Life in Portland Blog

High School Options in NE Portland

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Did you see the recent post about our latest listing? You may have noticed that it says students who live at this address will be able to choose between Jefferson and Grant High Schools. Huh? How does this work?

Well, the school district decided to convert Jefferson from a neighborhood school to a special focus school: the Jefferson Middle College Program for Advanced Studies. The idea is that high school students will be able to earn up to a full year of college credit by the time they graduate. Could turn out to be a great program, taking full advantage of Jeff’s proximity to Portland Community College Cascade Campus. Let’s keep our fingers crossed! All the kids in the Jefferson area will be guaranteed the opportunity to enroll in the new program. Students throughout the district can apply to attend.

But every high school student in Portland must be given the chance to attend a neighborhood school, so students in the Jefferson catchment area will now have “dual assignment.” In addition to Jefferson, they will have the choice of another high school, based on the grade school that their home address feeds to. For example, our new listing at 931 NE Sumner feeds to King Elementary, which is in the Jefferson area. The dual assignment for King is Grant High School, so a student living in this house would have the option to attend Jefferson or Grant.

The dual assignments are:

Jefferson/Grant: King, Humboldt, Boise-Eliot

Jefferson/Madison: Vernon, eastern portion of Faubion

Jefferson/Roosevelt: Beach, Woodlawn, Chief Joseph, Ockley Green, northern portion of Faubion

About 85% of Portland’s kids go to public schools, among the highest rates of public school enrollment in any U.S. city. It’s part of our famed livability.