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Leaders at Portland Public Schools are confronting their enrollment crisis amid recognition that declining numbers spell trouble for the district’s finances and resources.
District officials expanded on their strategy to retain and recruit families and students at a Thursday meeting of a Portland School Board subcommittee dedicated to teaching, learning and enrollment. The relaunch of the subcommittee comes as members of the new School Board list reversing the decline as one of their top priorities.
Top of mind for those leaders is addressing low enrollment at Jefferson High School, which enrolled 459 students in the last academic year. Ahead of a $466 million modernization project funded by the district’s last two bonds, Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong has emphasized her desire to reconsider a policy that allows students living in Jefferson’s zone to attend other high schools.
Currently, students living in Jefferson’s boundaries have the option to attend a number of other PPS high schools (Grant, Roosevelt, and McDaniel), all of which boast enrollment numbers that at least triple Jefferson’s.
That conversation about ending what’s known as a “dual assignment zone” is already starting. PPS proposes to phase out the dual assignment policy starting in fall 2027, which would affect families with children in seventh grade or younger this year.
Margaret Calvert, the district’s assistant superintendent of school improvement and modernization, walked board members through how the district plans to talk with families about removing the dual assignment zone.
Through a combination of back-to-school nights and community engagement sessions at affected middle schools in October (Ockley Green, Harriet Tubman, Vernon K-8, and Faubion K-8), the district plans to share its proposed scenarios, collect community input and ultimately recommend its final strategy by Dec. 10.
“There is declining enrollment overall, but the gap between schools, if we do nothing, remains at well under 1,000 students,” Calvert said. “The variety and richness of programming is reflective of the size of the school.”
Armstrong said the district is approaching the dual assignment change conversation in “an open-ended way,” and is looking for community guidelines to help determine timelines and and other provisions.
Jefferson will also serve as the pilot to a marketing campaign the district undertook in spring to boost its image at large and in specific neighborhoods. For the localized approach, Candice Grose, chief of communications for PPS, says the district is targeting the top five lowest-enrolled ZIP codes across Portland and providing branding tool kits to different schools—with Jefferson receiving its first. A more global campaign looks to emphasize the achievements of PPS alumni and market the district as a launching point for students’ futures.
Marketing campaign research, Grose says, has also been “brutally honest” in helping the district acknowledge its pain points with families.
District officials told board member Christy Splitt that PPS was targeting ZIP codes that have lost the largest number of students over time. Splitt pushed for the district to consider using catchment data to determine where it directs its resources (the district’s capture rate, which is how many families choose PPS over other alternatives, has also been on the decline).
“It might be good to consider in the next round, not just the ZIP code approach,” Splitt said. “If we’re just looking at the enrollment over time, we might be reaching out to areas where maybe there’s fewer kids that we can grab.”
