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Portland School Board members on Tuesday night agreed to end a policy that allowed students to opt out of attending Jefferson High School, and to re-draw the high school’s boundaries with maps recommended by Superintendent Dr. Kimberlee Armstrong.
The votes was unanimous to end Jefferson’s “dual assignment zones,” and the vote was 6-1 to adopt Armstrong’s recommendation. (Board member Stephanie Engelsman was the sole board member to vote against the recommendation, though she did not immediately provide a justification for why.) The resolutions’ passage means today’s seventh graders living inside Jefferson’s boundaries will be the first class without an option to attend either Grant, McDaniel, or Roosevelt high school.
Jefferson is slated for a $466 million modernization, and currently enrolls 391 students. Portland Public Schools officials have for months floated that they would end the policy allowing for student choice to boost enrollment.
Now, they also have the stamp of approval from the School Board to draw the new boundaries the way the Superintendent recommends. Known widely as “Scenario C,” these new boundaries will zone Peninsula Elementary School and the Beach Elementary School Spanish dual immersion program to Roosevelt; Irvington Elementary School to Grant; and all other elementary schools feeding into Ockley Green and Harriet Tubman middle schools, alongside Vernon K-8 and Faubion PK-8, into Jefferson.
The votes bring an end to a policy that has drained Jefferson’s enrollment since 2011, though the school has suffered since the 1980s from various desegregation and district policies that have emptied its halls. Today, the school’s size is comparable to some of PPS’s elementary schools.
“It’s not every day that you have the opportunity to right a historic wrong,” said board member Rashelle Chase-Miller. “Jeff means so much to our community, and I want to hold space for that. It’s really an amazing opportunity and privilege to be here now in this moment when we see the promise of Jeff being restored.”
Scenario C emerged as the leading candidate for Armstrong in early December because it balanced enrollment across affected high schools and allowed most students living within one mile of a high school to attend their closest school.
But it was, in some ways, also the scenario that didn’t please anyone. Proponents of the other strongly considered scenario, Scenario B, said it was wrong to split Harriet Tubman up and send relatively affluent Irvington students to Grant while the other three feeders routed to Jefferson. (Where Irvington is zoned is the sole difference between B and C.) And Irvington families who want their children to attend Grant hoped the district would consider a scenario where they could be joined by students at Sabin Elementary School, a historic Grant feeder. Under both leading scenarios, Sabin is zoned to Jefferson.
Like conversations nationwide on redistricting, discussions of new Portland boundaries were at times heated and emotional. Since the district began community engagement in mid-October, there has been a camp of parents eager to send their children to Jefferson, and a strong opposition effort from some in the Irvington and Sabin elementary school communities.
The redistricting effort raised hard questions in North and Northeast Portland, as WW reported in December. For some families, it was a reckoning on where liberal values met their own kids—some parents drew the line at sending their kids into a building that currently lacks comprehensive programming and extracurriculars. And for Jefferson families and supporters, the process led to hard questions about why the high school’s students had not been given the same access to opportunities guaranteed to students at other schools in the district. (“Choosy Moms Choose Jeff,” Dec. 10).
But at the Tuesday meeting where the School Board approved the resolution, the board room was oddly quiet. No one was registered for public comment, and most of the discussion centered around future plans for Jefferson. Compared to the outcry in inboxes and at community forums through late fall and early winter, the contrast was notable.
Some School Board members outlined their initial preferences for Scenario B, but noted that Scenario C best balanced enrollment across the three high schools most affected by the policy change.
The resolution presented to the School Board also included some remedy to quell concerns from polar opposite sides of the debate, who found common ground in wanting to hold PPS officials accountable to deliver their plan for comparable academic and extracurricular programming at Jefferson.
“This next chapter will be written together and require focused, collective effort,” Margaret Calvert, the district’s assistant superintendent of school improvement and modernization. “So that the students at Jefferson and all four high schools can attend well-resourced schools where they flourish and demonstrate their brilliance.”
The resolution outlines PPS’s commitment to continued engagement with students, families and staff to scale programming and development of academic pathways. It commits to funding up to two additional full-time positions at Jefferson each year through 2030-31, even when enrollment might not justify them. (The 2030-31 school year is when the student body is projected to cross a 1,100 student threshold to justify comprehensive programming.)
It also commits to notifying families at Jefferson, Grant, McDaniel, and Roosevelt to annual progress updates to the board regarding those specific schools. Those reports will include “changes in staffing levels, descriptions of staff recruiting efforts, how stakeholders were involved in identifying and designing course offerings, impacts on athletics, Visual and Performing Arts, extracurricular activities, and other pertinent information.”
Engelsman proposed an amendment for the district to also commit to a course catalog to be presented to families, part of a timeline the district presented but not part of the resolution. Instead of an amendment, Armstrong committed to honoring that timeline.
School Board student representative Ian Ritorto also voted against Armstrong’s recommendation, noting a vote from the 22-person district student council, where he says the vast majority of students supported Option B. (Three representatives supported option C, he says, two from Grant and one from Jefferson. The other Jefferson representative was absent.) He also raised concerns as a Roosevelt High School student about tanking enrollment at that school. Roosevelt is, in all scenarios PPS was seriously considering, set to be the lowest enrolled high school in the district in a few years.
Ritorto said all students, however, were in support of filling Jefferson.
“Everyone agreed that something is fundamentally wrong and we need to change this,” Ritorto said. “It’s necessary to make sure Jefferson has a real future as a comprehensive high school.”
