Ockley Green parent letter

May 17, 2008 by Sia

The following is a letter sent from Ockley Green parent Sia to Superintendent Carole Smith. The letter referenced in the first paragraph decries cuts at Ockley for 08-09, including the digital media program, one P.E. teacher, and two of four eighth grade teachers. –ed.

Dear Superintendent Smith:

I have read the letter from Jamie Malloy. It’s ironic, because yesterday I was talking a Jefferson parent that was trying to convince us that we could stay in Portland Public Schools for high school. At great expense to our low-income family, my daughter will be attending a private Catholic high school.

It is clear to me and many other parents that the district plans to continue the benign neglect of Jefferson Cluster schools. It is also clear that District will continue to practice de facto segregation through the school transfer policy. I just learned that students who participate in the Jefferson Dancers will NOT be required to attend Jefferson high school in the 2008-09 school year, as had been previously reported. PPS continues to cater to families with the wherewithal to participate in the school choice program. Families that can afford to transport children across town and away from their neighborhood schools. The environmental impact of this policy on this city, with regard to traffic congestion, pollution is “not okay”. The pitting of families against one another for “lottery winnings” as one parenting blog calls it is “not okay”. Continuing to give children in schools that are primarily attended by children of color, the short end of the stick regarding resources and programming is unconscionable.

Finding a supportive learning environment for my bright, stubborn, talented Afro-Latina daughter, has been a challenge at Portland Public School since we moved here in 1st grade. We have tried the school choice policy, but found that the policy is inherently flawed. The school choice program has become about middle-class and upper class parents choosing to have more resources and less economic and/or ethnic “diversity” for their children. Children of color are not always welcomed and supported in these environments. Meanwhile, parents of children of color that are low-income are selecting to forego basic needs and paying for school. Holy Redeemer draws from the Jefferson cluster and one-third of its students are on free and reduced lunch. My daughter, attended HRCS for 4th and 5th grade until I could no longer afford it. After a disastrous year at a focus option middle school, we were blessed to find Ockley Green.

Mr. Malone, Dr. Matier and Ms. Scheetz before her, have created an environment for our children that is loving, supportive and holds them accountable. My daughter has blossomed at Ockley Green. She has been making sure that she will receive high school credit for the algebra class. She didn’t even like math before now. She believes in herself and so does her school. As the parent of a middle schooler, there are days where you’re not sure how it will turn-out. Mr. Malone and his staff have demonstrated confidence in these children, when we parents sometimes have had our doubts. As a parent, I do everything I can to make our support staff, teachers and administrators know how special and precious these past two years have been. Ockley Green is the best school we have attended in Portland Public Schools. We tried the Family Cooperative School, Beach Neighborhood School and daVinci Arts Middle. My daughter was treated so poorly at some of those schools that I worried that she would lose her love for school that she brought to Portland.

I can’t even list the wonderful ways that the many Ockley staff that have reached out to our family. It is so special and unusual in your school system. I am so bitter about the cuts.

I am angry, hurt and pretty despondent that you continue to decimate the only school that is actually trying to accomplish what the mission of the District is supposed to be. I wish I could properly articulate how horrible what you have decided to perpetuate is, but language fails me. Much like you and the School Board continue to fail our children.

Tearfully,

Sia

Sia is the parent of an Ockley Green graduate.

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Oh yeah, Jefferson High

May 15, 2008 by Steve Rawley

At least Mayor Potter and superintendent Smith had the courtesy to follow up on the Mayor’s January week in residence at Jefferson High School. The school board — who met at Jefferson that same week, and heard testimony from the same students and same community members about the same issues — seem to have lost interest as soon as the TV trucks packed up and left.

It’s worth taking a look at the progress Potter claims in light of the flier circulated by Jefferson students complaining about cuts to curriculum and lack of academic rigor. These things are not directly within the city government’s power to fix, but the Mayor brought a strong sense of hope and possibility when he moved his office to the school.

According to the Oregonian, Potter announced that the city and TriMet would provide free transit passes to all PPS 6-12 graders. That’s great news, but doesn’t address the inequities Jefferson students face.

It was also announced that “Sam Adams’ office is helping provide instruments and new uniforms to Jefferson’s defunct band program.” But the district has not announced any plans to rebuild the music program at Jefferson. Uniforms and instruments for a defunct band program don’t help Jefferson students.

The Tribune notes that Potter takes credit for having the city “address safety issues at the crosswalk next to Jefferson’s Young Women’s Academy.” In fact, PDOT came out, nearly got hit by a car themselves, said it would be too expensive to fix, and left. Every school day, children continue to risk life and limb crossing that street.

Out of ten actions the mayor claims have happened since his January visit, it is difficult to identify one that actually improves the lot of Jefferson students, or makes Jefferson High more likely to attract the kind of enrollment that could sustain it as a viable neighborhood school.

Of course, the mayor’s people are quick to point out there’s only so much they can do, since they have no direct control over the school board.

So what has the school board done? So far, all we’ve heard about are more cuts to programs. The announced merger of the two main high school academies announced during the mayor’s week in January is evidently proceeding, but there has been no announced progress on any other “proof points” the superintendent’s staff requested in late 2007.

The recently approved budget for the coming school year cuts 4.5 full-time-equivalent (FTE) positions from Jefferson. But due to declining high school enrollment, there are internal shifts of FTE from Jefferson High School to the middle school students at the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Academies. I don’t begrudge the middle schoolers for getting these needed positions — the deserve far better, too — but this means real cuts in excess of 4.5 FTE to an already bare-bones high school curriculum.

It’s up to the school board and superintendent to step up, but so far there’s no evidence that Jefferson’s even on their radar anymore. Perhaps distracted by the PK-8 crisis and the looming facilities bond (already questioned by the Oregonian and Tribune), they’re suffering a little compassion fatigue about Jefferson.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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Publishers vs. librarians: PPS chooses publishers

May 15, 2008 by Steve Rawley

In an unsurprising vote Monday night, the PPS Board of Education moved to spend $1.2 million on middle school history materials, the first such adoption in over 20 years.

I differ with some of my activist cohorts on the degree to which standardization is necessary to ensure equity (I’m pleased the district is moving toward more standardization in general, though I have doubts about the kind of “canned” curriculum we’ve just committed to purchasing). But these differences aside, we can agree that something we’ve dealt with for twenty years, for better or worse, does not constitute a crisis for our middle school students.

Nearly half of our middle school students are in crisis, though. In recent conversations with parents from the Roosevelt, Madison, Jefferson and Grant clusters about the PK-8 conversion, it is clear that the lack of full funding for this transition is causing irreparable harm to an entire cycle of middle schoolers at PPS.

This is the emergency situation that needs the school board’s attention and funding, not the curriculum-in-a-box we just dropped $1.2 million on.

At the top of the list of unfunded operational needs are libraries. The budget, as approved two weeks ago, is short three to five full-time-equivalent (FTE) positions for librarians, and does not provide for appropriate middle school materials in the elementary schools that now must serve middle schoolers.

It also does not provide funding to guarantee computer labs, age-appropriate restroom facilities, lockers or white boards, among other things.

Just to start filling these basic needs, based on documentation provided by the district, would cost around $1.6 million. (It will surely be more, as the district gets a better accounting of the state of all schools.) This does not even begin to address the lack of FTE budget to offer any kind of depth in electives, after school programs or arts education.

To fully address the immediate, critical PK-8 operational funding deficit would probably cost many times this amount (I guestimate $3-6 million, which would still not cover the FTE needed to provide real breadth and depth of curriculum in the smaller PK-8 schools), but we’ve got to start plugging these critical holes now.

When I addressed the school board Monday night, I asked them to postpone the 6-8 social studies curriculum adoption for one year, and instead use this $1.2 million to start closing the gap in PK-8 operational funding.

Nicole Leggett and Michele Schultz have together identified several other sources to fully fund the PK-8 transition:

• Cap administrative wages for one year. (All non-represented district level and principals etc.) Savings: $1.18 million
• Reallocate Non-Instructional Personal Professional Services Fund. Savings up to $3.63 million.
• Reallocate to spend Internal Services Contingency Fund. Savings up to $3 million.
• Spend from the reserve.

The point is that this constitutes a real emergency for our children. New text books, which we have lived without for 20 years, are not as critical as well-stocked, fully-staffed libraries and age-appropriate facilities.

In board discussion before the vote, it was suggested that adopting this new curriculum and staffing libraries can proceed on separate tracks. But we’re not proceeding with libraries, and we are proceeding with this text book adoption.

There is a real disconnect between the school board and the parents I’ve been conversing with. The board does not have a sense of urgency to get the PK-8 transition right. Carole Smith has assembled a smart, experienced team to plan and implement the transition (two years after it began, but that’s not her fault). But they can only do so much without full funding.

What I suspect is that the board is hedging until they are forced to acknowledge the obvious: those who supported the PK-8 transition are now in a minority on the board, and there is significant doubt as to whether this model can deliver a comprehensive middle school education in a cost-effective manner.

With most PK-8 schools having fewer than 100 middle school students, and the superintendent’s staff acknowledging a need for more like 180-200 students to do it right, it’s clear we’re on a collision course with reality.

As much as I’d like to take that strategic issue head-on, we’re not changing course for the coming school year. Meanwhile we have thousands of middle schoolers who will not have access to libraries, computer labs and age-appropriate restrooms in the coming school year.

It’s time to stop asking the children to pay for the mistakes of adults. Instead of sending $1.2 million to text book publishers, we should be using it to hire the librarians we need, and stock their libraries.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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Common curriculum and equity

May 15, 2008 by Peter Campbell

These are the remarks delivered by Chief Joseph parent Peter Campbell to the PPS Board of Education Monday, May 14, 2008. –ed.

The mantra behind the common curriculum adoption has been equity. A legitimate case was presented that schools have inequitable curricular offerings, i.e., “good”/rich schools have better curricular offerings than “bad”/poor schools. The solution? Mandate that every school offer the same books and materials to all students.

While that may seem like a practical solution, it fails to recognize how this solution actually gets implemented. Here are the key sticking points:

1. A common materials adoption does not address the inequity that lies beneath the surface. Low-income kids wake up poor, go to school poor, and go home poor.
2. Just because you tell teachers to use these materials does not mean they are going to use them. For example, there’s widespread evidence that the recent elementary literacy adoption — Scott Foresman’s “Reading Street” — is not being implemented in a uniform fashion. Some teachers are using some of it, some are using all of it, and some are using none of it.
3. The fact that teachers choose not to use common materials is no blemish on teachers. Far from it. Most teachers are highly-trained professionals who exercise their professional judgement in selecting materials that match the needs and interests of the children they are paid to serve. In some cases, the common materials address these needs. But in others, they do not.
4. Too often, a common materials adoption requires that teachers learn how to implement a program. For example, elementary teachers over this past school year have spent an inordinate amount of time learning how to teach Scott Foresman, not teach reading.

So instead of wasting tax-payer money on a feel-good solution that does nothing to address the underlying inequity, a solution that good teachers know when to use and when to reject and that often forces teachers to waste time learning how to implement a costly and ineffective program, I urge you instead to spend our precious resources on site-based professional development. As countless studies have shown, one of the best ways to address the inequities in curricular offerings is to make sure that teachers are getting the kind of ongoing support and training they need. So there’s uniformity in a commitment to high-quality training and support across the district. But leave it to the teachers and the building principals to figure out how to implement the goals of this professional development. In so doing, you’ll be targeting dollars where you get more bang for the buck instead of wasting money on expensive, canned, one-size-fits all materials that gather dust on the shelves.

Peter Campbell is a parent, educator, and activist, who served in a volunteer role for four years as the Missouri State Coordinator for FairTest before moving to Portland. He has taught multiple subjects and grade levels for over 20 years. He blogs at Transform Education.

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Remarks to the School Board re. curriculum adoption

May 14, 2008 by Nicole Leggett

These are the remarks delivered by Peninsula parent Nicole Leggett to the PPS Board of Education Monday, May 14, 2008. –ed.

Good Evening, School Board,

I’m Nicole Leggett of Peninsula School. It has come to my attention that schools across the district have need of access to books. But not through another multi-million dollar curriculum adoption. What we need for are librarians to input, shelve, and then be there to check out the vast collections of books, we have already spent valuable resources on. Really we need to put what we have to good use, before you adopt a Social Studies curriculum that lacks sufficient buy-in to prove it’s urgently needed.

In a District with 43% drop out rate, we need to think about proven strategies that work across the varied demographics we have. Access to a library and the additional attention found there works every time. As the Mound of Information submitted to you from the United Librarians supports. 43% drop out rate screams crisis to us parents. Slow this curriculum adoptions process. Or dig into the reserve or levy. Our children deserve to read that book, in the back room, that can’t be checked out or shelved though the new system by Willing Volunteers. Give us librarians to do their job. We can’t fix this gross waste of resource, but you can. Put the Social Studies adoption off for a year. Till you can show it is as supported by staff, parents, and students as the PE adoption seems to be.

The Local Option Levy was passed by the public for many reasons. Not just the new Text Books the District has focused these funds on. Diversify the public’s interest. Go with something we know works. Access to books! I urge you to postpone this adoption. To instead implement an Open Library Policy.

Also, Please explain what K-8 families can expect from Archon, Inc. for the $100,000 that is proposed tonight?

Thank you

Nicole Leggett is a Peninsula K-8 Parent.

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Rethinking Schools May 16: “Where’s the Equity?”

May 5, 2008 by Peter Campbell

Please join Rethinking Schools colleagues from the Portland metro area to explore the tension between mandates and autonomy. What agreements need to be made so that ALL children receive a quality education? What systemic reforms put equity at the center of every decision? What agreements can teachers make to ensure that ALL students read writers from diverse backgrounds and write engaging assignments in all content areas? What systemic agreements ensure that teachers do not shoulder the burden of underfunded or misguided reforms?

When: Friday, May 16th, 4 pm – 6 pm

Where: Westminster Presbyterian Church, fireside room
1624 NE Hancock (2 blocks north of Broadway)

Please bring a friend or colleague or parent, and something to eat or drink to share.

Childcare available, but please call ahead: 503-282-6848.

Peter Campbell is a parent, educator, and activist, who served in a volunteer role for four years as the Missouri State Coordinator for FairTest before moving to Portland. He has taught multiple subjects and grade levels for over 20 years. He blogs at Transform Education.

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Election ’08 — Amanda Fritz

May 1, 2008 by Steve Rawley

Amanda Fritz, candidate for City Council seat #1, has responded to the PPS Equity questionnaire. Amanda has been involved with her neighborhood public schools for 17 years. Her daughter, a senior at Wilson, will be her third child to graduate from her neighborhood schools: Markham Elementary School, Jackson Middle School, and Wilson High School.

Amanda volunteered on Ruth Adkins’ school board campaign, and counts Ruth among her many supporters for her own campaign for City Council.

Comments are open on Amanda’s page.

(Disclosure: I have personally endorsed Amanda Fritz for City Council seat #1, but I do not intend to make any PPS Equity endorsements.)

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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A few facts about PK-8

April 21, 2008 by Steve Rawley

Source: School Profiles & Enrollment Data, 2007-2008, Portland Public Schools

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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Student transfers and the environment

April 16, 2008 by Steve Rawley

Terry Olson has a great post on his blog on the environmental impact of school transfers.

Nobody’s done a statistical survey to evaluate the number of vehicle miles traveled daily as families criss-cross the city taking their children out of their neighborhoods for school, but Terry scratches the surface by looking at the numbers of students transferring in and out of a handful of schools.

The cover story of yesterday’s Willamette Week is about seven ways Portland can be more green. Too bad they didn’t read Terry’s post before they went to press.

There is no reason Portland Public Schools can’t provide quality, comprehensive education in every neighborhood. The infrastructure is in place (even if it is in need of upgrades), and it is difficult to argue that families transfer out because the want to drive their kids across town and back every day.

The truth and shame of PPS is that they have allowed enrollment and funding to flood out of our poorest neighborhoods. Instead of attempting to stanch the flow, they have encouraged it by gutting programs (like the Jefferson arts magnet), eliminating comprehensive high schools in favor of experimentation in Gates small schools, closing schools, and eliminating middle school options (the Madison and Jefferson clusters have completely lost middle schools).

As with the greater economy, the free market system is beginning to creak and groan under environmental and human costs that have previously been written off. It simply is not sustainable to continue to defund our poorest neighborhoods to the tune of tens of millions of dollars annually.

As I’ve argued consistently over the past year, it is time for a New Deal for Portland Public Schools. We need to reinvest in our poorest neighborhoods, and remove any legitimate reason to transfer from one neighborhood school to another. (There will always be a place for centrally-located focus option schools, like Benson, da Vinci Arts and MLC, and I’m not arguing for the end of this kind of “choice.”)

It’s the right thing to do for the planet, for our children, and for our neighborhoods. What’s stopping the school board and superintendent from acting, and revamping the transfer policy and the distribution of our educational investment? As far as I can tell, it’s the fear of alienating a small number of upper middle class families.

They actually seem to be holding the planet and the majority of our children hostage in the interest of not upsetting a small minority of their constituents. This continues to bring shame to our great city, and intolerable inequity to our poorest citizens.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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Portland schools “did not measure up”

April 16, 2008 by Steve Rawley

With the virtually unchallenged* talk of 300,000 new residents moving to Portland, and the need to build more high-density housing near rail transit to accommodate them, it’s curious that nobody talks about the role of schools in people deciding to move to a city.

An article posted today in Pittsburgh’s POP City profiles a couple with a young child about to start school who decided to leave San Francisco so their son could have a better chance at things.

After extensive research, they came up with a short list: Portland, Boulder, Seattle, Asheville, N.C., Pittsburgh, Burlington, VT. and Minneapolis.

Wait a minute… Pittsburgh? Well, you guessed it; that’s where they ended up. And guess why the ruled out Portland?

“Portland, while culturally rich, had higher real estate prices and public schools that did not measure up.”

Guess why they ruled out Minneapolis? “Minneapolis had a public school lottery which was out of the question.”

I’m not saying we need to build up our schools to attract new residents. But when our schools are shaming our city, maybe it’s time to act. Portland Public Schools are depriving students of opportunity they can never recover, threatening the future of our city.

*Sho Dozono, to his credit, does question this figure, primarily on the basis of available housing.

Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.

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