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Portland Public Schools announced Feb. 10 it will close its high school program at the Metropolitan Learning Center, a decision families have criticized for being made without community engagement.
The closure, first reported by The Oregonian, affects only the high school grades at MLC, a K-12 alternative school in Northwest Portland that borders Couch Park. In an email sent to parents on Tuesday evening, the district cited under-enrollment at the high school level as its reason for closing the upper grades. Funding limitations “make it increasingly difficult to provide a full, robust high school experience with the breadth of coursework, services, and extracurricular opportunities students deserve,” the email read.
There are 41 students enrolled in MLC’s high school grades, according to a district spokesperson, which is lower than most district alternative schools and programs. Now, however, 33 students who are freshman, sophomores and juniors at the school will be required to find a new program for next fall. So will eighth graders previously admitted to the MLC high school.
Parents of high school students at MLC say the decision was abrupt and came with no warning. On Friday, Feb. 6, they received an announcement that there would be an “important school community meeting” regarding the high schoolers. The meeting announcing the closure, led by two PPS officials, was scheduled at 3:45 pm on Tuesday, Feb. 10, which meant many students were left to process the information alone.
That was unnerving for many parents, especially because they say the school has a large population of neurodivergent, queer and transgender students, who took refuge at the school. “The vast majority of parents could not attend [the meeting] and sent their children to attend alone,” said Marian Hammond, a parent at the school. “I watched as a dozen neurodivergent teenagers tried to absorb traumatizing information without any supportive safety net. This is inexcusable and could have been avoided by family-sensitive scheduling.”
Rachael Radick, a parent of a junior at MLC, says the announcement also came just hours before a Portland School Board meeting, giving parents no avenue to air their concerns as public comment. She says there was no community engagement ahead of the sudden announcement.
Radick says MLC provided a “rare, affirming space” that is now being ripped away from other students. “These students already carry a disproportionate burden of stigma, bullying, and discrimination, and the research is very clear about the life‑and‑death stakes,” Radick wrote in a message to PPS officials. “You are removing [the space] at the exact time when data show that transgender and gender diverse youth face extreme suicide risk and when hostile policies are multiplying nationwide.”
Dr. Isaac Cardona, the district’s chief of schools, says the district is normally able to engage students and families ahead of final determinations. “In this instance, district budget planning and staffing timelines required action within a compressed window, which limited our ability to conduct broader engagement specific to this program in advance.”
Cardona adds: “We recognize that the pace of this announcement has been difficult for some families. Our focus now is on meaningful engagement and individualized transition planning to support every student impacted.”
Now, many parents of MLS students are frantically scrambling to find their students another high school. In a frequently asked questions document, the district outlined the options. All MLC students will be able to enroll in their neighborhood high school in 2026–27 school year, and can request transfers to other neighborhood schools provided they have a valid reason for not attending their own neighborhood school, and will be able to consider other alternative programs.
District spokeswoman Valerie Feder says affected students will also get priority consideration for two lottery high schools: Benson Polytechnic and Jefferson.
“We are going to work with every child and family until they find the school they want to go to,” Feder says. “We will work with them as long as it takes.”
Chris Buehler, a parent of a high schooler at MLC, says his son ended up at MLC “after the utter failure of PPS to support him at his neighborhood school.”
Buehler says that while he has another child who is thriving in a neighborhood school, it simply isn’t the option for everyone. The least PPS can do, Buehler says, is guarantee a spot for each affected high schooler at their next best choice. “It’s unconscionable to dump them back out into the same system that has just failed them and tell them to try their luck with their second choice,” he adds.
Buehler and other parents have also reported logistical concerns. While PPS suggested reaching out to PPS Reconnection Services to help facilitate the transition, those who reached out said coordinators were unaware that MLC was closing and could not provide relief.
Students are pushing back on the change as well. A petition they’ve started has already garnered more than 170 signatures. In a message to MLC community members, students and teachers outlined their intentions to fight the closure with the School Board.
“We are taking action to try to persuade the school board to keep our high school open and to invest in alternate models of education that focus on students who are have faced oppression–particuarly those who are queer, trans, bullied, neurodivergent, disabled and in need of something more small and personal,” students and teachers wrote in a Wednesday message shared with WW.
