Portland is experiencing lower birth rates and delayed childbearing, compounded by housing availability and affordability problems and increased homeschooling since the COVID-19 pandemic. Those trends contributed to a roughly 5,000-student decline in Portland Public Schools from fall 2019 to fall 2024, leaving about 44,000 students last fall. Jefferson High, built in 1909 and historically home to a large share of Black students, is among the oldest PPS buildings and is slated for bond-funded modernization. Current assignment policies allow Jefferson catchment students to choose other schools, affecting enrollment patterns. Voters approved a $1.8 billion bond in May 2025 to modernize several high schools.
Portland, we've heard, is where young people go to retire-not procreate. It's not the only place where people are having fewer kids, and waiting longer to do so if they're going to bother at all. But add the city's housing availability and affordability issues, plus increases in homeschooling and other options since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and concerns grow over whether there will be enough kids to fill Portland Public Schools' buildings.
Built in 1909 and among the oldest PPS buildings still in use, it's slated for bond-funded modernization. In the 1970s, headlines in the Portland Observer called the school a "victim of white flight." For the past decade and a half, it's been challenged by a school assignment plan that doesn't guarantee anyone will actually go there. Instead, all students in the Jefferson catchment have the choice to attend a different school, one with more students and more course offerings.
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