Posts from — June 2010

I’ve read quite a few online comments encouraging wealthier parents to make donations to their school foundations to offset PPS proposed budget cuts at some of the better high schools. 

I wonder how many of those parents will be donating $6,821 over the next four years.  That’s what Marshall students could be donating over a four year period if the school closes. 

As things stand, students would be traveling the equivalent of the distance from Portland to Japan, or Peru or Russia.  A conservative estimate of the time that would be spent on a bus is 812 hours (70 minutes per day) times Oregon’s minimum wage ($8.40) = $6,821. 

That’s a large donation from a population where 72.7% of the families are living in poverty.

The Lincoln women who testified at tonight’s board meeting and encouraged board members to close schools prompted me to revisit some data. 

Lincoln, Grant, Wilson and Cleveland are viewed as “successful schools” but what students are successful at those schools?  The data below is for Lincoln but Grant and Wilson look similar.

• Black students accounted for 6% of Lincoln’s population but 17% of the discipline incidents (08/09)
• 89% of the white students, 68% of the Hispanic students and 61% of the Black students were receiving grades of  C or higher (08/09)
• Students taking above grade level coursework – 57% of White students, 24% of Black students and 36% of free lunch students (08/09)
• Only 50% of the students on free/reduced lunch met the Math AYP target (08/09)
• Limited English Proficient student graduation rate is 25% (07/08)

As for the argument that fewer campuses mean more opportunities for all students….well maybe not at Lincoln.  Black students only make up 3% of the Lincoln students taking AP/IB or PSU courses. 

Still, the women testifying before the board tonight think students of color and poor students should sacrifice so Lincoln students (wealthier white students) can continue to have more than everyone else.

Lincoln has publicly entered the school closure discussion.  The Lincoln Stand for Children representative just testified before the board encouraging them to consolidate schools now.  She told board members not to cave to political pressure.  Lincoln can’t withstand the kinds of cuts the superintendent has proposed. 

The Lincoln Long Term Development Committee  wants to build a brand new high school.  Let’s consolidate following Option 7B.  Close Lincoln first!

There was a time when I sympathized with the PPS superintendent and board as they made what I believed to be difficult budget cuts.  My views on that changed while I was working at the PPS Central Office. 

The superintendent doesn’t have to make all of the cuts she’s proposing.  District administrators haven’t heard the expression take care of your pennies and your dollars will take care of themselves.  Complain about district administrators holding meetings at hotels and a PPS Communications representative will be there defending the practice because it’s just a drop in the budget bucket. 

Just as predictable as the annual sky is falling cry is the manner in which the cuts will be made. 

Pay attention to all Central Office cuts.  Superintendent Smith has recommended cutting 5 Central Office Communications positions.  It won’t be Robb or Sara or Lolenzo or Matt…the lowest level staff will be cut.  Staff that make less than the cost of a hotel contract for administrator meetings.

In Superintendent Smith’s announcement about budget cuts today Smith said:

Although high schools as a whole would lose 10 percent of their positions, Roosevelt and Jefferson high schools would be shielded from any loss, Smith said. Those two schools are in a protected “academic priority zone,” due to high poverty levels among their students. The district’s eight other high schools would be cut a bit more than 10 percent as a result.

Hello…what about Marshall?  If the academic priority zones are based on poverty:

• Roosevelt is 79.4%
• Marshall is 72.7%
• Jefferson is 70.5%

Superintendent Smith’s high school redesign plan was vague about how schools were identified for Academic Priority Zone status but nowhere did it mention that identification was based on poverty. 

Where is Marshall’s protected status?  Or protected anything?  Hey PPS…way to give up on your largest catchment area.

The feeling of many who saw Monday’s school board board meeting is that the district has still set Marshall up on a course towards failure.  Suspension of the high school redesign just bought us an additional year.

At this point, we still have more questions than answers.  Among them:

• Will Marshall be identified as an Academic Priority Zone for fall?  If not, why not?
• Does NCLB require that Biz Tech undergo major changes (similar to Roosevelt) this year?
• Will Marshall continue with 3 small schools and 3 principals this year?    
•  What is the district’s plan for communicating with incoming freshman since the superintendent botched the forecasting by having counselors from Madison and Franklin forecast kids prior to board approval of the redesign?
• Why are Marshall incoming freshmen still being given priority transfer to schools that they do not feed into?
• How many focus school proposals have been submitted, from who and where are the proposals?  They need to be made public on PPS website.
• How did jumping the gun on board adoption of the redesign effect teacher assignments for Marshall?
• What’s the district’s plan for working with the Marshall community? 

We will be following the district’s lead in continuing to pursue the same course we were on prior to suspension of the high school redesign.  This means we are moving forward on our plan to secede from PPS.

The Marshall community is still waiting for  clarification from MESD regarding some basic boundary change petition requirements.

Meanwhile, here’s what PPS could lose when the Marshall cluster secedes from PPS:

• $28,162,711 in general funds
• 4,400 students
• ESL students (cluster average is 25%  of the population) and the funding that comes with them
• SPED students (cluster average is 18% of the population) and the funding that comes with them
•  $2,158,055 in Title I funds (probably an underestimate since I don’t have 10/11 projections)
• 10 buildings
• over 94 acres of land
• costs of legal expenses to fight the boundary change
• 1/2 the cost of the election

That could be quite a loss.

PPS Superintendent Smith and school board members continue to push the idea that they’re building on the success of the small schools at Marshall by closing the 3 small schools and opening a focus school.  I’d like to know how they define “success”. 

Here’s a profile of Biz Tech on the Marshall campus:

• 32% of all students met math benchmark
• 28% of poor children met math benchmark
• 25% of limited English proficient students met math benchmark
• Zero Black students met math benchmark
• 20% of Hispanic students met math benchmark
• 16% of students with disabilities met math benchmark
• Oregon 2008/09 school report cards show Biz Tech has a 46% graduation rate.
• A  story in the Oregonian in 2008 reported that Marshall students missed an average of more than five weeks of school each year. 

 Maybe I have unrealistic standards but I don’t see those results as being successful.

The following story is from the Oregonian archives:

District aims wrecking ball at Whitaker
History – The school board OKs borrowing $2.1 million to raze what’s become an eyesore
Thursday, August 24, 2006
PAIGE PARKER

Vandals inspired by Whitaker Middle School’s vacant, dimly lit hulk have made a mess out of a building already burdened with one of Portland’s messiest pasts.  This week, the Portland School Board pledged again to clean it up, giving district officials the go-ahead to borrow $2.1 million to raze the building.

Wrecking crews could begin knocking down the Northeast Portland school in early November, said Kerry Hampton, the district’s property manager. It could take as long as three months to completely clear the site, he said.

Marcia Taylor, who has lived across the street from the school since 1974, says she’ll be relieved to be rid of the building. Three of her children attended the school when it was Adams High School.

“It’s just really been a shame,” Taylor said. “It was just a beautiful school when it was built.”

Students haven’t attended the school since district leaders closed it in 2001. Whitaker was built in 1966 with windows that didn’t open, a flaw that contributed to the buildup of radon. A leaky roof and lack of ventilation encouraged the growth of toxic mold, and a host of other structural problems made the 268,899-square-foot building too costly to repair.

And though the community uses the adjacent track and grounds, the school itself is riddled with graffiti and garbage, and boards cover most of the windows.

Whitaker neighborhood students now attend Tubman Middle School, a seven-mile haul across the city by bus. Apart from the toll that traveling takes on students, leaving the school vacant has cost taxpayers. Since 2002, the district has spent just shy of $700,000 in maintenance, utilities and insurance for the empty building.

The district will borrow the demolition money, Hampton said, because interest on the loan will cost as much or less than the district now spends maintaining the building. After the building is gone, the district intends to sell the southern 5.8 acres of the approximately 10-acre site to a residential developer. Hampton estimates that the land will bring in at least enough to repay the loan, with as much as $787,000 left over.

But construction of a replacement school, which former Superintendent Jim Scherzinger promised five years ago, will have to wait. Portland Public Schools’ construction bond expired in 2005, and the district doesn’t have money to replace the school.

The school board passed a resolution in 2005 that sets aside half of the proceeds from the future sale of Washington High School for capital improvements at the Whitaker site. With an elementary school costing between $12 million and $15 million, and a middle school ranging from $18 million to $23 million, the district must raise much more to replace Whitaker.

Michelle Ovando, chairwoman of the Concordia Neighborhood Association, said neighbors hope the district sells to developers who will build affordable homes that fit in with the neighborhood.

“We’re anxious to get that school brought down. It draws in gang activity and drug activity,” Ovando said. “It’s a big building and easy to hide behind.”

School board members:

I am writing to again urge you to reconsider your plan to close John Marshall High School. My neighborhood, Lents, has worked so hard on developing a sense of identity and on fostering economic vitality through education. Sending students at least 30 minutes each way on buses to central Portland will be a significant hurdle to eastside redevelopment and to the goal of creating 20 minute neighborhoods.

Also, I would call your attention to a PPS report School Profiles and Enrollment Data 2008/09 (pages 121-123) showing minority enrollment in the city’s attendance zone. I think it’s quite clear that a move to shutter Jefferson or Marshall would be met with civil rights questions at the U.S. Department of Education.

You’ve heard plenty of testimony on this by now, so I won’t take too much more of your time. So I ask again — change the boundary over to DDSD, keep us open with fewer students from PPS, but don’t derail the civic redevelopment in my neighborhood.

Thanks,

Nick Christensen