This is the first in a three-part series that examines the impact of Portland's housing crisis on children. See the project here.
By BETHANY BARNES
THE OREGONIAN | OREGONLIVE
Snow covered an unprepared Portland the day 18 families learned they would soon be forced out of their homes. At the Normandy Apartments, the final day of 2016 came not with revelry but a rent hike so high it was essentially an eviction.
City leaders were stunned to learn Rigler Elementary stood to watch 5 percent of its students vanish by April. But it’s a reality some educators know all too well: Children don’t pay rent, but they are paying a steep price for Portland’s failure to solve its housing crisis.
Students who are forced into new schools often lose their academic footing. They have to start all over building new relationships. Even their sense of self can suffer.
Like the snow, which iced roads to the point that hundreds of people abandoned their cars, the increasingly harsh rental climate has knocked that vulnerable, but often voiceless, segment of the “City That Works” on its heels.
In Oregon’s largest school district, more than 1,700 students in kindergarten through grade eight churned through at least three schools in the last five years alone, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive shows. That’s enough students to fill the district’s biggest K-8 school -- twice.
Frankie Serrano, now 17, has cycled through three high schools in less than four years, after a spike in rents at his family’s North Portland apartment complex forced them to double up with relatives in Milwaukie. Switching schools severed him from friends and mentors and has forced him and his little brother to wear the uncomfortable mantle of “new kid” multiple times.