Every day you'll see the dust

Jefferson High School in Portland is going to undergo a spendy remodeling starting next year, as all the public high schools in town either are or have been. The bureaucrats will probably get the last of these money-pit projects done just in time to announce that due to declining enrollment, they have to close one or two of the schools. Don't laugh, I'm serious.

Anyway, like the kids at the other wrong-side-of-the-river schools before them, the Jefferson students will be bused to the old Marshall High School during the renovation. That's something like 11 miles away from Jeff, and the parents have been asking, why can't the school district use the perfectly good empty classrooms at the other financial black hole, Portland Community College, just across the street? 

Ha! Ha! Because that would make too much sense!

This is the school district that couldn't keep the Grant High School football, soccer, and lacrosse field open, because nobody had the foresight to plan for the day when the artificial turf inevitably wore out. You cannot expect a gang like that to be smart enough to even notice the PCC possibility, much less pursue it. So, long bus rides it is, kids.

One of the bobbleheads on the board of education is Julia, She Who Brims With Photo Ops. She's been part of that committee, on and off, for 20-some years now. I look at the public schools and see really bad management, and the buck for that stops with the board.

Now she's bobbling away on the Multnomah County commission, too – one of the two outvoted voices of reason there, supposedly. I dunno. If she runs the county the way she's run the school board, we're all gonna turn into angry soccer moms.