Portland Provides School Choice When Space Is Available
A Portland School Committee policy adopted in 2005 ensures that parents have school choice, also known as out-of-district placement. That means parents with students districted for a certain school have the option of applying to another Portland school on a space-available basis.
Students are assigned to schools based on geographic areas or districts within the city. For example, when Baxter Elementary School was closed, the students were re-districted to Longfellow, Riverton or Presumpscot schools.
All the students who would have attended Baxter are districted for Lyman Moore Middle School at the end of their fifth grade year. Lyman Moore holds spaces open for those students as well as for students from East End Community School (EECS) and Presumpscot Elementary School.
Lincoln Middle School holds spaces open for its sending schools: Hall, Longfellow and Riverton. King Middle School holds open spaces for Longfellow, Reiche and Nathan Clifford. If schools have open seats (space available), they can accept applicants from out-of-district Portland schools until seats are filled.
What happens if a school has more requests for out-of-district placements than it has space available? The school holds a lottery to fill seats.
The procedure for applying for school choice is simple and straight forward. Parents may write a brief letter to Assistant Superintendent Jeanne Whynot-Vickers stating the educational reasons supporting their request. She reviews all letters and then forwards them to the appropriate principal.
Every effort is made to meet the request if spaces are available. There are two caveats: Students must re-apply each year to attend an out-of-district school. And parents/students are responsible for transportation to an out-of-district school.
The only exceptions are East End Community School and the Many Rivers program at Hall Elementary School.
EECS has 100 out-of-district spaces to be filled by lottery; transportation for out-of-district students is provided by the school district. Students need not re-apply each year.
Entrance to the Many Rivers Program is by lottery; transportation for out-of-district students is provided. Students need not re-apply each year.
For more information on enrollment at EECS or Many Rivers, please contact the school principals- Carol Dayn at EECS (874-8185) and Deirdre Steiner at Hall (874-8205).
