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The Portland School Board will weigh a proposal by Superintendent Carole Smith on Tuesday to slightly raise the enrollment cap at Benson Polytechnic High School—a change that could boost Benson at the expense of less popular high schools such as Jefferson, Roosevelt and Madison.
Smith's proposal is a response to a request by the school board in July to re-examine the Benson enrollment cap that Smith and a previous school board put in place after PPS's 2010 high-school redesign. The cap depressed enrollment at Benson—a successful, career-focused high school that draws students from across the district by lottery—in order to increase enrollment at struggling Jefferson, Roosevelt and Madison.
Five years after Smith's high school redesign, high school enrollment remains lopsided even with the cap in place, and big schools such as Lincoln (with 1,692 students) are still able to offer far more programs and classes than small schools such as Madison (with 1,127 students). A central goal of the redesign was to balance enrollment.
Meanwhile, PPS held Benson's student population down. Ten years ago, Benson drew close to 1,300 students. This year, it has 914 students, with a cap of 275 new freshman. In 2015, it drew nearly 450 freshman applicants.
To Tom Koehler, chairman of the school board, it doesn't make sense to turn away students from a successful and popular option. Benson also has a higher graduation rate than Roosevelt, Jefferson and Madison.
"Benson is a shining example of something that's working," he says, "and we ought to expand that."
Smith, however, is not recommending getting rid of a second enrollment tool at Benson—a so-called "regional balancer"—that was pitched in 2014 as a way of making sure the Northeast Portland School draws equally from all parts of the district. In practice, the "regional balancer" has blocked many students at Roosevelt, Jefferson and Madison from accessing Benson.
"The balancer's impact on the lottery results is clear," a report from PPS reads. "The percentage of students from Jefferson, Madison and Roosevelt clusters who initially were granted admission through the lottery went from 61 percent in 2013 to 49 percent in 2014."
Last year, 115 students from Roosevelt applied to go to Benson. Four students from Lincoln did.
However, if PPS raises the overall enrollment cap, the effect of the "regional balancer" will diminish, PPS staffers write in Tuesday's recommendation to the board.
Smith's recommendation is to raise the cap on freshman next year to 300. The cap would rise to 365 the following year.
The staff report to the school board on the change contains no analysis of the potential impact on enrollment at Roosevelt, Jefferson and Madison.
Willamette Week