Category: Transfer Policy
January 25, 2010
by Carrie Adams
In 1998, I joined a multiethnic activist group called the Community Monitoring Advisory Coalition (CMAC). The group was led by longtime activists Ron Herndon, Richard Luccetti and Halim Rahsaan.
My first CMAC committee assignment was writing the history of the struggle to improve public education for minority children. That was quite an assignment for me considering that I come from a poor white background. I’d rarely left my neighborhood. Needless to say the paper was a collaborative effort.
I’m in the process of updating the Two Decade Struggle for Public School Children because it is now over a decade behind.
I get pissed when I read through the history now because so much of what was fought for has been lost. Here’s an excerpt from the paper:
In 1979 the Black United Front began working against a school desegregation plan that was very harmful to Black children and discriminatory in its implementation. Using a study by the Community Coalition for School Integration, the Front protested the forced busing of Black students from their communities while White students were allowed to attend neighborhood schools. School district policy prevented Black teachers from teaching at schools in the Black community.
There were no schools serving grades 6-8 in the Albina neighborhood where the majority of Portland’s Black children lived. All middle school aged children were mandatorily bused into other neighborhoods. School officials tried to put as few Black children as possible in as many White schools as possible. In 1977, 44 students from the Eliot neighborhood were bused to 20 different schools. This abusive practice of busing and scattering Black students occurred at every elementary school in the Black community.
The Front sponsored two successful boycotts of Portland Public Schools in 1980 and 1981 to press demands for a new desegregation plan and a middle school in the Black community.
Tubman Middle School was opened in 1983 but only after the firing of Superintendent Blanchard (BESC is named after him), partially because of his unwillingness to work with Black parents and intervention by a mediator from the US Department of Justice.
Sadly Tubman closed in 2006. Where is the Albina neighborhood’s middle school now?
One of my favorite poems is a long poem called The Intervals by Stuart MacKinnon. In it MacKinnon talks about not letting the effort of generations drop.
Portland Public Schools has taken advantage of the fact that some communities have been asleep. PPS has changed school boundaries and reconfigured, consolidated and closed schools in poor communities with little resistance.
By just about every measure (achievement gap, dropout and discipline rates, under and over representation in TAG and SPED, teacher diversity, and equitable opportunities) Portland has gone backwards. Hard fought gains have been lost.
PPS is about to change school assignment policy at the high school level, redraw boundaries, and close schools. They say that they’re making the changes in an effort to create equity. Nothing in their history makes me believe that.
PPS administrators can’t be trusted to do the right thing for kids unless forced. Hell, they don’t even know it’s about kids. They think it’s about them. Parents and community members need to get involved now. Before it’s too late.
Sourced from: Cheating in Class. Used by permission.
Carrie Adams blogs at Cheating in Class.
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January 21, 2010
by Steve Rawley
The Oregonian attempted a little analysis today, with a two-page spread in the “In Portland” section.
Reporter Kimberly Melton took several factors into account, including enrollment trends, political climate, community resources and current academic programs.
What this approach clearly misses is that free-flowing student transfers have drained significant enrollment from schools in poor neighborhoods, resulting in schools with some of the largest attendance area population having the smallest enrollment.
Also not considered in The Oregonian analysis is the value of the properties.
In the past, Portland Public Schools has allowed student transfers to drain enrollment from poor schools, then used low enrollment as an excuse to close them (think Kenton, with its valuable real estate at the intersection of N. Interstate and Lombard). In its analysis of Jefferson High, The O mentions PCC, but not the fact that PCC has long coveted the property for its own expansion.
In the end, the O puts Jefferson, Grant and Madison in the “too close to call” column, which will only lead to more fear, uncertainty and doubt in the community. The district is already dealing with a mini parent rebellion at Grant, and Jefferson, Oregon’s only majority black high school, has long been suspected as a candidate for closure.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is publisher and editor PPS Equity.
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January 20, 2010
by Carrie Adams
PPS 
Seattle School District
If people have any doubts about the direction that PPS is heading, they only need to head north 175 miles. PPS and the Seattle School District have so much in common.
Seattle School District converted some K-5 and 6-8 schools to K-8s. PPS followed (sort of…it’s half-assed and still in limbo). Both districts have parents and staff complaining about lack of support in the transitions.
The Seattle School District closed and consolidated schools. Portland followed.
The Seattle School District contracted with DeJong to develop enrollment projections. Those projections were met with skepticism by parents and board members.
In Portland, DeJong partnered with Magellan Consulting to complete a facilities assessment for PPS. More skepticism.
Both Seattle and Portland love to hire Broad graduates. They pop up like new Starbucks. Broad graduates are supposedly hired for their business expertise. That expertise has played out to be disastrous for public education.
In 2009, the Seattle School District developed a Student Assignment Plan which changed attendance boundaries and the way in which students were assigned to schools. Portland is in the middle of a high school redesign plan which also affects boundaries and student enrollment.
The Seattle School District closed several schools in 2009 due to declining enrollment. They expected to save $3 million per year. Just one year later they find themselves in need of buildings. The cost to reopen 5 of the recently closed buildings is $47.8 million. Not only was it a foolish financial decision but it disrupted the education of children.
Will PPS follow?
Sourced from: Cheating in Class. Used by permission.
Carrie Adams blogs at Cheating in Class.
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January 18, 2010
by Steve Rawley
As the school board begins to draw battle lines on the high school redesign, resistance is emerging in expected quarters.
Two weeks ago, the Oregonian editorial board opined against changing the student transfer policy, which has brought a bounty of enrollment and school funding to wealthy neighborhoods in tough times. (As one acquaintance put it, you can always count on the Oregonian editorial board to defend white privilege. I had some words about it here.)
A week ago, in an online op-ed on OregonLive.com (where The Oregonian maintains a half-assed Web presence) Grant High teacher Geoffrey Henderson argued against neighborhood schools, claiming there simply is not enough money to do it. (He doesn’t address how Beaverton, with similar size and demographics and identical state funding, has maintained a very viable and effective neighborhood-based school system during the two decades that Portland’s has been dismantled.)
Last Thursday, The Oregonian ran the op-ed I wrote in response to their editorial. (I joked with my wife that pigs must be flying, because I wrote a strong defense of PPS, and the O published it without rewriting it.) I expected to get some flack for it, and I have. They give you 500 words to make your case, which isn’t enough to get into nuance. I used those 500 words to give the district props for finally addressing the student transfer policy, at least in part, nearly four years after city and county auditors found it to be at odds with their stated goal of strong neighborhood schools.
Suffice it to say, many are troubled with aspects of the high school redesign.
In my high school redesign minority report, I suggested modifications to the ban on neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers to build trust in communities that have historically been hurt by district policies.
The district also missed an opportunity to build trust and demonstrate system planning competence by not fixing the K-8 mess before embarking on high school redesign. And, increasingly, community members are expressing doubts about the magnet school aspect, with concern that it will simply weaken neighborhood high schools. At a recent work session, it was revealed that enrollment at Benson High, our only major high school without an attendance area, would be significantly shrunk under current plans.
The school board is expected to vote on a series of resolutions next month, which will help clarify the process going forward.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is publisher and editor PPS Equity.
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January 10, 2010
by Steve Rawley
Kim Melton reports in The Oregonian today that school board members are starting to debate and discuss specifics of the high school system redesign.
Bobbie Regan is quoted questioning staff assumptions about curtailing neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers and the size (and by extension, number) of high schools to close. “I’m not clear that those are the board’s assumptions,” said Regan.
Board co-chair Trudy Sargent worries about closing “successful” schools, while David Wynde and co-chair Ruth Adkins warn about labeling schools as “successful” and “unsuccessful.”
As we get down to brass tacks, battle lines are being drawn, with a split board possible on student transfer policy changes.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is publisher and editor PPS Equity.
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January 8, 2010
by Steve Rawley
School board member Bobbie Regan may be signaling opposition to proposed limits to neighborhood-to-neighborhood student transfers, according to a report by Beth Slovic on Willamette Week’s news blog.
Regan’s apparent expression of unease with the proposal, which is part of a larger redesign of the high school system, comes on the heals of an Oregonian editorial Monday which expressed more direct opposition to the idea of limiting the flow of students and funding.
Each year, thousands of students and tens of millions of dollars in education funding transfer from Portland’s poorest neighborhoods and into its wealthiest. Schools in the Lincoln cluster home to Regan and the wealthiest familes in Portland Public Schools, had a net gain of nearly 600 students in 2008-09, representing over $3 million in funding.
In that same school year, schools in the Jefferson cluster, encompassing some of Portland’s poorest families, lost nearly 2,000 students and about $12 million to out transfers.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is publisher and editor PPS Equity.
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December 18, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Joseph Malone and Carla Randall, principals of Grant and Madison High Schools respectively, penned an op-ed in today’s Oregonian in support of the principle behind the high school redesign: equal educational opportunity.
Echoing Deputy Superintendent Charles Hopson’s speech to the City Club last month, Malone and Randall argue that opportunity should not be determined by race, income or ZIP code as it currently is.
Malone and Randall blame the current state largely on the district’s open transfer enrollment, an issue explored extensively on this site.
Malone and Randall ask:
What drives these inequities? Enrollment. In Portland’s open-choice system, it’s easy to flee some schools for others. Declined enrollment overall multiplies the effect. Schools that lose students, lose teaching staff, which means skimpier choices for kids. The risk? High-flyers leave, courses are diminished, parent involvement declines and students struggle.
It’s refreshing to hear district administrators openly repudiating the “school choice” policies the previous administration defended until the end, but troubling that so far these reform efforts are only aimed at the top four grades of a thirteen-grade system. School choice continues to drive dramatic inequities in the K-8 grades, too.
Also troubling in the high school plan, besides a nagging lack of details of analysis done to support planning (or, perhaps, the lack of analysis altogether), is the thinking around special focus options. At one point, planners were talking about having a third of high school students in special focus schools, meaning lower enrollment (or fewer in number) community high schools. Because of the lack of detail on how schools will be targeted for closure or conversion to focus options, rumors have consistently swirled in advance of every community meeting, with the latest, at Franklin, drawing upwards of 2000 concerned community members.
In perhaps unrelated news, Malone announced his resignation, effective at the end of the current school year, in e-mail to Grant parents yesterday. This has added fuel to the rumor mill, with parents wondering if he knows something the rest of us don’t.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is publisher and editor PPS Equity.
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November 5, 2009
by Steve Rawley
I’m feeling discouraged. The district seems to be once again careening from crisis to crisis, from an unresolved teachers’ contract, to an unfinished, perhaps unfinishable K8 transition, to charter schools preying on the empty buildings left in the wake of destructive enrollment policies. We’re embarking on an ambitious high school system redesign that appears headed in the right direction with regard to balancing enrollment geographically and providing equity of opportunity, but trust in the community is low.
When everything seems to be blowing up, it’s useful to make a list. So I came up with the PPS Equity Manifesto. There’s nothing on this list that we can’t do; there’s nothing there that costs money. In fact, it will save money. In a way, this is a distillation of all the discussions we’ve had on this and other blogs over the last couple years. Comments are open on the manifesto page. I’d love your feedback.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is publisher and editor PPS Equity.
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October 19, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Download audio, subscribe to the podcast, or listen here:
This is a full transcript of the podcast, with hyperlinks:
This week in PPS, we mourn the passing of Terry Olson.
The veteran teacher, husband, father of three, and grandfather of two passed away peacefully on Thursday, October 15th, after a long fight with cancer. He turned 63 on October 9th.
Terry’s blog Olson Online was a seminal space in Portland’s blogosphere. He started writing about “[p]ublic education advocacy, tax reform, and other stuff” in January of 2003, and continued writing forcefully about these issues until recently. To the end, Terry never pulled his punches.
Six weeks before he died, he wrote his final blog post about a bizarre charter school proposal in Corbett. The title of his last piece: Hypocrisy.
Terry’s blog was the first electronic gathering place where Portlanders discussed school equity issues extensively. He worked with the Neighborhood Schools Alliance when they rose up in opposition to Vicki Phillips’ rushed school closings and reconfigurations. He encouraged me and my wife Nancy to “come out” (well, actually, he “outed” us) when we were blogging anonymously about PPS.
By pushing us into the open, he emboldened us to mature as bloggers and expand the chorus of voices calling for school equity.
I only knew Terry as an education activist, and only in the last five years of his life. Our conversations were virtually entirely online, either in e-mail or on the blogs. I only met him twice in person. But his influence on me as an activist and citizen journalist was crucial. Without his ongoing encouragement and guidance, it’s unlikely PPS Equity would exist today.
The last time I saw him was In February 2008. Terry stood with me in icy wind and rain at the last Celebration, the school district’s school choice fair, handing out fliers (PDF) about the inequity of school choice. He stayed with me in the wind and rain until we had handed out all 500 fliers.
To me, this epitomized Terry’s selflessness in fighting for the greater common good, even as he literally fought for his own life.
He was a contributor to PPS Equity, both as an author and in the comments section.
Terry will be deeply missed by his family, to whom we send our deepest condolences, and in the community, where he led us by example.
Thank you, Terry Olson.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is publisher and editor PPS Equity.
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September 7, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Oregon Public Broadcasting’s morning talk show Think out loud is covering school equity on the first day of school (Tuesday, September 8), with a focus on the PPS high school redesign. Guests include yours truly, Jefferson principal Cynthia Harris, and John Wilhelmi, who headed up the high school redesign effort for PPS.
The show airs live 9-10 a.m. and is rebroadcast at 9 p.m. the same day. You can also listen online or download podcasts after the show has been broadcast.
Steve Rawley is the father of two PPS students and is publisher and editor PPS Equity.
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