North Portland’s Jefferson High School was already getting a face lift — now it’s going to have more students, too.
Tuesday night, the Portland Public Schools’ board voted to end Jefferson’s dual assignment policy, which has allowed families in the neighborhood to choose to have their student attend Jefferson or one of three other local high schools. That longstanding choice policy has led to a significant drop in enrollment at Jefferson, and steady increases at Grant, McDaniel and Roosevelt high schools.
The board also voted Tuesday to designate Jefferson a comprehensive high school again after 15 years as an option school.
These changes come as Jefferson High School’s modernization plans start to take shape, with construction set to begin this year.
“This vote affirms a long-term commitment to Jefferson as a comprehensive high school and to the students it serves,” said Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong in a press release shared after the vote.
“Our responsibility now is to deliver on that commitment through strong programs, sustained investment, and continued partnership with the community.”
Jefferson High School in Portland, Ore., Aug. 26, 2025. Construction at Jefferson is set to begin this spring to modernize the school.
Morgan Barnaby / OPB
The changes mean students from several elementary schools will attend Jefferson after going through their existing feeder middle school. The change begins with students entering ninth grade in the 2027-2028 school year:
- Beach
- Boise-Eliot/Humboldt
- Chief Joseph
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (including students in the Chinese Immersion program)
- Sabin
- Woodlawn
Students at Faubion and Vernon K-8 schools will go to Jefferson as well when they move on to ninth grade for the 2027-28 school year.
Students in Beach’s Spanish Immersion program will continue on to Roosevelt High School, in addition to Peninsula students. Irvington is the only neighborhood elementary school within Jefferson’s dual assignment area whose students will move on to Grant High School (after middle school).
The problem: Declining enrollment at Jefferson High School
As Jefferson enrollment declined over the last 10 years, enrollment at the other neighborhood schools available to students increased significantly, to the point of overcrowding at at least one school. The district attributes some of this enrollment growth to the three schools – Grant, McDaniel, and Roosevelt – undergoing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of renovations as part of the district’s plan to modernize its high schools.
The PPS school board has recognized Jefferson’s enrollment challenges for years, passing a resolution in 2022 to support a “process to develop a plan to increase student enrollment at Jefferson High School” by the start of the 2026-27 school year. Because Oregon funds schools based on a per-student funding formula, a school’s enrollment tends to have a direct effect on the size of its teaching staff and breadth of offerings.
“Jefferson enrollment has been impacted for decades by transfer options, including voluntary busing to other schools in the 1980s and 1990s and No Child Left Behind in the 2000s. The largest driver of enrollment at Jefferson High School for the past fifteen years has been the dual assignment choice,” according to one of the board resolutions passed Tuesday.
Gentrification in Portland’s historic Black neighborhoods in inner North and Northeast Portland also had a significant effect on Jefferson, which for years has been a majority Black high school.
Making Jefferson a Middle College option program in 2011 allowed students to enroll at nearby Portland Community College and gain college credits while still in high school. But the school’s small enrollment limited the variety of opportunities — academic and otherwise — offered for students.
PPS’ solution: New building, increased enrollment and offerings, changing demographics
In the staff memo prepared for Tuesday’s board meeting, PPS staff acknowledged that Jefferson’s demographics will change “the most”. Officials highlighted the continued importance of the district’s program for families that have been “displaced” from North and Northeast Portland.
“Right to Return is an effort on the part of PPS and its partners — and at the behest of Black city leaders — to allow students to return to the schools where they feel most supported and at-home,” the district’s website reads. “It is a necessary step toward addressing historic wrongs and fulfilling PPS’s commitment to racial equity and social justice.”
The boundary changes will mean enrollment growth at Jefferson, but lower enrollment at Grant, McDaniel and Roosevelt. The district projects that all four high schools will have enrollment above 1100 by 2030-31, with an estimated “range of enrollment” of 371 students.
At the board meeting, PPS athletic director Marshall Haskins said he looks forward to a more “equitable” athletic program at Jefferson that will be able to compete with other high schools.
“Even though Grant will drop in numbers, they’re not going to drop in kids who play sports at Grant,” Haskins said.
“Kids want to play sports… some of those kids who were at Grant and at Roosevelt and at McDaniel are going to get a chance to play sports when they didn’t get to play at those other schools.”
Sports won’t be the only thing influenced by the enrollment changes at Jefferson.
Over the next couple of years, the district plans to focus on how to grow Jefferson both in course offerings and enrollment. Possible subjects for new programming include the arts, college preparatory classes, and career and technical education. The resolution passed by the board also outlines a proposal to fund “up to two additional full-time positions” each year through 2030-31 to support these new classes.
Now Jefferson is undergoing its own multi-million dollar renovation project. According to PPS, construction on Jefferson is set to begin in spring 2026 with new facilities completed by fall 2029.
