Dual language immersion and the PPS rightsizing scenarios

What Scenarios A and B (released October 2026) would change for immersion families

Portland Public Schools (PPS) would move most of its Spanish dual language immersion (DLI) programs into fewer schools in both of its new scenarios. In these programs, students learn in two languages. In the two scenarios, A and B, PPS proposes to close or consolidate schools. PPS released them for the school board on October 6, 2026. Both scenarios also move or add Mandarin and Vietnamese sites. This site uses PPS’s own enrollment and lottery reports to show what these changes mean for immersion families.

9 → 4 elementary Spanish immersion sites, today → Scenario A or B

57% of Spanish kindergarten lottery applications went to programs that would move (2022-23 to 2026-27)

1,586 immersion students today in programs that move in Scenario A

52% → 36% of school-age Spanish speakers live within 1 mile of a K-5 Spanish site (estimate; allowing for survey error, the drop is 11–20 points)

Tiles, left to right: (1) count of K-5 Spanish immersion sites on the status quo and scenario maps; (2) kindergarten lottery applications to Spanish programs that move in Scenario A, as a share of all Spanish kindergarten applications, pooled over the 2022-23 to 2026-27 lotteries; (3) October 2025 enrollment in each moving language program, in the grades that move, summed over Scenario A’s moves; (4) school-age (5–17) Spanish speakers (Census survey estimates by tract, spread across each tract’s census blocks by where children live), share living within 1 mile, straight line, of a K-5 Spanish site; the range is a 90% interval for the drop from Census sampling error. Sources: PPS board packet for October 6, 2026: scenario maps and Rightsizing Update: Scenario Release memo, as digitized and transcribed in pps-explorer by Jason Brown; PPS Enrollment & Transfer, Elementary School / Kindergarten Lottery Results Summary, lotteries for 2022-23 through 2026-27 (prior lottery results); PPS, Enrollment by Grade and Program Type, October 2024 and October 2025 (PPS Data & Reporting); US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates, tables C16001 and B16007, census tracts in Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties; US Census Bureau, 2020 Census redistricting data (P.L. 94-171), tables P1 and P3, census blocks. Method details: Sources & methods.

What you will find on this site

  • Demand & scorecard: how many families apply to each immersion program, compared with the schools the programs would move to. Then, for every language, the sites, students and pathways in each scenario.
  • Equity: the case for a different solution for immersion families. At the schools that would lose a program, about half the students are historically underserved. Closures fall mostly on whiter, higher-income schools. The moving immersion programs are mostly Latino. Few Black students are in immersion. The plan reaches them mainly through closures and through moving César Chávez’s neighborhood program out of the school. Some of the programs that would move have long waitlists. Past program moves lost families.
  • School changes: every school the plan touches, not only the ones that close. It counts the schools and students affected, the Title I and SUN schools, and how the schools that take in students would change. Where immersion programs gather into one school, Latino and white students who now share a building would attend different buildings.
  • Lent & César Chávez: the 2023 Bridger → Lent move, and César Chávez, the plan’s new Spanish hub. The page covers 2019 through PPS’s projections for 2031.
  • Whole-school vs. strand immersion research: what published studies, field guidance and PPS’s own Lent conversion show about whole-school versus strand immersion. In a whole-school program, every class is an immersion class. A strand is an immersion program inside a school that also has a neighborhood program. We found no study that compares the two on student outcomes.
  • Sources & methods: where every number comes from and what it can’t tell you.
Note

This is an independent analysis, not a PPS publication. We transcribed the scenario details from the October 2026 board packet. For the official versions, see the PPS rightsizing materials.