Lincoln Middle School in Portland in February 2026. (Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)

Lincoln Middle School in Portland has nearly $20 million in obsolete infrastructure that should already have been replaced, according to a new assessment of the district’s three middle schools.

The details come amid the city’s effort to reorganize its middle school programming due to low building utilization, declining enrollment and facilities issues.

The school board passed a resolution in March calling on the superintendent to study the middle schools: Lincoln, King and Lyman Moore. It scaled back from explicitly calling for a reduction to two schools, although the latest facility assessment explores the enrollment implications of shuttering Lincoln.

Since the resolution, the district has hosted community engagement sessions on the topic and solicited feedback. Administrators presented an update on the work in August, and the district is currently recruiting community members to review a proposed design framework and provide comments through a form open until Oct. 4.

Part of the process involved a facilities assessment focused on the middle school buildings.

In a Monday meeting, the board’s committee for finance, personnel and operations heard an update from the architecture firm Harriman, which was hired by the district to conduct a larger facilities master plan. Harriman is reviewing buildings across the district for that study, but began with the middle schools as the school board prepares to make decisions about the future of those spaces.

All three schools are below capacity, Lisa Sawin from Harriman told the committee, but Lincoln is the lowest, with space for about 220 additional students. Across the district, there is space for 444 additional middle school students, based on a target of 85% building utilization.

An assessment of building conditions also showed Lincoln is in the poorest condition of the three schools, while Lyman Moore is in the best. Lincoln is the oldest of the three schools, originally constructed in 1897, while King was completed in 1950 and Lyman Moore in 1954.

Lincoln’s building has reached the end of life for almost all of its features, from code compliance to plumbing to fire protection. The cost to repair Lincoln’s obsolete infrastructure — elements of the facility that should have already been replaced — is $19.5 million, and looking a decade into the future, the school will require a total of $28 million in fixes.

That’s compared to under $3 million in immediate repair costs at each of the other schools.

Those estimates don’t include the cost of any renovations for programmatic changes or improvements, just critical repairs. Lincoln’s include a heating system replacement that will cost nearly $13 million alone, and other pressing fixes to the front entrance and roof.

Based on the capacity information and cost estimates, Sawin showed board members what would happen if the district closed Lincoln, due to its excess capacity, low population and outsized facility issues.

In that situation, Moore and King would actually be slightly overenrolled, by about 115 students, and could require renovations to accommodate the new students.

The firm also modeled closing both Lincoln and King, which would require nearly doubling the capacity of Moore. They’re also planning to simulate what might happen if the district moved fifth grade to middle school to make space for pre-K in the elementary schools.

Sarah Warren, chief of strategy for Portland Public Schools, said the numbers are meant to help guide the district’s conversation, but are not a conclusion.

“No one should read this as a particular outcome that is predetermined,” she said.

Warren said the details would be presented to the working group looking at the middle school operations, whose recommendations will eventually come before the full board.

“They are kind of scary numbers, admittedly, and clearly we’re going to have to raise money down the road — not too far down the road — one way or another,” she said. “But I just want people to know that we’re using this to have good conversations and study the problem, not to get quickly to a predetermined outcome.”

Sawin, from Harriman, said the district’s elementary schools are broadly in good shape, but the high schools also need work. Portland is currently applying for a grant from the state to consolidate all of its high schools into one campus that would also include technical programming and higher education.

A class of students walks through the then-new lobby in the recently renovated Lyseth Elementary School in Portland in 2021. (Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer)

The last major infrastructure project in the district wrapped up in 2024, after voters approved a $64 million bond in 2017 to renovate four elementary schools: Longfellow, Lyseth, Presumpscot and Reiche. Harriman was the architect on those projects as well.

Harriman’s full facilities study is due to be completed by December.