The Portland School Board will consider a proposal to limit school choice for eighth graders choosing whether to attend Portland or Deering High School.The Board will take part in a workshop at Tuesday's board meeting to discuss the proposal, which would limit the enrollment disparity of the school's classes to 30 students by assigning a number of students who choose the higher enrolled school as their first choice to the opposite school.It would not affect Casco Bay High School, which limits its enrollment to 400 students. Students need to send an application in order to attend. The current system allows eighth graders not attending Casco Bay High School to choose between Portland or Deering High School.The proposal is in response to the enrollment disparity between Portland and Deering High Schools. In 2020, 873 students attended Portland High School while 798 attended Deering, a difference of 75. In 2022, 906 students attended Portland High School while 704 attended Deering, bringing the disparity up to 202.The disparity extends to students with diverse backgrounds. The district labels some students as "diversity factor students," which includes social and economic factors like an IEP, learning English, homelessness and receiving reduced or free lunch. According to school district data, in 2022, 66% of Deering students fell under this umbrella as opposed to 48% of Portland High School students. Under the proposal, diversity would be a factor in the balancing of schools.Portland Superintendent Xavier Botana says the proposed changes would lower class sizes and increase efficiency at the schools while making them more diverse."We are proposing what is, in essence stopping unrestricted choice and having more controls that will allow us to do two things," Botana said. "One is to ensure that our enrollment at both schools is somewhat similar. So that allows us to offer the same kind of programming at both schools in a more efficient way. And then also to have our schools be reflective of the community to a higher extent than they are today."In response to potential concerns by parents in restricting choice of high school for some students, Botana says the proposal's intention is to make both schools equal for all students."The intent is to be able to provide the same high level, high quality education to all of our students, regardless of which school they enroll in," Botana said. "We have data that shows that students choose schools for pretty much the same reasons across both schools, so there really isn't a marked difference in why students choose. We know that both of the schools are quality options, and we just want to be able to continue to make sure that that's the experience of all of our students."Botana says the proposal would likely cap the number of students who would not receive their first choice of high schools at 10%.