Winterhaven School is one of many that parents can explore at www.scooponschools.com. Portland moms Jacqueline Rothenberg and Katy Mayo-Hudson started the website to help parents navigate the many Portland-area school choices for their kids.Parents used to sidle up to Northeast Portland mom Jacqueline Rothenberg on the playground, wanting to know if the rumors were true: Was she the one with THE spreadsheet?
The one that laid out in clear, concise terms all the ins and outs of picking a school for kids, be it public or private, neighborhood, magnet, charter or online, from application deadlines to decision day?
And most important of all: Would she share it?
Rothenberg was happy to oblige, and these days, parents don’t need to stalk her on the playground to get her inside scoop, painstakingly compiled during a year of trying to find the school that would be the right fit for her older daughter, now 8.
With another mom, Northeast Portlander Katy Mayo-Hudson, Rothenberg started , which walks parents through the potentially bewildering process of finding the right school for their kids and includes a growing list of insider portraits of different Portland-area schools.
Before this, “there was no clear path to get the information that we wanted,” Rothenberg says. “You have to weave together these choices as a parent, and nowhere is that done.”
Anyone who has ever tried to figure out the right school for their kids knows it can be tricky. Everyone is guaranteed a spot at their neighborhood public school, of course, and most families wind up there in the end. But many parents want to see what else is out there, from magnet schools such as Buckman Arts Elementary to public charter schools such as Emerson School.
And then there are venerable private schools such as the Oregon Episcopal School, as well as fast-growing virtual schools.
They all have different deadlines, different application requirements and different tour dates. If you want to do a comprehensive survey of your choices, it can be overwhelming, Rothenberg and Hudson say.
“I think Portland Public Schools is somewhat conflicted that they have options that compete with the neighborhood schools, and it comes out in their website guide to choosing a school,” Hudson says.
Judy Brennan, the district’s director of family support and school choice, acknowledges the school choice process “probably is not as easy as it could be.” Portland Public Schools gives parents many more options than most comparably sized school districts.
“There are very few systems that both give you a guaranteed neighborhood school and the option to apply to almost any other schools,” Brennan says. “We have set ourselves up to make it complicated, and it can be confusing for parents who are looking at the full range of choices.”
The district’s budget for website upgrades is limited, she says, so the district welcomes efforts like this one to help bring more clarity to the picking and choosing.
The numbers of students seeking transfers out of their neighborhood schools has declined, according to the district, from 3,318 elementary and middle school students in the 2006-07 school year to 2,707 for the upcoming school year.
But that doesn’t mean it’s easier to transfer: In fact, the percentage of applicants who successfully transferred out of their neighborhood school in 2006 was 65.5 percent, while for next school year it was 60 percent.
The lower numbers are because of the district’s focus on “making sure that our neighborhood schools are our strongest schools and a greater understanding of what it takes to have a balance of healthy schools across the system,” Brennan said.
Thousands of families each year consider the breadth of options before making a school choice. Rothenberg and Hudson say they see themselves as strong public school advocates and true believers in the neighborhood school system.
“But in the past few decades, there has been a lot more out there about how different children learn differently, and based on what we know today, maybe there are good reasons to have choices,” Rothenberg says.
Their website is organized chronologically, with features such as a calendar, ideas for questions to ask during school tours, and tips about the lottery. Those interested in a particular school, as opposed to general tips, can check to see if their school has been profiled in the site’s blog.
The blog features assessments of each school’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, Winterhaven, a K-8 school in Southeast Portland, is singled out for its “rigor, strong curriculum, high expectations and focused community,” but the profile also notes the school, a math and science magnet, can have a “pressure cooker atmosphere.”
But Mayo-Hudson stresses there’s no substitute for going on a tour and talking to as many enrolled families as you can. Kristin Teigan, who has a first-grader and a fourth-grader at the school, disputes the pressure-cooker claim. She says the school has met the needs of her two very different sons.
“There are kids of a wide variety of abilities, and the school accommodates them,” Teigan says.
Food for thought
There are other popular online forums in Portland for discussing individual schools, including the long-running website .
Olivia Rebanal, one of the site’s founders, says the Scoop on Schools website is a helpful addition, because the school choice process can be so overwhelming.
“Everyone has been through it, and many families don’t have the time or resources to get out there and explore the system,” Rebanal said.
As Rothenberg and Hudson’s own kids get older, the two mothers say they hope to expand the site to include more coverage of middle and high schools within Portland. They also have plans to continue spotlighting less traditional educational models, from home-schooling to unschooling.
“The only cause that we are pushing is being informed,” Rothenberg says. “If people are more informed, they will be more involved in their kid’s education, and all schools will benefit from parents who are engaged.”
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