The Portland school district is set on placing a multimillion-dollar construction bond on the November ballot. And meeting materials for the school board committee tasked with guiding its development show members may be considering a $1.4 billion pitch to voters.

The proposal, which would be a record-breaking ask, would include at least $236 million to cover cost overruns from the 2017 bond, which the district and school board originally sold to voters with a price tag of $790 million.

According to materials for Thursday’s bond committee meeting, district staff will recommend that school board members forge ahead with plans to extensively renovate Cleveland, Jefferson and Wilson high schools.

Committees have already been meeting at each of those schools to discuss potential renovations and remodels.

District officials will also recommend putting off any further ballot measures to fund construction projects until at least 2028 in order to maintain the current tax rate of $2.50 per $1,000.

But none of those plans are set in stone. School board member Julia Brim-Edwards said she and her colleagues still need to discuss them during public meetings as well as conduct community input sessions.

“It’s pre-emptive to say what will be in and what will be out,” said Brim-Edwards, who chairs the school board committee charged with running the bond campaign.

The final ballot language should be done by spring.

There isn’t a timeline for when work would be completed on each building according to the staff recommendation, but should the board and public agree to the eight-year, $1.4 billion bond package, all of the district’s high schools could see either complete tear-downs or extensive renovations by decade’s end.

A 2020 construction bond would also fund fixes for the district’s “worst facility needs,” which include school roofs, security systems, seismic upgrades and sprinklers, among other things.

It would also provide for “educational improvements,” which district officials have outlined as items like technology, special education classrooms, performing and visual arts spaces and athletic venues.

Brim-Edwards said the district’s current facilities are “not the learning environments we want for our students to be in.”

“What I’m hearing is a desire to improve those buildings,” she said.

Members of a master planning committee for Jefferson High School have been looking over models for possible renovations of the North Portland school.Photo courtesy Portland Public Schools

District staff will spend February hashing out the scope of each project and calculating a cost, according to meeting documents.

A November ballot measure would mark the third time the Portland district has asked voters to greenlight millions in construction. An overwhelming majority of voters in the district favor the prospect of a 2020 bond 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 almost half saying they strongly approve. The school board voted to move forward with a November 2020 ballot showing during its Jan. 7 meeting.

The district has already completed major overhauls of Roosevelt, Franklin and Grant high schools and Faubion K-8. Voters approved those projects in 2012 to the tune of $482 million.

In 2017, the district proposed extensive renovations of two high schools — Madison and Benson — and rebuilding Lincoln High and Kellogg Middle School. At the time, that $790 million bond was the largest in state history.

The district’s 2020 plans could nearly double that.

The bond committee will meet at 4:30 p.m. Thursday at Portland Public Schools’ Blanchard Education Service Center, 501 N. Dixon St.