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Griffin Caldwell, a kindergartener whose family speaks Vietnamese, faced difficulty transfering into Portland Public Schools' new Vietnamese immersion program from his home district of Parkrose. The districts' inability to consider students' individual needs when deciding whether to approve or deny transfer requests played a role.
(Kelly House/The Oregonian)
New Oregon laws intended to keep educators from shunning needy students who live outside their districts are having the opposite effect on some kids, Portland area schools officials say.
Months into the first school year in which the 2013 and 2014 legislation is in full effect, officials from Portland and other districts are ready to ask lawmakers to revisit the issue.
The new laws force districts to stop rejecting students with special educational needs who want to transfer in. Administrators say the legislation also has stifled their ability to approve transfers for students whose educational needs or life circumstances make it hard to stay in their home districts.
Portland Public Schools enrollment and transfer director Judy Brennan said pure luck now decides which students are approved and denied.
“It’s Powerball,” Brennan said.
The educators seek fixes ranging from improved coordination among districts to increased flexibility for administrators to consider applications from kids with unique circumstances.
Sara Gelser
Rep. Sara Gelser, the Corvallis Democrat who chairs Oregon's House Education Committee and pushed hard for the reforms, says she's willing to hear district leaders' concerns, but there's one area in which she refuses to budge.
“What I’m not willing to revisit is relaxing, at all, the nondiscrimination portion of this bill,” Gelser said. “It’s not acceptable, under any circumstances, for one student to have any fewer opportunities than another based on their personal characteristics.”
A 'discriminatory' process
Nobody argues Oregon’s old system was fair to all students.
For years, Oregon districts reviewed students’ educational records when determining whether or not to let them transfer from the districts where they lived. In some districts, officials routinely denied admission to applicants who cost more to educate than the average student -- namely, students who qualified for special education or who didn’t speak English at home.
Brennan, the Portland administrator, said districts “lost the state’s trust.”
“I was appalled that we would rank our kids in that way,” said Gelser, the legislator.
So she advocated for House Bill 2747. The bill, which passed in 2013 with wide support in both the House and Senate, bans educators from considering anything but a student's place in line when deciding which transfer requests to accept, and which to deny.
“You can no longer say, ‘We won’t take a special ed kid, we won’t take an ELL kid,’” Gelser said.
House Bill 4007 followed this year. It required school boards to decide before the school year begins how many students they allow to transfer in or out. Districts are left to set their own deadlines for students to apply.
Previously, students could apply to transfer at any time of year. Under the new law, once a district fills all of its lottery slots, more transfers can only be considered through special school board action.
A district must accept all transfer applicants unless their number exceeds the cap set by the school board. If that happens, transfer slots are awarded by lottery.
There are limited exceptions for students fleeing “emergencies” such as bullying or child abuse in their home district. Both the receiving district and the releasing district must agree to the transfer for it to take place.
The new law has been effective in eliminating discrimination against students with costlier educational needs, officials in Portland and other metro area districts say. But, they argue, it has created other inequities.
Problems arise
Portland school leaders say the new laws leave districts with no ability to consider the details of why a student wants to transfer.
Often, Portland’s Brennan said, if school officials knew those details, they would be able to make special considerations for students who would benefit educationally from a transfer.
“There was always more than just a number,” Brennan said. “Now, it’s just a number. We can’t look at the kids’ needs.”
Brennan said 61 students who attended Portland Public Schools while living in another district in 2013-14 were denied permission to stay this year.
Many were students classified as homeless, who are in an unusual position under the new state law.
The law exempts students who obtained transfer agreements in 2013-14 from having to enter this year’s transfer lottery if they want to continue in the same school.
But students who were homeless last year can't benefit from that exemption if they've since found permanent housing. That's because homeless students don't obtain transfer agreements; federal law says districts must admit them.
For example, consider a Gresham teen who was homeless in 2013-14 and attended Portland’s Franklin High School. If his family has since signed a lease in Gresham, he’d have to enter this year’s Portland lottery to stay there.
“We had what we thought were protections in place for families last year that wound up not protecting them enough this year,” Brennan said.
The old system also gave administrators discretion to admit out-of-district residents who wanted to take advantage of a program their districts don’t offer -- say, language immersion courses for students who struggle with English.
“But with this new law, it’s just luck,” Brennan said.
District leaders from North Clackamas to Parkrose voiced similar concerns.
Joe Krumm, spokesman for North Clackamas School District, said officials there have run into another problem.
Oregon students who moved during the summer have always been required to apply for a transfer if they wanted to continue attending their old schools. But under the new system, students who move after their district’s deadline to apply are left without that option, Krumm said.
In other cases, students were able to apply before the deadline, but they didn’t win out in the lottery.
Plus, says Parkrose School District Superintendent Karen Gray, the new law leaves too many scheduling decisions up to the individual district. With each district setting its own deadline for students to transfer, the process can be confusing for both educators and students.
Sometimes, students might make their home district's deadline to apply for a transfer out, but miss their chosen district's deadline to transfer in. As a result, they miss their opportunity to transfer.
"It's not good for kids, and it's not good for the schools," she said.
Lawmakers respond
Gray is part of a statewide team of school administrators who are crafting proposed changes to the law. They plan to push for a uniform, statewide application schedule. Their proposed changes are in the “baby stages,” she said, but “you’ll be seeing a new piece of law.”
The Oregon Department of Education has fielded multiple questions and concerns from school officials who have noticed kinks in the law.
Rep. Jeff Reardon, a Happy Valley Democrat who is vice-chair of the House Education Committee, said superintendents have also contacted his office to voice their concerns.
“It’s already on my radar as something we need to look at,” Reardon said.
--Kelly House