The Portland school district is one step closer to placing a multimillion-dollar construction bond on the November ballot.

The school board on Tuesday voted unanimously to have district staff develop a bond of at least $238 million to cover cost overruns from projects voters greenlit in 2017. The question now is which other schools the board will propose to extensively renovate with the 2020 bond.

“I think this is a really essential step forward for Portland Public Schools,” said school board member Andrew Scott, who chairs the committee tasked with developing the bond.

The $790 million in construction projects voters approved in 2017 have been plagued with questions over the district’s cost estimates since the early goings. The bond called for extensive renovations of two high schools — Madison and Benson — and construction of a brand new Lincoln High and Kellogg Middle School.

Less than a year after the measure passed but before work began on any of those buildings, the district found those projects would cost at least $100 million more than the district told voters. A California firm hired by the school board in 2018 to further audit those plans found total costs will top $1 billion.

School board Vice Chair Julia Brim-Edwards told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she and her colleagues faced two choices: stick to the budget or deliver on the building plans that appeared on the ballot.

“We chose to build the schools that were promised to voters,” she said.

But at least some critics, including former school board member Steve Buel, have expressed reservations about the district’s plans to push forward with a new bond when questions linger over the 2017 effort.

“This decades-long plan is important to the health of our children and educational system,” Buel told the board, urging members to further explain how low-ball estimates ballooned into a nearly quarter-billion-dollar deficit.

Scott, who was elected to the board in 2019 and spent nearly a decade as the City of Portland’s chief budget officer, said a bond accountability committee is monitoring spending and that he’s seen estimate validations improve.

“I think there are definitely issues that came out of the 2017 bond. One of the reasons I ran for the school board is because of those issues,” he said.

An overwhelming majority of voters in the district favor the concept of a school construction bond in 2020, given that it would not raise the property tax rate, according to a survey conducted by polling firm Anzalone Liszt Grove Research.

Nearly three out of four respondents told the agency they’d support the effort, with 49% saying they strongly approve, according to a copy of the document obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Tuesday’s vote marked the school board “putting a stake in the ground,” Brim-Edwards said. From here, district staff will develop the final price tag for a bond that will likely include major renovations for at least one more high school.

Only Cleveland, Jefferson and Wilson have yet to be included in a large-scale rebuild.

In 2012, district voters approved a $482 million construction bond to overhaul Roosevelt, Franklin and Grant high schools and Faubion K-8.

A newly renovated Grant High opened its doors in August, marking the end of that spate of work.

Kellogg was demolished in August of 2018 and construction crews erected the first walls of its new building last month. Much of the former Madison campus in Northeast Portland has also been demolished as that school’s students attend classes at a spillover campus behind Eastport Plaza on Southeast 91st Avenue.

And district officials broke ground at Lincoln in December.

The November bond will share the ballot with a slew of other measures and several high-profile races including a presidential election and the Portland mayoral contest.

“It’s going to be a crowded ballot, but I think it’s incumbent on us to pay it forward for the next generation of students who will benefit from much better facilities,” Brim-Edwards said.