The Marshall Community Wants a Comprehensive Neighborhood High School (in our neighborhood)
The turnout for Thursday’s community meeting at Marshall was great despite PPS failure to send out an auto-dialer message as promised. Carole Smith, Zeke Smith and Mark Davalos took questions and statements from students, parents, and community members.
Unlike all of the other high school redesign meetings that I’ve attended, Zeke Smith started out by sitting in the crowd. Carole and Mark were in the hot seats while student after student asked the same question. Why did you choose to close Marshall? Just when you thought you’d heard the last why Marshall question, another student would ask. They must have caught on quickly that the answers varied each time the question was asked.
One student switched the why Marshall question to “what was the criteria used to make the closure decision?” I think it’s reasonable to expect both Carole Smith and Mark Davalos to be able to answer the question but Zeke had to jump in and rescue them.
One student was very direct and asked if Marshall was selected because district administrators thought it would be the path of least resistance. Yes students that’s why. It’s also how PPS makes hiring decisions. The district hires and promotes administrators that aren’t likely to make waves. Mark Davalos is an example of that.
There were a couple of common messages from students, parents, staff, and community members.
- The Marshall community wants and expects to have a comprehensive high school in our cluster.
- Students and parents love the Marshall teachers. It was great to see the strong relationships between staff, students and parents. I haven’t seen that since my kids were in elementary school (when our cluster still had them).
There was also broad and strong support for moving the PPS boundaries if the district moves forward on the current high school redesign proposal.
We will pursue moving the entire Marshall cluster to David Douglas school district if that’s what it takes for students in the Marshall neighborhood to have a comprehensive high school program.
Mark Davalos’ role in the meeting seemed to be focused on making sure time was wasted and that good questions were overlooked. A community member asked Carole and Mark how the high school redesign supports the Lents Urban Renewal Plan and suddenly it was time to talk about wrapping up the meeting.
Carole talked with a small group of people after the meeting. She asked what we saw as the best redesign outcome for Marshall. We told her that we want a comprehensive high school on the Marshall campus. Carole started talking about trade-offs and problem-solving a solution for the Marshall campus. The Lents Education Committee chairperson asked Carole if she would be willing to meet with us so we could problem-solve together. Carole said yes but backed away from it when the committee chairperson tried to pin her down on a meeting.
Carole did what she usually does which is to praise people on their testimony (that was really powerful) and to say she gets it. I have no doubt she gets it. She just isn’t going to do anything about it.
10 comments
Carrie, Thank you for a precise and astute summary of the Marshall HS Redesign meeting on May 27th. Your observations about Carole, Mark and Zeke are right on the money. Mark Davalos is weak. Carole will not act even though she acknowledges that she gets it. So what is left is for Zeke to clean up!!!
The meeting was one of the best I have attended and its too bad that it couldnt have been longer, there was still some important testimony and I felt like we did not hear from everyone and lets face it, I have never seen a fair amount of comment cards handed in after any meeting. There were people that havent ever been to a meeting at Marshall, people that cared enough to come. I know it went over 8:30 as it was, dinner came much later than expected and families just had to get home. Its funny that when I was standing close to Trudy Sargent I watched her talk to one of the organizers and she could not have been colder or more dismissive. From what I understand, after repeated efforts she never did respond to any invitations to attend, yet there she was. She was already scheduled to be at Marshall that evening for an event with the seniors. How hard would it have been to simply just RSVP and say that? Why the blatant rudeness? When is her term up? Bye Bye Trudy.
Carrie, I dont want to contradict your comment about the auto-dialer, just add to it. This call was PROMISED to go out Tuesday the 25th to ALL addresses in the Marshall area, not just the students of the school. It did not. On the 26th, it did not. On the day of the meeting one organzier told me that there was two people that pressed the question to PPS, and no one seemed to know an answer. One person actually went to thre District and visited all staff, door to door- demanding that it needed to go out no matter what time it was. So yes, that autodialer did go out……at 3pm on the 27th but it took two very angry and motivated people to do that.
The question about the correlation (or lack of) the redesign with the Lents Urban Renewal Plan needs to be brought up again and again. They do not align with one another and that needs to be examined closely. PDC and Sam Adams, feel free to jump in now, ITS TIME so get on it.
Other little pieces of information that concern me is that Jefferson is talking about how it fared after the desegration and how it was brought back to life. During that period of time it was a lively and vibrant HS and Marshall was the same…until some bad things happened in the neighborhood and people automatically assumed that the school reflected that activity and thus created a stigma. NCLB exacerbated the stigma and made things worse. Jefferson is now claiming racism and maybe rightfully so, but how do you say that about Marhall? We are made up largely of communities of color and poor. The time and effort that SHOULD have gone into Marshall when it happened to them, went elsewhere, letting Marshall become no more than a lab experiment and the the is racism here but it is in the form of the poor and their civil rights, creating serious and significant social injustice. PPS created caste system in place of equity and unless the schools are given the tools, resources and support to succeed, PPS will continue to create the division between the poor and communities of color and all the other WHITE (see the data) schools that suprisingly are not experiencing change the more vulnerable schools are. I live it, I hear it, I see it, I feel it.
According to PPS recent data, there are over 170 families attending Marshall HS that are living with other guardians than their parents. This is for a number of reasons but it is worth pointing out that about 1/4 of the students live with Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Alone (yes alone), with older siblings or Foster Care. Now here is another sad piece, as of last month, 35 families enrolled at Marshall are homeless.
There are targeted (some very underfunded) resources allocated to specific demographic areas of the city to address these needs that families may not get if they go to another school that dont have enough othe resources or programs to support these families. These programs are targted to address barriers that families face every day and at many times are very successful. I am not referring to Title 1 or any other specialized funding. I am talking about service agencies and partners. Seriously, will their needs be addressed at Franklin or Madison? Nope. They wont be addressed until PPS starts getting the attendance and drop out data, then may take SOME action…six years from now????
But in the longrun, it will make the problems worse. You cannot solve challenges families face by moving their kids further away? Make their local school a lottery only campus?
No matter what a student wears or looks like change does not change the brilliant mind. There are some amazing students out here, we are not uneducated, just not given the opportunity to develop these young and capable students to thier potential. They need to either fight for or move to where they get their needs met.
Unless I heard wrong, Carole has said that the smaller focus would address the needs of the students that need extra support to succeed. This was to be in terms of smaller classrooms and specialized instruction and I thought that the plan said that this would be a priority. this plan will address the most vulnerable populations and that it will do, but not in a positive way.
How do you achieve this with a lottery only campus?
Trudy- 0ut
Zeke- out
And many others on that list- feel free to add on here….
PDC-in
DDSD- in
SAM ADAMS- in
“Hi David Douglas, my name is Marshall. Its nice to meet you, why dont you come in a talk for a while? We have a lot in common and I would love to start doing more together.”
Sincerely,
Marshall HS
I believe Trudy ran unnopposed this last time. Can she be recalled?
I agree with everything you said in the last comment with one exception. As a Jefferson community member I believe any school that has suffered so others can have a private education in public school needs an equitable chance to educate their kids with the proper leadership and resources. The burden of integration (bootstraps) falls on the poor, disabled, people of color, and those who have a different first language on the North side and East County.
Sam Adams in??? He has done nothing to help the inequity. His educational committee is a joke. I tried to get on it so I could bring a different perscpective than his affluent supporters. No way.I’m not one of his affluent supporters. He has been mayor for some time and done almost nothing which approaches helping kids in Portland who are not children of his supporters. Recently he has done the scholarships for poor kids. This is it. A nice thing, but it does nothing to help the k-12 schools.
Trudy was just re-elected last year, so her seat will not be open again until 2013. But yes, it is possible to recall someone who ran unopposed. Who lives in Zone 6 and would be willing to finish out her term?
Carrie do you live in Zone 6?
Stephanie, I do for now.
Steve, I thought the same thing about Sam Adams-in? I can’t see where he’s done much at all as far as getting his feet wet with the whole high school redesign or just having a desire to improve the quality of education here in Portland. I guess he’s too busy wondering where the next large condo project could be built, or just whatever looks good in photos ( the visual fixes, which doesn’t involve what’s happening, or not, in our public schools ).
It seems to me Sam’s all about “show”. weak on substance.
Getrowdie, I am really disappointed in his education cabinet which started out as a committee to address the dropout rate. When I have tried to get information about what they are doing or even get involved Ihave been put off. No info. And certainly no involvement. You can’t truly address the dropout problem without addressing the horrendously weak middle grade programs in the lower economic areas. Redesign the high schools all you want. Make sure every kid in the primary grades can read. But it still won’t really address the dropout problem from a school perspective unless you address the middle grades. So, Sam, how is your committee of stalwart mostly West Hillsy folks coming in addressing the middle grade educational problems? Whoops, you aren’t looking at that and now you have become an educational committee instead of a dropout committee. I see. Thank you.
Sorry guys, when I said “Sam Adams- in” I meant that he needs to get off his but, get his education cabinet doing what they are supposed to be doing and to get engaged in this process??? So that’s what I meant. There is absolutely NO reason for his lack of response.
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