The Demolition Permit for Cleveland High School Will Automatically Be Issued This Week!
As we approach 1000 signatures on our petition, I wanted to reach out and thank you for all your hard work and support. The campaign to preserve, restore and expand Cleveland High School is gaining momentum and each day, more and more people are noticing! The campaign has received coverage on KATU-TV and KOIN-TV as well as Willamette Week and the Cleveland Clarion newspaper.
Portland Public Schools is experiencing a fiscal crisis. They are cutting instructional days which directly harms students and are beginning the process of determining up to 10 schools to close due to declining enrollment and decreasing revenue. Demolishing Cleveland High School (which is a great candidate for restoration, renovation and expansion) at a time when PPS has no idea which schools they are going to close is fiscally irresponsible and a betrayal of public trust. While PPS states at this time that no high schools will close, they may need to close schools that are feeder schools to Cleveland. So in effect, they are asking the public to support demolishing a perfectly good candidate for renovation and expansion when they have no idea how many future students may attend Cleveland. And the public gets to pay nearly 500 million dollars for the privilege of having a poorly designed, anonymous set of shoeboxes as a replacement school.
All of these examples are five-alarm fires and indications that PPS is headed towards a fiscal cliff and a crisis in public confidence. It has been made clear to Superintendent Armstrong and members of the Board of Education that the public design process was biased, poorly executed and that critical information was denied to members of the public during this time. I have provided the district all the evidence to support this conclusion. Yet PPS continues to remain silent on this issue and are choosing to run full speed headlong into a remarkable error in public policy. They continue to hope that as members of the community, we are not paying attention or that we do not care that they are going to needlessly destroy our architectural and cultural history and we will happily fork over 500 million dollars to do it. I'm betting that PPS is wrong.
As we move into the final stages of attempting to save, renovate, restore and expand Cleveland High School and save it from the wrecking ball, I'm asking for you to please keep the pressure on PPS. If you have not already done so please reach out via telephone or email to PPS and the other elected leaders below. While elected leaders outside of PPS have no legislative ability to stop PPS, asking them to speak up will put more pressure on PPS to change course. And when in-person protests are scheduled outside of the school, please consider attending. Now is the time to act! Thank you everyone for your support! Please share this email and the petition link https://www.change.org/p/help-save-cleveland-high-school-in-portland-from-demolition with your friends and neighbors!
Portland Public Schools District Office: 503-916-2000 Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong email: karmstrong@pps.net
Members of the Portland School Board email: schoolboard@pps.net Portland City Council Portland City Council District 3 Councilor Tiffany Koyama-Lane email: councilorkoyamalane@portlandoregon.gov Councilor Steve Novick email: councilor.novick@portlandoregon.gov Councilor Angelita Morillo email: councilor.morillo@portlandoregon.gov
Oregon House of Representatives Representative Rob Nosse email: rep.robnosse@oregonlegislature.gov