Portland School Consolidation
In the Fall of 2024 the Portland School Board established a committee to review the boundaries of the eight mainland schools and three middle schools. That committee’s work is ongoing and they are about to publicly introduce various scenarios of reconfigurations of the Portland elementary and middle school district boundaries. Some of that work was to look at the functional capacity* of each school.
The Portland elementary and middle schools have 4,661 attending students as of October 1, 2024. The Boundaries Committee is using a base group of 4,047 regular instruction students who live in the City of Portland for its determination on school boundaries and size. The additional 614 pre-K and special ed students (who need dedicated services) were accounted for in the overall size of the buildings. The committee consultant has advised them the functional capacity of the 11 schools is 6,008 students. That is a delta of 1,961 excess students between the two divisions.
This begs several important questions.
Do we need 11 mainland schools?
Which schools do we close?
If we close schools, what do we do with the buildings?
* Functional capacity addresses the capacity of the rooms used for regular classroom instruction. It removes cafeterias, gyms, offices, libraries, hallways and other common areas from the calculations.
Child Development Services “CDS” Another Element in the Puzzle
The State Legislature and Governor have determined that special education services for children from birth to age 4 are best handled by the local community. Thus, by 2028, local communities will need to have a program to serve these children. Portland is already looking at plans for such a program. The question remains: Who will foot the bill, the local taxpayer or the state? (You can guess where it will eventually end up.) This will necessitate the need for space to house a program to serve an estimated 200 children.
Elementary Schools
As the chart below shows, we could close three elementary schools and still have the capacity to handle the enrollment of the students living in Portland for the next several years.
We are not suggesting such a drastic approach for several reasons including neighborhood cohesion and walk-ability for students.
Longfellow Elementary School, at the center of the Deering neighborhood, surrounded by five schools, would likely be a target for the chopping block.
Noting the above need for a CDS facility, The James Phinney Baxter Campaign Fund would put forth the proposal to convert the Presumpscot Elementary School for use by the CDS program. Presumpscot is a single story building with easy off-street access for specialized transportation and its students could easily be reallocated to two other schools. Presumpscot also has the lowest number of students, just above the 200 threshold to make its programming viable (note, the 213 shown above does not include the pre-K and other populations – the actual enrollment is 266).
Using the most recent scenario from the committee, 75 students could move to Lyseth Elementary School, 138 students to Ocean Avenue School and 50 West Bayside students from the Ocean Avenue School to the East End Elementary School. All three schools have ample space to accommodate these additional students.
Middle Schools
As you can see from the chart below, the middle school situation is much more direct. The consultant to the Boundaries Committee put forth a scenario at the last meeting (Thursday, May 2, 2025) that suggests closing one middle school, Lincoln Middle School.
We agree with this assessment, as did some of the committee members. Although the numbers indicate less of a delta between the capacities and enrollment, the two remaining schools would be able to accommodate the existing and expected future student enrollment.
Lincoln Middle School
The building was built in 1912, when we approached education differently. Boys and girls were separated and used different doors to access the building. The building is three stories plus a basement making it impractical for modern schooling. It will yield more value when sold and converted into market rate housing. Nearby the Nathan Clifford Condos at 60% of the size of Lincoln has 22 condos with a total taxable value of $9.7 million. Lincoln would easily be valued at $10 - $15 million. (Assuming our City Council doesn't muck up the works.)
These are just two of the several places the School Board should be looking at to reduce the school budget. The board won't look at proposals like these unless forced to by voting down the School Budget on June 10, 2025.
