What a Shrinking City Means for Its Elementary Schools

Portland, unfortunately, is no longer a growth story.

For years, the city’s population grew as quickly and reliably as Nike’s earnings, or Intel’s chip shipments (or the invasive ivy that climbs trees in the West Hills). Now, Portland is shrinking, populationwise, and the city’s public schools are strapped for students, especially its kindergartens. If you have kids, and they are now in high school or beyond, you won’t believe how much things have changed.

There are empty classrooms in schools that used to be packed. Kindergarten open houses are more like hard-sell pitches from time-share salesmen at Hawaiian resorts.

Rachel Saslow, a reporter and mother of three, wrote about the trend in the April 12 issue of WW.

“Portland’s K-12 schools are losing students at more than double the rate of the rest of the country and at one and a half times the rate of Oregon schools as a whole,” Saslow wrote. “That’s an existential threat to Portland Public Schools because funding follows enrollment.”

Listen to this episode of Dive for the story behind the story to find out how Saslow—who has a lot of kids in the game—stumbled on this barnburner in plain sight.

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