As the Portland school board contemplates how to redraw school attendance boundaries before the opening of a new Kellogg Middle School, parent Gabrielle Mercedes Bolivar recalled the last time officials decided to shutter one building and shuffle its students despite the community’s pleas to the contrary.

“It’s like deja vu,” she told board members Tuesday night.

Bolivar’s children attend Ockley Green Middle School and Jefferson High. Other families who lived nearby had children at Humboldt School before it was closed and its students moved into nearby Boise-Eliot.

Last year, Portland school board members advocated a district-wide plan to assess and redraw boundaries during a meeting that turned testy at time. But district officials have recently proposed a phased approach that begins with 20 schools in Southeast Portland.

And the tension has returned.

Bolivar advocated for a districtwide approach to the boundary redraws, telling board members that siloing the process by region would only lead to problems down the road.

“If you say the hard line is here and then you run out of space, what are you going to do when you get over here or vice versa?” she said.

Board members Rita Moore and Scott Bailey spent a chunk of Tuesday’s meeting echoing Bolivar’s sentiments. Bailey feared the district might force some Southeast families into a new school one year only to reverse that decision after the final boundary adjustment.

“That’s going to happen unless you do all the boundaries at once,” Bailey said.

But a phased approach, Deputy Superintendent Claire Hertz told the school board, would ensure there was enough time for each community to weigh in on proposed boundary changes.

“The actual drawing of the lines will not happen ahead of time,” she said.

Hertz said holding boundary review meetings for every school ahead of Kellogg’s planned fall 2021 opening would put too much strain on central office staff that’s already stretched thin. In addition to holding community meetings for boundary reviews, district employees are developing a $1.4 billion bond proposal for the November ballot and figuring out how to allocate about $39 million in new state education funding.

Redrawing boundaries by region, Hertz said, will allow the district’s engagement team to hold more meetings to gather community feedback.

Under the proposed approach, Southeast Portland will go first, with its boundaries redrawn in time for Kellogg’s opening. North and Northeast schools would come the following year and buildings west of the Willamette River would have their boundaries set by fall 2023.

“We’re looking at a districtwide set of data so we’re making sure we’re grouping our schools adequately into each phase of work,” Hertz said.

While board members had differing thoughts on how to roll out new boundaries, there was broad agreement on the reasons behind the adjustment. Schools like Cesar Chavez in North Portland and Bridger K-8 in Southeast are overcrowded, while others like Lent K-8 in Southeast and Madison High in Northeast Portland are under enrolled.

Board members also signaled a desire to reunite Access Academy, the gifted program whose students are currently split between Lane Middle School and Vestal Elementary.

Note: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that, while Gabrielle Mercedes Bolivar and her family lived through the school reassignment that sent children from Humbolt Elementary to Boise Elliot, her children did not attend either of those schools.

--Eder Campuzano; ecapuzano@oregonian.com; @EderCampuzo