Portland Public Schools’ Enrollment Has Declined over the Years

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.

This coming year, community conversations are sure to focus on Jefferson High, historically home to one of the largest shares of Black students in the city. 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. Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong told the school board in June that it’s time to rethink that.

A Look at the Numbers

1851 Year the first public school building opened in Portland, at First and Oak, run by a 22-year-old teacher named John T. Outhouse (really).

20 Number of pupils served in 1851, including boys and girls.

2K Approximate increase in PPS enrollment every year in the 1950s and early 1960s, as baby boomers reached school age, peaking at almost 80,000.

1960 Year the FDA approved the birth control pill.

44K PPS total enrollment last fall.

5K Decrease in PPS enrollment from fall 2019 to fall 2024.

$1.8B Amount to be raised by the 2025 bond, the largest such school bond in Oregon history.

58% Share of Portland voters who approved bond measure 26-259 in May 2025, largely to rebuild or modernize three high schools: Cleveland, Jefferson, and Wells.

88 Number of ninth graders last year at Jefferson, which does not have a traditional geographic enrollment area.

407 Average number of ninth graders at PPS’s other eight high schools last year.

2022 Year the PPS board directed the superintendent to “initiate a process to develop a plan to increase student enrollment at Jefferson” no later than fall 2026, with an actual recommendation due by June 2027.