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Portland Public Schools officials presented on Thursday a preliminary plan to scale up comprehensive academic offerings at Jefferson High School.
The presentation came before the Portland School Board’s teaching, learning and enrollment committee in an apparent response to concerns from the public hearings that district officials have been holding to get feedback about expanding Jefferson’s enrollment. Ahead of a $466 million modernization project, the School Board instructed the superintendent to boost enrollment at the school so it could sustain programming comparable to other district high schools. (Jefferson this year enrolls 391 students, a fraction of the district’s other high schools.)
To fill Jefferson, PPS has decided to end dual assignment zones, which currently allow students who live in Jefferson’s boundary to choose between that school and Grant, McDaniel or Roosevelt high schools. Parents have largely opted to send their students to those other surrounding schools, which all offer a wider breadth of electives, career technical education courses, and Advanced Placement classes. The class of 2031, today’s seventh graders, will be the first class without a choice if the School Board moves forward with redistricting in January.
But as WW previously reported, part of boosting Jefferson’s enrollment will be selling more parents on the idea. And though parents for and against the ending of dual assignment agree on little, they have similar concerns about whether the district will be able to provide similar academic programming to its other high schools (“Choosy Moms Choose Jeff,” Dec. 10).
Dr. Filip Hristić, PPS’s senior director of secondary academics, said at the meeting that the goal is not merely to add AP courses and provide them as an option, but to build advanced coursework into a core experience at the school.
That could look like folding pre-AP coursework into ninth grade core classes and introducing AP courses in social studies or language arts in the 10th grade. Hristić said that would set students up for a combination of AP coursework and dual credit options in their upperclassmen years.
“What we have found from looking at data is that at schools that identify AP or [International Baccalaureate] for all…is that the racial disproportionality that exists throughout the country and in many of our schools simply disappear when college level coursework is part of the core for coursework,” Hristić said.
Modernization also presents an opportunity to bolster Jefferson’s career technical offerings, Hristić said, to create pathways aligned with “high wage, high growth, and high innovation” sectors in the state. That means building up hands-on learning opportunities at the school, including from dual credit and internships. And PPS officials hope that they can build on Jefferson’s arts legacy through more visual and performing arts offerings, among them technical theater and costume design.
Preliminary plans also suggest the district will continue to leverage some key partnerships with Portland Community College and Self Enhancement Inc.
“The opportunity now is to move from multiple individual partnerships to a coordinated learning ecosystem,” Hristić continued, adding partnerships will help support everything from mentorship to dual credit coursework. “This approach positions Jefferson not only as a school with strong partnerships, but as a regional hub where students move seamlessly between school, college, community organizations, and industry.”
Officials also have outlined loose time frames for scaling up programming at Jefferson. From December to August 2026, they will conduct community engagement with affected stakeholders and build up course offerings for the 2026–27 school year. This will also be the time frame when staff undergo professional development for pre-AP teaching and when brainstorming CTE pathways starts.
From fall of 2026 to January 2027, the district will conduct family orientation on updated coursework; collect early feedback and report to the School Board; and finalize how Jefferson’s current partnerships will play out for dual credit, mentorship and internships.
