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 published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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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 19, 2010
by Steve Rawley
The Oregonian ran an op-ed today by Xavier Botana, chief academic officer of Portland Public Schools, in response to a January 4 editorial criticizing high school system redesign plans.
Botana writes that “current plans would guarantee a well-rounded core program at each community high school. And those plans aren’t based on wishful thinking — they’re realistically budgeted, based on current resources and forecasted enrollment. They’re also based on what today’s students need.”
He also writes frankly about “small but real tradeoffs” required to bring comprehensive high schools to all students. Botana talks about having ninth grade academies at all schools, which have been shown to reduce dropouts, but he does not mention doing anything about the gross inequities still present in the middle grades.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 18, 2010
by Steve Rawley
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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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 published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 11, 2010
by Steve Rawley
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.
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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 published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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January 10, 2010
by Steve Rawley
In Multnomah County:
- the vast majority of taxpayers (96.7 percent) would see a reduction (12.6 percent) or no change in their income tax under these measures. The wealthiest 3.3 percent would see a slight increase in marginal rates.
- there are 91,000 students in public schools.
- there are 83,592 people on the Oregon Health Plan.
- there are 6,380 seniors and people with disabilities in long-term care.
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
by Carrie Adams
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.
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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 published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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