At the beginning of February, Portland’s K-12 alternative Metropolitan Learning Center was set to close its high school. According to The Oregonian, which first reported the news, the district said the decision was due in part to “sustained under-enrollment”.

The school community felt blindsided.

“The way they rolled it out was really, I will say, harmful to families, and so the reaction was very strong,” said Liz Buelow, who teaches English to students in grades seven through 12. “Students were very upset, but we tried to turn it into something good.”

Together with another staff member and a group of students, Buelow set up what she calls a “war room” to campaign to keep the school open.

Social studies teacher Chris Snyderbrown recalls teaching a lesson about the 1968 East Los Angeles walkouts, where thousands of students protested education disparities between white and Latino students. He got to see his own students mobilize, like seeing a lecture come to life.

“Then to see immediately after, our students step up and use their voice and be really vulnerable about why they came to our school, it was really inspirational,” Snyderbrown said.

MLC’s resistance landed at a tough time for Portland Public Schools. Districtwide declining enrollment is a driving factor in budget problems in PPS and across the state. Oregon’s largest district is planning to close several schools, though it hasn’t said which ones, or even exactly how many.

But MLC’s campaign worked.

Less than a month after announcing the plan to shut down the small high school program, the district reversed course and committed to supporting efforts to increase enrollment.

“MLC has a long history, an expert and dedicated staff, and a community that cares deeply about its students,” shared PPS Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong in a message to MLC staff and families, announcing the reversed decision. “I am committed to partnering with you to build toward stability and strength.”

Operating since 1968, MLC serves students from kindergarten through 12th grade, with a learning model that emphasizes helping students “be themselves, find themselves, and find a sense of belonging”.

As a PPS alternative school, MLC provides a smaller, more personal learning environment. The K-12 model allows students to interact with kids of different ages and form years-long relationships with teachers that are rare in a more traditional school.

“When I talk to students, they feel afraid, nervous, intimidated, when they’re in a classroom, maybe because they haven’t had success in school before. A lot of them feel intimidated by teachers,” Buelow said.

“When they feel comfortable with me…with all the other teachers, they’re able to finally settle down in their bodies, and they’re able to absorb the information.”

Earlier this month, another tiny class graduated from MLC: just six students. But with the support of the district, the MLC community believes the school can offer the same opportunities to more students.

Bella’s story

Bella Kjellander first started at MLC in 2nd grade. It was where her stepsisters were going. She was into art at the time, and heard that there were murals all over the school. One time, she participated in the schoolwide “egg drop”, a tradition going back more than 50 years, where students build devices to drop an egg off the roof without it cracking when it lands.

“Basically, it’s just the whole school hanging out and watching things being thrown off the roof for a couple hours,” Bella said.

Bella was shy, but close with her teachers. Her favorite moment in those early years at MLC was Camp Hancock, an outdoor school program in Fossil, Oregon.

Bella said what makes MLC special is the sense of community.

“It’s a place I feel like anyone can fit in,” she said.

After online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bella went back to in-person school for ninth grade. But she didn’t go to MLC. She went to her neighborhood school: Grant High in Northeast Portland.

Grant has over 2,000 students. Coming back from online learning, Bella said her social skills were “low”. She was overwhelmed and fell behind academically.

“I don’t think I was as prepared for it as I thought I was going to be,” she said.

She wanted to go back to MLC, but wasn’t sure she could. Then sophomore year, Bella’s mom passed away. She moved in with her grandfather, away from the Grant catchment area, which provided a chance to change high schools.

She chose MLC.

“My first day back, I was feeling very weird,” Bella said. She was back at the school she knew from before the pandemic, but her classmates were new. She was living in a new house.

“It was a very not great time of my life. I was very overwhelmed, and school was not in the front of my mind at that time.”

But her MLC classmates made her feel welcome, showing her around the high school, asking her questions about herself, and complimenting her outfits. She opened up to her teachers.

“I felt comfortable telling them what I was going through because they understood and they were kind about it,” Bella said.

Bella had to catch up academically, taking virtual classes while also attending MLC.

Earlier this month, she spoke at MLC’s graduation, summing up her experience.

“For a while, I thought for sure that I would drop out or worse, but literally immediately on my first day after transferring back to MLC, I was met with so much acceptance and love and like understanding from the faculty and students here,” she shared.

What makes MLC different

MLC students like Bella often have the same teachers.

Snyderbrown just wrapped up his 19th year at MLC. During recess duty over the years, he’s met kids in fourth or fifth grade who eventually become his students in high school. A school with a small number of students and staff can be challenging at times, Snyderbrown said.

“Sometimes human beings butt heads, but in terms of supporting kids and helping them grow academically, it’s a gift to be able to track them through those years,” Snyderbrown said. “That relationship is really at the core of it.”

Through those relationships, he said, teachers can make genuine connections with students and engage them in school.

“Not that students necessarily do their work to please their teachers, but there is that element of like, if they trust you and value you as a teacher, then that’s gonna help motivate them as well.”

Roughly one-in-three students at MLC has a learning disability — nearly twice the district average. The school has developed a reputation for serving neurodivergent students due to the more individualized support, smaller classes, and opportunities for experiential and project-based learning.

At MLC, there’s also a generational opportunity for students to work with kids of different ages. Each year, seniors get paired up with kindergartners to do activities throughout the year. At graduation earlier this month, the school’s six graduates walked to the stage flanked by their little “buddies”. Each one gave their senior a “wish”, an idea the kindergarten class came up with after reading the book, I Wish You More.

“I wish you more grateful than hateful,” one of Bella’s buddies said, standing next to her. “I wish you more ice cream,” added the other.

“I have some high school students who TA in younger grades, and that’s the best part of their day,” Synderbrown said. “No offense to my social studies classes, but that’s why they really do come to school, is because they feel seen by these younger kids, and they see that these younger kids need them.”

Bella, the MLC graduate, is going to Lewis & Clark College next year. She wants to become a teacher. She got experience interning at an elementary class at MLC, but helping middle schoolers in Outdoor School taught her that she’s more interested in teaching older students.

“I work really well with middle schoolers,” Bella said. “People are always shocked when I say I want to teach middle school, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know, I just get them.’”

At MLC’s graduation, Bella was voted “most likely to be teacher of the year in 2036” by her teachers. Others were named “most likely to make comics for National Geographic Kids,” or “most likely to headline an international music festival.”

None of these things that set MLC apart from other schools is new. And they weren’t enough on their own to boost student enrollment numbers, especially in high school.

Over the years, MLC’s enrollment, especially at the high school level, has dropped drastically. Ten years ago, the school enrolled 120 students in high school. This past school year, there were 40.

At the same time, the cost per student at MLC is one of the highest across the district, with an estimated $17,163 per student cost projected for the 2026-2027 school year. Only two other small schools — Jefferson High School and the Alliance alternative program — spend more per student.

Teachers at MLC say the programming isn’t the problem — it’s publicity.

In the past, they’d seen posters in the hallways advertising PPS’s other high schools, attempting to draw students away from MLC for high school. There’d been rumors for years that the district did not “allow” MLC to be advertised. Those rumors only got louder once the district signaled its plan to end the high school.

That is no longer the case.

Renewed hope - and support

In May, the Portland school board officially approved a mascot for MLC: the monarch butterfly.

“A caterpillar turning into a butterfly is a great visual that represents the growth and transformation which takes place for the students at MLC,” according to the PPS presentation presented to the school board.

“I think the monarch’s pretty cool,” Bella, the MLC graduate, said. “It’s a good thing for marketing too.”

And for the first time, maybe ever, MLC is getting some marketing attention, as the district plans for more “intentional recruitment” to prospective students and families.

“Families aren’t rejecting MLC,” a PPS marketing department presentation read, “they’re missing it.”

The district and school staff are working on a public campaign to share more about what MLC is. Part of the message is that MLC is not for every student — and it’s not meant to be.

“Big comprehensive high schools do things that we can’t do, and they do those well, for example, having like a plethora of elective options for students,” said Snyderbrown.

“Not every high schooler would want to be at a K-12 school with kindergartners down the hallway.”

But some high schoolers do. Buelow said that next year’s freshman class at MLC is at capacity.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/18/portland-metropolitan-learning-center-makes-its-case-for-k-12-alternative-education/