More Students Choose Alternatives to Portland Public Schools

The news comes as PPS’s enrollment is dipping faster than at school districts statewide.

Parents and students attend a seismic risk meeting at Beverly Cleary K-8 School. (Kenzie Bruce)
By Joanna Hou

At a May 12 meeting of the Portland Public Schools Board policy committee, committee chair Julia Brim-Edwards sounded the alarm on the district’s capture rate—the percentage of kids living within the district who enroll in PPS schools.

In answer to a question from Brim-Edwards about enrollment decline fueling the district’s $40 million budget shortfall, district officials wrote that the capture rate of students enrolling in PPS schools this academic year was 69% for high school, 71% for middle school, and 75% for elementary school.

The rates, calculated using census data, vary by high school attendance area and grade level, but are generally lower than PPS rates in the past. The news also comes as PPS’s enrollment is dipping faster than at school districts statewide.

Researchers at Portland State University, who compile an annual forecast and report on PPS enrollment, indicated the district’s “recent high” in overall capture rate was 83% in the 2018–19 school year.

Brim-Edwards is using that data to push the School Board to make the PPS’s kindergarten enrollment policy more friendly to families, especially as it prepares to launch a districtwide enrollment campaign. At the meeting, she said the enrollment trends were broadly concerning.

“I’ve never seen our capture rate so low at PPS,” she said. “That shows that we’re losing lots of families…a third of families.”

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