Successful neighborhood K-8s are worth more than just their price per student.
What happened to the K-8s PPS already converted?
Since 2016, PPS has converted 14 of its K-8s to K-5s. Today, five of these schools are on its closure list in both plans. History shows what PPS’s current plans could mean for the seven K-8s it wants to convert now: strong K-8s risk losing what works, and vulnerable ones risk being set up to close.
Portland has changed its mind about K-8s before. Each time, PPS made sweeping changes all at once, instead of going school by school and planning how each change would work.
PPS’s K-8s and middle schools, back and forthNumber of regular PPS schools each fall, 1998 to 2024, and the K-8s left if either plan is adopted.1
K-8s
Middle schools
Number of K-8s, if Rightsizing plans are adopted
1970s
The introduction of middle schools
Historically, most of Portland’s neighborhood schools were founded as K-8 grammar schools, and remained that way through the 1960s.2 In the 1970s, PPS’s “Schools for the Seventies” plan set out to move 6th through 8th graders into new middle schools, partly to help desegregate schools and partly to create better resourced schools.3The plan involved converting about 20 elementary schools into middle schools; by 1975 six schools had been converted, and by 1979 the total was 12, with two more planned.4
In Northeast Portland, schools including Vernon, Sabin, and Irvington gave up their upper grades to become early childhood centers (gaining pre-K instead), and Black students in the upper grades were bused out of their neighborhoods.5 The plan was sharply criticized for putting that burden on Black children, and it was never finished: voters rejected some of the funding, and many middle schools weren’t built or converted, leaving middle-school deserts in North and Northeast Portland.6 Ironically, at the time, Irvington was lauded as a desegregation success and model to be used elsewhere7—today it’s slated for closure.
2006–2015
Back to K-8s
Fast forward to the 2000s, and facing declining enrollment, Superintendent Vicki Phillips reversed course on K-8s. In 2006, the School Board approved converting six schools in January and another 17 in May; all together, 23 elementary schools were approved to convert into K-8s. Within two years PPS had closed eight schools, including Kellogg Middle School, and by fall 2009 it ran 32 K-8s, up from 3 in fall 2004.8 Phillips left as Superintendent in July 2007 with many of the conversions still in process, and her successor, Carole Smith, carried on with them. By 2015, PPS ran 29 K-8s in total, and Smith later said the change “happened too quickly without planning.”9 The result was a mishmash: some K-8s were poorly resourced, and some would go on to thrive.10
2016–today
Back to K-5s
Since 2016, PPS has been converting K-8s back into K-5s as it pushes for using middle schools: four reverted in 2016, seven in 2018, and three in 2021, plus Kellogg Middle School reopened in 2021, 14 years after PPS closed it in favor of K-8s.11 Today, both Rightsizing plans would convert seven more K-8s to elementary schools. All together, the recent conversions would change 21 schools away from K-8s.
Converting a school costs not only time, money, and heartache for the families and communities involved (not to mention the teachers and staff); it puts the reconfigured school at risk. Of the 14 schools PPS has converted away from K-8s since 2016, five are now proposed for closure.12
It’s time to tell the district to stop flip-flopping ~20 schools, en masse, without any real plan for how each school benefits from proposed changes.
1 Counts are regular PPS schools (no charter, alternative, or special education schools) in the federal Common Core of Data school directory (National Center for Education Statistics, via the Urban Institute’s Education Data Portal), grouped by each school’s lowest and highest grade: kindergarten or pre-K through 7th or 8th grade counts as a K-8, including schools adding a grade a year on their way to K-8; 5th, 6th, or 7th through 8th grade counts as a middle school. The federal data for fall 2005 lists nearly every PPS school as pre-K through 12th grade, so 2005 uses each school’s fall 2004 grades; the conversions approved in 2006 took effect in fall 2006. Both 2026 plans keep Astor, Odyssey, Skyline, and Winterhaven as K-8s and make MLC a K-8 (PPS, Rightsizing scenario comparison, Oct. 4, 2026), shown here as fall 2027, when most changes take effect. ↑
2 Portland’s neighborhood schools began as grammar schools; Fernwood Grammar School, built in 1911 and now part of Beverly Cleary School, is one example (PPS, Historic Building Assessment, October 2009). The School Board adopted “Portland Schools for the Seventies” on March 23, 1970 (same report), and the next day The Oregonian reported that of the new middle schools, “Portsmouth will be the first, and will open in the fall of 1970” (The Oregonian, March 24, 1970, p. 32). ↑
3 Superintendent Robert Blanchard said the reorganization would correct “any enrollment which shows more than 25 per cent of any minority race” (The Oregonian, “Public Hearings Trigger ‘Blanchard Plan’ Change,” March 20, 1970). He argued that after 4th grade, “you can’t offer the kinds of resources, programs and staffing economically in 96 elementary schools” (The Oregonian, reprinting the Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 2, 1970). The plan created “middle schools to offer enriched programs for sixth, seventh and eighth graders, which displace neighborhood K-8 schools” (Kathie Durbin, The Oregonian, April 13, 1979). ↑
4 “That plan envisions vacation of 20 elementary schools which would be converted to middle schools for grades 6-8” (The Oregonian, “Public Eyes School Plan,” Feb. 16, 1971). The first five were to be Beaumont, Hosford, Fernwood, Portsmouth, and Whitaker, “for the future a total of 20” (Citizens for Schools campaign ad, The Oregonian, April 13, 1971). PPS had six middle schools in 1975 (Todd Engdahl, Sunday Oregonian, May 4, 1975) and 12 by 1979 (Collins, Sunday Oregonian, July 8, 1979). ↑
5 To create the early childhood centers, PPS “eliminated the upper grade levels at what typically used to be traditional kindergarten-through-grade-8 schools.” By 1978 there were seven: Woodlawn, Vernon, Sabin, King, Humboldt, Eliot, and Irvington. Eliminating the upper grades “forced resident students, most of them blacks, to be bused out to predominantly white schools elsewhere in the city” (Huntly Collins, “Early childhood centers offer highly praised fare,” Sunday Oregonian, Nov. 12, 1978). In 1971, Vernon’s 6th through 8th graders were assigned to Whitaker, Sabin’s to Beaumont, and Irvington’s to Fernwood, and Irvington was slated for an early childhood center (The Oregonian, “Boundary Lines Adopted For Five Proposed Portland Middle Schools,” March 21, 1971). For the first time, “a predominantly black student population was forced to be bused out of inner-city schools” (Huntly Collins, “Blacks ‘still fighting for same thing,’” The Oregonian, Nov. 24, 1978). ↑
6 The School Board rejected a citizen coalition’s “pairing” plan to “share school desegregation efforts more equitably among both black and white students” (Durbin, The Oregonian, April 13, 1979). The coalition doubted the early childhood centers could be desegregated without “a mandatory busing program that applies to whites as well as to blacks” (The Oregonian, Nov. 12, 1978). Herndon said PPS cut the upper grades from schools in the Black community without building a middle school there (interview with Ronnie Herndon, Sept. 1979, PDXScholar, Portland State University). School officials conceded that about 350 students, “most of them upper-grade blacks, have no neighborhood middle school to attend”; citizen researchers put the figure closer to 700 (Huntly Collins, “Blacks ‘still fighting for same thing,’” The Oregonian, Nov. 24, 1978). Beaumont, one of the first five planned middle schools, was still a K-8 in 1978, when its neighborhood voted 1,110 to 463 to keep it that way (The Oregonian, “Voters back grade school,” May 17, 1978). In 1971, “city voters overwhelmingly defeated a $35.9 million bond issue for construction of middle schools”; by 1979, PPS had developed 12 middle schools, with two more planned (Huntly Collins, “Robert Blanchard: 10-year survivor as superintendent,” Sunday Oregonian, July 8, 1979). Black leaders said desegregation had been achieved “largely by forcing black students to be bused,” and the board rejected two-way busing, saying it would undercut efforts “to maintain white, middle-class families in the city system” (same article). ↑
7 After becoming an early childhood center, Irvington went from more than 63 percent minority enrollment to 47 percent, and it was the only one of the seven centers no longer “racially isolated” under state guidelines. A federal education official called Portland’s centers “one of the better projects nationally” (Huntly Collins, “Early childhood centers offer highly praised fare,” Sunday Oregonian, Nov. 12, 1978). ↑
8 In January 2006, the board approved expanding six North and Northeast Portland elementary schools to K-8s, including King and Vernon (The Oregonian, “Board grumbles at changes for schools,” April 11, 2006). In May 2006, it approved converting 17 more (The Oregonian, “Parents to Phillips: Keep Rose City Park open,” Jan. 30, 2007). The eight closures, including Kellogg Middle School in June 2007, are from The Oregonian, “Schoolhouse shuffle,” June 14, 2007. K-8 counts are regular PPS schools offering kindergarten through 8th grade in the federal Common Core of Data (National Center for Education Statistics, via the Urban Institute’s Education Data Portal); several more schools were K-7s in fall 2007, adding a grade a year. Within months of arriving in 2004, Phillips had closed low-performing middle schools and started new K-8s (Willamette Week, “Left Out,” Oct. 20, 2009). She announced her resignation April 25, 2007, and led PPS until July 1 (KATU); conversions were still in process when she left (The Oregonian, “Phillips’ changes could falter,” April 27, 2007). Irvington became a K-8 in 2008, and Laurelhurst in 2009. ↑
9 29 K-8s in fall 2015: regular PPS schools offering kindergarten through 8th grade in the federal Common Core of Data (National Center for Education Statistics, via the Urban Institute’s Education Data Portal). Smith’s quote: Willamette Week, June 4, 2015, which also reports that most K-8s were in North and Northeast Portland and other lower-income areas, while wealthier neighborhoods kept their middle schools. ↑
10Willamette Week, “Left Out,” Oct. 20, 2009, on how the new K-8s’ middle grades compared with PPS’s middle schools. One example: Bridger, a K-8 since 2008, had 73 middle graders in 2009, well below PPS’s own minimum of 160. ↑
11 2016: Beach, Chief Joseph, Peninsula, and Woodlawn, when Ockley Green became a middle school. 2018: Boise-Eliot/Humboldt, Irvington, Lee (now Sunrise), MLK Jr., Sabin, Scott, and Vestal, when Harriet Tubman and Roseway Heights middle schools opened (OPB, Sept. 8, 2017). 2021: Arleta, Creston, and Lent, when Kellogg Middle School reopened. ↑
12 Beach and Peninsula (converted 2016), Irvington and Sabin (2018), and Creston (2021) close in both Scenario A and Scenario B (PPS, Rightsizing scenario comparison, Oct. 4, 2026). None of the seven K-8s the plans would convert now is on the closure list. ↑
In 2018, PPS sent Sabin’s middle graders to Harriet Tubman Middle School; seven years later, Sabin Elementary is on the closure list.
Sabin and Vernon are neighbors less than a mile apart, with nearly the same enrollment. Today, both plans would send Vernon’s middle graders to Tubman, too, but Vernon would start out as an even smaller K-5 than Sabin did, putting it at even greater risk for future closure.
PPS took its 360 and 500 thresholds from the prototype schools in Oregon’s Quality Education Model, a statewide model for estimating what it costs to run a school. The model doesn’t use them as minimum enrollments, and it has no K-8 prototype; PPS applied the middle school number to K-8s.6
Sabin as a K-5, fall 2018 to 2025-26452 → 270Down 40% in seven years, while the typical PPS elementary school lost 24%. Sabin closes in both plans.7
Vernon as a K-8, 2025-26 to 2035-36539 → 444PSU’s forecast, down 18%. Both plans would convert it to a K-5 that starts below PPS’s 360 threshold.
Sabin’s enrollment, and where Vernon could goStudents each October. Faded lines show what could have happened instead.8
Sabin
Sabin, if it had declined like a typical PPS elementary school
Vernon
Vernon as a K-8, PSU forecast
Vernon as a K-5, if it lost students as Sabin did
Enrollment at Sabin went from 551 to 452, a change of only 99 students, because its combined K-5 grades grew by 18 students.
What PPS expected vs. what actually happened
The 2021 PPS Long-Range Facility Plan notes that “For the 2021-22 school year, Sabin Elementary is forecast at 60% utilization. Utilization is projected to remain steady over the next several years, staying at 60% in 2030-31.”9
Instead, Sabin’s real utilization has dropped to 48%: 270 students in a school with room for 559.10
In both plans, Sabin’s students would be sent to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School, which is also under-enrolled: 319 students in 2025-26, below PPS’s 360 K-5 threshold and at half its capacity. MLK Jr. was converted to a K-5 in the same 2018 round as Sabin. Yesterday’s K-8 conversions bring today’s school closures.11
Converting a strong K-8 can make it a vulnerable K-5. Vernon is one of PPS’s most cost-effective K-8s, and its middle graders beat expectations in math more than any other PPS school. Converting it would start it out below PPS’s own K-5 threshold, the same path that put Sabin on the closure list. Rather than simply converting K-8s, PPS should present well-reasoned, school-by-school plans.
1 Sabin’s 2017-18 enrollment by grade is from PPS’s 2017-18 School Profiles; Vernon’s 2025-26 enrollment by grade is from the Oregon Department of Education’s fall membership report (via ppsdata.info). “K-5 students, after conversion” is each school’s enrollment minus its grades 6–8 that year. The 360-student K-5 and 500-student K-8 thresholds are from PPS’s Rightsizing scenario comparison, Oct. 4, 2026. Sabin’s middle graders were assigned to Tubman by School Board Resolution 5534, Nov. 14, 2017; both 2026 plans move Vernon’s grades 6–8 to Tubman. ↑
2 Walking distance by street from each school to Tubman, school to school. Distances from homes in each attendance area vary. ↑
3 Students in poverty is the Oregon Department of Education’s measure, the same one used on the Test scores page: the share of students tested in 2024-25 whose families are identified as experiencing poverty (Sabin 39 of 168; Vernon 121 of 379). It covers only students in tested grades, 3rd through 8th, so Sabin’s figure is for grades 3–5 as a K-5. PPS’s budget uses a narrower count, students directly certified for free meals through SNAP or similar programs: Sabin 14%, Vernon 19%. ↑
4 Capture rate is the share of PPS students living in each school’s attendance area who attend that school, from PPS’s October 2024 capture-rate report, the most recent. Sabin’s figure describes it as a K-5, not as a K-8. More on capture rates. ↑
5 Share of all neighborhood kids counts private-school students too: each school’s neighborhood students divided by every K-8 student living in its attendance area, public or private. Kids living in the area are from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 2020–2024, table B14002; method on the Neighborhood page. These are survey estimates with wide margins of error, and Sabin’s figure describes it as a K-5. ↑
6 PPS’s Rightsizing Update memo to the School Board, Aug. 4, 2026, p. 2: the 360 and 500 thresholds were “guided by the prototype school description in the Quality Education Model,” and PPS “applied the same number for K-8s” (text of the memo, from PPS’s BoardBook). The equity audit PPS commissioned warns that these prototype sizes are for estimating costs, not planning floors, and “should not be used as automatic closure thresholds” (Green and Hanson, Equity Audit Evaluation, June 10, 2026, pp. 135–147). ↑
7 Sabin’s enrollment as a K-5 is from PPS data via ppsdata.info; 452 is fall 2018, its first year as a K-5. The 24% is the median change for PPS elementary schools over the same years. Vernon’s forecast is from the Portland State University Population Research Center’s PPS enrollment forecast, 2026-27 to 2035-36, which assumes Vernon stays a K-8. ↑
8 Enrollment from 2014-15 through 2024-25 is from the federal Common Core of Data (National Center for Education Statistics, via the Urban Institute’s Education Data Portal), which matches PPS’s own counts; 2025-26 is from the Oregon Department of Education’s fall membership report (via ppsdata.info); Vernon’s 2026-27 through 2035-36 is PSU’s forecast as a K-8. The two faded lines are my what-ifs, not forecasts. The 360 and 500 lines are PPS’s thresholds (see note 6). “Typical” follows the median PPS elementary school’s year-by-year change from fall 2018 to 2025-26 (down 24% overall), starting from Sabin’s 452. For Vernon as a K-5, most changes in both plans take effect in fall 2027: the line starts at PSU’s 2027-28 forecast times Vernon’s K-5 share in 2026-27 (334 of 515, from PPS’s grades 6–8 count), about 319, then follows Sabin’s year-by-year change from its first year as a K-5. Sabin is on the closure list in both plans, so its lines stop at 2025-26. ↑
10 Utilization is enrollment divided by functional capacity, using the facility plan’s own capacity for Sabin, 559 students. 48% is Sabin’s 2025-26 enrollment of 270 (Oregon Department of Education fall membership, via ppsdata.info). The plan’s 60% for 2021-22 matches Sabin’s actual enrollment that year, 342 of 559. ↑
11 Both plans consolidate Sabin into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School and move MLK Jr.’s Chinese immersion program to Boise-Eliot/Humboldt (PPS, Rightsizing Update: Scenario Release memo and slides, Oct. 6, 2026 board meeting). MLK Jr.’s 319 students are from ODE fall membership (via ppsdata.info); “half its capacity” is 319 of the 635-student functional capacity in PPS’s 2021 Long-Range Facility Plan (50%). PSU forecasts 314 for 2026-27. MLK Jr. became a K-5 in fall 2018, when Tubman opened, with Sabin, Irvington, and four other schools (see the Overview tab, note 11). ↑
More coming soon.
Three K-8s PPS would convert closely match three past conversions that now close: Bridger and Creston, César Chávez and Peninsula, and Faubion and Beach.
