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Ken Cavagnolo, an astrophysicist turned artificial-intelligence executive, will run against Christy Splitt for the Portland School Board.
The two will run for the board’s Zone 1 seat, which covers much of Southwest Portland, including Ida B. Wells High School. The seat, formerly held by Andrew Scott, is open for a special election after Scott moved out of his zone during his term. In January, the School Board appointed Splitt to a six-month term, and the winner of the election will serve out Scott’s term until June 2027.
Unlike most School Board candidates this election cycle, Cavagnolo has no ties to Portland Public Schools, beyond the district being the one in his backyard. But he says education has shaped his life—first as a Ph.D. recipient for astrophysics and later as he was invited to give elementary and middle school kids talks about space.
Cavagnolo says his main motivation to run, and main priority on the board, would be to improve student outcomes at PPS. There has been a demonstrable decline in student outcomes in the district over the past 11 years, he says, and graduation rates have increased nonetheless. (In recent years, education experts have referred to this phenomenon as the honesty gap.)
Cavagnolo cites a recent PPS board meeting as an example of this; the district presented high graduation rates for the class of 2024 alongside a lowered readiness rate. He says it was concerning that the School Board did not ask many questions about the disparity.
“If the board is not invested in that as the No. 1 burning issue confronting Portland Public Schools, then what is it all about?” he says. “What is the mission [of the board] if it’s not to give students the opportunity to have a high-quality education? That’s the No. 1 absolute bottom-line issue for me.”
Cavagnolo says it’s up to members of the School Board to collaborate with the superintendent, teachers and students in the district to identify problems and create an “operational and tactical plan” to fix the crisis. He says he thinks the job of a board is to advise the district, not just approve the budget and superintendent.
Splitt, his opponent, is a government relations coordinator for the Oregon Department of Energy. Since joining the board in January, she has led efforts on it to advocate for more school funding in Salem. She has also been part of the Hayhurst Elementary School PTA as both president and treasurer.
She has collected many of the notable endorsements in the race thus far, including ones from the Portland Association of Teachers and a couple of current and former board members.
Cavagnolo has collected no endorsements in the race so far, a choice he says is intentional.
“There’s never a danger that you think that there’s somebody behind the curtain who’s telling me what to do or say, or who’s meddling in my business,” he says. “I am 100% fully and totally accountable to the school system, to the voters, to the public. That is my intent.”