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Portland schools chief favors 11-school closure option as families press for more time
Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong says she is leaning toward a plan to close 11 schools, three fewer than the district’s most extensive proposal. Families continue to question the timeline, enrollment projections and how the district will protect access to school programs.
Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong said Friday she is leaning toward a consolidation plan that would close 11 schools, rather than a scenario that would close 14, as the district weighs how to respond to years of declining enrollment.
Armstrong discussed the options on OPB’s “Think Out Loud.” She said the 11-school proposal would bring less disruption while still putting at least 70% of students in schools the district considers sustainable.
“B’s magnitude and complexity of change isn’t as great as Scenario A,” Armstrong said, “but it still gives the opportunity to have 70% of our students or above in schools that are sustainable.”
PPS, Oregon’s largest school district, released proposals last week that could close as many as 14 schools beginning next fall. The plans have drawn questions and opposition from families and school staff, including a large turnout at an Oct. 6 school board meeting. Gov. Tina Kotek also urged district leaders this week to take time to get the process right.
Armstrong said conversations about consolidating schools have been underway since April and rejected the idea of indefinitely postponing a decision. Asked about a third scenario that would leave schools as they are, she said, “I’m not into delaying the inevitable.”
The district is continuing to solicit feedback. Armstrong said families and staff should share concerns and ideas, and a community engagement session was scheduled for Saturday morning in Northeast Portland. She said PPS plans to present her recommended proposal to the school board next month, along with a staffing plan.
Families have also challenged the district’s enrollment figures and its definition of a sustainable school. Armstrong acknowledged fluctuations in enrollment at individual schools but said she trusts projections from Portland State University’s Population Research Center.
District officials have cited minimum enrollment benchmarks of 360 students for elementary schools and 500 for middle schools, saying those sizes help ensure students can access programs such as art, music and library classes. Even under the closure scenarios, however, about one-quarter of PPS students would remain in schools below those thresholds.
Armstrong said resources could be shifted once schools are stabilized. She also said the district factored in some potential enrollment loss from the consolidation process, though she did not specify how much. Some families have warned that closures could prompt more households to leave the district; Armstrong said she did not expect the effect to be as large as critics predict.
The district’s enrollment forecast says 74% of kindergarten-age students living within PPS boundaries attend public school, up from 68% in fall 2020. School closures are also under consideration in other Oregon districts, including Salem-Keizer, Beaverton and Medford.