Demand & scorecard

Where families apply for immersion, and what each scenario does to it

Demand: programs would move away from where families apply

The Spanish programs that would move include Atkinson and Beach. These two programs draw the most applications and longest waitlists in the district. The scenarios would move them to schools that have drawn far fewer applicants. These figures are averages over the last five lotteries (2022-23 to 2026-27).

Families who want a kindergarten seat in dual language immersion (DLI) apply through the Portland Public Schools (PPS) school-choice lottery. The lottery reports show, for each program:

how many families applied
how many got an offer
how many were waitlisted (put on the waiting list)

One group doesn’t need to apply: neighborhood families at Lent and Rigler, the two all-immersion schools. See the note below.

Figure 1: Kindergarten lottery applications per year (5-year average) at each program that moves, and at the school it moves to. Hover for offers and waitlists. Lent’s figure counts only applicants from outside its neighborhood (see note below).

Sources: PPS Enrollment & Transfer, Elementary School / Kindergarten Lottery Results Summary, lotteries for 2022-23 through 2026-27 (prior lottery results); 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. Method details: Sources & methods.

Rigler, Boise-Eliot/Humboldt and Vestal have no orange dot because they have no immersion lottery today. Boise-Eliot/Humboldt and Vestal would be new immersion sites. Rigler fills its Spanish program without appearing in the lottery reports.

Lottery numbers understate demand at whole-school immersion schools

At Lent and Rigler, every student is in Spanish immersion. Children from the school’s own neighborhood enroll without entering the lottery. Only families from outside the neighborhood apply. In 2025-26, Lent enrolled 43 immersion kindergartners but made 14 lottery offers. Rigler enrolled 50 with no lottery at all.

So Lent’s orange dot above counts only applicants from outside its neighborhood. You can’t compare it directly with the sending schools (the schools that would lose a program). Those schools enroll about as many kindergartners as they offer lottery seats.

Sources: PPS, Enrollment by Grade and Program Type, October 2024 and October 2025 (PPS Data & Reporting); PPS Enrollment & Transfer, Elementary School / Kindergarten Lottery Results Summary, lotteries for 2022-23 through 2026-27 (prior lottery results). Method details: Sources & methods.

A precedent: Bridger’s Spanish program moved to Lent in 2023

Table 1

Year	Spanish immersion students	Per grade (÷ 6)	Kindergarten (actual)	Avg K class size	Est. K immersion classes
2021-22	Bridger 211 + Lent 126	56.2	–	18 / 14	3.5
2022-23	Bridger 190 + Lent 129	53.2	–	16 / 18	3.2
2023-24	Lent 308	51.3	–	13	3.9
2024-25	Lent 256	42.7	32	16	2.0
2025-26	Lent 256	42.7	43	21.5	2.0
Classes = kindergarten immersion students (actual where published, otherwise the per-grade average) ÷ average kindergarten class size at the school (all kindergarten classes, both programs). An estimate, not a count.
Sources: PPS, Enrollment Details for Language Immersion Schools (Language Immersion Track Profiles), October 2021–October 2025 (current, archive); PPS, Enrollment by Grade and Program Type, October 2024 and October 2025 (PPS Data & Reporting); PPS, Class Size Detail, 2021-22 through 2025-26 (archive, current); district enrollment by grade: PPS, Enrollment – Summary Comparison, October 3, 2022 (archive), and Enrollment by Grade and Program Type, 2024 and 2025. Method details: Sources & methods.

PPS has consolidated Spanish immersion before. Until 2022-23, PPS ran Spanish immersion at both Bridger and Lent. Each was a K-5 school (kindergarten through grade 5) with an immersion program and a neighborhood program. In 2023-24, PPS moved Bridger’s program to Lent, and Lent became all-immersion. Bridger became the K-8 Bridger Creative Science.

Before the move: the two schools had about 55 Spanish immersion students per grade, roughly three kindergarten classes.
After the move: Lent has enrolled 38 immersion kindergartners a year on average (2024-25 and 2025-26). That is two classes, about 31% fewer.
District-wide, measured the same way: enrollment fell about 14%. This compares the October 2022 average across grades K-5 with kindergarten in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Comparing kindergarten with kindergarten, the district fell 9%.

These figures are estimates. For years before 2024-25, PPS publishes immersion counts by school but not by grade. So “per grade” means the school’s immersion total divided by six grades. District-wide, kindergarten classes run smaller than grades 1–5. So an all-grades average likely overstates the old kindergarten size. That is why the district comparison above uses the same all-grades baseline.

Lottery applications can’t be used for this comparison. Lent’s neighborhood families stopped applying once it became all-immersion (see the note above).

Spanish waitlists over time

Figure 2: Kindergarten waitlist at each Spanish immersion program, by lottery year. Blue: program moves away in both scenarios. Orange: school receives a moved program. Gray: program stays where it is.

Who is waitlisted: mostly English speakers from nearby

At the programs with the longest waitlists, most of the families turned away are English-speaking families from the surrounding area. These are the families a move puts farther away. The 2026-27 kindergarten lottery shows this. It breaks down each program’s applicants by where they live and by their language background. Native Spanish speakers get priority, and PPS almost always offers them seats.

Table 2

Lives in	Waitlisted of applied, by language background
2026-27 kindergarten Spanish immersion lottery
The four programs with the most waitlisted applicants
Lives in	English speakers	Heritage speakers	Native speakers
Atkinson
Neighborhood	7 of 18	0 of 4	–
Regional area	24 of 62	7 of 14	4 of 21
Elsewhere in PPS	2 of 3	1 of 1	2 of 2
Ainsworth
Neighborhood	0 of 23	0 of 5	0 of 2
Regional area	16 of 28	6 of 11	0 of 9
Elsewhere in PPS	13 of 20	2 of 5	4 of 7
Beach
Neighborhood	11 of 16	0 of 1	0 of 2
Regional area	23 of 37	1 of 13	0 of 8
Elsewhere in PPS	0 of 4	1 of 4	0 of 2
Lent
Regional area	9 of 12	3 of 10	0 of 26
Elsewhere in PPS	–	–	1 of 1
Neighborhood = lives in the host school's attendance area (NH); Regional area = lives in the set of schools forming the high-school Spanish immersion assignment area (RG); Elsewhere = any other PPS address (TR). Language background as recorded by PPS on the application. A child can apply to several programs, so counts are applications, not children.
Sources: PPS Enrollment & Transfer, 2026-27 Kindergarten Lottery Results Summary (prior lottery results). Method details: Sources & methods.

Scorecard: every program move

Table 3

Move	Grades	Scenario	Students	K lottery, per year		Home language matches		Note
Move	Grades	Scenario	Students	Applied	Waitlisted	Sending	Receiving	Note
Spanish
César Chávez → George	6-8	A & B	105	–	–	62%	76%	School becomes K-5
Beaumont → Roseway Heights	6-8	A & B	101	–	–	54%	53%
Ockley Green → George	6-8	A & B	63	–	–	16%	76%
Scott → Rigler	K-5	A & B	222	40	8	36%	49%
Atkinson → Lent	K-5	A & B	178	121	49	40%	46%
Beach → César Chávez	K-5	A & B	155	96	46	21%	62%	Sending school closes
Sitton → César Chávez	K-5	A & B	138	25	4	54%	62%
James John → César Chávez	K-5	A & B	133	27	4	52%	62%	Sending school closes
Mandarin
MLK Jr. → Boise-Eliot/Humboldt	K-5	A & B	193	59	5	2%	–
Clark → Woodstock	K-5	A & B	91	16	0	57%	29%
Vietnamese
Rose City Park → Vestal	K-5	A	207	33	1	40%	–	Sending school closes
Students: October 2025 enrollment in the language program, in the grades that move. Home language: share of the program's immersion students whose home language is the program language (Chinese for Mandarin). Lottery demand is shown for kindergarten entry only; middle-grade programs have no comparable lottery.
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 by Grade and Program Type, October 2024 and October 2025 (PPS Data & Reporting); PPS, Enrollment by Language and School, October 2024 and October 2025 (PPS Data & Reporting); PPS Enrollment & Transfer, Elementary School / Kindergarten Lottery Results Summary, lotteries for 2022-23 through 2026-27 (prior lottery results). Method details: Sources & methods.

How many sites each language and grade band would have

Table 4

Grades	Status quo	Scenario A	Scenario B
Spanish
K-5	9	4	4
6-8	7	4	4
9-12	4	4	4
Mandarin
K-5	3	2	2
6-8	2	2	2
9-12	2	2	2
Japanese
K-5	1	1	1
6-8	1	1	1
9-12	1	1	1
Russian
K-5	1	1	1
6-8	1	1	1
9-12	1	1	1
Vietnamese
K-5	1	1	1
6-8	1	1	1
9-12	1	1	1
A site is a school whose label on the scenario map names an immersion program in that language and grade band. Bold: fewer or more sites than today.
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. Method details: Sources & methods.

How far speakers of each language live from the nearest site

Table 5

Home language	Within 1 mile of a K-5 site			Average distance (miles)
Home language	Status quo	A	B	Status quo	A	B
Spanish	42%	25%	25%	1.4	1.9	1.9
Spanish (ages 5-17)	52%	36%	36%	1.3	1.7	1.7
Mandarin	15%	7%	7%	2.5	2.6	2.6
Vietnamese	8%	15%	8%	3.3	2.9	3.3
Russian	10%	10%	10%	4.9	4.9	4.9
People age 5+ who speak each language at home (ACS 2020-2024 tract estimates, spread across each tract's 2020 census blocks by population; school-age Spanish by population under 18); straight-line distance from each block to the nearest K-5 site of that language. For school-age Spanish speakers, allowing for Census sampling error, the 90% range is 44-57% within 1 mile today and 29-41% in Scenarios A and B. Mandarin counts all Chinese speakers; Russian counts Russian, Polish and other Slavic languages. Japanese has no tract-level data.
Sources: 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; 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. Method details: Sources & methods.