A crowd gathered at the Jefferson High School library last week to hear Principal Toni Hunter (right) and others talk about the school’s transformation into a “middle college” magnet in partnership with Portland Community College. After years of failed attempts to turn the school around, many parents remain skeptical. Portland’s Jefferson High School, which has suffered a long, painful decline, finally has a widely supported, research-tested, resource-rich plan to reverse course and become an academic powerhouse.

In partnership with Portland Community College, Oregon’s only predominantly African American high school will be remade this fall into a citywide magnet focused on getting students prepared for and succeeding in college courses at PCC’s gleaming Cascade Campus across the street.

Still, big questions remain, none bigger than this: Will enough Jefferson-area students and their parents choose to enroll?

Every entering freshman will have to commit to doing college-level work. Results from similar schools around the nation suggest nearly all of them will succeed, and the hardest-working will graduate with a year or more of free college credits.

Although nearly 400 eighth-graders live nearby and have limited choices apart from Jefferson, however, the school has not been swamped with interest. The first of five weekly events designed to showcase the new Jefferson featured about 20 school district and community college officials to explain its assets — but drew just two eighth-graders and their parents to hear the pitch. Subsequent events drew bigger crowds, including standing-room-only turnout last week. But many Jefferson-area parents remain skeptical that yet another change will work when so many have failed.

Some parents say the idea of their child taking community college classes instead of participating wholly in high school, complete with all the clubs, music groups and social events a big school can offer, has little appeal.

“I am a little leery,” said Kurt Sand, a Jefferson-area parent with two elementary-age children. “I don’t know if I’ll want my kids crossing the street to go to college with college kids,” adding that he wants his children to have traditional high school experiences, not to “ask a PCC student to the prom.”

Other parents and students are writing off Jefferson without a serious look.Raul Velasquez (right), a Jefferson teacher with the Self Enhancement mentoring program, talks to Magdalena and Jose Siquina and their son, Juan (second from left), at last week’s event.”People have preconceived notions of what kind of school Jefferson is, and parents get nervous about their children being guinea pigs in a new system,” said Andrea Shatz, counselor at Beach School, which feeds into Jefferson. “Personally, I buy into the vision for the new Jefferson … but you have to hold people’s hands a little bit to get them to really check it out.”

That is particularly true among white parents, many of whom view Jefferson, where most teachers are white and 65 percent of the students are African American, as school that caters to black students. The families who packed last week’s information night were overwhelmingly African American or Latino.

“I appreciate that it is a school very much committed to the African American community,” said Christy Zabo, a white parent of eighth-grade twins who attend their neighborhood school, Beach. “But for us, Jefferson isn’t an option.”

Her daughter has long hoped to attend career-tech oriented Benson High, another citywide magnet high school. Her son isn’t as sure what he wants, but it isn’t Jefferson, she said. The dropout rate at the school has been too high and, after her children were among the first to spend their middle grade years in a K-8 school, she doesn’t want them to be “guinea pigs” again.

Many people find it hard to believe that Jefferson, after years posting some of the state’s lowest test scores, can achieve a surefire turnaround from the start.

Cade May, a biracial eighth-grader who lives near Jefferson, would much rather go to Central Catholic, a private high school where he found students to be highly focused academics, or Grant High, where many of his best friends from Beaumont Middle School will go.

May thinks Jefferson is likely to become the kind of rigorous college-oriented high school he’s looking for “eventually,” and the idea of getting a year or more of college for free is appealing. “But I don’t want to gamble.”

School officials say Jefferson doesn’t have to draw huge numbers of students this year to succeed. District projections suggest the school — designed to be smaller and more specialized than the city’s seven comprehensive neighborhood high schools — will enroll about 500 students once fully up and running. So it would need to draw only about 150 freshmen to be considered full size.

District officials said they will give the new Jefferson, formally called Jefferson High School Middle College for Advanced Studies, extra support to get off the ground, as they have done for other specialized schools.

Wholesale reinvention is not new for Jefferson. Since the late 1990s, the school has been subjected to a constant churn of reforms and changes, many of them ill-conceived, poorly supported or both. As principals came and went, sometimes several in a single year, the faculty has been upended and the school remade into subject-area academies, then grade-level academies, then back to a unified school.

Daryn Hickok (left), a 10-year-old student at Boise-Eliot School in North Portland, was among students and parents who attended an event to learn about the new Jefferson High School last week. Some students are looking forward to attending, drawn especially to the chance to take college courses.”I want to be able to challenge myself,” says Anna Robertson, now an eighth-grader.Although it enrolled 1,200 students 20 years ago, it has shrunk to just 400 this year, as the vast majority of families who live in the Jefferson zone bailed for other schools.

This latest turnaround plan, however, is different, backers say. Everyone who knows the details — including Jefferson teachers, the school board, Jefferson alumni, the community college’s top leaders and involved Jefferson parents — practically crackle with excitement as they discuss what they are convinced the new Jefferson will deliver.

Terms including “amazing,” “fabulous” and “phenomenal” pepper their accounts.

Algie Gatewood, president of PCC’s Cascade Campus, said his board will judge his success largely by how well the middle college flies. “We have made this partnership with Jefferson High School our No. 1 priority,” he said. “It fits right with our mission of offering opportunity to people of all ages, races, backgrounds and levels of income.”

Tony Hopson, president of a North Portland nonprofit with a track record of getting African American teens to graduate from high school and enter college, has long been an outspoken critic of school district action and inaction at Jefferson, his alma mater.

He’s become the ultimate true believer in the latest plans for Jeff. His agency, Self Enhancement, will provide daily on-site mentoring and support to every freshman. But he said he trusts all the players — including Superintendent Carole Smith and her top staff — to do their part to help Jefferson thrive.

“We really do believe in the teaching staff that is here today, that they are here for all the right reasons,” Hopson told prospective families at a recent gathering. “The central office — we trust their word this time. They are going to hold to what they have told us.”

Nationally, the middle college model of having students co-enroll at a community college while still in high school has proved successful at getting students to pass college courses and pile up college credits. According to researchers at Columbia University, middle college students pass more than 90 percent of the community college classes they take — a statistic that has held true for the Jefferson students who have taken PCC classes in recent years.

Some students can’t wait to start at Jefferson this fall.

A resident of the Jefferson area, white eighth-grader Emilie Larison attended elementary and middle school outside the neighborhood but has chosen Jefferson High. A dancer, she is drawn by the renowned dance troupe that will remain even as the school converts to a middle college. She also said she is “excited … about being around older people and getting used to the college environment before I go to college.”

Anna Robertson, also a white eighth-grader, had a good impression of Jefferson before touring it last month. Her brother, an introverted, academically oriented guy now in his senior year at Jeff, found students more welcoming than at previous schools, their mother, Lisa, said. And the teachers have been excellent.

Robertson said that learning about the stepped-up emphasis on college courses got her even more excited. Most middle school classes have been too easy, she said. “I want to be able to challenge myself.” All her friends will go to Madison High, which made her choice harder. “I really like my friends … but I can’t say no to all this opportunity here at Jefferson.”

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