Hand-in-hand with Jefferson High School’s planned expansion comes a change in boundaries for Portland’s school districts. Portland Public Schools voted earlier this month to end the dual-assignment policy, which for the last 15 years has allowed families to let their student opt out of attending Jefferson High School and instead choose to attend one of three other high schools in the area.
This dual-assignment policy has led to steadily declining enrollment rates for the public high school in North Portland. Jefferson High School currently enrolls just under 400 students. Grant High School has an enrollment of over 2,000, McDaniel High School has over 1,600 students, and Roosevelt High School enrolls over 1,400. The new boundary plan aims to even out enrollment between the three schools by 2030, with the $465 million expansion set to open in 2028.
Joining us to discuss the changes are Michelle DePass, vice-chair of the Portland School Board, and Lakeitha Elliot, Jefferson High graduate and former PTA member.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB this is Think Out Loud, I’m Dave Miller. For the last 15 years, Portland Public Schools have given families in a swath of North and Northeast Portland the option of having their kids not attend Jefferson High School. They could instead send them to Grant or McDaniel or Roosevelt. This dual assignment policy has led to steadily declining enrollment at Jefferson, which for years has been a majority Black school. It now has under 400 students, compared to over 2,000 at nearby Grant. But the school board recently voted to end this policy. It coincides with Jefferson’s nearly $500 million planned renovation. For more on Jefferson’s future, I’m joined by Michelle DePass, the vice chair of the Portland School Board, and Lakeitha Elliot, a Jefferson High School graduate and former PTA member. It’s great to have both of you on the show.
Lakeitha Elliot: Thank you.
Michelle DePass: Thank you.
Miller: Lakeitha first, I mentioned that you’re a Jefferson High graduate, but your connection to the school is way deeper than that. My understanding is it goes from your grandfather to your parents down to your son, so four generations. Can you give us a sense for what the school means to you and to your family?
Elliot: There’s a deep pride and love for this school. I grew up a block away. I also didn’t mention I went there for preschool too, from the time I was three.
Miller: Sort of bookended your pre-K-12 education?
Elliot: Yeah, absolutely. And more than it being a school, it was a center of community, the place we went to see art and music and politics and those kind of things, that organizing happened at that school. It’s an important place in the community on top of the education piece.
Miller: What was Jefferson like as a high school when you went there?
Elliot: It was large and vibrant and diverse. Definitely predominantly Black, but also we had a large Asian population at the time. Just very diverse and very connected and community-oriented.
Miller: What has it been like for you to see the diminishment of the school? I mentioned the enrollment around under 400 kids right now.
Elliot: It’s been hard in a lot of ways. But at the same time, it’s also been okay. Because you see the people who are committed to having their children in a place where they can be nurtured and connected and feel that same sense of community.
Miller: People who are very much choosing to go there.
Elliot: You get to see that when people have a choice and they do choose Jefferson. It’s important.
Miller: Michelle, what did you weigh as you considered your recent yes vote to end the dual assignment program?
DePass: Yeah, I was weighing feedback that I heard from parents. We got lots of feedback, particularly early on, about the boundary changes, the ending of dual enrollment. We heard from Irvington and Sabin families that were very concerned about having their communities divided. We heard tremendous encouragement and excitement from Faubion and Vernon parents that were very excited about their students going into a brand new building. And kind of everything in between. A lot of trepidation from parents about the change and what this meant for their students’ education. And in the long run, I voted to support the superintendent’s recommendation, even though that wouldn’t have been my preferred recommendation. But I learned that the superintendent’s recommendation weighed additional criteria that I hadn’t. Maya Angelou says, “When you know better you do better.”
Miller: You said that that wasn’t your preferred one of the options, but eventually when you learned more, you supported. So what had your misgivings been?
DePass: Well, my initial vote would have been to support Option B. The difference between Option B and Option C that we eventually voted on is that Option C allows more flexibility, and actually preserves attendance and population at both Grant and Jefferson, where Option B would leave Grant a little bit at a disadvantage eventually, looking into the future. Looking out long term, the best choice to offer the flexibility that we need as we continue to redistrict – it’s an exercise the district goes through every 10 years – Option C would allow the flexibility to make changes.
Miller: You were talking earlier about what you saw as broadly some of the differences in what you heard from parents whose kids go to different elementary schools. You mentioned Faubion, you mentioned Sabin or Irvington. You didn’t talk about race or money. I do want to get there for people who are less familiar with the neighborhoods of these schools. To what extent could you map out the way people talked about sending their kids to Jefferson or not, based on race and class?
DePass: Sure, I really appreciate that. I was gonna let you bring it up, but it’s obviously the elephant in the room. It’s hard to not talk about it. And it’s also hard to not talk about it without a context around racial housing patterns, segregation patterns, in every city within America. In Portland, we see it in the neighborhoods surrounding Jefferson High School. We look, we see Vernon, and we see the schools that are, in some ways, largely still segregated. But the neighborhoods are not very well racially integrated. It’s also hard not to discuss it without this context around what the neighborhoods have suffered from and have been involved in, and that’s the redlining that happened, 40s and 50s. The designation of these neighborhoods in Albina as “blighted.” The city’s actions around how they chose to do land use around Emanuel Hospital, the Memorial Coliseum, the freeway even. And how we’ve ended up with neighborhoods that are greatly gentrified by largely white families that have higher incomes than the displaced residents. So there’s a tension there.
And this is coupled with 15 years ago, the decision to make Jefferson an option. While we might not have been talking about race then, the outcome is that these contribute to racial segregation, these decisions that have been made in the past. I think that people moving into these neighborhoods, close in Northeast neighborhoods with these beautiful homes, have not expected that their kids would have to interact with Black children, because they could choose to send them any place but Jefferson.
So that’s the story of the neighborhood development. The next part of the chapter is that we will be making a move to bring more students to Jefferson. It’ll be a great thing, and we actually have 50 years of desegregation data, and data from college professors, that know that children that are in diverse environments in high school do quite a bit better in college and beyond. This is not an experiment. This is something that we’re gonna do gratefully and happily and the students will benefit.
Miller: Lakeitha, what stood out to you in school board meetings that you attended, school board meetings about the lead up to this vote?
Elliot: The racism, definitely. I think a lot of folks didn’t specifically call out race, but they used the coded language, and so they use the “safety” or the “opportunity.”
Miller: Saying “I wish I could do this, but-”
Elliot: “I don’t feel safe sending my kid there.”
Miller: Or “there aren’t as many opportunities there as there are at Grant.” Which is mathematically very true, when you have 400 kids versus 2,000. For example, there are no AP courses at Jefferson right now. There are 17 at Grant, 25 at McDaniel.
Elliot: Right. There’s also access to middle college and opportunities for kids to get college credit through PCC at Jefferson.
Miller: And that was part of the 15 years ago PPS plan, it’s an option school, but we will have this middle college and its connection to PCC.
Elliot: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the challenge for me hearing that is that these people haven’t had concerns about the disparities until there’s time that their kid might have to go to Jefferson.
Miller: When you say these people, who are you talking about?
Elliot: White families, absolutely. Those were the majority of those who were speaking out, who were now suddenly concerned about equity or now suddenly questioning why Jefferson doesn’t have these things or why they can’t send their kid there. You’ve been in this system for this many years and haven’t questioned why there are these disparities in these spaces. And so those were the things that were challenging to hear. Like I said, in the coded language, but not really saying I don’t want my kid to go to this place that has something different, but I’m okay with it being separate and unequal at the same time.
Miller: Michelle, what do you say to those parents who say I’m afraid Jefferson is not going to have the course offerings or opportunities or electives that these other high schools do have?
DePass: I’m always curious where people are getting their data. How do you know that? Just so everyone knows, it will be an AP school. And it will be an AP for all school, meaning I believe that all freshmen have to take AP classes. We’ve had some families that didn’t like that because that meant that Johnny wasn’t gonna be extra special, but would be required to take the same AP classes as everyone else. It will have a full set of electives. And that work is happening now. The programming piece is being sequenced, really wanting to be driven by what the kids’ interests are. As we’re gathering interest from incoming freshmen, 7th and 8th graders, the programming piece will be tailored to what interests them. We don’t know what that looks like yet because we’re still asking the questions.
What I would say to parents assuming not great things happening at Jefferson is those programs will be available at Jefferson. We’re building a comprehensive high school that involves a suite of electives that’ll be on par with every other high school in Portland. And I challenge people to think about their bias, that Black isn’t bad. I’ve been in development spaces for about 30 years. I’m used to people talking about transportation or the word “safety.” We do live in a culture where parents are very safety conscious, maybe a little bit too much sometimes. But the transportation issues, “How is my child gonna get across MLK?” is coded. Because children are already crossing MLK every day. And in fact, many students are crossing MLK to get to Tubman. And the other part is, if you have a 14 year old that can’t cross the street, then we need to teach them how to be a pedestrian.
So yeah, I’m hearing this. I’m questioning and challenging parents.
Miller: How concerned are you, as a representative of the district, that a significant number of these parents will, for whatever reason, try to figure out ways to not send their kids to Jefferson? There’s been a lot of reporting over the years, richer families who have political might, when they send their kids to schools, schools change. How worried are you that a good number of parents will not do that? Will either fudge, in other words lie, about where they live, or opt to send their kids to parochial or private schools?
DePass: Well, parents do have choices, and parents that have money have more choices. I’m gonna hope that the parents are gonna mostly do the right thing, and that’s that if they live within the boundary, they will send their child to Jefferson, which again will be a comprehensive high school with a full suite and full range of electives and AP programming. There probably will be some people we anticipate that will sell their homes. I’m hoping to work with a named organization to buy those homes. If somebody doesn’t want to live in the Jefferson catchment enough to sell their home, they should do that and move someplace where they do want to be, and allow that home to be bought by someone that does want to be there. There are people that will pull their children out of school and that’s nothing new. If it’s about race, that’s unfortunate.
On the alternative side, there are lots of families – in fact, at the Lady Demos games I’ve been going to regularly, at the Jefferson dance performance I went to a week ago, I’m seeing quite a few parents from neighboring schools coming in. And in fact, at the Jefferson dancers performance, ran into some Faubion parents that said “I got a Jefferson hoodie for Christmas, and we’re already donating from our school to the PTA.”
So to your point about PTAs changing and school populations changing, yes – “Nice White Parents,” a podcast about this, I encourage people to look it up – it will change. Having people from the neighborhood come to Jefferson will change it. Change happens. It will be good. It might be a little messy in the first year, but it’ll be a good change. It’ll be especially good for our students that, in some cases might not even have access to having a Black friend.
Miller: Michelle, I’m curious about the bigger picture of student numbers citywide. Because the district’s own forecasts say that high school enrollment across the entire district is gonna be going down significantly over the next eight years. Willamette Week wrote this last year: “If the projections hold true in eight years, each high school except Roosevelt would be about 550 students below capacity if students were evenly distributed. In total, the district is overbuilding by more than 4,400 students – enough to fill more than two high schools.”
How much did you, as just one member of the school board, seriously consider changing plans for the overall high school rebuild, for example, saying we’re gonna have to not do this for Cleveland, and Cleveland will close? Not to single that school out, but to say the future doesn’t make sense for this many comprehensive high schools in a shrinking high school enrollment district.
DePass: That’s a great question. In 2021, we got a presentation by the Population Resource Center at Portland State University that contracts with the district to do population projections. During that presentation, we were told there were two neighborhoods, two high school catchment areas that would have growth. One was the Franklin cluster. The other one was the Jefferson cluster. People never talk about closing Cleveland or Ida B. Wells or even Lincoln. They always talk about closing Jefferson.
Miller: Well, I’m asking you about closing Cleveland.
DePass: Yeah, you were asking about Cleveland. The public has not asked about Cleveland. Cleveland’s also being rebuilt to the tune of about $460 million.
Miller: Yeah, money that could go to fix other high schools or for seismic improvements in elementary schools, for example.
DePass: The people that made the decision to build the high schools 100 years ago, when Portland’s population was quite low, looked out 100 years, which is the charge that we’ve been charged with. Not 15, and not five like the population projections, but look out 100 years, and you build for 100 years. It is difficult to predict the future. But our city founders built the number of high schools it did, which I believe is nine buildings, with the hope that the population would come. The other thing is that each of the new modernized buildings is built to house 1,700 students. But ideally, you would have a 75 to 80% utilization rate. So it’s not crammed with humans. That drops your numbers down a little bit lower.
One last thing I’ll say about Jefferson is that the Housing Bureau, which is a former employer, has multiple permits on the boards right now for multi-family housing in the Jefferson catchment area. And quite a few buildings have been erected in this catchment area in the last 3 or 4 years. Those are, for the first time in Portland history, family-sized housing, meaning they’re 3 bedrooms and up. And with Portland’s preference policy, we anticipate there will be many more families living in the Jefferson catchment area.
Miller: Lakeitha, I’m just curious what your hopes are for Jefferson over the next, say, decade.
Elliot: My hope is that it’ll continue to be a center of community. That there will still be a connection to the deep history and especially the deep history of the Black community, that it doesn’t lose that community feel. And that the folks who are showing up to Jefferson will invest in it, will continue to show up, will engage in those hard conversations around race and inequality and those kinds of things.
Miller: Lakeitha Elliot and Michelle DePass, thanks very much.
DePass: Thank you too, Dave.
Elliot: Thank you.
Miller: Lakeith Elliot is a Jefferson High School graduate, former PTA member. Michelle DePass is vice-chair of the Portland Public School Board.
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