Category: Facilities
September 21, 2008
by Steve Rawley
Lest the casual reader believe PPS Equity is solely focused on the things Portland Public Schools is doing wrong (we’ve been described as “scathing” by Sarah Mirk at the Merc), we should pause and take note of the things that are on the right track.
In Carole Smith’s September 5 speech (58KB PDF) to the City Club of Portland (reviewed by Peter Campbell here and by Terry Olson on his blog), she highlighted what I see as a significant policy shift from her predescessor. In her prepared remarks, she says
…our high school campuses with the lowest enrollment — the ones usually suggested for closure — each have at least 1,400 high school age students living in their neighborhoods. As a city, we have a choice: We can declare defeat, shut down those campuses and tell 1,400 students they have to take a long bus ride every day to a high school in a more affluent part of town — sacrificing their ability to participate in athletics, after-school programs at those schools that meet families’ needs and are attractive to students.
I’m not ready to give up on those schools and on those neighborhoods.
Hey, I could have written this! In fact, I have, many times.
(The next step is to figure out how to pay for it. I’ve long suggested balancing enrollment through a combination of equalizing opportunities across the district and a neighborhood-based enrollment policy. Carole Smith and her staff haven’t made that next step yet, but unless they have a 50% increase in funding or want to cut programming in wealthier neighborhoods, balancing enrollment is the only way we’re going to get there.)
Finally, we’re hearing talk of “equity of access,” which sounds pretty darned close to the “equity of opportunity” I’ve been calling for.
The significant question about “access” is whether we will continue to have a two-tiered secondary school system — comprehensive middle and high schools for the wealthier half of the city and K8s and “small schools” high schools for the rest — or whether we’re going to work toward eliminating the ability to know the wealth of a neighborhood by the type of school you find there.
Smith is taking the first steps on the path to what I call equity; to that end, her staff, “by the end of this school year, … will define the core educational program to be offered at each of our high school campuses, as well as a plan to fund it within existing resources.”
You have to assume this will be a pretty low bar, as it has been with K8s. (The minimum 6-8 curriculum being defined for the K8 transition is significantly less than what was already available at every middle school in Portland before the K8 conversion.) But we’ve got to guarantee that students are at least able to graduate with the classes available, something that isn’t necessarily possible at some of Portland’s poorest high schools, a problem aggravated by the district’s rigid implementation of the “small schools” model at Madison High School, for example.
Nevertheless, these implementation details, along with a continued focus on assessment, do not detract from the fact that Carole Smith is on the right track in significant, broad stroke ways.
Talking about high schools before talking about facilities. Talking about “equity of access”. Talking about where students live (as opposed to where they’ve transferred to) as a critical element in the design of the high school system.
It’s easy to point to missed opportunities to take immediate action and show a real commitment to equity of opportunity: Madison High, K8s, Libraries, etc. But it seems to me the winds have shifted, and if we actually put some of Carole Smith’s words into bold action, we’re going to see a turn-around from the laissez-faire, two-tiered, self-segregated “system” of education we currently have.
Then it just becomes a question of urgency. Every year we wait, we lose another class of students.
It wouldn’t hurt if the school board put a little more wind at Carole Smith’s back in this regard.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
7 Comments
September 14, 2008
by Steve Rawley
As the newest member of the Portland Public Schools board of education, I would like to extend a cordial welcome to Martín González in the form of a challenge on a number of critical issues, in no particular order.
- High schools: advocate for comprehensive high schools in every neighborhood, with the schools offering the best variety of courses and the most qualified teachers sited in the poorest neighborhoods. This policy, the inverse of the current high school system, would rebuild enrollment and public investment where it is most needed. “Small schools,” as currently implemented, may be offered as a special focus, but should never be substituted for comprehensive schools.
- Facilities: advocate for building new facilities based on where students live, not where they’ve transferred, a policy of investing in proportion to local student population and encouraging families to stay in (or return to) their neighborhood schools.
- K8 transition: advocate for a comprehensive middle school option in every neighborhood. K8 schools may be the best option for some students, but they offer dramatically less educational opportunity and are more segregated than middle schools. (Before this transition, every middle school student in PPS had access to a staffed library. Now many do not.) PPS middle grade students assigned to K8 schools are significantly more likely to be non-white and poor than those assigned to middle schools. If any student has a middle school option in their neighborhood, all students should.
- No Child Left Behind: bring a resolution to the board calling for the repeal of the punitive aspects of this law that unfairly target poor and minority students, and introduce policy directing district administration to de-emphasize assessment in favor of a more rounded, whole-child educational focus.
- Student transfer and school funding policies: advocate for a school funding policy that would reinvest in schools that have been gutted by out-transfers as a way to bring enrollment back. Introduce policy that would shift our public investment back to where families live, and guarantee a minimum core curriculum (including the arts) in every neighborhood school. If you really want to be bold, propose policy that would limit neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers to those that would not adversely impact socio-economic segregation. That is, students who qualify for free or reduced lunch could basically transfer anywhere, but other students could only transfer into Title I schools, much like the transfer policy in place during the 1980 desegregation plan (but keying on income instead of race).
- Charter schools: come out strongly for neighborhood schools. Learn from charter school applications what’s missing in our neighborhood schools, and advocate for policy to provide these things in neighborhood schools. The most recent PPS charter school proposal suggests nothing we shouldn’t already be doing in every neighborhood school.
González has a unique opportunity to “audition” for the seat that he will have to win by popular vote in May. How he performs on each of the above issues will signal where he stands with those of us who want school system based on equity of opportunity, where the wealth of a neighborhood does not correspond to the wealth of offerings in its schools.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
2 Comments
July 9, 2008
by Steve Rawley
Make no mistake, talk of converting Benson High School to a two-year, part-time CTE (Career Technical Education) center means that Benson is the first of Portland’s ten high schools to go on the chopping block.
District leaders have broadly hinted that they will close two high schools. If they convert Benson to a CTE center, would they only need to close one cluster school? Or are they considering closing two schools in addition to the Benson conversion? Any guesses which remaining high schools they would close or “merge”?
Logic, demographics and building conditions may indicate Lincoln and Wilson merging in a new facility. East side schools could rebuild or remodel, but continue to serve their neighborhoods (and be in place for the expected population boom coming in the next 15-20 years).
More likely, of course, they’re eyeballing east-side schools like Marshall and Madison for closures and mergers. Or Roosevelt and Jefferson. And rebuilding Wilson and Lincoln to the satisfaction of the west-side elites, of course, perhaps moving Lincoln and giving the land to Homer Williams in the process.
Get ready to fight for your high school, Portlanders.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
19 Comments
June 8, 2008
by Steve Rawley
The 2007-08 PPS school year heard lots of talk of equity, but no common vision has emerged for what that means or how we can get there.
Things started on a cautiously optimistic high note with the hiring from within of Carole Smith, whose staff started saying the right things about equity.
The school year built to a climax with the mayor’s week at Jefferson in January, but the wind started to come out of the sails with a new budget that brings further staffing cuts at schools in poor neighborhoods. Questions remain about the district’s commitment to “proof points” at Jefferson, such as merging the academies, to say nothing of restoring the performing arts department or restoring AP classes.
Questions about the PK-8 transition bubbled up and led to Smith’s first encounter with an angry mob. She responded with an action team. Some of the biggest holes are plugged, but PK-8 remains in crisis, still short library staff for eight schools.
In the end, we still don’t know: What defines equity? There have been no changes to the policies most responsible for inequity (open transfers and the school funding formula). Worse, the district seems fixed in a mindset that they can guarantee outcomes for children affected by poverty. But this mindset has subjected our poorest children to less educational depth and breadth, and can only accelerate out-transfers of those better off.
The longer they try to deliver “equity” like this, the more inequitable things have gotten.
Ultimately, the only path to equity is equal opportunity and balanced enrollment. That is (like I said in September), we’ve got to define a comprehensive curriculum (including arts, libraries, technology, etc.) and deliver it in every neighborhood school, and we’ve got to talk about the transfer policy in the detail requested by the Flynn-Blackmer audit, issued two years ago this month.
September 2007
Report on transfer policy and neighborhood funding inequity presented to school board
I present the school board and interim superintendent Ed Schmitt the first draft of my report Charting Open Transfer Enrollment and Neighborhood Funding Inequities (261KB PDF). The report details how the district’s transfer and enrollment policy takes significant funding from our poorest neighborhoods — over $40 million in 2006-2007 — and hands it to our wealthiest neighborhoods. The poorest school clusters — Jefferson, Madison, Marshall and Roosevelt — continue with disproportionate program cuts as enrollment and funding flow to more affluent neighborhoods. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods effectively maintain comprehensive programming at the expense of our poorest citizens.
PPS changes policy to allow corporate advertising in school gyms
Before Carole Smith is hired, the school board votes to allow the Trail Blazers to “donate” the refinishing of our ten high school gym floors in exchange for the placement of permanent corporate ads. Dwight Jaynes loves the idea, others do not. Rick Seifert (of Red Electric fame) inspires the nickname Dwight “Burgerville” Jaynes.
October 2007
Smith hired from within
Bucking a trend of hiring administrators from outside of the district, the school board surprises many by hiring Carole Smith from within. Smith wastes no time setting high expectations, saying “Jefferson’s going to be great.”
District low-balls rehired custodians
Opening negotiations with their rehired custodians, PPS offers a 30% pay cut.
District data show transfer policy aggravates segregation
In advance of board discussion on the transfer policy, administrators present data showing the segregation caused by the transfer policy.
City offers million dollar band-aid to district’s 40 million dollar problem
Erik Sten’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development offers Portland schools a million dollars to to “create excitement.” Excitement fails to materialize.
November 2007
Board dances around transfer issue, takes no action to balance enrollment
The school board finally gets around to talking about its transfer policy, a year and a half after auditors asked for clarification. They artfully avoid answering city and county auditors’ questions about racial and economic segregation caused by its policy.
December 2007
Board rejects all four charter applications
Possibly signaling a new attitude, the school board rejects four charter school applications.
New Administration makes positive rumblings about “Equity”
Carole Smith’s administration starts saying the right thing about equity.
January 2008
Mayor Potter comes to Jefferson
The school board comes, too, and is met with a parade of students speaking eloquently about the lack of rigorous and varied course offerings available to them. The Jefferson High School PTSA presents the school board with their comprehensively damning resolution calling for an end to the transfer policy that has devastated the schools in our poorest neighborhoods. I put in my two cents worth, too, addressing the intolerable inequity created by the board’s transfer policy.
The whole scene is repeated Wednesday, when the City Council meets at Jefferson. In addition to the students and PTSA members, city council candidate and Wilson High parent Amanda Fritz addresses the council about the glaring differences between her daughter’s school and Jefferson. I speak of the school district and city working at cross purposes.
The week wraps up with the mayor’s state of the city address to the City Club on Friday, with club members getting a tour of Jefferson’s half-empty library, and the mothballed metal shop, TV studio and band room.
The entire week leaves the Jefferson community buoyed by a sense of hope and possibility. How could a city like Portland tolerate such glaring inequity?
February 2008
PPS Equity launched
It seems like it’s been a lot longer, but I just launched this site in February.
The last “Celebration!”
PPS holds its last “meat market” school choice fair.
PK8 comes to a boil
Two years after a rushed decision to eliminate middle schools (in some neighborhoods; the west side gets to keep theirs, evidently) parents come together to demand a better deal for their middle-school children.
Custodians stave off 30% pay cut
Custodians and food service workers are made to feel good about taking a 3-year wage freeze.
Ivy charter withdraws application
With the board poised to approve their application on appeal (with some modifications), the organizers of the Ivy Charter School withdraw at the last minute. The other three applications in the cycle were rejected and did not appeal.
Smith’s first budget: where’s the equity?
Carole Smith’s first budget makes a few tentative steps toward equity, but does nothing to balance enrollment or help schools hardest hit by the transfer policy.
March 2008
Smith forms PK8 action team
Two years after beginning implementation, the district decides to start planning for it.
April 2008
Deep cuts to poor schools
As community members start to study the budget, deep cuts are discovered at our poorest schools, putting the lie to the “overarching” goal of equity.
Gates “small schools” make no progress
Touted as a salve for the “achievement gap,” our poorest schools were carved up into academies. New data show these schools continue to have the worst dropout rates in Portland.
May 2008
Jefferson Students walk out, protest lack of progress
Frustrated at staffing cuts, and a continuing lack of breadth and depth in course offerings, Jefferson students walk out, demanding curriculum, teachers, AP classes, language classes, College Center, and
other programs.
School board funds new books for middle schoolers, even as many schools lack library staff
Some parents question the timing and priority of the move.
PK8 team addresses some concerns
PK8 schools get some basic guarantees, but district won’t commit to library staff for nearly a third of PK8 schools. Transition remains in crisis, but at a lower boil.
June 2008
Madison students walk out, decry “small schools”
Protesting the anticipated “involuntary transfer” of a highly-regarded counselor, around 50 Madison High School students walk out, also citing discontent with the “small schools” model that has them constrained in narrow academic silos.
Oregonian covers small schools
In an A1 story in the Sunday Oregonian, reporters Betsy Hammond and Lisa Grace Lednicer write about the failure of the Gates-funded “small schools” to bridge the “achievement gap.”
But it is quixotic to form policy around outcomes, as former PPS school board member Steve Buel has pointed out.
Over the summer
Teachers and students get summer vacation, but the school board never sleeps. They meet all summer, and three of them will be entering the final year of their term (Henning, Ryan and Sargent). Will the transfer policy be addressed in a meaningful way? Will we finally figure out how to talk about high schools, school mergers (closures) and facilities, all in one fell swoop? Will anybody present a vision for what PPS will look like in five years? Stay tuned….
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
7 Comments
May 30, 2008
by Steve Rawley
At the PK8 Action Team meeting last night, district staff had at least some good news for parents and concerned community members.
The biggest news was a commitment to provide age-appropriate library materials for all PK8 libraries, and staff over the summer to enter the books into the catalog system and put them on the shelves. But we still have eight schools without library staff.
It was also announced that each school would have two computer labs by one year from now.
Age-appropriate library materials and technology were two critical items identified in a petition published earlier this week, and it is gratifying to no longer have to fight for them.
But the lack of library staff at eight of our 30 PK8 schools means that a large number of students will continue to be denied basic educational resources. Until this gap is funded, the PK8 transition remains in crisis.
Adding to the confusion, the PK8 Action Team still hasn’t provided a comprehensive accounting of the funding gap. It is rumored that many of the facilities issues (restrooms, etc.) will be addressed, but there were many operational funding gaps presented at the last meeting that have not been categorized as “one-time” or “ongoing,” and there has not been a comprehensive, school-by-school list of needs.
In order to provide this accounting, the district must first define what constitutes a minimally adequate educational environment for middle schoolers. I requested this at the meeting last night, but I’m not entirely optimistic that we will get it.
This is, of course, a district-wide issue, not just PK8. But until we can define and guarantee a minimum level, we will continue to see gross inequities across our district.
Now that we seem to be edging away from crisis mode in the PK8 transition, perhaps we can talk about the looming strategic issues. I’m still not convinced that the district is fully committed to making PK8 work, or that we have an economically sustainable and educationally adequate model for our middle schoolers, especially at our smaller schools.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
2 Comments
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 is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
5 Comments
April 13, 2008
by Steve Rawley
The candidates for Portland City Council and Mayor are starting to talk about schools, and already there has been some interesting talk.
Willamette Week is posting video of their joint endorsement interviews, which have so far included candidates for commssioner #1 and #2, as well as mayoral candidates Sho Dozono and Sam Adams.
Jim Middaugh, a candidate for commissioner #2, raised some eyebrows at PPS with his response to the PPS Equity candidate questionnaire, in which he claims city staff of the Schools, Families, Housing Initiative helped avert a school closure. This prompted Matt Shelby from PPS to note “I’m not aware of closure plans, or even discussions for that matter, involving any of our schools.”
(Middaugh, like all other candidates who have responded to the questionnaire except Fred Stewart, carefully avoids talking about holding the district accountable to the Flynn-Blackmer audit.)
In the Willamette Week interview, Middaugh declares that schools are his top priority, and he cites his work on the Schools, Families, Housing Initiative as an example of how the city can help schools.
What he doesn’t mention is that in the first of two rounds of this grant, only one small project was funded that will actually be school-based. I’m not saying the other projects aren’t worthy, but there’s only so much a million dollars could do even if all of it were spent on our schools. One $14,000 grant isn’t much to crow about.
But I don’t want to pick on Midaugh. The fact that he has kids in PPS is one positive he would be wise to play up.
The mayoral candidates are also jumping on the schools bandwagon, and also tip-toeing around any serious issues, like the glaring inequity documented over several years by the Neighborhood Schools Alliance, and more recently by me and the Jefferson PTSA.
Sho Dozono is vague about schools, as he is with pretty much everything, but thinks businesses and non-profits should be more involved. Sam Adams is all about “fundraising” (how about revenue raising?), and seems to have tuned in to the Jefferson High School “charrette” fiasco, with no awareness of the community fallout that followed this top-secret plan to demolish Jefferson and essentially cede the property to PCC.
In the Willamette Week interview, Adams talks glowingly of a Jefferson High fully integrated with PCC.
It’s surely not be a bad thing for some students to earn college credit while they go to high school. But this demonstrates how out of touch Adams is with his constituents in North Portland, who have been cool to the idea of demolishing Jefferson High and rebuilding it as an extension of the PCC campus.
Of course, this idea is consistent with the developer-centric ethos of Adams, much of City Hall, and PPS, so we shouldn’t be terribly surprised.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
8 Comments
March 13, 2008
by Steve Rawley
After broadly hinting that we need to close two high schools in the press in January, Portland Public Schools abruptly pulled back from discussing the future of our existing ten high schools publicly.
The need to focus energy and resources on completing the questionable K-8 transition seemed to be the reason, but Beth Slovic at the Willamette Week published an e-mail yesterday that points to another reason.
The e-mail, from outside facilities consultant Bill DeJong, criticizes the leaders of Carole Smith’s high school team (not mentioned by name, but presumably Leslie Rennie Hill and John Wilhelmi) for not moving quickly enough toward the kind of change he would like to see — i.e. school closures.
Superintendent Smith sent an e-mail last evening explaining that the high school discussion and facilities discussion are on separate tracks. It is a reasonable position, worth supporting in the face of outside consultants who would rush us toward school closures.
“The work is urgent, but it must not be frenetic or imposed quickly upon the community to meet an artificial timeline. Any changes will require community vetting and ownership, as well as thoughtful planning before implementation; this much we have learned from past school closures and reconfiguration,” wrote Smith.
Smith acknowledges that our “liberal transfer policy” has a role in some high schools sitting “half empty, while others are bursting.”
She also responds indirectly to DeJong’s criticism: “Decisions about the size and location of our high school buildings, while important, will come as the result of this strategy. The buildings cannot drive the strategy. For that reason, and very consciously, I have asked the Portland School Board not to include our high schools in this winter’s facilities discussions.”
Agreed.
So let’s talk about high schools.
I’m willing to accept that we would be better off with fewer high schools. Eight high schools would give us an average size of about 1,400, enough to fund a full curriculum. (All five of Beaverton’s neighborhood high schools have more than 2,000 students.)
There are a couple preconditions I would like to add to the conversation, in addition to the “buildings cannot drive the strategy” bit.
- Siting of schools must be based on where students live, not where they’ve transfered.
- Comprehensive highs must be the centerpiece of our high school strategy. This is key to equity. These schools must be available to all students, in the neighborhoods where they live. Special focus options should be centrally located, like Benson, and as is done in districts like Beaverton. They should not be co-located with neighborhood programs, and definitely not substitute for comprehensive schools in poor neighborhoods.
- The “liberal transfer policy” must be examined in light of equalizing programming across the district.
- Siting must not be influenced in any way by the commercial value of the land of existing facilities.
Smith closes her e-mail, “It’s high time to have that conversation, and I hope you will join us.”
I couldn’t agree more. Maybe the first step is to fire the outside consultants who don’t seem to get that we want and orderly process. The next step is to lay all the cards on the table. Anybody who’s paid attention knows that we’re talking about closing at least two high schools.
Let’s get it all out in the open.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
29 Comments
March 1, 2008
by Steve Rawley
You won’t hear me say that very often, but with Friday’s editorial, “Firing up the bulldozers”, the Oregonian’s editorial board correctly questions whether Portland Public Schools should “reverse course on any recent program changes to avoid costly fixes or unnecessary facilities upgrades.”
The O cites the hasty reconfiguration started by “Hurricane” Vicki Phillips, the inadequacy of many former elementary school buildings to handle K-8 schools, and the temporary housing of eighth graders at Madison High as reasons to rethink things before committing to radical, long-lasting and expensive physical plant changes.
Most surprisingly, the O acknowledges “anecdotal enthusiasm among the stroller set,” which augurs an end to declining enrollment in the district, as long as we can keep our “schools attractive enough for families to stay.” This is the demographic change that those of us with young children in the district are keenly aware of, but is not accounted for by the PSU demographic studies PPS depends on.
We may finally be seeing baby steps in the right direction from Portland’s elites on public school policy. I’ve been asking for a few weeks now for the district to state the reason for continuing with Phillips’ K-8 conversion. I appreciate that the Oregonian editorial board is asking the same question.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
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February 20, 2008
by Steve Rawley
We know that the completing the K-8 transition is one of the top priorities of Carole Smith. We all know that to date, the transition has been rocky. Many schools do not have space. Some comprehensive middle schools seem slated to be kept open, while some clusters, like Jefferson, have had all their middle schools either closed or converted (despite having one school without enough space to even add sixth grade).
I was unable to attend the meeting last night at Rigler… Who went? How did it go?
I’ve set up a forum for this topic, since it’s probably going to be a hot one for a while. Feel free to start new topics there, or leave comments here.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is founder and editor of PPS Equity.
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