Business owner Mike Roach wears a white T-shirt in support of Rieke Elementary School. Just past the lectern sits Jason Trombley, the chair of Portland's District-wide Boundary Review Advisory Commitee. In the background, parents in light blue shirts represent Bridlemile Elementary.
Rob Manning / OPB
You don’t need to know where Bridlemile Elementary is to recognize school land mines such as school choice, class division and public distrust.
Potential school boundary changes that rankled Portland's west side for a year and a half were finally decided this week.
But the solutions dredged up fundamental tensions within the Portland Public Schools.
Schools near downtown Portland are crowded and getting worse. The long-term solution involves building more schools. But in the short term, it means moving students around. To get specific, sending kids south to schools with more space.
Caught in the middle is Bridlemile Elementary, a neighborhood school in Southwest Portland.
"It feels the latest proposal solves other schools' problems at the expense of Bridlemile," said Trista Parks, the mother of two students at Bridlemile. "Our community is bearing the brunt of the overcrowding at Lincoln."
Chair of the Portland Public Schools Board of Directors, Tom Koehler, and Board Director Amy Kohnstamm listen as parents testify about boundary changes and program moves for west-side schools, April 19, 2016.
Rob Manning / OPB
Lincoln High School is beyond overcrowded. To solve that problem, west side boundary proposals looked to align parts of Bridlemile with Wilson High, rather than Lincoln. But parents fiercely opposed separating children who’d essentially grown up together by drawing a district-mandated boundary line.
Bridlemile parent Brett Corick said whether the line affected middle or high school didn't matter.
"There's not a good time to split kids. That's wrong. So I think the goal is to not split the kids and allow there to be an alternative," Corick said.
The parents' preferred alternative involves school choice, essentially letting them pick where their kids go. In recent years, Portland has limited choice to special programs. But the district left in place a practice allowing Bridlemile students to pick from two middle school options.
Parents wanted to continue that — and give it more support — as a way to lure some students away from the Lincoln High track. Board member Mike Rosen was intrigued.
Portland Public Schools board directors Mike Rosen (left) and Steve Buel voted in the two-member minority against boundary and building changes for the district's west side, April 19.
Rob Manning / OPB
"The district under the transfer option could test it, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work," Rosen suggested to his board colleagues and district staff at one meeting.
But the numbers didn't work, according to PPS enrollment and transfer director Judy Brennan.
She said a computer model testing the transfer idea found transfers were unlikely to reduce overcrowding at Lincoln as much as a boundary change would. Brennan said allowing parents to choose between two neighborhood schools also raised some questions.
"This sets a precedent that we don't have anywhere else in PPS regarding middle school choice, and choice between comprehensive high schools," Brennan said. "And when we consider that increased choice, and that precedent-setting, it occurs to us that it's counter to several of our really important district-wide fundamentals."
Superintendent Carole Smith had proposed a firm geographic boundary. Bridlemile parents raised doubts about the district's data. Parent Amy Armstrong warned board members they were setting up a class divide in the west hills.
"What this final map is doing is drawing lines around the most affluent parts of Bridlemile and ensuring their path to Lincoln," Armstrong said. "Does the district really want to implement a plan that creates a Bridlemile divided along class lines?"
Lincoln is downtown Portland's high school, with a student body of more than 1600 students.
Rob Manning
Board member Amy Kohnstamm, who represents the west side, thought she’d come up with a compromise at the April 19 board meeting: a line through Bridlemile sending kids to different middle schools.
Kohnstamm thought parents would favor a clean split at middle school, rather than having kids together at middle school, then split for high school.
But parents let Kohnstamm know they didn't like it when she suggested she'd heard little pushback:
"Switching the split at Bridlemile from the high school point to the middle school point, we didn't hear, really any opposition to that," she said.
Bridlemile parents reacted loudly, asking, "What?"
"Well, we heard very little opposition to that,” Kohnstamm said, re-phrasing.
The large Bridlemile contingent at the school board meeting again reacted with disdain and surprise.
Board member Mike Rosen sided with parents on the west side changes, voting "no" on Kohnstamm's plan. Rosen said the district was making a mistake by favoring district computer models over the on-the-ground experience of parents. He pointed to troubled overhauls of the past as evidence that Portland Public Schools should listen more to parents
"I'm sorry I'm voting 'no' after all this time," Rosen said Tuesday night. "But it's just another in a decade and a half of what I think is disrespectful treatment of the parents and their wealth of knowledge."
The boundary plan passed 5-2.
The lingering question is what effect these conflicts will have on something the district wants: voter approval of a bond measure this fall. Many parents are frustrated with the district but also see firsthand the need for bigger, newer school buildings, that won't come without bond money.