November 4, 2009
by Steve Rawley
While district administrators attended seminars like “Successful Teacher incentive and Pay for Performance Programs in Urban Schools” last week at the Great City Schools Conference, teachers leafleted attendees with the following:
To the Attendees of the Council of the Great City Schools Conference:
Welcome to Portland. In Portland, we are proud of our public schools. In this city, over 80% of residents choose to send their children to public school rather than other alternatives. The community respects and supports its teachers.
Teachers in the Portland Public Schools are some of the most highly educated and experienced staff in the state. 86% hold masters degrees or higher. Over 50% have 12 or more years of teaching experience.
No wonder Superintendent Carole Smith and the Portland Public Schools Board members are proud to host this conference. Unfortunately, however, they do not show similar regard for Portland teachers and our work.
Portland educators have now been working without a contract for SIXTEEN MONTHS. Despite that, day after day we continue to go to our school buildings because of our deep commitment to our students and to our community.
Just six years ago, Portland teachers took a pay cut of more than 5% when we worked ten days for free to avoid a threatened 24-day cut to the school year. Because of our action, all Portland students had a full school year. No other employee group in the district worked 10 days without pay. And now we are being asked to take another 5-day pay cut and a cost of living freeze.
The District calls for “shared sacrifice,” but it’s disingenuous. Portland teachers are continually asked to take on more responsibilities for less pay, while administrators at the central office are given five figure raises – for “increased responsibilities”.
One manager in Communications got a raise this year of $15,268. The amount of his raise alone is more than one-third of the annual salary of a 4th year teacher with a Masters degree. One part-time (0.8) Director of Planning and Performance at the central office, who has an MBA and no prior K-12 education experience, makes $90,000, while a full-time teacher with a PhD and twelve year’s experience makes $20,000 less.
Your PPS hosts probably did not mention that Portland teachers are frustrated and angry over the District’s lack of respect for us and our work. Teachers are seldom included in educational decisions that directly impact our students. Our professional training and experience is rarely acknowledged.
The District’s misguided priorities have resulted in staff frustration, low morale and a lack of confidence in PPS leadership.
What makes Great City Schools? Great teachers and great leaders who recognize that it takes teachers who feel respected for their professional knowledge and skill.
We have great teachers …
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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November 2, 2009
by Steve Rawley
As Portland teachers approach 500 days without a contract, and as discontent bubbles to the surface over a failing experiment in K8 schools and an ill-conceived “surplus” auction, senior management of Portland Public Schools spent last week at the downtown Hilton, enjoying seminars and speakers, not to mention complimentary breakfast and lunch.
They were there as hosts of the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) fall conference, with a headlining keynote address by former PPS superintendent Vicki Philips. Philips, now director of education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was the architect of Portland’s devastating experiments in K8s and “small schools” high schools.
She openly acknowledges that small schools were a failure (as does PPS, at least as implied by the proposed high school redesign). The latest trend being pushed by Gates — not to mention the Obama administration — is merit pay. Only we can’t call it that. “This has been the third rail,” Philips told Willamette Week‘s Beth Slovic.
Instead, much as fundamentalists have re-clothed creationism as “intelligent design,” Philips and other merit-pay proponents dress up their union-busting with terms like “performance” and talk about ways of measuring it, like videotaping teachers, sampling student work and surveying students.
According to Oregonian education blogger Betsy Hammond, Gates “will award millions to several pioneering urban districts that agree to hire, place, train and pay teachers differently…..”
So while bargaining team members from the teachers’ union report intransigence on the part of the school district in resolving their contract dispute, while a second generation of middle graders begins a middle school career in contained classrooms, and while parents report no homework due to a paper shortage even as the district auctions “surplus” paper, our superintendent and at least ten administrators spent last week taking tips from the very person responsible for a great deal of the morass our district faces today.
Portland Public Schools spends $35,000 a year in dues to the CGCS, and it spent at least $1,750 on conference fees (the superintendent and board members attend at no additional fee), not to mention the much greater cost of 11 person-weeks spent away from the district’s business of (ahem) educating our children. On Facebook, a senior PPS administrator defended attendance at the conference as a “relative bargain.”
But what’s the value to our students in sending so many senior administrators to a week-long conference (at a luxury hotel) touting the latest corporate foundation-driven trends in urban education? Under Carole Smith, our district has taken a welcome turn away from trend-hopping, instead proposing a bold, homegrown vision for our high schools, firmly repudiating the bad Gates medicine we swallowed under Philips.
Why should we blow good money to listen to Philips now?
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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November 2, 2009
by Steve Rawley
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“It is a civil rights violation of the worst kind in the city of Portland when based on race and zip code roughly 85% of white students have access to opportunity in rigorous college prep programs, curriculum and resources compared to 27% of black students. We are a better state than this. We are a better city than this.” –PPS Deputy Superintendent Charles Hopson
This week in PPS, we feature sound clips from the Urban League of Portland‘s presentation to the Portland City Club on the State of Black Oregon.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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October 28, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Beth Slovic report in today’s Willamette Week that Portland Public Schools last week sold “surplus” copy paper and toilet paper, among other items, for less than market value. Portland teachers spend an average of $600 a year out of their own pockets for classroom supplies, according to their union. They are currently fighting for a contract that doesn’t roll back their pay to pre-2007 levels, even as they deal with an increased workload.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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October 27, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Teachers in Portland Public Schools are in their second year without a contract. District negotiators seem to have “backed themselves into a corner,” according to Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) negotiators, and are unwilling to entertain creative bargaining suggestions, like adding a third year to the contract under consideration.
The contract currently being negotiated is for the two-year period ending in June 2010. In normal circumstances, negotiations for the next contract, covering July 2010 through June 2012, would begin early next year.
It is no secret that virtually all teachers work many hours and days beyond the requirements of their contract. They are insulted by the district’s insistence on taking a furlough equal to a 2.63 percent pay cut, especially after they worked for ten days for free to stave off a threatened 24-day cut to the school year in 2003. No other bargaining unit at PPS sacrificed like that.
The district’s call for “shared sacrifice” is seen as disingenuous by teachers. They are being asked to take on more responsibility for less pay, even as administrators at BESC are given five-figure raises for — that’s right — “increased responsibilities.”
The top pay for a PPS teacher with a PhD and twelve year’s experience is around $70,000. The part-time (80 percent) Director of Planning and Performance at BESC, who has an MBA and no prior K-12 education experience, makes $90,000.
The state has been called in to mediate, but so far there is still no progress.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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October 23, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Fox 12 TV is reporting that Woodmere Elementary School in southeast Portland will begin charging parents late fees when they pick up their kids more than ten minutes after the final bell. For every each ten minute block after the first ten, parents will be charged $5, the equivalent of $30 an hour.
Woodmere students are 57 percent non-white. Eighty percent qualify for free or reduced lunch, and 34 percent are English Language Learners. Fox 12 reports that the district will study the program and consider implementing it at other schools.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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October 22, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Jennifer Anderson writes in the Portland Tribune about issues facing Portland Public Schools superintendent Carole Smith, including stalled teacher contract talks and the stalled — some would say failed — experiment in k8 schools.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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October 21, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Beth Slovic documents the obvious inequities between K8s and middle schools for middle grade education.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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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 published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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October 18, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Friend of PPS Equity Terry Olson passed away on Thursday. Tomorrow’s PPS Equity podcast will be a tribute to him. His son Adrian posted a note on Terry’s blog Thursday.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
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