Apparently, the enrollment gap between Portland and Deering high schools, which started in 2019, continues.

The Portland school board’s suggested solution is the holding a three-school lottery for students. This is not a good solution for several reasons.

First, clearly there is a problem. Holding a lottery won’t fix it – it will perpetuate it. Parents of students, and the students themselves, are choosing not to go to Deering High School. This may just be a problem of incorrect perceptions or there may an actual basis for supporting the decision not to attend Deering.

Second, forcing parents to send their children to a school they do not want to go is not a viable solution. The students will be unhappy with the decision and this will likely interfere with their learning, and those parents who can afford it may opt to send their children to a private school.

As an engineer, when working on a new problem, I always tried to identify a root cause before casting about for a solution. Why not try to find out the root cause? Either set up meetings with parents and students or submit forms to the parents and students who will be entering high school in the next year to solicit the reasons for their choice of high schools.

One can deal with the problem of a leaking pipe by choosing to put a bucket underneath it or repair the cause of the leak. The Portland school board should reconsider and take the latter approach.

Sam Rosenthal
Portland

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