Editorial: PPS owes Black students more than a rushed real estate deal

Portland Public Schools is poised to spend $16 million to buy the One North development in North Portland to turn into the long-promised Center for Black Student Excellence. But the price tag is perhaps the easiest of the issues that school board members and the public must confront before buying the complex that will primarily house nonprofits – not classrooms.

If the sale proceeds, the district would have to spend another $20 million to $25 million on updates, including to the building’s heating and cooling systems and to gird the sleek 10-year-old development for a possible earthquake – even as dozens of rickety elementary and middle schools remain on a waiting list for life-saving seismic repairs. While the district has bond dollars to cover the center’s capital costs, operating expenses are expected to total more than $736,000 a year, according to PPS’ newly-disclosed due diligence report. Even with rent from current commercial tenants covering more than half that cost, the remaining amount and future vacancies will vie for general fund dollars in a district already projecting a $50 million shortfall for 2026.

Those aren’t the only loose threads. It’s unclear how many of PPS’ Black students would be able to easily access the building at North Fremont Street and North Williams Avenue. Only one-fifth of the district’s Black students attend schools within walking distance, while more than a third attend schools five miles away or farther. City restrictions may prohibit students from using the complex’s upper floors – the expansive atrium that is a focal point – putting as much as one-fifth of the space off limits, according to a staff memo. And renovations are expected to take up to two-and-a-half years – hardly the quick turnaround that some believed it would be, as The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Julia Silverman reported.

To top it off, aside from a broad vision for the center, PPS has set no specific goals for how the center will help students succeed academically nor laid out a plan to achieve them. When asked by The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board if PPS directors will have such information before voting on finalizing the sale, PPS Vice Chair Michelle DePass said “That’s a great question. I don’t know.”

No wonder that Portland Association of Teachers President Angela Bonilla panned the proposal for “using race as a smokescreen for the conversion of public funds into private and non-profit hands” and criticized PPS for “rushing to maintain a veneer of racial justice while blatantly ignoring the actual needs of our Black students and families. Black students don’t need a new building, far from their schools, with no school bus access.”

These are all serious concerns that deserve public debate, community input and thoughtful examination by those elected to provide oversight. PPS board Chair Eddie Wang and DePass, unfortunately, are going in the other direction. They bypassed the usual process for vetting such a deal, blocked an opportunity for public discussion last week and are instead cramming the matter onto the agenda for this Tuesday’s board meeting.

No matter how badly they want to launch the long-overdue center, the school board should not short-circuit the evaluation or cut out the public. Failing to ensure this purchase truly fulfills the promise to Black students or ignoring the math on the impact to the district would betray their obligation to put the needs of students – not nonprofit partners – first.

Certainly, PPS’ sense of urgency to do something is merited. Portland voters authorized up to $60 million to create a Center for Black Student Excellence five years ago as part of the district’s 2020 bond. The district’s failure to follow through so far is the latest in a long list of broken commitments to Portland’s Black community. If PPS is going to make promises, it must deliver.

And the resolution specifically noted the need to work with Black-led community partners, highlighting the work of the influential Albina Vision Trust, which is seeking to redevelop the historically Black district devastated decades ago by discriminatory policies that allowed homes and businesses to be razed. These nonprofits have long provided essential services that support not just students’ academic goals but their social, health and economic needs as well.

But going all in on a “solution” that doesn’t actually solve the challenge is a failure of a different sort. Buying a building with no detailed plan of how it will serve students or what it will accomplish is a backwards way of meeting this mission. Figuring out transportation for students at schools five or 10 miles away to access the center is a massive unknown, not a simple footnote. Turning the school district into a landlord for commercial and nonprofit tenants is a new responsibility that does not fit with PPS’ strengths.

And this isn’t the only way to fulfill the promise. The PPS resolution outlining the ambitions for such a center envisioned a “constellation of community schools” and strategies to advance Black student achievement. Creating career-and-technical-education space or building modernized science labs in multiple schools throughout the city, for instance, could offer valuable learning opportunities that students can actually access during the school day – and more quickly than two years from now.

Wang and DePass, however, are not only avoiding the questions, they’re preventing other board members and the public from doing so. When the board two months ago authorized the district to enter into a sale agreement and conduct due diligence on the One North development, board members and PPS staff made clear that the board’s facilities committee, chaired by PPS Zone 5 Director Virginia La Forte, would vet the project. Multiple board members specifically noted the need to ensure information was shared and analyzed in digestible amounts rather than dumped on the board on a rushed timeline.

So much for keeping to plan. As La Forte sought to put discussion of the district’s due diligence report on her committee’s Nov. 10 agenda, Wang and DePass quietly directed PPS staff to move it from her committee, according to PPS Chief of Staff Deborah Kafoury – a decision that Wang initially denied making when asked by the editorial board. Instead, the project will be on Tuesday’s jammed agenda in the last meeting before Thanksgiving break.

When La Forte tried to hold the discussion in her committee anyway last Monday, DePass objected repeatedly, delaying the meeting and chiding La Forte about what a “bad look” it would be to discuss the project without many advocates for the center present. Never mind that this was the process that the board had expressly laid out for the public in September and is the routine way to vet projects such as this.

Even after cutting discussion short by a week, Wang and DePass are still eyeing Dec. 2 for a final vote rather than push the date back to allow more public input. Families wanting to know the answers to some of the many concerning questions should let board members know in person or by emailing them. And when the full board takes up the issue this Tuesday, they should be prepared to show whose interests they serve.

-The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board