The Portland school board’s three new members weigh in on construction overruns and a potential 2020 bond

Portland Public Schools’ drive to rebuild or modernize three high schools and a middle school, which voters were told would be covered by the $790 million bond, are now slated to cost nearly $240 million more.

And it’s likely the Portland school board will ask voters to address those extreme cost overruns with another bond next year.

The board’s three newest members, set to be sworn in on July 2, will play a prominent role in those discussions.

Portland school construction costs could top $1 billion; district officials lack ‘rationale or explanation’ for low-ball estimates

An audit of a 2017 measure approved by voters finds district officials knowingly gave low estimates against the recommendations of modernization office staff.

Andrew Scott, Michelle DePass and Eilidh Lowery won their respective races in May to replace Julie Esparza Brown, Paul Anthony and Mike Rosen during an election that also returned Amy Kohnstamm to the board for another four-year term.

The three newcomers spoke to The Oregonian/OregonLive about their priorities for the next four years, as well as their perspective on issues the school board will address in the next 12 months.

The school board, in its current incarnation, has discussed putting another bond on the ballot in 2020 to address the nearly quarter-billion-dollar cost overruns.

Here’s where the three newcomers fall on the issue:

Andrew Scott, Zone 1

“I think what we need to do is show voters what happened with the estimates with the 2017 bond and processes we’ve put into place.

Rebuilding and modernizing our schools is something important that our district needs over the next 20 years. The voters have shown really strong support with modernizing our schools. The issue in 2017 is that we underestimated the cost of the fixes we were going to do, and we need to go to voters and show them we’ve put processes in place at both the staff level and community oversight level to ensure those types of errors don’t happen again in the future.

Being transparent about what happened in 2017 is how we’re going to win the trust of voters.

Both at the City of Portland and Metro, both of those city governments have issued and run bond programs. I’ve spent most of my career in public finance, so I bring some expertise to the board that will help avoid some of these problems in the future.

I know the right questions from a board perspective that can help make sure we’re going forward with a realistic plan.”

Michelle DePass, Zone 2

“There is a trust issue. We’re going to have to do our homework to build that back up.

I feel strongly that, as a voter, I want the district to give me what I voted on. And I’m guessing some voters will say, ‘Let’s just vote for it because we need to finish the improvements we wanted initially’ and some other people will be distrustful and say, ‘I’m not going to vote again. The district needs to get this right.’

There’s going to be multiple camps of voters. I don’t know how this will be sold and packaged.

I feel like, as public servants, one of the best things we can do is build trust. And you build trust in a really predictable way: You are transparent. You are fully forthcoming. You are open to feedback.

When a community comes to you or a constituency comes to you and says, ‘We’ve been harmed,’you don’t get defensive. You listen and you apologize. You acknowledge.

You can’t just say, ‘We didn’t mean to hurt you.’ There’s a process you can move through to build trust.”

Eilidh Lowery, Zone 7

“Well, I think we need to fix our schools. Most of our buildings are 75 years old. A lot of them are crumbling. We’re trying to bring modern learning into classrooms that weren’t built for that.

I haven’t thought about alternative solutions other than asking voters for bonds to fund buildings. I think we need to work as a board to make sure that what we’re delivering is realistic, on-time and on budget.”

--Eder Campuzano and Christina Morales