A few weeks before the end of the school year, staff at Woodburn’s Success High School received the news: their alternative high school wasn’t closing, but moving to co-locate with Woodburn High School this fall.

District officials said several of the district’s preschool classrooms will move to the Success building. In the May 22 release announcing the news, district officials wrote that they’ll save money on renting a space for the preschool.

The timing of the administration’s decision — near the end of the school year and without community input — lands at a tense time for the district’s relationship with its staff and families at the alternative school, who say their students benefit from a school separate from the high school that many of them left.

But alternative school families and staff question suddenly moving some of the district’s most vulnerable students.

“The idea of having a separate building and building a place of safety for the kids was really important,” said Misha Pfliger, a social studies teacher at Success. “A lot of them really appreciate the opportunity to just completely start over fresh.”

Success is small, serving a little over 100 students, according to state data. Similar to the Woodburn School District, Success serves mostly Latino students. Slightly more of its students qualify for special education services than the district average.

For students, alternative schools often provide smaller classes and more individualized attention for those who have not been successful in traditional high schools. Students come to an alternative school for a variety of reasons, including discipline problems, attendance issues, or challenges at home.

Isaac Baez moved from Woodburn High to Success back when he was a sophomore. Connie Lopez, Isaac’s mother, said her son felt overwhelmed at the main high school. Now a rising senior at Success, Lopez said her son feels heard and like the teachers care about him.

“He loves all his teachers, all the teachers love him,” she said.

Pfliger said having a separate building provided an opportunity to get students “interested in school again.”

“For a lot of these kids, they never liked school or it never really sat well with them, or they struggled with it,” he said.

If Success wasn’t an option for Isaac, Connie Lopez said her son was considering an online school. Now, she said he wants to get his GED to avoid going back for his senior year.

Isaac’s father, Jorge Lopez, graduated from Success years ago. At a June board meeting, he asked the school board to reconsider the decision to move the school.

“We are demanding transparency, accountability and a thorough explanation of how this decision was made,” Jorge Lopez said. “More importantly, we are seeking the board to listen to the voices of students, families, and educators who know firsthand why Success works.”

District touts savings, student options in housing preschool in alternative high school building

District administrators said moving Success to make way for the district’s preschool program will cost about the same as a one-year lease for preschool space: $123,000.

“Rather than spending another year paying for leased space, the district will make a one-time investment to prepare a district-owned facility,” district officials said in a transition document shared with OPB. “This approach eliminates the need for ongoing lease payments, allowing those dollars to be redirected to student programs in future years.” District officials said they’ll be adding a playground.

District officials say they also ended a different lease, for office space, that will save the district $84,000 annually. They said the re-purposing of the Success space shows good “stewardship of public resources”.

For Success students, district officials say the move to the main high school will mean increased access to electives and career technical education programs.

“By housing Success, evening school, and GED programs on the same campus, students will be able to transition more easily between programs based on their individual needs,” district officials said. “Students balancing work, family responsibilities, or credit recovery will have more scheduling options without the added barrier of traveling to multiple locations.”

Woodburn received support for Success High School through a construction bond voters approved in 2015. In addition to safety upgrades and building repairs, the district said the 20-year bond would help “construct, furnish and equip Success High School” and possibly purchase land. Before the new building opened, Success had been housed in an old church.

District officials said that while the school has served as an alternative high school as the bond promised, the district is now “adapting the use of district facilities to meet current student needs, enrollment realities, and financial challenges.”

Photos of Success from the architecture firm that designed the school show an open common area with tiered seating, with small classrooms along the sides of the building. Some parents, staff and community members say making the high school facility work as a preschool will require costly renovations.

At a late June school board meeting, parents and teachers shared comments about the school’s move. Speakers included Rep. Lesly Muñoz (D-Woodburn).

“We cannot meet the needs of one group of students by destabilizing another,” Rep. Munoz said.

“Have we fully assessed the impact this move will have on attendance, graduation rates, mental health, academic performance, and school connectedness?”

Backlash from families and staff

Woodburn doesn’t appear to have any policies related to closing facilities or programs. Students, families and staff say there should’ve been better communication or more opportunities to talk about Success’ relocation.

After staff and families learned of the planned move in May, they began circulating a petition to keep Success in its building. The petition received almost 100 signatures from an equal spread of staff, students and community members.

“It was a decision that was just made without anybody really having an opportunity to weigh the benefits or costs,” Woodburn Education Association president Tony Salm said. “It was just sprung on us.”

Staff, families and community members plan to meet July 13 to discuss next steps.

The union representing Woodburn teachers has been negotiating with the district for over a year, and in June, the school board voted to declare an impasse.

Like other districts in recent years, improving workload and compensation are union goals, with administrators maintaining they lack funding to meet those demands. The two sides disagree about available funding, and the situation with Success is creating a new point of friction.

The union has submitted a request to bargain due to a change in working conditions for Success staff like Pfliger.

“I’ve had staff say things like, ‘why do they hate us?’ which to me is concerning because if you’re talking about ostensible labor management relations, that’s probably the worst place to start from — that your boss hates you,” Pfliger said.

The school year won’t start for a couple of months, but Woodburn school staff have seen moving trucks outside the school. A member of the union for educational assistants, custodians and other school employees said classrooms have already been emptied.

Success students and their families are invited to orientations in August. Pfliger worries about how his students will adjust to their new school.

“These kids, what we’ve built for them and what they’ve built with us, it’s been helpful and amazing,” he said.

“To pull them away and to move them somewhere else, it risks kind of having all of that go away. And a lot of kids might suffer because of that.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/07/02/woodburn-high-school-alternative-program-preschool/