Oregon Public Broadcasting

The Portland School board is scheduled to vote on a plan to overhaul the district's high schools in a little more than a week. The goal is to create more uniform class offerings and funding.

Parents of students at Jefferson High School are planning to protest the announcement that their school may close. Amelia Templeton reports.

School Superintendent Carole Smith originally proposed closing only Marshall High School, and turning Benson Poytechnic into a magnate school.

Now five members of the school board say they don't like that plan. They think Jefferson should close too.

Many Jefferson parents see this as the latest in a long line of efforts to close the struggling school, instead of investing in it.

Julie Rodgers: "I'm just mad. Enough is enough."

That's alumna Julie Rodgers. Her son is supposed to be a freshman at Jefferson next year. Rogers says she thought the overhaul would finally give Jefferson the resources it needs to succeed.

Julie Rodgers: "It was the right plan at the right time for the right reason and they don't have the guts to follow through"

School Board Chair Trudy Sergant says the problem was funding, not guts. Dollars are linked to enrollment at each school.  

Even with an end to policies that allow students to transfer to other high schools, Jefferson would only serve about 900 students.

Sergant says increasing class offerings for a student body that small isn't cost effective, or realistic given state budget shortfalls. 

Trudy Sergant: "If you look back at the superintendent's proposal for eight schools it was really based on a stable revenue stream which we don't have." 

Mary Merriweather is the president of the Jefferson Parent Teacher Association. She disagrees about the cost of keeping the school open.

Mary Merriweather: "There is a very very slight difference in the cost that it would take to sustain an eight school model and a seven school model."

Neither Merriweather nor Sargent could say what the actual difference in cost would be.

Jefferson is unique as the only majority African American School in the state. But Sargent says that 79 percent of potential Jefferson students transferred out of the school.

Trudy Sergant: "So from my point of view the students have already chosen to go other places."

But Merriwether argues that situation was turning round.

She says she recently transferred her own children out of private schools to attend Jefferson.