Cleveland High School, a 1929 Classical Revival school designed by Portland Public Schools Architect George Jones is a remarkably intact National Register of Historic Places eligible architectural gem in southeast Portland that has been serving students and the community for generations. But Cleveland High School needs your help now!

Portland Public Schools has applied for a permit to completely demolish the school and replace it with an ill-conceived anonymous modernist building that looks much more like an office park than a school where students can learn, thrive and grow. Our kids deserve better!

In addition to destroying 100% of the historic architecture on the campus, this demolition plan is an environmental catastrophe as the current campus sequesters the equivalent amount of carbon in 55,227 trees at ten year growth. Demolishing the school would environmentally be the same as driving over 8 million miles in a passenger car. 

While Portland Public Schools did conduct design sessions, there was significant bias that was evident from the start. It was clear that PPS and their architect were pro-demolition from almost day one. Participants were misled and preservation never had a seat at the table or had a voice in protecting the historic resources of the school. We can do better than this. While PPS points to a survey supporting demolition, the number of people answering the survey amounted to less than 1% of Portlanders. Our schools and architectural history are the property of all Portlanders. 

The passage of the School Bond Acts were in no way explicit or implied permission to take a wrecking ball to the historic and cultural resources of this city. They were an avenue of support from voters to engage in an equitable process that brought the community together to create responsible and reasonable plans to modernize our schools for the next 100 years. The renovations at Franklin, Benson and Grant High Schools have shown us that PPS is capable of modernizing and renovating our places of learning while respecting our history, the character of our communities and the livability of our neighborhoods. There is no reason Cleveland High School and its students should be shortchanged. 

A campaign has begun to appeal to PPS to reopen the design process for Cleveland High School and this time, seriously and appropriately consider the design options available for preserving the historic campus core, renovating it and bringing it up to standard and redeveloping the area behind the original school building to serve students and the community for generations. Portland Public Schools belong to all of us-and we all deserve to be heard before our historic and cultural resources are arbitrarily destroyed. 

This survey and your comments will be presented to the Portland Public Schools Board of Education and Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong. In addition, local, state and federal historic preservation organizations have begun a campaign that will shine a nationwide spotlight on this school, inherent flaws in the design process, and best practices to ensure historic resource protection.