Lessons Learned at Lincoln

While pulling weeds and shoveling bark dust at Community Care Day at Lincoln High School in the Goose Hollow neighborhood on Saturday, I heard some interesting facts, and researched a few more:

* Lincoln isn’t accepting any transfers this year. It’s over capacity just with students living within its boundaries.

* Enrollment last year was 1498, including 297 transfers.

* The school is short 24 classrooms.

* The auditorium holds 600 students. When all-school assemblies are held, they have to be in the gym.

* Approximately 35 Lincoln students live in the Pearl.

* There isn’t much capacity at Wilson, the other westside high school in Portland Public Schools, to shift boundaries and students there. While both schools were built to hold more pupils, recent mandates such as technology require dedicated classroom space, reducing the number of rooms available for general instruction.

* It would cost $80 – 100 million to renovate or rebuild Lincoln to add enough capacity to serve projected increases in student numbers. Forest Heights Elementary is flourishing, proving that residential developments outside of the Central City can add students to Portland Public Schools perhaps more effectively than subsidizing downtown condominiums.

Scott Moore at the Mercury reported last week that Commissioner Erik Sten is looking into building an elementary school in the Pearl. It seems to me the more urgent need for Portland Public Schools is to figure out how to fit all current Lincoln-area residents into a high school or high schools. Lincoln administrators are finding the Pearl is attracting divorced parents soon to be empty-nesters, who find two bedroom downtown apartments entirely adequate for the one teenager still living at home. It makes a lot more sense to me that this trend will continue and increase in magnitude, than the concept that building an elementary school in the Pearl will attract more families there.

There are already at least two good options for elementary schools for families living downtown on the westside: Chapman Elementary and the Metropolitan Learning Center. Both are in the Northwest District, reached by a short ride on that handy-dandy and oh-so-spiffy Streetcar. The urgent need is more high school (and middle school) capacity, not another grade school.

The Portland Public Schools District could and should help in the short term, by providing educational options on the eastside to attract some transfers out of the Lincoln area to ease overcrowding. Establishing an International Baccalaureate program at Jefferson would be a good start, in my opinion. But in the next decade, as infill and large-subdivision westside residential development continues to keep and attract families in the city, more space in westside high schools seems likely to be needed. It’s needed right now at Lincoln.