Portland Gentrifiers Abusing Student Transfer System
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Portland School Superintendent Carol Smith is scheduled to present a new plan Tuesday that would limit the district’s decades-long transfer policy at elementary and middle schools. Proponents say the move could stop middle-class kids from fleeing struggling inner-city schools, while critics warn it might drive wealthier families from the public school system entirely.
For years, families in Portland Public School District have had the option to request a transfer out of their assigned neighborhoods school, in favor of other schools in the district that have vacancies. Transfers are determined by lottery.
“These issues are always very controversial,” Roger Kirchner, the region two director of the Oregon PTA, said. “Demographics change every five years or so, which impacts these kinds of decisions.”
Since the late 1990s, many mostly white and mostly middle-class families have returned to neighborhoods in North and Northeast Portland that were once considered distressed. Gentrification has increased property values and brought new restaurants and shops, but it hasn’t necessarily brought new families to neighborhood elementary and middle schools, according to a report prepared by a 12-member advisory committee.
The Superintendent’s Advisory Committee for Enrollment and Transfer (SACET) was tasked with making recommendations on the district’s transfer policy. The Oct. 28 report stated the district’s transfer system destabilized the school system itself, while exacerbating patterns of segregation along the fault lines of race and class.
It found that gentrification was a factor in the current imbalanced distribution of minority and low-income students throughout the district.
“[The task force] worked to understand the interplay between gentrification and the enrollment and transfer system,” stated the SACET’s Oct. 28 report. “Data reveals that wealthier (and often, White) families move into the historically African American communities of North and Northeast Portland and then “choose out,” by transferring their children to schools outside the neighborhood.“
The taskforce ranked the neighborhood schools with the greatest racial disparities. Seven of the 12 schools with the largest racial differences were in the historically black neighborhoods of North and Northeast Portland. In the case of these schools, the data showed that even though white families had moved in the area, their children were still not attending the local elementary or middle school.
The result was that some schools had became de facto segregated institutions of ethnic poverty, inside largely white, middle class neighborhoods.
At King School, off Northeast Alberta Street, the student population had 19 percent more children color attending school than living in the neighborhood. The number of low-income students attending the school was 21 percent greater than the amount of low-income students residing in the neighborhood.
White Students Use Transfers More
Under the Portland School District’s current transfer policy, students who wish to attend a school outside of their neighborhood are allowed to apply to the school of their choice. If there isn’t enough spaces for every applicant, the district initiates a lottery.
During the 2012 to 2013 school year, white students made for approximately 63 percent of lottery transfers, black and Latino students make up 11 percent and 5 percent of transfers, respectively.
Currently one-third of all Portland Public School students attend a school outside their neighborhood while 10 percent of the district’s students seek new transfers through the lottery each year, the report stated.
Suggested Alternative to Lottery System
Students who wish to transfer out their given school also have the option of petitioning the district. Under this scenario, a student shares their personal story and is granted a transfer if they qualify as having “extraordinary circumstances.”
Under the current proposal before the school board, the district would shift away from the lottery system to one more driven by petitions. The logic being that petitions would allow more consideration to special circumstances.
In a Nov. 25 memo to the board, superintendent Carole Smith wrote that shifting away from the random lottery and more towards a petition-driven transfer system is in the best interest of the district.
“This has largely been our practice at the high school level over the past four years and has led to the greater health of our high school system,” Smith wrote. “This recommendation would extend this practice to all grade levels.”
If approved, neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers based on the lottery system would be phased out by the 2015 to 2016 school year, according to Smith.
Christine Miles from Portland Public Schools said the board is considering changes to transfer lottery, but that to say the policy is being “voted out,” isn’t accurate.
“It’s change,” Miles said, “and it’s not a definite.”
Amy Welch, a neighborhood association leader from Hayden Island in North Portland, said she hopes the school board won’t touch the transfer policy.
“No-no, I would not be in favor of it. Kids should have a choice of what school to go to,” Welch said. “They’re not all the same.”
The Portland School Board will address the recommendation during their Nov. 25 meeting.
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