Portland Public Schools reports rise in students with IEPs, outlines staffing and data fixes

Jesse Applegate, senior director for special education and student support, told the committee the district’s special-education population has grown since the last child count: “As of 10/01/2019, we had just over a thousand students, 1,003 students receiving IEP services. This past 10/01/2025, we, now have 1,220 students receiving IEP services from Portland Public Schools.”

Applegate said the district also tracks 66 students who attend private schools physically located in Portland and are served through individualized service plans rather than IEPs. The district’s assistant superintendent for elementary schools, Angela Atkinson Duena, explained the obligation: “we are obligated to, evaluate and create, if needed, ISPs for any student who attends … a private school that is physically located within Portland.” She said federal grant funds largely cover that work.

On how students spend their day, Applegate summarized the district’s inclusion categories: roughly two-thirds of students with IEPs spend 80% or more of their school day in general education; other students spend 40–79% (resource room), less than 40% (self-contained), or are placed in specialized private/residential settings.

Applegate reviewed disability categories and dual identification: the most common qualifying categories are other health impairment, specific learning disability and autism; the district counts 373 students who are both multilingual and have IEPs. He said those dual-identified shares are roughly proportional to district composition.

On staffing, Applegate said central special-education leadership roles that were open last year have been filled. He reported continuing vacancies among school-based staff: 24 EdTech vacancies of 180 positions (many filled by contracted staff), six vacant case-manager (teacher) roles, four speech vacancies, three BCBAs and one psychologist vacancy. He noted the district contracts externally for behavioral-health professionals (BHPs) and currently has 53 active BHPs providing mostly 1:1 support.

The presentation described work under strategic initiative 2.5, organized in four strands: professional development, consistent specialized-program features, accurate IEP and service-delivery documentation, and family engagement. Specific actions include a year-long, role-differentiated professional-development arc, CPI physical-management teams trained at each school, three rounds of program walkthroughs to assess “essential features” of specialized programs, monthly IEP-data reviews led by a new program manager for the Acuity system, and plans for three Parent University sessions to improve family access to IEP meetings and progress reporting.

Applegate emphasized data-infrastructure work to match Acuity with Infinite Campus so the district can report reliably on services, referrals and evaluations. He said the district is beginning to schedule individual-student service blocks in its elementary scheduling software to compare actual service implementation with IEP documentation.

Board members asked clarifying questions about private-school ISPs and CPI training; Atkinson Duena reiterated the district’s legal obligation for students attending private schools inside Portland and said CPI (Crisis Prevention Institute) materials are publicly available.

Applegate and staff said they will continue to use a mix of hired staff and contractors to maintain service delivery while pursuing recruitment and data-quality improvements.