Many other districts, including Gladstone, West Linn-Wilsonville and Ashland, plan to open their schools to students from other districts, largely because every additional student means another $6,000 in state and local funding.
The new "open enrollment" law, passed by the 2011 Legislature, is designed to give families more choice. Until the law passed, a family needed permission from both the school district where they live and the school district where they wanted to enroll their child before a student could transfer across district lines.
That changes this year.
School boards have until March 1 to declare how many seats at each school they are willing to open to students from outside their boundaries. Most large Oregon districts have yet to set their official numbers. Smith will recommend that figure be set at zero for every Portland school.
Her rationale is that:
- Many Portland schools are already overcrowded or are projected to become so as the district's enrollment grows over the coming decade.
- Accepting transfer students under the new law could tie Portland's hands, because once accepted, the transfer student is guaranteed the right to remain in the district until grade 12. Portland will continue to allow students to transfer in, but should do so only with the consent of their home district, Smith says. That allows Portland to set conditions, including that the transfer be reauthorized each year and that students can be sent back to their home districts for problems such as chronic absenteeism.
- Under open enrollment, Portland would have to accept high needs, high cost special education students from other districts. Under the current transfer system, that Smith wants to continue, Portland can refer high needs special education students back to their home districts to get specialized services.
According to Judy Brennan, Portland's director of enrollment and transfer services, more than 1,200 students apply for Portland Public Schools' permission to attend a school district other than where they live. Most are students who are moving out of Portland Public Schools but want to remain enrolled in their school after they move. The second biggest group are students who are moving into PPS but wish to remain enrolled in their school outside Portland.
Those applications would continue to be reviewed and most would be granted, she said.
For this school year, she said, nearly 1,300 students applied to attend a Portland school despite living in or moving to a nearby district. More than three-fourths of those requests were granted, she said.
Another 280 students living in or moving to Portland Public Schools applied to attend schools in other districts, she reported. Seventy percent of those requests were granted.
Brennan said Portland has no idea how many of its own students may transfer away under the open enrollment law. She said the district will monitor that and could decide to open some slots next year.
-- Betsy Hammond?
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Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/02/superintendent_portland_public.html
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