Beyond parks
Every map on this site stops at the edge of a park. The public also owns school grounds with fields, courts, tracks, and playgrounds on them. This page puts them on the map, says what is recorded there, and asks what opening one would take.
School grounds are the largest pool of public open space that is not on the parks map.
Inside the city limits, 135 public school grounds cover about 951acres. Metro's outdoor recreation inventory lists 110 of them. The atlas has never drawn them until now.
- Who owns them. Portland Public Schools (95), David Douglas School District (16), 16 across 5 other districts, and 8with no district in Metro's record.
- What is recorded on them. Playgrounds on 81, sport fields on 77, basketball courts on 47, and running tracks on 25, by OpenStreetMap.
- What is left off. Colleges, hospitals, and the juvenile detention school are excluded. Three school grounds that sit inside a PP&R park are counted with the park.
- Sizes are Metro's. Acreage comes from Metro's 2014 outdoor recreation inventory where it exists, otherwise from the site outline.
For youA gap on the parks map is not always a gap on the ground. Before the City buys land, it can ask what the public already owns a block away.
How a school ground gets onto this page
Metro's RLIS school-site outlines are filtered to public K-12 grounds whose center falls inside Portland's city limits and outside every PP&R park polygon. Each ground is joined to Metro's school points for its district and grades, and to Metro's ORCA inventory for acreage.
OpenStreetMap pitches, playgrounds, tracks, and gardens whose center falls inside the outline are attached to the ground and translated into the same facility keys the coverage map uses. The pipeline is rerun monthly.
For some neighborhoods, the closest court or field the public owns is behind a school.
For each headline facility, this counts the school grounds that have it on record and how many of those sit farther than the City's reach standard from any park that has it.
47 school grounds have one on record. 7 of them sit beyond 1 mile from any park with one.
- Ventura Park Elementary · 1.9 mi
- Stephenson Elementary · 1.9 mi
- Odyssey School · 1.5 mi
- Menlo Park Elementary · 1.5 mi
- Mill Park Elementary · 1.3 mi
77 school grounds have one on record. 1 of them sit beyond 2 miles from any park with one.
- Forest Park Elementary · 3.5 mi
- Stephenson Elementary · 1.9 mi
- Jackson Middle · 1.6 mi
- Markham Elementary · 1.5 mi
- Portland SD 1J · 1.5 mi
81 school grounds have one on record. 20 of them sit beyond ½ mile from any park with one.
- Odyssey School · 1.4 mi
- Stephenson Elementary · 1.1 mi
- Powell Butte Elementary · 1.1 mi
- Glencoe Elementary · 0.8 mi
- Glenfair Elementary · 0.8 mi
25 school grounds have one on record. 25 of them sit beyond ½ mile from any park with one.
- Parklane Elementary and Oliver Middle · 6.4 mi
- Alice Ott Middle · 6.2 mi
- David Douglas High · 5.2 mi
- Sitton Elementary · 5.0 mi
- Ron Russell Middle · 5.0 mi
- Farthest first. Each list ranks grounds by how far the nearest park with that facility is, so the top of the list is where a school ground would close the biggest gap.
- Recorded, not verified. A court on OpenStreetMap is a court someone mapped. Condition, lights, and hours are not in any public layer.
For youWhere the nearest public court is a school court, the cheapest gap-closer may be an agreement rather than a construction project.
Portland already opens school grounds with the parks bureau. The question is how far that reaches.
PP&R runs SUN Community Schools at eleven school sites, ten of them inside the city limits. Council has also approved a joint-use agreement for athletic facilities once before.
- Alice Ott Middle · David DouglasPP&R page
- Arleta K-5 · Portland Public SchoolsPP&R page
- Beaumont Middle · Portland Public SchoolsPP&R page
- Faubion Elementary · Portland Public SchoolsPP&R page
- Grout Elementary · Portland Public SchoolsPP&R page
- Lane Middle · Portland Public SchoolsPP&R page
- Mt. Tabor Middle · Portland Public SchoolsPP&R page
- Parkrose High · ParkrosePP&R page
- Roseway Heights Middle · Portland Public SchoolsPP&R page
- Sitton Elementary · Portland Public SchoolsPP&R page
- The precedent exists. In May 2022 Council approved a joint-use agreement with Portland Public Schools for athletic facilities, with reciprocal fee waivers (Ordinance 190827). Its term ran through May 31, 2025. We have not found a published successor; whether one is in force is a question for PP&R and PPS, listed in the register.
- A school park is a real category. Three school grounds already sit inside a PP&R park and are counted with it: Winterhaven in Brooklyn School Park, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Park, and SEI Academy in DeNorval Unthank Park.
- The national bar. The Trust for Public Land counts a schoolyard as park space only where a formal open-access policy or joint-use agreement exists. Under that standard, a school ground counts toward park access once it is formally open, not before.
- Access is the district's call. Each of the five school districts with grounds in the city sets its own after-hours rules. No public dataset lists them.
For youThe mechanism is already on the books. What is missing is a published list of which grounds are open, when, and under what agreement.
Opening a school ground requires an access agreement and a site-specific operating plan.
Existing school grounds are candidates for investigation. Public use may require capital work, accessibility improvements, staffing, cleaning, insurance, and agreement with the school district. Existing ownership and maintenance do not establish spare capacity.
- An agreement. Who opens the gate, who insures, who repairs, who schedules. Ordinance 190827 is the template for the athletic side.
- A program. SUN Community Schools show the model: a PP&R presence on school grounds, with the district as host.
- A published list. Which grounds are open after hours and on which days, so the coverage map can count them the way TPL does.
- Gate question 8. Before creating a new asset, the manual asks whether an existing one could be activated instead. This page is the start of that answer for land the City does not own.
- Current status of the PPS joint-use agreementOrdinance 190827's term ended May 31, 2025; whether a successor is in force decides which school fields and gyms the public can count on.PP&R Recreation; PPS Facilities
Public records request - Park development cost per acreComparable development, access, and ongoing operating costs are needed to compare a new park with school-ground access. Confirm whether SDC planning estimates apply to the proposed sites.PP&R Planning (SDC methodology, efiles 7780583)
Public records request - School-ground public-access policy by districtWhich grounds are open after hours, so a school court can be counted the way the Trust for Public Land counts it.Portland Public, David Douglas, Parkrose, Reynolds, and Centennial school districts
Partner data-share
For youIf you live near a school ground on this page, the question for your district and for PP&R is simple: is it open, and if not, what would it take?
If a school ground near you is open after hours, or was and no longer is, say which. Every reply improves the record.
Tell us about a school ground →Every ground on this page traces to a public record.
Outlines from Metro, features from OpenStreetMap, programs from PP&R's own pages, the agreement from Council's record.
School-site outlines, district and grade joins, and acreage are from Metro RLIS (School Sites, Schools, ORCA Sites). Features inside each ground are © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL, fetched through the Overpass API on 2026-09-04. SUN Community School sites are from PP&R's pages. The joint-use precedent is Ordinance 190827. Joint-use status checked in public records on 2026-09-12. Distances and the "could be activated" label are our model.
Data refreshed 2026-09-12
The rule this page applies, activate before you create, comes from the allocation manual and its eight-question gate.