PPS Set to Close 60% of the High Schools Making the Grade
The state just released the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) reports and 3 of the 5 PPS high schools making AYP are at Marshall. Superintendent Smith’s poorly thought out plan to create equity and improve high schools would close all 3 Marshall schools.
Now the district has the opportunity to learn from Marshall’s success but will anyone from management be smart enough to do that or will the superintendent push on with her school closure agenda.
All 3 schools at Roosevelt failed to make AYP but they get $7.7 million for improvement. In order to get the school improvement grant, Roosevelt had to get rid of the school principal and replace some staff. The principal booted from Roosevelt has now been placed at Marshall. There wasn’t even a principal selection process.
The district sent out an email spinning the AYP results story as 8 out of 10 schools made AYP but REALLY only K-5s met federal standards district wide. Middle and high schools failed to meet AYP.
Limited English Proficient student performance declined in both math and reading at the high school level and only about 1 in 4 limited English students graduated in the class of 2009. Didn’t the superintendent and board just agree to cut services to those students?
At the high school level, the district failed to meet AYP for economically disadvantaged, limited English proficient, students with disabilities, Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native students.
Sadly, the criteria for meeting AYP is pretty low, “subgroups are only required to meet attendance (or graduation for high schools) when the academic status target is not met.” Even so the district failed to meet AYP. Superintendent Smith needs to be booted.
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ELL students’ graduation rate is at a dismal 25%. For so many years, PPS has shown no clear strategies as to how to improve that rate. Now, the latest I heard: PPS is going to lay off some bilingual Educational Assistants. They could not do this before because of community pressure so they went underground with this. The trust is gone with the ELL communities.
Show me – There is strong support for a rally on 8/23 at BESC against the cuts to special education and ESL so spread the word. How can we get paras and families to show up for this? I will do whatever outreach is necessary and have an actual TEAM to help me do this. Our stance as parents of kids with disabilities is that cutting paras hurts everyone and I believe this is a message that we share with the ESL community. We have a facebook page at PPS Special Education Rally with more news to come.
But do you realize special ed. has been 19 million dollars over budget for the past 2 years. They have spent all their ARRA money and it is because Joanne Mabbot can’t program for kids, she has put large amount of kids out of district again, 100x as many kids on home instruction and her re direction program use to be done at zero cost above pioneer. No extra monies. Don’t rally against anyone but her. It is intolerable and PPS should be ashamed that they are letting her continue with these practices. she takes her friends out to dinner on her procurement card over the weekend and calls it work. Unacceptable.
I am reading this information about Joanne that upsets me that I cannot prove from an anonymous poster. I have tried to engage with you on direct action or verifiable information on various comments here and PPS Equity. I would love to communicate with you on the specifics of the head of ISS not being ethical but that is your call. I am happy to support facts but this is just hearsay and would be foolish for me to rally against from an anonymous source. These cuts are disproportionate and will impact all students negatively with loss of paras and increased caseloads for SLP’s. This is not just about special education and ESL because the IEP’s have to be met regardless (in theory) and with less para support teachers will be on their own. More students with IEP’s are in general education most of the time. More of these kids will be tracked into B classrooms, given referrals, expelled, drop out, and schools in certain neighborhoods will not meet AYP. Give me something I can work with and I can guarantee you I will take it and run.
Stephanie as a public person you have the right to ask for the special ed budget for the last two years. As Carole Smith said, special ed is getting 5% more from General fund. Sped doesn’t look like it because so much is paying the overage . Ask to see how ARRA money was spent. You are suppose to spend 51 percent by the end of the first year Sped/joanne has spent it all the first year. Ask to see how many kids Joanne has unilateraly placed without IEP teams. Remember all documents are public.
Thanks for the advice on what questions to ask and I will follow up on that. The legal stuff requires hours of research on my part to even know what questions to ask so this helps. We did have someone with a financial background look at the budget and items were identified in our letter to PPS.
I am ticked off that Ed Bear was laid off from BizTech and summarily replaced with a principal from Roosevelt. I worked with him for one year at BT and thought he was possibly the best administrator I had had in my 14 years of teaching!
As for ESL and success, they’re not cutting teachers per se, but doing away with the “12 new positions” they promised at the end of the last school year. According to the superintendent’s report, ESL is supposed to remain at the 2009-2010 levels.
Now, as far as ELLs and progress and graduation rate, well that’s another can of worms, with the high school teachers supporting one particular research-based model and the ESL department ignoring the teachers’ points, objections, input, suggestions.. well, there it is. It’s summer and I’m supposed to be relaxing.
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard positive feedback on Devon Baker.
Did PPS eliminate Ed’s position?
Devon Baker is a very nice man. Tho, in my humble opinion, there are many, many highly qualified people who could do a better job at Marshall. Unfortunately, many of these people the district has demoted, eliminated, or harrassed to death.
Have you all looked at inside PPS. They announced all the Principal and there are 3 on special assignments. Is that considered in the cuts????
Moonlighting, How do we access Inside PPS? Who are the principals on special assignment? Who’s the principal at Jefferson?
To access Inside PPS:
http://inside.pps.k12.or.us
Carrie Brenda fox, L. Speed and the principal from King. All given the boot from their schools and now we pay their salaries while they are on “special assignment”. Is that considered in the central office cuts??? It is all smoke and mirrors.
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