Portland school district tests a creative strategy
Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Dec 1, 2009 by Justin Carinci
A Northwest Portland affordable housing building will host an unusual tenant in its storefront space: a public school. Portland Public Schools will lease ground-floor space in the Pearl Family Housing development, scheduled to open in spring 2011, for an elementary school.
The unique arrangement could serve as a model for future development, school district officials say. With the difficulty in predicting population growth and the expense of buying land and building new schools, leases and creative partnerships could become more common.
Portland Public Schools doesn’t rent any of its school buildings, spokesman Matt Shelby said. In fact, it leases out buildings to other schools, such as Riverdale Grade School in Southwest Portland and De La Salle North Catholic in North Portland.
But population doesn’t increase only in the neighborhoods with extra school space. And the growing northwest neighborhoods still have only one traditional elementary school: Chapman Elementary School.
Chapman has an average of 25.2 students per class, said district spokesman Matt Shelby, compared to the district-wide average of 24.3.
“That school is already at capacity,” Shelby said. “If you’re building new units, they don’t have the room to accommodate new students.”
In the past, when crowding merited another school, the district built one. After all, why rent when you can own?
“Those two options are not apples to apples,” school board member David Wynde said. “A new school is millions of dollars, and we don’t have the money at this point.”
The school district’s five-year lease on the Pearl Family Housing space costs $1.5 million
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