 students. We currently have 44,000. So, right now, our resources are just spread really thin. The PSU projections have been overall pretty accurate for the last 10 years. We have a 6,000-student decline since 2019, and most of that is driven by the low birth rates in the city, and just nationwide too. This is a nationwide issue, especially in urban areas. And I think–

Miller: Just to be clear, when you say that, both the decline in school numbers and also these conversations about closing schools are happening in districts in Oregon, in Washington, all across the country.

Wang: Yeah, exactly.

Miller: OK, but what do you see? I mean, it’s not just declining birth rates. It’s also some families saying we’re gonna opt out. We’re gonna send our kids to online charter schools, to private or parochial schools, to maybe homeschooling for elementary ages. How does that factor into your thinking?

Wang: Yeah, I mean, that’s always been the case. Every decade of public education, there’s always people who opt out, and that’s a real thing. I think the biggest drop was what came after the pandemic. So our catchment numbers, percentage – catchment is how many kids in the area and how many of them actually go to our public schools – before the pandemic, I think it was edging close to about 87%. Don’t quote me on it, but it’s close to 90%. And then when the pandemic hit, after we came back to schools, it dropped down to, I’m guessing about 71%. And since then, it’s been perpetually low. It’s been 71%. I think we’ve been inching up towards 73% this year, in the last year.

So, it’s getting better. However, I think this is an Oregon problem. It’s not unique to PPS. The question is, where are these kids? Where are they going? And yeah, there’s been a constant effort, as far as I know, of trying to recruit more kids, programs to recruit more. PPS has been doing a lot of outreach to capture as many as possible. We’ve seen maybe a 1% [to] 2% increase. But I’m gonna be honest, that’s where we are.

Miller: There’s a lot more to talk about in terms of that population and your thoughts about how to capture them, and the effects that these plans might have on that. But let’s bring some callers in.

Isabelle has called in. Isabelle, go ahead.

Isabelle [caller]: Oh, hi! Hello.

Miller: Hi, go ahead. What’s your experience, and what are your thoughts about the plans in front of the board right now?

Isabelle [caller]: Well, I think it’s obviously some really, really tough choices. And I guess I wanted to just share the experience. First off, I just didn’t realize how nervous I would be calling in, but here I am.

Miller: Here you are. You’re doing great.

Isabelle [caller]: I have a kid who’s in eighth grade at Mt. Tabor Middle School, and Mt. Tabor Middle School has been a wonderful experience. We have an amazing band program, an incredible art program. And with the Southeast Guiding Coalition, it was left underenrolled, and that was kind of a known problem. So one of the things with this plan is that’s gonna fix that enrollment. It’s gonna bring kids from a nearby K-8 that’s very close to our school into Tabor.

I think that a lot of people are gonna to call in and be like, this plan needs to hold off, we need to wait, etc. But I also think that it’s important to recognize there are some options in this plan that, to me, do make a lot of sense. That was what I wanted to call in. And I recognize that the board has some really tough choices to make, and I hope that they’re able to do it focusing on the data and what’s really gonna be best for all the kids to have the best outcome overall.

Miller: Isabelle, thanks very much for that call. Eddie Wang, your response.

Wang: I think I’m just as nervous as Isabelle. My hands are sweating like crazy. Thank you for sharing that story because before I came on the board, I was actually the parent rep for my kids’ elementary school during the Southeast Guiding Coalition – which is, if you don’t know, the redistricting effort back in 2020 to 2021 for the Southeast schools. And one of the fundamental problems that we understood at that time was that, when we’re redrawing the boundaries, [we were] basically just shuffling a bunch of dangerously underenrolled schools already and not really fixing the root problem. I was one of the parents who signed on to the opposition letter that said that if we don’t fix the root problem now, what’s gonna happen is [in] five or six years, we’re gonna have to put these families through the same thing again. And that, to me, is an injustice. I think that’s where I really feel for what Isabelle’s saying. That matches my story as well.

One of the things that really frustrates me is when visiting schools across Portland, I went to one school that has a highly-enrolled middle school, and they have four bands. They have an advanced band, they even have a jazz band, one intermediate and one beginner. And then the middle school right next to where I live, they’d struggle just to fill one band. So you have these advanced players who have to play at the speed of the beginners, right? And that is a loss of opportunity. This is something I feel very passionate about, where the zip code that you live in may determine how many opportunities you have to advance in music.

To me, that’s something that needs to be fixed. So I’m really glad that you shared your perspective. This is one of the fundamental goals of this, to make sure that every kid, no matter where you are in the district, you have the same opportunities as everyone else to advance …. or also the other end too, like if you’re struggling to have specialists that are available and things like that. So yeah, thank you for pointing that out.

Miller: But it seems like one of the big issues for the community right now is that the losses that families know they will experience if their program or their school shuts down, those seem much more tangible and obvious right now than the gains that are being promised. I mean, if your school is gonna close, you know exactly what you’re going to lose, and the list is long, emotional and real. It’s much less clear to everybody right now what you might gain. How do you think about that?

Wang: You nailed it on the head. I mean, when we talk about school closures, it’s easy to imagine the physical building of a school and suddenly it’s no longer. I mean, that’s something that–

Miller: It’s no longer a school. We’ll talk about what it is.

Wang: Yeah, no longer a school.

Miller: That’s a huge question, but it’s not your neighborhood school anymore, and your teachers may or may not go to where your kids end up going.

Wang: Yes. I’ll answer that question too. But that’s something anyone on the street can imagine and very clearly envision, right? What is really difficult to see has been, in the last 10 years, the slow decay of what’s been going on to a lot of our dangerously underenrolled schools. And what I mean by slow decay is that when my daughter started kindergarten, we had a full-time librarian. We had teaching specialists in reading and math. We had multiple strands, which means like multiple first grade, multiple second grade. So the teachers had collaborative teams that they can work in.

And then slowly year after year, those kept shrinking and shrinking, until now we only have a librarian one day of the week. We have special ed teachers that have to split their time between two separate schools, some even three. I mean, there’s a difference when a special ed teacher is there full-time and when they’re only there half-time. It’s the same amount of work, but they’re no longer … You have less adults in the school, right?

So, that’s harder to envision and that’s, I think, part of the crux. Yes, there’s a lot of focus, and very real focus, on the emotional costs of change. One of the things that we, as a board, have centered and tried to mitigate some of this worry or cost of change is that we are trying to, in this plan, prioritize trying to move clusters of students together. So instead of redrawing boundaries, we prioritize moving entire schools together when they’re consolidating with another school. I think the idea is that communities will be joining each other instead of being split apart.

Miller: Let’s take a call from Elizabeth who has called in. Elizabeth, go ahead.

Elizabeth [caller]: Hi. My question is about the school closure policy. So the policy states that there needs to be an adequate analysis of the community impact and of barriers. I’m wondering what kind of factors were considered when making the scenarios, and whether there were factors outside of PPS jurisdiction, such as number of after school care seats that were lost, proximity to preschools, quality of ADA sidewalks outside of the school, access to bus routes, access to city resources and access to county libraries?

Miller: Elizabeth, thanks very much for that call. OK, so, Eddie Wang, a big question there. But at the heart of it is, what data and thinking went into the particular lists, these two scenarios, that the district gave you?

Wang: Yes, thank you. Yes, there’s a lot of data. Unfortunately, I don’t have it all with me at the moment, and my brain is feeling pretty full lately, so, sorry if I can’t spout off numbers. A lot of the data that we demanded and requested as a board was looking at things such as enrollment numbers, utilization rates, but also transportation distances as well. We also asked the district to overlay maps of facilities that are in their ratings. So, when we talk about ratings, we look at things such as HVAC, whether they have modernized HVAC – air conditioning, heating. We look at whether there’s seismic rating as well. And all those were taken into consideration.

Miller: I wanna play a voicemail that came in. We did ask in the last couple of days for folks’ thoughts if they want to share them in advance. This is a call that came in from Michelle.

Michelle [caller voicemail]: The proposed scenarios are based on limited metrics, and it’s clear that their true impact on the thousands of Portland residents was not thought through. We’ve yet to see a detailed transition plan that addresses the building vacancies, transportation costs, environmental impacts, employment matters, class sizes, childcare for working families and economic consequences. So I think the board should not vote to move forward with any school closures until this information is provided for every impacted school in the district.

Miller: Eddie Wang, the members of the board last week did ask for a lot of the information that Michelle is talking about there. Do you have that info yet?

Wang: Not all of it, no.

Miller: What are you most focused on right now in terms of information that you think you need personally before you can make your decision?

Wang: Yeah, very good question. We’ve been getting a lot of questions, and they’re very important to answer. All of them are very vital questions. Yes, transportation costs, all these things. These are super important questions to answer, but I think there’s also separate buckets of questions, right? For example, one bucket of question is, what questions do we need to answer in order to improve the end result? That is probably the number one question, the question that I am most concerned with, and we’re talking about things like, what does a well-resourced school mean? What are, based on funding projections – and I have to say I just stress projections – things that can be offered when we do have well-enrolled schools? What is the equity impact of this? I mean, we’re looking at the cost of doing nothing means that almost 70% of our students [who] are historically-underserved, or near or in poverty, are going to be in underenrolled schools and unsustainable schools in the next five years.

These are the questions that I prioritize. And then–

Miller: Let me stop you there because this gets back to what you were saying earlier in the band example that you had brought up from your own experience. Do you yet feel like you have concrete answers from the district about what the future well-resourced schools would look like? I mean, would every school have librarians, dedicated special ed teachers, multiple second grade classrooms, and on and on and on, and enough paraprofessionals to help them? I mean, if not, when are you going to know how many of these people are going to be in each, say, K-5 school?

Wang: Yeah, there’s a lot of moving parts. And I have to acknowledge that it is a challenge to answer all those questions, especially for the district. So, to kind of give you an example, we’re looking at another $65 million deficit this coming year.

Miller: In other words, for next year, if there’s no new state money, the gap between what you have now and what you’re going to have next year is $65 million.

Wang: Yes.

Miller: And the district has said over and over that this rightsizing, the school closure plan, is not really about saving money. It’s about a better, more fair allocation of resources, which is, they say, separate from this looming $65 million budget shortfall.

Wang: Yes. I wanna stress the word “stability,” because what we’re looking at through this process … This is the unfortunate … I had previous board members come up [on] actually three separate occasions, and said, “Hey, Eddie, I think you’re going through the roughest board period ever.” Because when I first came on the board three-and-a-half years ago, we had to cut $30 million from the budget. My second year, we had to cut $48 million from the budget. Last year, we had to cut $56 million, and now we’re looking at $65 [million]. It just keeps growing because of the cost of everything’s rising, and if our enrollment’s going down, our funding goes down.

Miller: I just wanna rephrase that though, cause as a PPS parent and just as a person, sure, maybe it’s a hard time to be on the school board. But I just wanna re-center this. What matters is the experience of kids. They’re the ones who are experiencing these budget cuts. You were elected, along with six other people, to shepherd the district through hard times, but it’s the kids who are experiencing those hard times.

Wang: Exactly. And when they don’t have stability, it hurts our kids. And what I mean by stability is that when we’re constantly looking at budget cut after budget cut, we are losing teachers that kids have established relationships with. Then some of them come back, and then some of them are lost. So we’re constantly losing and losing and losing.

So what I mean by get to stability is, with this rightsizing process, we’re reducing the expense of the district so that we can get to a point where we no longer have to worry about budget cuts anymore. I mean, how many times I’ve heard her sighs from district office, teachers and principals about, like, “I wish we didn’t have to focus on budget cuts again. We can actually work on educating our kids.”

Miller: But this gets me a little bit confused about … When the district says that the rightsizing is not actually about saving money, it’s about a more equitable allocation of resources, then you can’t have it both ways. How would this then actually save you money? It seems like instead, the best argument I’ve heard is the one you’ve already been making: It means that every third grader will have more or less the same number of librarians, band teachers and special education teachers. But it doesn’t say that that’ll make it less likely that there will be a budget cut two years from now. What am I missing?

Wang: So, I think it’s just the order of operations. We’re not closing schools to save on the budget. What we are doing is looking at our current budget, and looking at the future budget, and looking at how many resources that can provide. And based on the number of resources, how many of our schools can we fully support?

So, that’s the order of operation, and that’s why it’s not cost saving. We’re not doing this to cost save. We’re looking at, with $65 million less in our budget, how much can we afford? And, is it OK to have really expensive… I’ll give you one great example. An elementary school that is close to or under 200 students, we subsidize those schools with about $500,000 dollars. So if you can imagine, if we have a system where we don’t have these low-enrolled schools [that] are costing an extra $500,000, I mean, you could do a lot with $500,000, right?

What it is is responsibly looking at how many resources we have and not spreading it out too thin. So I think that’s where the debate is coming in. It’s the order of operations.

Miller: Let’s take some more calls. Andrew has called in. Andrew, go ahead.

Andrew [caller]: Yeah, hello. Gentlemen, thank you for taking my call. I understand that fighting this is just kind of fighting the inevitable. And while I’m sad for my family in particular – I have a 2-year-old daughter that will be, or would be, attending Lewis, depending on which path we choose – I understand that this is necessary. So I appreciate everybody for giving that level of detail.

My concern though is what happens in the vacancy of these schools? These are community centers across the city. And the city, we’ve seen, is struggling with trouble holding businesses, keeping businesses, and other abandoned building sites. What [is] the plan [for] the vacant buildings that will result from either of these plans?

Wang: Thank you. By the way, I forgot to start this program with saying that I’m here speaking for myself, not for the full board. Just to be clear.

Miller: Fair enough.

Wang: But that is a great question. Unfortunately, I can’t give you too many promises right now, but I can talk to you about what has been in conversation. I think that would probably just be as interesting. So, first off, PPS has a very strong policy for protecting public assets. We, and me personally, strongly believe that public assets need to stay public assets. I know that there’s a temptation to sell it to private … but that’s only gonna be a one-time funding and it’s gonna be gone forever, right? And I am strongly against that. I believe that we need to keep these lands and these properties public.

One example was we were looking at a property, and we were trying to work with the city. I’ve been in touch with multiple city councilors in terms of – this is a property that’s been vacant for a while – working on a project to convert this property into affordable housing, with hopefully priority for our teaching staff to help promote more teachers to move in and afford to work here. So that’s one idea that has been floated around.

The other ideas–

Miller: That seems wildly expensive. To take an elementary school and turn it into housing, maybe it could pencil out, but it seems unlikely that that is going to be a scenario that can happen very often, if at all. We’ve had a lot of conversations about affordable housing construction over the years. And office buildings, that hasn’t really happened. People have tried to think about it here and other places. So I bring a healthy skepticism to the idea that a school is likely to turn into housing on a grand scale.

Wang: And your skepticism is well founded. That’s why this conversation has been taking over a year. So yeah, absolutely.

Other ideas that have been floating around have been using some of these sites for community centers – also, again, I wanna stress these are just conversations, none of these are formal – using it for Preschool for All sites. There’s other things. One of our things with our bonds … We started this bond program actually back in 2011. But the idea is that we would start building high schools first, then middle schools and the elementary schools, working backwards. We’re worried if we went elementary, middle and then high school, the construction could follow the students, and that would be bad.

So, the long-range plan is for our next bond ask to be for monies to modernize our middle and elementary schools. And when we do that, we need swing sites. Some of these buildings may also become swing sites, or they may actually become the site of a modernization as well.

Miller: Let’s take another call. Stephanie has called in. Stephanie, go ahead.

Stephanie [caller]: Hey there, thanks for taking my call. I’m sad, but I’m trying to stay focused here. I live in the Sellwood neighborhood, and we are a block-and-a-half from my kids’ middle school that one of them just started attending. It’s a fully-enrolled, fully-functioning [middle school]. In fact, I believe it’s the most high-functioning, best middle school in the district, top 10 in the state.

You have a lot of data points that I think are really questionable, that, I understand, are coming at you or you don’t really have all the information yet. But with the perceived enrollment, I’m concerned that it’s not considering the nuance of each neighborhood. Like Sellwood is a family-friendly neighborhood. It’s not a true urban environment. Real estate here is always going to be desirable for families.

So I think that’s one of the main data concerns, but my question really is, why does this have to be option A, option B – which is basically the same, minus three schools – or do nothing? Why can’t this just be like a first draft? Why do we have to move so fast? Can we emphasize reflection over action? Can we do a tiered approach? If this comes true, if these numbers do drop, then we will look to do this rather than like 14 or 11 schools all at once.

Miller: Stephanie, thanks very much for that call. Eddie Wang?

Wang: Yeah, thank you Stephanie. I wanna really center the feeling that Stephanie’s feeling. When I first saw the scenarios, my heart sank when I saw Sellwood on that list. I know that when I had a kid, just from my personal experience, from 0 to 5 years old, we felt we were like a little island. And then suddenly when we started school and kindergarten, we became a village, right? We saw the same people at pick up and drop off. We knew these families, they would watch our kids in emergency, things like that. I mean, we were leaning on each other. It was a very wonderful community that we found and we became part of, and the thought of that being lost or not being there anymore is absolutely devastating. I really want to center that emotional, because it’s real.

Miller: I appreciate that. So now on to her really specific and good questions, which there are a lot of them, but they boil down to are these the only options? Is it gonna be A or B? And what about the possibility of tinkering with them or phasing this in, slowing this down, not saying don’t do anything but have a more phased-in approach? For example, the way the high school bond rebuilding has been over more than a decade now. It’s not everything all at once. It’s sequential. That’s Stephanie’s main question here.

Wang: Yeah, well, let me answer the first question. This is the time for feedback. So when we designed this process, the first step was when the board reached out to community to figure out what the guiding principles were, and we created the guiding principles. From the guiding principles, staff created these plans. And then after releasing the plans … Yeah, as you know, as any designer, it’s easier to react to something than something conceptual. So this part of the feedback process is about tweaking the scenarios. It is about what are some things that weren’t considered or things that may have a bigger impact than we initially thought, and tweaking the scenario.

Miller: When you say “tweak,” do you have a sense for how much is actually on the table right now? And I should say – I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet – my understanding is that the superintendent, Armstrong, next month will say to the board, as a district administration, this is our preferred option. This is what we think you should approve. It’ll be one scenario. I’m not sure if it’ll be A1, A2, A3, B, whatever, C, but it’ll be one thing that they’ll recommend.

Do you have a sense, personally, for how much might change between now, the three things that we’ve all seen, and what the superintendent eventually presents to you as their preferred option?

Wang: It’s a good question. No.

Miller: You don’t know?

Wang: No, because right now, we had four community meetings last week. We have another four this week, and another five or four next week. So we’re getting a lot of feedback, and I think we’re not there yet. It’s only because we’re not there yet. The stage right now is collecting all the feedback and figuring out … Because one of the difficult things about boundaries, schools and the whole map is that every decision has cascading effects that will bounce all the way across the district. So, tweaking one thing, you have to work through the whole thing in terms of understanding.

Miller: But there are areas … I mean, I don’t imagine that making changes, whether it’s boundary changes, school closures or program closures, on the west side would obviously have effects in outer northeast or outer southeast. So, what do you think about the idea of phasing in the school closure program?

Wang: The longer we wait, the more severe the fix will have to be. And the reason I say that is two things. This process, I didn’t actually just start this year, it started 12 years ago. I mean, we had multiple reviews of boundaries. We had DBRAC, which is the District[wide] Boundary Review Advisory Committee, that came out and they also identified the exact same problems. Back then, the leaders were not encouraged or brave enough to make the changes that were recommended, so the can got kicked down the road. We’re at a point where there’s no more road left to kick the can.

Every year that we wait, the problem is gonna get worse and worse. I mean, I’ll give you an example. There’s a thing called blended classrooms. Blended classrooms are like when fourth and fifth grade are combined together in one classroom. And just on its own, there’s nothing wrong with blended classrooms. When done properly, it actually can be a really good thing. The issue is when they’re done not by choice. And last year, we had 13 schools that had blended classrooms. This year, we have 38. And not only that, but this year [there] was also a huge increase in first and second grade blended classrooms. A lot of these weren’t done by choice.

So the longer we wait, the more these kinds of things are gonna escalate and the changes are gonna be even more drastic.

Miller: Steve has been waiting for a while. Steve, go ahead.

Steve [caller]: Hi, thanks, Eddie, for the public outreach here. I just want to provide an example of a knock-on effect of the changes of this scale, where the dual language programs that Portland is well known for are all being impacted by these changes. For example, we live in the King neighborhood and send our kids to the Mandarin Immersion Program at King. And this program was created in partnership with our local Albina Head Start program in 2014. It’s been consistently growing, year over year, in both Head Start students and total students. So both the school and the Mandarin programs have larger enrollments than even before the pandemic.

The PPS proposals have our schools splitting up, with the Mandarin Immersion Program moving to Boise-Eliot, as a way to balance out some of the other school closures going on. So, we’re basically carving up our local school community and weakening our Mandarin Immersion Program that we’ve been building organically over a decade because of the scale of these changes.

I just wanted to throw out an example of, by going this big, how it impacts so many different communities, and not even just the ones closing but all these programs that we’ve been spending a lot of effort growing over the past decade-plus.

Miller: Steve, thanks for that call. Eddie Wang, your response.

Wang: Yeah, DLI programs are close to my heart. It is something that I fully support and wanna keep supporting as long as possible.

Miller: They would be dramatically affected by these changes. A lot of people have called in. We don’t think we’ll get time for all of those, but people [are] calling about Spanish programs, about Vietnamese, obviously Mandarin here. How do you think about the effects of DLI, dual language immersion programs, that are embedded in this rightsizing conversation?

Wang: It is a very difficult conversation because, as we know from DLI programs, students who are able to learn in their native languages show way better outcomes. That’s why we support DLI and we have these DLI programs. I am a huge proponent of them and we’ll support them forever.

We also have to look at the long-term sustainability of our DLI programs. Our DLI programs are very expensive. I mean, especially since we have a situation like, for example, [at] one of our schools, the kindergarten Mandarin DLI only has six students. So, when we talk about the expense of DLI … But before I get there, I want to say this is the time, again, to bring in feedback about the impacts. I’m glad that you shared that impact. It is something that needs to be considered and thought through. So thank you for sharing that.

I wanna share about one of the things that … I know it didn’t answer the Mandarin DLI question, but going into Spanish, because that was your question about the big impacts. One of the things that we saw in the Southeast Guiding Coalition was when we created Lent to become an all-school DLI, there were a lot of advantages to creating an all-school DLI. The staff finally had planning teams. They could work together. We could have bilingual counselors and wraparound services that are directed to them, as well as some RESJ partnerships with the community. I mean, these are things that were possible because we had an all-school DLI with a sustainable enrollment. And the benefits were drastic.

I think that today there’s going to be a Teaching and Learning Committee meeting of the board, where they’re sharing about the reasons behind the DLI changes. I really recommend everyone tune in because they really delve into the details about what this means, why we’re doing it, and what are the benefits on the other side.

Miller: Let’s take another call. Chris has called in. Chris, go ahead.

Chris [caller]: Yeah, hi. Thank you. If declining enrollment is the problem, why are we spending resources on closing schools instead of investing in innovations and programs that would bring families back to public education? Especially in the light of all the burgeoning technologies and whatnot, and AI. It seems like the competitive landscape needs to be bolstered, not cut down on.

Miller: Chris, what do you have in mind when you say investing in schools in a way that would attract more families? If I understand you correctly, you’re saying families who are opting out of Portland Public Schools. What are you actually advocating for, calling for?

Chris [caller]: I think schools, and all industries right now, need to be looking at how to invest and how to leverage technologies like AI, and how to leverage learning and infrastructure so that we get the most out of it. I think that is going to require a lot of research and administration to figure out how those technologies can be used and leveraged in classrooms. And that is an investment, not a pullback.

Miller: Chris, thanks very much for that call. Eddie, I’ll give you a chance to respond to that: using more AI broadly to attract more families. But I’d like to broaden the question actually. Do you think that these changes in the short or even the medium term will lead more families to choose to go to PPS if they have the choice, or fewer?

Wang: I think that if we do nothing, more families will probably leave. And the reason for that is because if we do nothing, the resources are going to be spread so thin that we’re not gonna be able to meet the needs for a lot of our students. And when families feel like their students’ needs aren’t being met, that is the largest impetus for leaving. Yeah, I want to address that.

And I also want to–

Miller: What’s the time frame of what you’ve just been describing?

Wang: Five years.

Miller: Five years. So, in other words, you do believe that closing a significant number of neighborhood schools won’t lead to fewer people choosing to send their kids to PPS. You’re saying doing nothing and having lackluster schools, that would be the real hit to enrollment.

Wang: Yes.

Miller: Let’s take another call. Giles has called in. Giles, go ahead.

Giles [caller]: Yes, I’m here. First of all, I want to thank you so much for putting yourself out there. It takes a lot of courage. Also, before I jump in, I want to thank Stephanie because I loved her question. I think she nailed it. It’s also super relatable that it’s hard to string a sentence together when your heart is in your throat.

I’m a Sunnyside parent. I have one kiddo that moved all the way through the system from kindergarten. He’s now in high school. They helped raise my child. He’s an incredible individual. I’m super proud of him, and Sunnyside is a big part of that. I have a second grader there. I want to say, first off, for people who are not familiar with Sunnyside Environmental School, that they should be, because it’s an extraordinary school. In many ways, I think it should be considered one of the crown jewels of the PPS system. I’m sure that Eddie knows it.

My question is, first, I could literally talk for an hour about Sunnyside and just be warming up because I love it so much as all of everyone. As Eddie said, the schools are like a village, and that’s very, very true with Sunnyside. So here’s the thing, Sunnyside is at full enrollment, with a waiting list. It’s singular not only because of its focus on environmentalism – I mean, these kids go out there and they literally are putting salmon fry into the river. They are protecting the environment in a very concrete way. But it’s also a haven for neurodivergent children, and so much so that many families felt that they were at wits’ end, even fearing for their children’s welfare. And then when they got to Sunnyside, one parent told a testimony recently about how her child began eating again.

Sunnyside can take the most wounded individual and just wrap them with love. It’s not like an outlier or an anomaly. It’s in the DNA of the school, which is a deep emphasis on empathy, social justice, environmentalism, alignment with Indigenous values, cultures and individuals. It’s a very, very special place. And at the same time, other schools like Winterhaven and Odyssey aren’t even being touched, even though they are, in fact, very underenrolled and they get to keep their K-8 status.

More to the point, what would happen to Sunnyside is it would go from K-8, which is the heart of it because it has this very, what can you say, deeply developed buddy system, whereby the middle schoolers are mentors to the little ones and they bring them up. And it is a very cohesive community. To rip away the middle school from Sunnyside would be literally to rip out its heart and stomp on it–

Miller: Giles, sorry to interrupt, but I want to make space for other voices. Thank you so much for everything you brought up. And Eddie, before I give you a chance to respond, what Giles was saying reminded me of a voicemail that came in that I’d like to play so that you can hear that as well, and then you can respond to all this together. This is Will who called in.

Will [caller voicemail]: The main thing is that our school is such a hub of the neighborhood. We have the Vietnamese Dual Language Immersion Program, and there’s such a strong Vietnamese culture that feels so integrated into our neighborhood. My kid is in the Vietnamese Immersion Program. I think of the difference between when I grew up and my view of the world, my worldview of, what is culture? I didn’t have that, and he does have that. It’s so important to me.

My dad was an engineer, and he used to tell me that you don’t dismantle something that’s working to try and fix something that’s broken. I think that is a great metaphor for what’s happening here with Rose City Park specifically, and I imagine it’s true of a lot of these schools that they’re trying to close.

Miller: Eddie, I want to play that because that’s what came to mind, that line, when I was hearing Giles talking eloquently about the impact that Sunnyside has had on his kids and on others. How do you reckon with this line from our caller Will’s dad: “You don’t dismantle something that’s working to try to fix something that’s broken.” Because these parents, and many others talking about many other schools, are saying, “OK, but my school is actually thriving right now, and this would kill it.”

Wang: I wanna first just recognize what these two parents said. It is scary when we have what is perceived as a dismantling of a program, and I think that–

Miller: Well, just to be clear, it’s not perceived as a dismantling. It is a literal dismantling in the case of Sunnyside. This is not perception, that is fact. This particular focus option school would cease to exist.

Wang: Yes, so I think this deserves a robust discussion. Absolutely. I am familiar with Sunnyside and their program is pretty cool, amazing. I helped with a grant of theirs that they helped develop some of their play structure areas. I mean, it’s a beautiful place. Looking at focus options in general, yeah, it is a very valid question that needs to be deeply explored. And this is one of the questions that the board has consistently asked: Show us what it means, why certain schools were selected and others weren’t. And that conversation needs to happen, absolutely.

In terms of the DLI program, that’s a move. And in response to the question about why break something down that’s working – the issue is that the enrollment system in all of PPS is not working.

Miller: Right. I mean, maybe the most honest way to put it [is] that in order to achieve the kind of across-the-board equity so that everybody, to go back to some basic things, has a baseline of resources. Some families, who currently are sending their kids to schools where they’re thriving and schools that they love, will lose what they currently have. And that is the way you achieve this version of equity. Is that the most honest way to put it?

Wang: Yeah, I’m not gonna … yeah.

Miller: You’re not going to disagree with that.

Wang: No. I mean, but also, there’s things I like to classify as like, what are some … I mean, all these are real issues. I wanna say none of them are not real issues. But I think some issues require a little crystal ball to figure out what’s gonna happen, because one of the things that often happens in a lot of consolidation stories across the nation is that, before consolidation, there’s a lot of uproar. People think it’s gonna be a loss. But then after, what happens is that sometimes, actually oftentimes, there’s a lot of relief in terms of people joining new communities and bigger, more thriving communities, and being happy about it.

This is what happened with my kids’ experience when her DLI program was moved to a different middle school. It was a huge change. It was uplifting a deep program that had been existing in a middle school for decades and then moved to a different middle school. People thought it was gonna be the end of it. But actually, the stories I’m hearing from the fellow DLI families have been like, “We love this place. We actually feel more supported. We’re part of a bigger thriving community.”

Miller: Do you think that’s because of intentional work that the district did or school leaders, or because individual families came together and made the best of a new situation?

Wang: All the above.

Miller: How much faith do you have in the current administration, the current district leadership, to shepherd this huge set of school communities through immense change? As I mentioned at the beginning, 8,000 kids would switch schools in one way or another if scenario A were accepted. How much faith do you have in the district as configured now to smartly, conscientiously, carefully shepherd us through those changes?

Wang: I don’t know how you rate it … green. So let me answer the question.

Miller: What gives you hope that the district could do all these changes well?

Wang: The wonderful thing about the district leadership that I’ve noticed is that they really put a lot of time doing their homework. And one of the things that the district did that we got kudos for was that we hired in a professor that studies rightsizing processes, Dr. Green. One of the key takeaways from that report … did an audit of the previous rightsizing processes and made a ton of recommendations for how to do things better. And one of the key takeaways was that, in order to increase the likelihood of success, the receiving schools need to either have a very strong culture already or [be] very well supported in the transition plan.

So that actually created a wholesale change in the strategy at the district. If you remember from even just like four or five months ago, [in] the original projection, the number that was thrown out there was potentially closing 20 schools. Then after the Green report, there was a lot of reevaluating our change management capacity. So that number was dropped to 14 because the thinking was that we would need to keep more resources to help those transitions, and that’s going to be expensive.

The district did pull back on the number of changes, specifically because of planning for these transitions and providing supports – more staff to support the transitions, maybe some administrators that stay on a little bit longer and be part of that transition. So these are all, yeah, great conversations.

Miller: Just briefly, we played a small number of the voicemails that came in, like a tiny fraction. We only were able to take a small-ish number of calls. For people who have more that they want to say to you all at the board, what’s the best way for them to say things that you will listen to? You’ve got 30 seconds to answer that.

Wang: Oh, boy. Email the board: schoolboard@pps.net. We also have multiple community outreach that’s happening this week and next week. There’s about a total of like 12, I think so far. So, come to one of those. And then PPS, I forgot the website, but if you just search “PPS rightsizing,” it will take you to that place where you can provide feedback.

Miller: Eddie Wang, thanks very much for giving us an hour of your time today. I appreciate it.

Wang: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. This has been a hard conversation, but a very important one. So thank you.

Miller: Eddie Wang is the chair of the Portland Public Schools Board. He taught at PPS for more than 10 years, most recently biology and physics at Benson High School.

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