To make room for its highly gifted program, Portland Public Schools plans to break up a program designed to serve its highest-needs special education students, Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero announced Tuesday.

His plan is to oust the Pioneer special education program, with about 123 students, so the 350-student Access Academy program for highly gifted students can use its buildings, located on Southeast Division Street at 71st Avenue. Access is a program for students whose extensive educational needs could not be met at their neighborhood school; so is Pioneer.

Guerrero said he plans to send high-need middle grade special education students back to be included at their neighborhood schools. He proposed relocating the program for high-need elementary pupils with disabilities to the former Applegate Elementary campus in North Portland.

Access currently operates at the former Rose City Park Elementary in Northeast Portland, but must move by next school year. The district plans to reassign some students from overcrowded Beverly Cleary School to attend a reopened Rose City Park Elementary.

It's all part of the district's efforts to fix inequities. Many under-enrolled schools have too few students and thus fewer program offerings; other packed schools have more, but need relief from overcrowding. The district's primary solution is to reassign children so the district can all but end its unsuccesful experiment with K-8 schools and open two new middle schools.

It's not an easy task. The district only has so many buildings, the decisions are highly-personal, and pleasing one community often means upsetting another.

In October, district officials proposed dispersing Access students to neighborhood or regional programs to solve its building puzzle. But they met fierce opposition from the school community.

Guerrero, in his third week on the job, apologized and the district walked back the plan.

"I owe the school community an apology and I have to own it because I'm the new superintendent," he told Access families.

"We needed all stakeholders at the table as we imagined that (plan)," Guerrero said. "Even though there were never any final decisions made, we're talking about you and you're not there and that doesn't feel right upon reflection."

Amy Estep, a classroom therapist who has been at Pioneer for 15 years, says the district is now putting Pioneer through the same situation.

The district released few details about the plan. But the broad outlines, according to a note Guerrero sent to the Access families, are that Pioneer will be restructured "next year to align with district goals on special education inclusion. The K-5 students will move as a group to Applegate school, while a small number of middle school and high school students will be integrated into comprehensive middle and high school programs."

Estep said she thinks the notion that the district is doing this to be more inclusive is a ruse to mask a plan that is hasty and doesn't have the children with disabilities' real needs at heart.

"We have created a therapeutic learning environment for these kids and they have come from the schools that didn't meet their needs and now they are being asked to go back there," Estep said. "I just really feel like it's destroying something that's working really well for the sake of a different program"

Estep said spreading the middle grades special education program across different school buildings will dissolve the tight-knit community that makes the program work. She also has safety concerns. She worries about children with severe emotional needs, who are violent and may require multiple people to restrain them, being in buildings with general population students where only a few trained staff may be around to help.

She also fears special educators will quit once they are more isolated in their jobs.

"It's emotional work to work with kids like this," she said. "If you don't have your community to hold you up you're not as good as you need to be."

Estep said Guerrero's announcement blindsided her and other Pioneer employees.

"He said our building wasn't used to its full potential which is completely untrue. He's only been to our building once," Estep said.

Questions were met with, "We hadn't really considered that" and "We're still working on that," she said.

"This is a really big deal to not have thought out," Estep said. "As a human race, it's our duty to take care of the most vulnerable and (Pioneer) students are the most vulnerable. To ruin something we have worked 15 years to make incredible just feels really unjust."

Access parent Nicole Iroz-Elrado said the building appears to meet Access' needs, though she worried about its location being less accessible to those in North Portland. She said she is pleased the district is no longer considering splitting up Access, but worries about the district's plans for children at Pioneer.

"Pioneer students are quite vulnerable - often one step away from inpatient treatment or private care," Iroz-Elardo said. "I don't have a lot of faith in (Portland Public Schools) ability to adequately prepare for or staff the integration of the middle school Pioneer students. We need to hear a lot more detail about those plans."

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com