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It’s a big open secret that Portland and Oregon Public Schools are some of the worst in the country – last year ranking 45th out of 50 states. Ranking well behind every southern state, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, and well – just about everybody. This isn’t because of funding that ranks as some of the highest per student in the country nor from a lack of complete Democratic party control over all levels of the government for more than 30 years. It has some of the highest funding per student, while delivering some of the worst results in the entire country.

Since Covid over 12% of students have been pulled from declining and failing Portland schools and it is projected that it will likely reach more than a 24% attendance drop. Public school enrollment in Oregon dropped by more than 22,000 after COVID-19 and continues to decline. But that hasn’t stopped the school system from adding almost 12,000 new employees – even while enrollments were dramatically declining.

It’s reached the point Portland schools will be closed soon – up to 5 of the 10 schools in the district.

Additionally, the school year has been chopped to one of the shortest in history as teachers take furlough days. I mean, where could all this money be going? It’s not like the Portland school district has a communications department that costs as much to run each year as an entire high school?

But maybe it’s lack of funding. Despite passing multiple bonds at or over a billion dollars, they have failed to modernize nor make schools earthquake safe as was promised in EACH of the 4 bond measures passed in the last decade. Each one seems to assume people forgot they gave them over half a billion dollars to fix school buildings 4 times in a row.

• 2012 School Building Improvement Bond – $482 million
• 2017 Health, Safety and Modernization Bond – $790 million
• 2020 School Bond – $1.2 billion
• 2025 School Bond – $1.8 billion

And they are right – Portland voters overwhelmingly vote each new failure in. I mean, why bother even lying when audits are ignored and nobody loses their job when they fix 0 out of 10 serious deficiencies in bond performance. Waste and negligence abound in Portland schools.

Intelligent parents appear to be voting with their feet. They’re pulling their kids out of schools that are seismically unsafe, as well physically unsafe for their children as violent students are regularly put right back into classrooms with children they have assaulted due to a misguided sense of restorative justice.

And don’t forget the highly politicized teachers. Portland went through an embarrassing teacher’s union strike that turned into a pro-Palestinian protest group. The teachers were also encouraged to use teaching materials that instructed kids to pray to Allah for the destruction of Israel. The teaching union only later had to agree to barely any changes since it turns out there really wasn’t more money and are now being sued by parents for damages. Students are encouraged to go to protests instead of school days (with a number of schools that won’t count skipping school to protest as unexcused).

“Unless those harm reduction studies include the harm to the community … I fail to see how any harm reduction study could be taken seriously” – public commentary

State Sen. Lisa Reynolds killed a bill that would ban distributing needle and drug use paraphernalia that were regularly occurring within 1 block of elementary schools and filling residential areas with so many addicts passed out on the streets that the nearby McDonalds was jokingly called Fent-donalds. Multiple businesses said the conditions had gotten so bad they were closing their shops in the area due to safety for their employees. All of this well within the ‘drug free zones’ around at least one elementary school as specified by city ordinance.

I personally have seen and dealt with the results. There were countless people slumped on sidewalks surrounding the distribution areas after every handout. Even worse, the Portland People’s Outreach Project that were doing these programs often became physically hostile and intimidated anyone that would complain or question them. (more comments here if you can stomach them)

Sadly, “harm reduction” activities like these programs have not saved lives – quite the opposite. Even better, as should be 100% expected from non-profit organizations with absolutely no academic or other credentials, the policies have directly caused deaths to have more than tripled since they started.