Category: High Schools
December 14, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Rumors of Franklin High School’s possible closure have begun in advance of a community meeting on high school redesign there, with legitimacy conferred by a neighborhood newspaper which does not cite any district sources, and then picked up, also without confirmation, by the Mercury.
Similar rumors made there way around e-mail lists and blogs in advance of meetings at Grant, Cleveland and Jefferson High Schools. Portland Public Schools administrators have consistently denied that any schools have already been slated for closure.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
9 Comments
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 published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
Comments Off on The Manifesto
November 5, 2009
by Steve Rawley
In another sign of the failure of Portland Public Schools to fund and support a performing arts magnet school in a historically black neighborhood, a proposed charter school focused on many of Jefferson’s current and past strengths — namely video production and music — has its eyes on the now vacant music wing at Jefferson High as a possible location.
Jennifer Anderson reports in the Tribune today that Erica Jayasuriya, the organizer of the school modeled after a Minnesota charter school, also has her eye on Madison and Roosevelt areas.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
Comments Off on Hip Hop Charter eyes Jefferson
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.
8 Comments
November 2, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Download audio, subscribe to the podcast, or listen here:
“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.
Comments Off on This Week in PPS: the State of Black Oregon
October 14, 2009
by Sheila Wilcox
Amidst unstable funding for education and a lingering recession, Portland Public School teachers like me are stuck in the middle of contentious contract negotiations, one year overdue. Much information that is available to the public is filtered through Portland administrators, namely Carole Smith, who seems very much out of touch with the day-to-day workings of most teachers.
As news stories broke about $500,000 spent on Blackberries for “higher ups”, and $80,000 spent on hotel meetings for the same, one starts to wonder how much more is being spent on “non-classroom” items. One such story saw Matt Shelby, district spokesperson, say something to the effect that these items were very minor compared to the overall budget. And this got me wondering, “If these items were just “drops in the bucket” so to speak, how many drops in the bucket do there need to be, before the bucket gets filled, and people get mad?”
Drops in the bucket. There are 80+ schools in the Portland district. If each of these schools received $1,000, then that $80,000 spent on hotels takes on greater significance. I have had to scrounge for materials each and every year I have taught. $1,000 to buy the novel sets I desperately need to teach 7th grade. Wow, what a luxury. How many drops is that $80,000 now?
Not to mention $500,000. As I think about the computer lab our school was promised, but then denied, because we didn’t have the room, I wonder. Would half a million buy a lab? Or how about an addition to our cramped, “only suitable for elementary students but made to serve middle school students as well” library? A place to house our nurse and counselor and special ed. teachers, who currently have to share small quarters? This would not go far to fix all of our K-8s that are sorely lacking in facilities and resources. But, what if even one school got the treatment it deserved? How many drops in the bucket is that worth?
As we see the district move forward with its grand high school redesign, one cannot help but wonder what happened to the K-8 redesign. Did we miss it? And can we really trust a district that feels as if several hundred thousand dollars are just drops in the bucket?
Sheila Wilcox is a PPS parent and K8 teacher.
34 Comments
October 12, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Download audio, subscribe to the podcast, or listen here:
Stephannie Hunter and Shalonda Menefee
A report from the PPS Parent Union kickoff weekend, with Sheila Warren, Stephanie Hunter, Ken Libby Shalonda Menefee and more.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
Comments Off on This Week in PPS: Parent Union kickoff
October 7, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Families unable to attend the all-day high school redesign sessions hosted by the district will have the opportunity to engage the district on the topic at the PPS Parent Union Parent Information Gathering this Saturday, October 10, from 1 to 2 p.m.
The full event runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m at the Curious Comedy Theater at Vanport Square, 5225 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. There will be door prizes, Mom’s Comedy Theater skits and children’s activities. The event coincides with the anniversary celebration for the Vanport Building.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
Comments Off on PPS Parent Union hosts high school redesign round table
October 1, 2009
by Steve Rawley
In a story complementing elementary teacher Bonnie Robb’s story here two weeks ago, Beth Slovic explains a similar problem for high school students in yesterday’s Willamette Week.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
1 Comment
September 28, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Download audio, subscribe to the podcast, or listen here:
Rob Ingram:
“I’m one of those guys who believes that actors and musicians and athletes are a little over-paid, and our teachers and social workers are way under-paid.” (photo by Steve Rawley)
This week in PPS, we begin a new series I’m calling “Difference Makers,” interviews with people making a difference in the lives of youth. This week, I talked with Rob Ingram, director of the City of Portland’s Office of Youth Violence Prevention. We had a broad ranging talk touching on the Million Father March, Black Men Working, the success of students involved with SEI, the PPS high school redesign, and the over-representation of black men in Oregon’s criminal justice system. I caught up with Rob at his office in Northeast Portland.
Links
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
Comments Off on This week in PPS: Rob Ingram
« Previous Entries Next Entries »
