Category: School Board
February 12, 2009
by Steve Rawley
Beth Slovic reports today on Willamette Week’s blog that Madison High School will eliminate it’s autonomous, autocratic academic silos and return to a single high school in the fall, saving the district money while increasing opportunity for Madison students.
That leaves just Marshall and Roosevelt in the “small schools” category, with Jefferson having previously abandoned the disastrous experiment.
We’ll have to wait and see if any middle schools are reconstituted in the Madison and Jefferson clusters, the only parts of town stuck exclusively with K8 schools for the middle grades. Like “small schools,” K8s cost significantly more money to operate while providing significantly less opportunity (and high school prep) to their middle grade students.
At Monday’s school board meeting, the business agenda included money to purchase portables for Madison feeder schools Rigler and Scott, which don’t currently have room for eighth grade. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to invest that money into re-opening Rose City Park Elementary and converting Gregory Heights back to a middle school? Given the community uproar surrounding the decision to merge those schools into a single K8, it’s difficult to argue the community would be upset to have their old configuration back.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
12 Comments
February 6, 2009
by Steve Rawley
The “Initiative for 21st Century Libraries” is on the agenda for this Monday’s school board meeting, with district library staff presenting their case for what our school libraries should look like.
If last month’s community forum was any indication, expect to hear a call for a staffed library with media literacy instruction available to every PPS student. (That last part is particularly critical; some PPS high school principals are under the mistaken impression that students don’t need instruction in research and the evaluation of information in the age of the Internet.)
Friends of libraries are asked to attend and wear red to show their support. The meeting starts at 7pm, the library update is scheduled for 7:55, and citizen comment is scheduled for 9:45 (since this is an informational item — no vote — there will not be citizen comment immediately following the staff presentation).
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
1 Comment
January 29, 2009
by Steve Rawley
David Wynde issued a dire warning at the last school board meeting about the coming budget, which he describes as large cuts to an already inadequate base of funding. Though he didn’t say it, there will likely be cuts to programming, increases in class size and maybe even school closures.
Current enrollment figures, released this week, show a persistent pattern of divestment from the poorest neighborhoods in Portland due to the migration of students under the Portland Public Schools student transfer policy, and its labyrinthine, outdated and counterproductive layers of school board exceptions and amendments.
We have allowed “choice” to design a system of schools in Portland that are dramatically inequitable in terms of course offerings, teacher experience, and discipline.
School choice has dismantled, closed, or demolished (literally) every single comprehensive secondary school in the Jefferson and Madison clusters. The same is true for the Roosevelt and Marshall clusters, save two beleagured, largley poor and minority middle schools on the fringes of district boundaries.
The schools that remain disproportionately lack library staff, music, art and electives when compared to the rest of Portland, and are more segregated by race and class than the neighborhoods they serve.
It’s been two and a half years since a joint city-county audit (230KB PDF) concluded that Portland’s school choice system was at odds with strong neighborhood schools, noted declining availability of transfer slots in high-demand schools, and recommended suspension of the transfer lottery “until the Board adopts a policy that clarifies the purpose of the school choice system.”
The school board has never issued that policy, or done anything significant to reform a system that has not only failed, it’s made matters worse.
So, two and half years later, parents in the poorest parts of town are agonizing over ever more rapidly dwindling transfer slots in schools increasing distances from their homes, because their neighborhood schools have been utterly drained of enrollment, funding, and opportunity.
“This isn’t school choice,” one parent told me. “It’s school chance.”
Current transfer policy arose largely out of the last budget crisis, and the result has been devestating to poor neighborhoods and the families who live there. So this current crisis is an opportunity as much as it is a challenge.
It may seem an awkward time to demand the rebuilding of school libraries, music and art departments. But if we spread enrollment and funding proportionately to where students live, we could begin rebuild these programs in schools that have lost them. At the same time, we can maintain a base line of programming at other schools that are currently over-crowded.
Yes, there will be cuts, but some clusters and schools have fared dramatically better under choice than others. We cannot tolerate any more reduction of opportunity in the Jefferson, Madison, Marshall and Roosevelt clusters, all of which have been cut beyond the bone. Yes, the rest of this town may have to go without some of their gravy so these clusters can have a little meat.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
28 Comments
November 8, 2008
by Steve Buel
Here’s Monday nights agenda for the Portland School Board:
- PRESENTATION TO THE BOARD 6:30 pm
• MESD 2007-2008 Annual Report (information item)
- STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE REPORT 6:45 pm
- SUPERINTENDENT REPORT 6:50 pm
- BUSINESS AGENDA 6:55pm
- OTHER BUSINESS 7:00 pm
• Council of Great City Schools Annual Conference (information item)
- ADJOURN 7:10 pm
So the school board can only find 40 minutes of work that needs to be done? Or should I say 40 minutes of reports to receive. This is in a school district which spends hundreds of millions of dollars of citizens’ taxes, which is beset by problems ranging from incredible school inequity, massive economic problems on the horizon, disastrous maintenance deficits, serious teacher hiring malpractices, rampant school discipline problems, incredible numbers of dropouts, a TAG program which desperately needs to be revamped, a k-8 curriculum which is the envy of no one, a student transfer program which is further segregating the school district, schools which are inundated with a culture of testing instead of education (no offense to those educators who are fighting this), schools without libraries or librarians, huge numbers of kids who can’t read or do basic math, and a myriad of other serious problems. 40 minutes?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that Superintendent Carol Smith has begun to address many of these problems and the school board does a lot of work in committees. They are good people who care about Portland and its children. But that is not enough. The school board is elected to lead, to solve problems, and work for the best educational programs it can. It needs real public input, serious public discussions about directions to take, resolutions put forth to address problems which are debated openly and sold to the public and the school district’s employees, real leadership which garners genuine support and confidence. Leadership that continues to move us in a new direction where all kids are important and which looks at education in Portland as something more than a referendum on programs which arise out of some hazy educational research done somewhere by someone for some reason we don’t understand, and which we then push on our teaching staff eating up their time in meetings instead of having them be further engaged in the teaching process.
So I call on each school board member to bring their resolutions to the table. This is the time. November and the first part of December are a slow time in education. A good time to make some progress. A good time to look at those problems which are beginning to fester. A good time to discuss those problems which need to be addressed by our city’s educational leaders –- you, the board.
Steve Buel has taught in public schools for 41 years. He served on the PPS school board (1979-1983) and co-authored the 1980 School Desegregation Plan. He has followed PPS politics since 1975.
5 Comments
October 29, 2008
by Steve Rawley
In a must-read story in today’s Willamette Week discussing the Portland Public Schools board of education resolution in opposition to Bill Sizemore’s Measure 60 (merit pay for teachers), Beth Slovic writes that Measure 60 supporter Sonja Henning, who cast the lone vote in opposition to the resolution, didn’t return several phone calls.
A reliable source has filled us in on the rest of the story: Henning did eventually respond, but not to comment on the story. Henning’s response to legitimate requests for comment on her public policy position calls into question her suitability to serve in public office.
After several calls to her office and home seeking comment on her dissenting vote went unreturned, Slovic attempted to contact her in person at her home. She left a note on her door requesting a call back.
Henning reportedly responded with a voice message accusing the reporter of “crossing the line” and ultimately admonishing her not to attempt any further contact for any reason.
This message was followed by a call from PPS communications boss Robb Cowie, who reportedly reiterated Henning’s message, and also said all future contact with Henning must go through his office. Furthermore, Cowie is reported to have said, Slovic is not to approach Henning at public school board meetings.
Think about that.
Word is that Henning is also not returning calls to the Portland Tribune. (Reporters at The Oregonian did not immediately return e-mails requesting comment on Henning’s refusal to return calls requesting comment. Wheels within wheels!)
It is not clear whether Cowie’s reported decree will affect other reporters, or if singles out Slovic, a reporter who has covered PPS policy and politics more closely than any other reporter currently on the beat.
It is also unclear whether this is intended to apply to other board members, who have made themselves available to the public and the press in varying degrees (new board director Martín González is already becoming notorious for not returning calls and e-mails), or just to Henning.
Cowie was not immediately available for comment.
Given how rare dissent on the current school board is, it’s disappointing that it should come in favor of a poorly designed assault on teachers which would result in lower pay at schools serving poor and minority students (who statistically score worse on tests, which would lead to lower pay for their teachers). Coupled with the PPS teacher transfer policy, Measure 60 would surely aggravate the existing dramatic inequity in teacher experience between poor and rich schools.
The school board took the right position on this measure, and Henning’s dissent borders on bizarre. It’s certainly in the public interest to learn more.
And that’s what’s even more disappointing, even disturbing: that an elected public official would attempt to place herself and her policy positions above public scrutiny.
A reporter’s job is to act as a proxy for the public, and the public has a right to know how and why public policy is made. Henning could have simply returned the first call and offered a brief explanation. Or she could have simply said “no comment.” But to treat a reporter — and the general public she represents — with such contempt is beyond the pale.
If Sonja Henning wants to put herself off-limits to the public at public meetings, it’s time for her to retire from public life. She’s already announced she won’t seek a second term. If she’s so uncomfortable in the public eye, she should take the easy way out and resign now.
—
Update, October 30, 8:53 pm: Robb Cowie, while declining to comment on private conversations between him and individual reporters, sent me this comment via e-mail:
…[S]chool board meetings are public meetings and any reporter can attend. Reporters or members of the public are free to approach school board members and ask questions (school board members are also free to decline to answer those questions, if they choose). Portland Public Schools has not placed any restrictions on any journalist’s access to school board meetings.
Either my source misunderstood Cowie (or I misunderstood my source), or PPS is backing off from an untenable position. In either case, it is now clear that Beth Slovic is, in fact, free to approach Sonja Henning at school board meetings.
Next public board meeting: This Saturday, November 1, 8 a.m. at McMenamin’s Kennedy School, in the Agnes Kennedy White Library.
—
Update, October 31, 10:30 a.m.: Beth Slovic clarifies that Cowie relayed a request from Sonja Henning that Slovic not approach her at board meetings. She also said that he told her this does not apply to other journalists, just her. In other words, this was not an edict from the district. (Since the district’s chief spokesman was the one delivering the message, one can see how this may have been perceived as something more than an individual board member’s request.)
It is unfortunate that the district’s communications office was put in the awkward position of relaying Henning’s legally unenforceable (without a restraining order) request to Slovic.
The focus of this story remains on Henning. I regret if anyone thought I was trying to portray Robb Cowie or the PPS communications office as the bad guys.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
5 Comments
October 1, 2008
by Steve Rawley
Talk about playing both sides for the middle.
The newest member of the Portland Public Schools Board of Education is already demonstrating keen political instincts. Even as he speaks of representing minority communities, he’s falling in line with the group think of the board.
“I’m not going to go there and just be an opposition candidate,” says Martín González in a Portland Tribune story by Christian Gaston.
“I think people are looking for magical solutions and I like Kool-Aid, but I don’t think that’s how it works.”
I think González, who has not responded to PPS Equity e-mail challenging him to take bold positions on critical issues, may be talking about us.
Personally, I can’t stand Kool-Aid. And I don’t think having comprehensive secondary schools in our least wealthy neighborhoods and a neighborhood-based enrollment policy is asking for magic. I think it would be equitable, balanced, sustainable public education and investment policy.
If González thinks that’s asking for magic, I think he’s being incredibly cynical.
He falls right in line with the company dogma about transfer and enrollment policy.
González said that the district’s transfer policy isn’t responsible for segregating students: Instead, parents and students are separating themselves.
“The reality is, I think, our society is still segregated,” González said.
Yes, society is segregated, and yes, people do self-segregate. I’ve written about that quite a bit, in fact.
But this doesn’t excuse the district’s policy that encourages more of it. The fact remains that our schools have become dramatically more segregated, both in terms of ethnicity and economics, than the neighborhoods they serve.
This policy González is defending, coupled with the school funding formula, divests over $40 million a year from our least wealthy, least white neighborhoods.
I can understand the perspective of wanting to keep options for poor and minority students, who are disproportionately assigned to schools that the district has not just neglected, but has actively gutted and broken into small schools with dramatically reduced opportunity.
This is why I’ve proposed a transfer policy — predicated on first providing comprehensive secondary schools in every cluster — that allows students to transfer freely, so long as their transfer doesn’t aggravate socio-economic segregation (much like the Black United Front’s 1980 desegregation plan, but keyed on economics instead of race).
This policy would allow disadvantaged students to choose from virtually any school, but keep most students in their neighborhood schools. It would balance our public investment in proportion to where students live, bring equity of opportunity to all students, and it would tend to desegregate schools in all neighborhoods. And best of all, it would cost taxpayers less than the current model with all its built-in inequities.
This isn’t magic, Mr. González, this is sound public policy. If we could do it in 1980, we can do it in 2008.
Platitudes about bringing a new voice to the table and tracking individual student achievement don’t mean much when the policies of Portland Public Schools continue to drain enrollment and public investment from our poorest neighborhoods and deprive the students there of basic opportunity available to students living in the wealthier, whiter parts of Portland.
It’s looking like the school board and their patrons got exactly what they were looking for. A minority male, which changes the balance of the board from 85% female and 71% white to 71% female and 57% white, making the board look more like the 55% white school district they lead.
But best of all, the powers-that-be manage to keep their own white asses covered with a seemingly representative board defending policies which disproportionately hurt poor and minority neighborhoods and students to the benefit of wealthier, whiter ones.
You’ve got to hand it to them; they know exactly what they’re doing. And it sounds an awful lot like class war to me.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
1 Comment
September 14, 2008
by Steve Rawley
As the newest member of the Portland Public Schools board of education, I would like to extend a cordial welcome to Martín González in the form of a challenge on a number of critical issues, in no particular order.
- High schools: advocate for comprehensive high schools in every neighborhood, with the schools offering the best variety of courses and the most qualified teachers sited in the poorest neighborhoods. This policy, the inverse of the current high school system, would rebuild enrollment and public investment where it is most needed. “Small schools,” as currently implemented, may be offered as a special focus, but should never be substituted for comprehensive schools.
- Facilities: advocate for building new facilities based on where students live, not where they’ve transferred, a policy of investing in proportion to local student population and encouraging families to stay in (or return to) their neighborhood schools.
- K8 transition: advocate for a comprehensive middle school option in every neighborhood. K8 schools may be the best option for some students, but they offer dramatically less educational opportunity and are more segregated than middle schools. (Before this transition, every middle school student in PPS had access to a staffed library. Now many do not.) PPS middle grade students assigned to K8 schools are significantly more likely to be non-white and poor than those assigned to middle schools. If any student has a middle school option in their neighborhood, all students should.
- No Child Left Behind: bring a resolution to the board calling for the repeal of the punitive aspects of this law that unfairly target poor and minority students, and introduce policy directing district administration to de-emphasize assessment in favor of a more rounded, whole-child educational focus.
- Student transfer and school funding policies: advocate for a school funding policy that would reinvest in schools that have been gutted by out-transfers as a way to bring enrollment back. Introduce policy that would shift our public investment back to where families live, and guarantee a minimum core curriculum (including the arts) in every neighborhood school. If you really want to be bold, propose policy that would limit neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers to those that would not adversely impact socio-economic segregation. That is, students who qualify for free or reduced lunch could basically transfer anywhere, but other students could only transfer into Title I schools, much like the transfer policy in place during the 1980 desegregation plan (but keying on income instead of race).
- Charter schools: come out strongly for neighborhood schools. Learn from charter school applications what’s missing in our neighborhood schools, and advocate for policy to provide these things in neighborhood schools. The most recent PPS charter school proposal suggests nothing we shouldn’t already be doing in every neighborhood school.
González has a unique opportunity to “audition” for the seat that he will have to win by popular vote in May. How he performs on each of the above issues will signal where he stands with those of us who want school system based on equity of opportunity, where the wealth of a neighborhood does not correspond to the wealth of offerings in its schools.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
2 Comments
September 14, 2008
by Steve Rawley
The latest charter school to rear its head in north or northeast Portland represents a clear challenge to Portland Public Schools, a challenge they have so far refused to meet.
Nothing proposed by the Emerald Charter’s organizers is anything we shouldn’t get in our neighborhood public schools: community building, respect, excellence, and diversity. (In fact, the charter schools movement by its very nature goes against community building and diversity and will likely never come close to neighborhood schools in those areas.)
But you don’t have to read very far into Emerald’s Web page to see a perfectly reasonable rationale to break away from PPS. “Are we teaching students how to learn,” ask the organizers, “or are we giving them a series of rote exercises to get them through the next series of tests?”
This is exactly the question that many activists have asked, and some have pointed out that the PPS obsession with assessment predates No Child Left Behind. The more recent obsession with the “achievement gap” has ensured that Portland schools, especially in neighborhoods that are not predominately white and middle class, have increasingly focused on preparation for assessment to the detriment of “enrichment” (art, music, P.E., world languages, recess etc.).
Whether or not this focus does anything to help bridge the “achievement gap” (some schools that have done away with test prep entirely have actually shown better progress), it is clearly driving white, middle class families away from their inner north and northeast neighborhood schools. The resulting self-segregation reflects the contemporary sociological phenomenon of people tending to associate almost entirely with people who think, act, and look like them.
I cannot criticize anybody for doing what they think is best for their children — that’s their job as a parent. I want nothing to do with name calling and angry debates about personal choices, but people who believe their charter somehow won’t be part of a regressive social movement — with race as a significant aspect — are sorely misguided and misinformed.
Charter schools are, in fact, a regressive social movement; their promise is illusory. I wrote about this in a Portland Tribune op-ed last winter. Nothing has changed since then.
There is a notion that since PPS has historically failed poor and minority students, these communities should be allowed to take their state education money and take care of themselves. It’s hard to argue with the success of the Self Enhancement Academy’s work with its almost entirely African-American student body (five of 137 students were non-black last year).
But the fact that more black students are enrolled in Self Enhancement than in the other six PPS charter schools combined tells the story of “diversity” in charter schools. Every recent charter school application has promised diversity; none have delivered. Portland’s charter schools represent another form of the self-segregation encouraged by the district’s student transfer policy.
Postmodern identity politics is no way to run a public school system, and it is certainly not what we should be teaching our children.
The PPS board of education must be made to understand this latest charter school as a shot across the bow of the district’s assessment obsession. At least three of the current board (Adkins, Williams and Wynde) appear opposed to new charter schools on principle. But Carole Smith’s administration seems entirely sold on the current edu-speak lingo that says we need to focus on “closing the achievement gap” and “equity of outcomes,” goals that have put us into the vicious cycle of stripping “enrichment” as we chase “achievement” as measured by standardized tests.
If school board members want to head off this kind of challenge to the common schools model, they need to create policy that pulls the district away from assessment mania and creates neighborhood schools that consciously focus on the simple things the Emerald Charter’s organizers talk about.
There is nothing revolutionary in turning away from educational trends that have been disastrous for poor and minority children, not to mention the middle class children who would be their classmates. The PPS board needs to quit waffling on this. They should proclaim NCLB a bad law, and declare assessment obsession a detriment to whole-child learning and a significant contributor to inequity and segregation. It makes no sense to continue creating fertile ground for more charter schools that will drain more families from neighborhood schools.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
20 Comments
August 29, 2008
by Steve Rawley
The Portland Public Schools board of education’s appointment last night of Martín González was certainly no surprise. Two of the five candidates — Blanton and Stephan — were unqualified, and two of the remaining three — Buel and Moore — were openly critical, one even sarcastic, about the board’s student transfer and school funding policies which have created a second tier of neighborhood schools in our poor and minority areas.
Evidently these two didn’t get the memo that the student transfer policy is the Thing That Shan’t be Mentioned in Public. After all, it solves such a Very Important Problem.
González got this memo, and also the one about keeping all dissent under wraps. As he pointed out in the candidate forum Tuesday, he worked for many years in an organization that makes all decisions by consensus. He as much as said he’s a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. He appears completely unlikely to rock the boat on any significant issues (e.g. the student transfer policy).
For at least five years, this school board has ruled by inertia. It is extremely rare, if not unheard of in recent history, for any significant policy to originate with the board. Instead, they abdicate their policy-making role to staff, discuss it in private and rubber stamp it in public.
When they do have to make a decision — hiring a superintendent, approving or denying a charter school, appointing board leadership — the decisions are made behind closed doors with no public deliberation, and are almost always unanimous (or nearly unanimous). By the time they go before the public, it is a done deal, and any board discussion (not to mention citizen comment) is moot.
If there is dissent, or even difficult considerations arriving at consensus, these are rarely articulated publicly.
The appointment of González shows us two such examples. First, when approving the process for appointing a new member on July 7, the vote was 5-1. Sonja Henning voted “no,” but during board discussion of the issue, she deferred. “I don’t need to say it here,” she said.
After the meeting adjourned and the cameras and microphones were turned off, two of her board colleagues joined her for a discussion that greatly exceeded the length of the official board meeting.
Doesn’t the public have a right to know why she voted “no”? Isn’t public deliberation a fundamental piece of the democratic process?
In last night’s pre-ordained appointment of González, board “discussion” focussed solely on kudos to González and how excellent “all five” candidates were.
Surely, in private, the board had discussed the other four candidates in some detail. Surely they spoke of the fact that two were not truly qualified, that Steve Buel, while arguably the most qualified candidate, spent too much time directly criticizing the board’s failure to act on equity, and that Rita Moore seemed too willing to challenge them on their student transfer and school funding policies. Surely they talked about how much easier it will be to work with somebody who supports the current transfer policy and whose style is non-confrontational.
Yes, it might be uncomfortable to come right out and say these things on the public record, but we all know they’re being said, and we all know important decisions are being made in private.
I’m not suggesting this board is breaking Oregon’s public meeting law. Legally, they can meet privately in non-majority groups, and they can play phone tree, deliberating and reaching consensus out of the public eye.
But even if they’re hewing to the letter of the law, they habitually violate the spirit of open, democratic process.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
2 Comments
August 27, 2008
by Steve Rawley
The school board office has issued a revised agenda for tomorrow’s special board meeting, with the start time changed to 5 pm. The meeting, previously scheduled to start at 7, is still scheduled for an hour, and still has the single agenda item of appointing a zone 4 director.
Steve Rawley published PPS Equity from 2008 to 2010, when he moved his family out of the district.
4 Comments
« Previous Entries Next Entries »
