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Scarce, Spendy Land Squeezes School Sites As Suburban Districts Try to Grow

Posted on: Sunday, 6 November 2005, 15:00 CST

By Amy Hsuan, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

Nov. 6--From Beaverton to Bend, a building boom pits schools against subdivisions for land inside urban growth boundaries.

Fast-growing communities need new schools the most, but in those areas buildable lots disappear and prices skyrocket the fastest.

As school districts plan some of the state's biggest bond measures ever, they'll have to choose: continue building campuses with acres of sports fields or squeeze into tighter, less costly spaces.

Ultimately, taxpayers will decide. But this is not just a financial struggle; it's also a clash of values.

Schools have become one of the last holdouts in Oregon's movement to use land sparingly. They guard their elbow room even as yards shrink and condos rise.

Many educators and parents insist children need room to grow and play. And residents of increasingly packed suburbs need gathering spots, they say.

On the other side, advocates for higher density contend downsizing schools is good for children. Smaller buildings fit into neighborhoods, they say, promoting walking and biking.

These opposing visions crop up nationwide in communities with escalating land prices. One national school-siting group recently dropped minimum campus-size standards, and experts are beginning to recommend that schools slim down.

In Oregon, change is happening incrementally.

School districts already are building multiple-story schools, sharing recreation space with parks districts and whittling away acres. Oregonians will have to decide how small schools can get without sacrificing student success.

Suburban campuses such as Tualatin High School are on the front lines.

Principal Jeff Smith oversees a lolling 64 acres of grounds, complete with six tennis courts, a swimming pool and an eight-lane track. Tualatin offers an activity for every student, he says -- football, baseball, soccer.

The parklike campus, built a decade ago, is larger than Oregon's typical 40-acre high school. Middle schools average 21 acres and elementary schools 13 acres.

Oregonians take pride in their neighborhood schools, says Dan Maks of Beaverton. He fears downsizing them would compromise suburbs' identity.

"In my mind, you would be losing what we came out here for," he says. "I don't want to live in Portland. I want to live in Beaverton."

But state laws encourage development to cluster in cities. Many advocates of urban density have embraced the idea of treading lightly on the natural environment, and some say it's time big-box schools scaled down.

Insisting on large campuses forces schools toward their communities' fringes, says Rex Burkholder, a councilor at the Portland area's Metro regional government. He suggests smaller sites where students can walk and bike from home, even if that means cutting back on fields for sports teams.

"It's almost a question of philosophy and values," says Burkholder, a former teacher. "Schools should be the center of the community. Are we losing that value?"

Across Oregon, communities are weighing their commitments to raising successful children, protecting the natural landscape and spending public money wisely.

In Central Oregon, a construction boom has triggered a surge of students in the Bend-La Pine School District. Newer elementary and middle schools occupy smaller sites in central neighborhoods accessible by foot.

High schools are harder to change, says John Rexford, assistant superintendent of operations.

"You need places to play soccer and T-ball," he says. "To say a high school can get by without the field space is ignoring the needs our schools have to deliver a quality program."

Districts gamble on growth

Stakes are high in fast-growing markets spanning the Portland suburbs and Central Oregon, where soaring enrollments cram classrooms to capacity. It's not uncommon for students to eat lunch in a mid-morning shift or learn in portable classrooms.

Some districts' enrollments have doubled during the past decade. But so have raw land prices, reaching $500,000 an acre in Washington County, one of the state's priciest development markets.

Jan Youngquist, the Beaverton School District's facilities planner, scouts subdivisions under construction at the start of each academic year. Construction progress tells her when to expect families and children in the state's fastest-growing district.

"We have to act as developers," Youngquist says. "We're doing the exact same thing."

For nearly two-thirds of Oregon superintendents surveyed last year, land availability topped the list of barriers to planning future schools.

Schools don't get a sneak preview when local governments choose which rural areas are next in line for development. If they want to buy at an affordable price, they're left to predict which direction the population will go. Beaverton is considering buying properties outside developed areas -- a gamble because growth could go elsewhere.

Oregon depends on taxpayers to buy land and build classrooms.

About a half-dozen high-growth districts hope to pass record construction bonds in the next two years, and spiking land prices account for a large chunk of the price tag. Beaverton officials trimmed an upcoming proposal by roughly $30 million to about $200 million to ease the burden on taxpayers. North Clackamas, Bend and Sherwood are honing their requests.

One option: downsizing.

Recent state and national studies have urged educators to consider shrinking campuses to locate centrally, which they say reduces traffic -- and taxpayers' bills.

"Many communities are finding that they don't have that much land for schools, or they don't want to use that much land," says Janell Weihs, spokeswoman for the Council of Educational Facility Planners, International. "But it's so ingrained in some school districts."

Bethany Johnson of the University of Oregon's Community Planning Workshop has seen an increase in two-story grade schools, neighborhood-scale campuses and renovated historic buildings. Many schools share play space with park districts.

These trends should continue, her group urged this year in a report released in conjunction with Oregon's land-use and transportation departments. But Johnson says schools will change gradually.

"If the community wants lots of playing fields and a big parking lot and a one-story school, that's pretty much what they have to give," she says. "Planners and districts realize it's a delicate relationship. You can only push the community so far."

Oregon's squeeze for land is inspiring creative design.

Bend architect Ron Barber is adding a second story to an existing elementary school to increase space while preserving outdoor play areas. In nearby Redmond, he's building on a site that will house both a grade school and a middle school -- with shared parking, fields and boiler room.

Rethinking schools can be good for the community, says Barber, who helped craft Bend's new elementary model.

"Everything gets smaller," he says. "It's easier to blend into the neighborhood."

In Portland, that's always been the idea. The city's largest high school, Wilson, has 26 acres, two-thirds the size of a typical suburban campus. Many elementary schools sit on a few acres.

Charter and magnet schools crowd onto small sites, too.

Emerson School, a 120-student elementary in Northwest Portland, has no parking, no gymnasium, no playground. A change jar in the office helps parents feed the parking meter. Teachers park in a few rented spaces nearby.

Instead of traditional gym class, students get exercise from weekly kung fu lessons and daily bouts of yoga, power walking or bocce ball in the North Park Blocks. They walk to the library and ride public transit for field trips.

"There's an upside and a downside to being right in the middle of the city," program coordinator Tara O'Neil says. "The upside far outweighs the downside."

Similar niche schools are cropping up in space-conscious suburban locations, from Gresham's Alpha High School to Wilsonville's ArtTech charter school.

For traditional schools to downsize, cities and counties must modernize their rules, says John Weekes, a schools architect in Portland. He faces height restrictions and minimum parking requirements.

Parents must realize that their children's schools won't look like the ones they attended, says Weekes, who is teaming with Barber on the Redmond project.

"For some reason, people look at schools through the lens of 30 years ago," Weekes says. "What they find appealing is what they know. What they know is what they experienced. And that was a long, long time ago."

Still, others say urban school models, with reduced parking and play space, just don't fit the suburbs.

Mass transit has yet to become convenient in the North Clackamas School District, Superintendent Ron Naso says, and not everybody can walk or bike.

"People ask, 'Why can't we be more urban in our thinking?' " Naso says. "We still embody a suburban mindset."

By Amy Hsuan and Laura Oppenheimer

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

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Source: The Oregonian

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