Portland Public Schools teaches children math as complex as calculus, but made a simple arithmetic mistake potentially worth millions and tried to keep the error secret.
Portland Public Schools flubbed basic addition and awarded the bid to plan the $146 million redesign of Madison High School to the wrong firm, giving the important design contract to the bidder that the official district vetting team rated second-best.
How? Bad formulas on an Excel spreadsheet.
Losing the project was a devastating to partners Opsis Architecture and Dao Architecture. In their bid proposal, Opsis, a larger, more established firm, joined with Dao, a minority-woman owned firm, as a way to increase equity in the architecture profession. The team had done the master plan for the high school and felt invested in the Madison community.