Integrated Schools
Portland Chapter
Welcome to Integrated Schools: Portland.
We are a community of parents in Portland, Oregon, working to dismantle the racial and socioeconomic segregation in our public schools. We believe that public education is a public good—and that our neighborhood schools are stronger when they reflect the full diversity of our city. Whether you’re navigating your first kindergarten choice or looking to get involved in district-level advocacy, you’ve found a home here. We don’t have all the answers, but we are committed to showing up, listening, and learning together.
Progressive Values, Divided Classrooms: Bridging the Gap in Portland’s Public Schools
Portland is a city proud of its civic conscience. We display signs championing justice in our front yards, support sustainable transit, and vote overwhelmingly for progressive public policy. We value equity, community, and inclusion as core tenets of what makes this region special.
Yet on weekday mornings, our school enrollment patterns tell a different story.
Across Portland neighborhoods, school demographics often fail to reflect the actual diversity of the surrounding blocks. Families with social and economic capital frequently navigate away from their assigned neighborhood schools—using focus option lotteries, language immersion programs, special transfers, or private alternatives. The result is an unintentional, systemic sorting: schools located just a mile apart can have radically different resources, racial demographics, and socioeconomic profiles.
This is Portland’s school paradox: a deep commitment to systemic equity in principle, alongside individual educational choices that quietly reinforce segregation in practice.
Our Commitment as Portland Parents
Integrated Schools Portland exists to help families close the gap between our values and our actions. We are not asking anyone to be a "savior" or to enter school communities with an agenda to fix them. We are organizing parents to:
Show Up with Humility: Step into neighborhood schools as humble learners, active listeners, and collaborative neighbors rather than dominant voices.
Resist the Rush to Transfer: Commit to the neighborhood school first, giving our local community the stability and collective investment it deserves.
Advocate for Systemic Equity: Shift our collective parent energy toward district-wide equity, transparent funding, and inclusive policies that support every child across the city.
When we invest together in our neighborhood schools, we do more than integrate classrooms—we knit our city back together.
Join the Conversation
Are you wrestling with school choices, curious about your neighborhood feeder pattern, or looking to connect with families who are taking the leap together? Join us.
We meet quarterly to discuss issues of systemic equity in our city, discuss how White and/or privileged people need to take action to subvert systemic racism and segregation in schools, talk about how we show up in integrated schools (i.e., leave the White saviorism at home), and sometimes get involved in advocacy in our own communities.
Email elizabeth.doerr@gmail.com for more information and sign up for our listserv here: