January 11, 2010
I only caught the tail end of board discussion on the HS redesign… didn’t see the staff presentation. Who watched? Who was there? What’s your take?
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
January 10, 2010
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 published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
January 10, 2010
Tens of thousands of local students, seniors and the disabled face devastating cuts to critical services.
Thousands of teaching and educational support professionals face lay offs and furloughs. These jobs, which support the greater local economy through spending power, can be preserved with a yes vote.
“Job killing taxes” is an oxymoron. These modest tax increases, which will only affect the wealthy and corporations, will preserve jobs and vital community services.
Please join me in voting “Yes” for both Oregon measures 66 and 67.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 8, 2010
I’ve never forgotten my first visit to Whitaker Middle School in June 2001. It was shortly after Willamette Week broke the story The Poisoning of Whitaker. The Willamette Week story exposed a long history of radon poisoning along with other indoor air quality concerns at the school. For about 10 years, PPS administrators failed to adequately address building conditions or to inform staff or students of the health hazards.
The first thing I noticed when entering Whitaker School (Pictured in the Cheating in Class banner) was that the cove base had been removed from along the bottom of the walls exposing mold. There was a solid, thick, black line that ran parallel to the walls. I realized as I got closer that it was a trail of dead ants which ran the full length of the hallway. It looked as if someone had sprayed for ants but didn’t bother to clean up the dead ants.
It was during that visit that a staff member gave me a sample of what appeared to be a mushroom scraped from the wall in a special education classroom. The building smelled awful. I later learned that the smell was probably coming from a squirrel that had died in the basement.
I am not an environmental health and safety expert. I’m a mom. A mom who recognizes mold when I see it. Whitaker clearly had a mold problem.
Still, PBS Engineering and Environmental who had been on contract with PPS for years, had produced report after report stating that there wasn’t an indoor air or mold problem. They even produced a report the same month of my visit saying that “ventilation of the spaces tested appears to be adequate with respect to the ventilation parameters monitored and the particulate identified in the laboratory reports.”
In July 2001, Whitaker was vacated and later determined to be too toxic to renovate. After spending $700,000 on maintenance for the vacant building over the next few years, PPS administrators decided to demolish the building.
The PPS board voted to borrow $2.1 million for the demolition in August 2006.
Well PBS may have missed the boat on the mold problem but they weren’t going to miss out on their share of the demolition dollars. PBS oversaw the decommissioning of several underground storage tanks, hydraulic lifts and water wells. They also developed erosion control and grading plans.
According to the PBS Engineering and Environmental project website:
“The Whitaker School project is a good example of how PBS incorporates their multi-disciplinary structure into a successful project. Led by the Sustainable Design Group, all four PBS service areas – Engineering, Environmental, Health and Safety, and Natural Resources – brought this project to successful completion.” It sure did!
You’d think that PBS would count their winnings and move on but no…they’re still providing services to PPS. Their annual contract was amended on 10/12/09. They continue to receive about $450,000 annually.
The Whitaker situation raises a question about potential conflicts of interest. But that’s not new for PPS.
In 1998, PPS contracted with KPMG to conduct a comprehensive performance audit. At that time, the district claimed to have solicited four firms to submit bids to perform the audit but only two firms responded. KPMG’s proposal was incomplete. The only mention of costs was a handwritten note at the bottom of a letter. The note estimated costs at $300,000 – $350,000 with formal cost estimates to be sent at a later time. The district didn’t follow their own Request for Proposals policy.
KPMG came up with 230 audit recommendations. The most controversial being the recommendation to close 13 schools. An Oregonian analysis conducted shortly after the audit found KPMG’s numbers to be inflated. Many of KPMG’s findings are still in dispute today.
Research into KPMG’s background suggests that KPMG might have been motivated by their desire to profit from PPS closures. KPMG was a partner in a for-profit education management company. They used public school system audits to gain entry into schools.
KPMG was actively involved in pushing charter school legislation, vouchers and privatization. It makes you wonder why the PPS board would have approved a contract with a company hostile to public education.
Now we have Magellan. The Magellan website states:
Magellan K-12 is a specialty consulting firm providing services to education clients nationwide. The firm is focused solely on the K-12 marketplace and provides Educational Adequacy and Suitability Assessments. The firm develops educational standards and specifications, architectural programs, site selections, enrollment projections, geographic information systems, economic models, bond programs, and construction implementation plans.
Once again…one stop shopping. Magellan can identify problems with PPS facilities, make recommendations about renovations and new construction, and manage all projects.
Not surprisingly many of the PPS staffers involved in today’s questionable contracts are the same people who brought us PBS Engineering and Environmental and KPMG.
I agree with the little girl. There’s a fungus among us. What do you think?
Sourced from: Cheating in Class. Used by permission.
Carrie Adams blogs at Cheating in Class.
January 8, 2010
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 published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
January 7, 2010
The power outage that shut down BESC also shut down the company that provides critical services (DNS) for this site. Things appear to be running smoothly at the moment, though I have not had a chance to catch up on e-mail.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
January 6, 2010
The No Child Left Behind act requires public school districts to provide Title I services to eligible public and private school students.
This is the part of No Child Left Behind that supports programs in schools and school districts to improve the learning of children from low-income families. The U.S. Department of Education provides Title I funds to states to give to school districts based on the number of children from low-income families in each district.
The US Department of Education audit on Oregon’s Title I program in 2008 produced many findings centered on accountability. Among other things, there was an almost complete absence of oversight in how some Oregon districts handle services to private school children. The findings listed below are taken directly from the Title I report (emphasis mine).
Finding (1): The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) has not ensured that its LEAs (school districts) maintain control of the Title I program for eligible private school children and their families and teachers. For example:
- As part of the process for selecting a third-party provider in PPS, private school officials meet with potential providers without district officials present.
- PPS provides its third-party providers with a list of possible criteria to use to select students for services, but leaves it to the third-party provider and private school officials to decide which criteria are actually used.
- PPS gives the third-party provider and the private schools the responsibility of deciding the types of services (i.e., reading or math) that students selected for services receive and how the services will be evaluated.
- In Woodburn School District (WSD) the private school officials develop the plan for services, the selection criteria, and how the services will be evaluated.
Finding (2): The ODE has not ensured that its districts have consistently met the requirements for consultation with private school officials regarding: (1) the method or sources of data the district will use to determine the number of private school children from low-income families residing in participating public school attendance areas; and (2) the evaluation of the Title I program for private school children. PPS tells interested private school officials to report free and reduced priced lunch data in October without first consulting with them concerning the different options that may be used to obtain data on low-income students. PPS’s affirmation form does not include this topic. In both PPS and WSD the third-party contractor designs the evaluation of the Title I program for private school children. Neither LEA has determined in consultation with private school officials how the Title I program for private school children will be evaluated, what the agreed upon standards are, and how annual progress will be measured.
Finding (3): The ODE has not ensured that its LEAs have consistently exercised proper oversight in awarding contracts for the provision of Title I services to participating private school children. A contract that PPS has with a third-party vendor to provide services to participating private school children did not have enough detail to enable PPS to determine that the Title I statutory and regulatory requirements are being met. The contract has not broken out the specific amount for administration, instruction, family involvement, and professional development that the vendor is charging.
PPS’ handling of Title I services to private school children is the equivalent of handing private schools a check and walking away. Where is the accountability for that? Unfortunately, this is typical of how PPS manages its money. District staff consistently argue that questioned expenses are just a small portion of their budget. They don’t get it that the pennies add up.
The PPS 2009/10 budget includes $20.2 million in Title I funds PLUS $14.5 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds. PPS reports that the ARRA funds will be targeted towards: standards and assessment; data systems; teacher effectiveness; and support for lowest performing schools.
Schools need the money but they need to use it effectively. Don’t let the district piss the money away.
TAKE ACTION – You have a right to know how your child’s school is spending their money. Find out if your child’s school is a Title I school. If so, here are some questions (ask any or all) that you should ask your school principal:
Don’t worry about whether you’ll understand all of it. Most parents don’t understand it. You’ll get it over time. The important thing is to ask questions and always follow-up.
If you need help with any of the information you collect, you can email me by going to the About page or you can post questions on this blog. There’s a very supportive online community of parents with tons of expertise and various perspectives.
Sourced from: Cheating in Class
Carrie Adams blogs at Cheating in Class.
January 4, 2010
On December 9th and 10th stakeholders invested in a wide array of integrated services in PPS gathered together to review data from the recent audit of special education services and make recommendations on next steps.
My “stake” in this is as a parent of a child with an IEP in the district and as someone that cares deeply about better outcomes for those receiving special education services.
On the first day the stakeholder’s were presented with the faces and stories of integrated services. First we watched a video about special education that featured parents, grandparents, students, and staff; this video will be linked on the PPS website.
Carole Smith and Xavier Botana spoke to the group and then we heard from Joanne Mabbot the director of Integrated Services and others within the department or the audit team. The parent/grandparent panel spoke and we were given about 3 minutes each to tell our stories.
The objective feedback I received from some in the audience was that our panel represented parents that were savvy and made the system work for them. Weeks prior to the stakeholders meeting the department acknowledged a desire for more diversity on the panel and asked for help from the parent/grandparent stakeholders.
Sheila Warren, parent union organizer, spoke about her own experiences on the video and panel and also about her efforts to include those under-represented voices. During both days I was relieved to hear from many stakeholders a deep concern for equity and a desire to bring in the voices of foster parents, parents with disabilities, low-income families, minority families, and children who live in group homes or mental health facilities. In several side conversations there was an overall commitment to finding a way to capture these stories.
During my 3 minutes on the parent panel I talked about my dilemma of choosing belonging over academics. My teacher works very hard to educate my daughter and has a great team of supports to meet her academic IEP goals. Despite this, I know in my heart my daughter needs more 1 to 1 help to meet her academic potential and her teacher has not yet learned to clone herself or grow 50 arms and 25 heads.
For now, I choose friends, meaningful activities, and natural environment learning because that is what our family has decided is most important. I told a story about how my daughter cried when I told her about advancing to 1st grade. Through her tears she could barely get out the words, “I am going to miss my friends so much.” I wish I could bottle the relief on her face when I told her that her friends go to 1st grade too.
I used this story at the meeting as a way to highlight the importance of belonging and that “loneliness is the only real disability” (a quote by Beth Mount). Since this is an opinion piece I want to be clear that I am not complaining about the choice I have made or the education my daughter is receiving.
I would love it if my daughter’s school was a student-centered technological wonderland that was set up to have universal access and honored the multiple intelligences and every teacher had training in modifying curriculum for all learners. I would be thrilled if my daughter could just have access to an ordinary education in a low enrolled PPS school!
Regardless, I have the luxury of a choice some parents of kids with IEP’s don’t have. My complaint is that I have had to engineer my experience of special education on my own with mentoring from other parents I was lucky enough to meet and learn from.
How do we teach other parents what I know on a widespread basis? How do we share with other teachers what my teacher knows about how to help kids with IEP’s be successful in general education classrooms? Why is it word of mouth and not common knowledge? What is it with what seems like a purposeful effort to keep parents in self-contained classrooms from communicating?
To be fair, one of the recommendation from the two days was for parents to opt-in to be contacted by other parents for networking and this received a lot of votes.
The student panel was wonderful and I was inspired by the teachers and staff that clearly have a vision of presumed competence in the 18-21 transition programs. The job developers and students told us about the Solar Waffle Cart on Alberta and how many of the students in transition dream of being small business owners.
There was not a hint of contrivance on the part of the transition staff and they were dreaming big right along with these kids. A young man who has had a job at Fred Meyer for 5 years told his story and thank goodness for the tissue on the table. It is amazing how much this young man has cared for others in his life and how much loss he has endured but still he has a deeper sense of gratitude than anyone I know.
We heard from a Roosevelt student who has an IEP for a learning disability and how difficult it was to get her academic needs taken seriously.
What was missing on the student panel were students with physical disabilities who cannot access neighborhood schools or common areas in schools deemed accessible. What about the students in wheelchairs that cannot go to lunch with their friends because the cafeteria only has stairs? What about the kid who has to commute 45 minutes one way in good traffic to school because his “special” classroom is across town? What about the clusters of kids with disabilities who clean, landscape, recycle, shred, and do food service for free and have it called “work experience?”
To clarify my last statement; it is not the nature of the work itself but the fact that a minority group is singled out to do this work before the age of 18 when academics should be a priority along with transition services. I know countless kids who would not be happy with me if I took this work away from them but I know a few who have asked me, “How come I have to clean up after everyone and they don’t, it’s not fair?”
The point I was able to get out on day two of the forum was that if this work experience is such a great opportunity then the general education population needs to have the equity extended to them as well to work side by side with the kids with disabilities. This may actually happen in some schools and I would love to hear about it. Not all schools use the kids in transition programs to do work in the school and find real experiences in the community for them.
We heard from a panel that included an assistant principal, counselor, special education teacher, paraeducator, and a general education teacher. I appreciated what the panel had to say and the tone was notably different than the parents and students.
The paraeducator in particular really brought it home when she talked about the day to day tasks such as being bit, having your hair pulled out, a great deal of heavy lifting, dealing with various bodily fluids on a daily basis, and changing diapers on adult sized students.
I worked in direct care for kids and adults in group homes and have done similar work as a paraeducator with the exception being I did not also have to meet IEP goals while providing this level of support. When you do this work you just care about these kids having positive outcomes and the less glamorous, dangerous, and unpleasant parts of the day are part of that.
As I have alluded already, there was a real need to get the spectrum of experience injected into this event and the employee panel kicked it up a notch. There were some wince-worthy moments as a parent listening to the panel but I had also wished for a reality check and got one.
I do wonder what the range of experiences are in teachers and how much knowledge they have of what happens in other schools or programs. When the paraeducator talked about changing diapers someone in the audience said, “EWWWW” and it broke my heart. How dare they? That is someone’s child who should be given dignity and respect despite their toileting ability.
My opinion is that cross-training and job shadows in different schools, programs, and classrooms might not be a bad idea. Better yet, administrators need to see a day in the life of a teacher in all schools and classrooms.
When I worked in group homes and a corporate administrator was visiting the expectations was that we would spend days cleaning and painting in preparation. We would purchase new clothes for the residents, furniture, and decorations for the home. During some of these corporate visits the administrator would simply walk through the home straight to the office or leave after 10 minutes and we would wonder why we bothered.
Is this what is happening in PPS when administrators visit as well? Are PPS administrators just spending 10 minutes or heading straight to the office? What would happen if they saw the real deal? Would things change or would someone get fired or transferred?
On day two of the stakeholder’s meeting we had an opportunity to look at the data from the audit and from the data create a “gallery walk” of recommendations to be voted on as a top priority or secondary priority. The recommendations are still being boiled down to account for duplicates and common themes but the current data shared with stakeholders shows that the following areas rose to the surface:
One of the highlights for me out of the two days was the presentation on Universal Design given by William Macklin from the assistive technology team. In all honesty I thought his presentation was a bit heavy on the overpriced computer software for reading but overall it made me feel better as a parent that Universal Design exists in the vocabulary at PPS.
After his presentation I had a reality check moment when I asked an administrator and teacher I was talking with about ensuring that all of the schools knew about the Universal Design technology PPS already had available for teachers. The response was that if everyone knew it existed then there would not be enough for everyone to access. The other snag with assistive technology is that only students who qualify can actually use the technology. Getting qualified requires more of that educational engineering on the part of parents and teachers that are actually aware the resources exist. There has to be a better way!
The next steps are that stakeholders meet again in February to begin action planning with the facilitators and PPS. I really hope that positive steps forward are the result of this audit and stakeholder process. I am still new enough to the public education process that I can still hope while being politely irritating (insert responses about my face in the dictionary under gullible in the comments:) ) . I left the two day event feeling positive but with even more questions and reservations about what this change to Integrated Student Services is going to look like. The director of Integrated Services started a blog and has a post about the finer details of the two-day event.
This was just a summary of my take on the two day event. I would love to hear from others who attended and everyone who has a stake in this.
Question: I am part of a subcommittee with the state looking at how to improve the quality of life for children with autism in Oregon. One of the recommendations is mentoring high school kids to become autism and behavior consultants. There are not nearly enough consultants in the state and the CDC just announced the numbers have increased to 1 in 110 children having autism nationwide. What do you think about electives or focus options being offered in topics like autism and behavior analysis?
Stephanie Hunter is a behavior consultant and the parent of a student at Ockley Green. She is active in local and statewide advocacy for children and adults with disabilities, which she writes about on her blog Belonging Matters.
January 4, 2010
The editorial board of The Oregonian, that rump of a daily paper that still (barely) manages to spill a little ink on Mondays, today spilled some in defense of the radical transfer policy that has been a significant contributor to the two-tiered system of education in Portland Public Schools.
In an editorial on the proposed high school system redesign, Thee O makes a wishy-washy argument in favor of some aspects (ending the long-discredited, Bill Gates-funded experiment with small schools in poor neighborhoods and reducing the number of neighborhood high schools) but against proposals that might hurt property values in wealthy, white neighborhoods (curtailing student transfers between neighborhood high schools and equalizing opportunity across the district).
In the end, the editorial reads as plea for the status quo, at least as far as wealthy, white Portlanders are concerened: “Fix what’s broken. Don’t break what’s working.”
How we can fix poor schools whose enrollment and funding have been drained by the enrollment policies that support this status quo for the wealthy is left as an exercise for the reader. They’ve got the full meal deal, and the other half doesn’t even get bread.
Cake, anyone?
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
January 3, 2010
Lili Taylor has been busy over break at Cheating in School, with new and informative posts on Title I and No Child Left Behind, some history on the closure and demolition of Whitaker Middle School, the history of PPS’ ongoing noncompliance with Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, and more.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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