Normally we’d refer anyone asking about what schools a particular house is assigned to to look it up on Portland Public School’s Look Up page.  It’s still a great resource but needs to be taken with a grain of salt and potential reality check as PPS looks at moving school boundaries throughout the Portland Metro area.

We attended one of the Growing Great Schools meetings on Monday at West Sylvan Elementary in SW Portland.  The meetings are designed as a public comment period discussing two proposals put forth for enrollment balancing district-wide.  The vast majority of attendees we west-side residents and focused on west-side school.  The meeting was passionate but civil.  I heard four themes:

1. Chapman parents are concerned that growth in the Pearl will be far greater than the proposals forecast.  Data from NextPortland.com was cited: there are nearly 4500 units under construction and if even a small fraction of them add kids to the school, all bets are off.  Chapman is already at 112% capacity.
2. Bridelmile parents are concerned about some areas being moved from a Lincoln High School track to a Wilson High School track.
3. Skyline just wants to be left alone.  They don’t fit on the district map and don’t fit in the district box.  Becoming a K-5 and busing to West Sylvan for middle school isn’t a good plan.
4. Hayhurst also hosts the Odyssey program.  The library has been cut in half to make temporary classrooms and enrollment at Hayhurst is growing.  The two entities have a symbyotic relationship but Odyssey needs to move, before the next school year starts.

There were a lot of good ideas floated, too many to go into here.  The proof will be in whether the ideas were heard.  The most important thing for people looking at a real estate purchase now is that they understand the scenarios (the two are almost identical on the west-side) and that they are just scenarios- the final version is likely to be very different or could be exactly the same.

• Scenario 1
• Scenario 2

I focused on the west-side as it’s the meeting we went to. The Growing Great Schools  page has info and maps for all the areas of Portland.  The scenarios are much more divergent on the east-side than they are on the west-side.