Portland schools report 3,900 active work orders and limited maintenance staff; district lays out prioritization matrix

Frank Levitt, senior director of operations for Portland SD 1J, told the Facilities Improvement Oversight Committee that the maintenance division currently has 77 technicians responsible for roughly 9.5 million square feet of school facilities and about 3,900 active work orders in the district system.

“Those 77 technicians are the 77 that we will have moving forward,” Levitt said, noting one vacant plumber position the district was recruiting to fill. He described the workload breakdown: about 1,600 mechanical and plumbing work orders, 1,400 general repairs (windows, flooring, roofing, keys, painting, carpentry), roughly 520 landscape work orders and about 370 electrical orders.

Levitt explained the district uses an emergency/high/medium/low priority matrix: emergency requests pose an immediate threat to safety, health or operations and are addressed the same day; high priorities affect safety or delivery and are addressed within days; medium priorities affect function but not immediate instruction; low items are cosmetic or “honey‑do” items that are scheduled when resources allow.

To improve response, Levitt said the district has begun a swing shift to give technicians access to schools outside peak instructional hours and is piloting a remote operations center with a vendor to monitor building mechanical systems so staff can respond earlier to failures. He also said summertime and break periods are when the district tackles many low‑priority items in concentrated campaigns.

Board members noted the long backlog and asked for clearer budget figures; one board member said an earlier district estimate of deferred maintenance was about $1.9 billion and urged that maintenance staffing and funding be part of bond and legislative advocacy. No immediate staffing changes were approved at the meeting.