First day of school at Sitton Elementary

Sumeya Hassan, third-grader at Sitton Elementary, center, listens to directions from her new teacher Tivon Abel. It's the first day of school at Sitton in North Portland. The elementary school is among the district's most crowded.

(Faith Cathcart/The Oregonian)

The team of researchers who are advising Portland Public Schools officials as they prepare to redraw district boundaries say the district should strive to make changes to the top five most overcrowded schools in time for next school year.

Those changes won’t necessarily translate into boundary reviews for the schools, but they could include moving programs into schools with more room or purchasing portable classrooms to create space.

The recommendation was one of seven Wendy Willis and Phil Keisling, representatives from the Mark Hatfield School of Government's Center for Public Service, issued to the Portland School Board on Monday night, after months of gathering public input about the planned boundary review process.

The district's most overcrowded schools are Beverly Cleary, Chapman, Creative Science, Kelly and Sitton.

More than 20 parents of Beverly Cleary students turned out at the meeting to make a preemptive plea to the board: Don’t ease overcrowding there by launching a “starter” boundary change that would shift some Cleary students into nearby Rose City Park.

“We are aware there is overcrowding at Beverly Cleary School and a permanent solution needs to be found,” Cleary parent Sandra Gray said. But, she added, shifting some students into Rose City Park “should not be taken lightly.”

Judy Brennan, the district’s enrollment and transfer director, said changing boundaries said moving a contingent of Beverly Cleary students into Rose City Park – which currently houses some Cleary students and has room for more– is only one option among many. She said district officials would meet with principals over the next month to brainstorm ways to reduce pressure on the schools.

If an in-house solution exists, she said, district officials would choose that one before turning to boundary changes. A boundary change for Beverly Cleary students, she said, “really is just a could-be at this point.”

Other recommendations from the PSU researchers are:

Establish a work and communications plan before setting out on the boundary review process.

Establish a District-wide Boundary Review Advisory Committee (henceforth known as D-BRAC) to monitor and evaluate enrollment issues at all schools. This year, the committee would be in charge of recommending changes to the five most overcrowded schools. In the 2015-16 school year, the group’s focus would shift to district wide boundary changes, with a goal of making the changes in time for the start of the 2016-17 school year.

Create a user friendly website for community members to follow the process: The district already publishes enrollment data online in PDF form, but the PSU researchers recommended creating a more interactive website that lets visitors easily navigate information about their school’s enrollment, demographics, attendance, discipline, staffing and other topics. They could also conduct side-by-side comparisons of their neighborhood school and other district schools.

Ensure every school has baseline program offerings: “Many believe that boundary changes result in ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ based on where the lines are drawn and what school their children are assigned to,” the PPS report states. “PPS should require and ensure that every school offers baseline programs, regardless of the number of students.”

Engage the community: The researchers advised board members to engage the community around multiple topics, not just boundary review. Discussions about boundary changes are directly linked to other conversations already taking place in the district, from impending changes to the lottery and transfer policies to enrollment forecasts that predict steady growth at PPS for years into the future. “Boundary review can and is an important tool…but it is clearly not the only, ore even the biggest, challenge and opportunity facing the district,” Keisling said. The researchers set ambitious communication goals for the district, including:

Consider combining the District-wide Boundary Review Advisory Committee with the existing Superintendent’s Advisory Committee for Enrollment & Transfer. Both groups are dealing with subject matter related to growing enrollment and its impact on the district’s schools.

Use the values culled from public input to develop a “2025 Vision” district leaders can apply to future policy decisions. The vision should build upon Superintendent Carole Smith’s

--Kelly House