A year ago, Portland voters delivered big for Portland Public Schools. Despite countless reasons to doubt PPS' management -- from curriculum inequities to lead-contamination in students' drinking water -- voters approved a $790 million bond to rebuild four schools and pay for health-and-safety fixes across the district. Taxpayers concluded the need for modernized schools for students was worth the price tag and the leap of faith.
Unfortunately, that leap of faith feels more like a step off a cliff these days.
Modernizing the four schools identified in the bond -- Madison, Lincoln and Benson Polytechnic high schools and Kellogg Middle School -- is now estimated to cost $190 million more than what voters were told. The board has yet to map out a strategy to cover the shortfall or scale back building plans amid escalating construction costs. And most concerning, as the Portland Tribune's Shasta Kearns Moore reported, internal documents show that project cost estimates given to voters in May 2017 were significantly lower than estimates reviewed by the district earlier. The $790 million figure didn't even fall within the $894 million to $1 billion range that was shared with some district officials, according to the Tribune.
The revelations present the toughest challenge yet for a board and administration that have made significant gains in the past year rooting out entrenched dysfunction. The district notched a long list of achievements due in large part to the election of three new board members, the leadership of 2017-2018 board chairwoman Julia Brim-Edwards and the hiring of superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero. Leaders drafted new policies on handling complaints and public records; negotiated a new teachers contract; pledged to enact recommendations stemming from an investigation of sex-misconduct complaints against a former educator; reorganized central administration; and forged ahead on previously-delayed plans to open two new middle schools.
But in contrast to that aggressive action, the district seems stuck in slow motion, with limited communication on just what the bond shortfall will mean for students, the district and taxpayers.
Rita Moore, who took over as board chairwoman last month, told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board that there's no need to rush a solution. Construction on the schools is at least several months away, she said. A new deputy superintendent for business and operations recently joined the district and will need time to get her financial team together before offering solutions.
In the meantime, design teams for Kellogg, Lincoln and Benson have been asked to look for ways to contain costs that still ensure the schools match the standards of those schools built with proceeds from a 2012 bond, said district spokesman Harry Esteve.
The problem is that the longer the district waits to commit to firm budgets with clear funding, the fewer options it has for controlling costs. Consider that the board has already approved the master plan for Madison's renovation with no adopted budget. That project is already weighing in at 35 percent more than expected, according to a report from the district's Bond Accountability Committee, a citizens' group of construction and financial experts that tracks how well the district is carrying out its promises to voters.
"In our judgment, budget discipline on the 2017 bond was abandoned with the Madison vote," states the committee's report, which is to be presented to the board on Tuesday. "Firm budgets should be immediately re-established for the high schools, and the project teams should be instructed to adhere to them."
Without correction, the risk grows that budget-busting becomes the acceptable norm. Already, the master plan under development for Lincoln is similarly overshooting project estimates. The board should take the opportunity to reassert that missing budget discipline at its board meeting this week. Pushing off budget discussions only guarantees that designs get cemented in place, whether the money is there or not.
Already, community members are guessing what such a huge shortfall might mean. Benson advocates worry that the district will revive an earlier idea to split the school's renovations into two phases, instead of completing them in one as the bond promised. If that's on the table, the district should pull the public into the conversation sooner rather than later to explain why it cannot back up its campaign promises.
And while the board is right to focus on steps it should take in the future, it should also seek to understand how the district settled on such unrealistically low project costs. The responses from board members and the district administration -- that no one really knows how it happened -- are unsatisfying to say the least. It shows that the board at the time -- which oversaw the development of the bond package in multiple work sessions in 2016 and 2017 -- failed to do its most fundamental job to check, question and verify PPS staff's work on a massive ask of taxpayers.
How the board moves ahead, both in addressing the shortfall and addressing the public, will matter for both the success of this bond and the many envisioned for the future.
- Helen Jung for The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board