Susie Brighouse has taught at Marshall since 1991.  She sent the following letter to the superintendent and school board:

Dear Superintendent Smith and School Board members –

Portland Public Schools has been a part of my life since I was born. My father was an electrician for PPS.  My older siblings went to Duniway and Lewis.  My two oldest brothers graduated from Benson.   I am a product of Lewis Elementary and Hosford Middle School.  During the summer after my sophomore year in high school, I worked as a teacher’s aide for Portland Public Summer School.  I was fortunate, because that’s when I knew that I wanted to be a teacher.  After graduating from Eastern Oregon University in 1989, and teaching summer school, I subbed for over a year to “get my foot in the door.”  My first full-time teaching job began 2nd semester at Cleveland High School in 1991.  Because of cuts, that lasted until June.  In October of 1991, I was hired at Marshall High School for a ½ time position.  I have been at Marshall ever since.  I have seen many colleagues leave Marshall, but the ones that have impressed me the most were the ones who spent most of their teaching careers here at Marshall, because it definitely isn’t the easy road.  Many times, I have found myself justifying staying at Marshall, even to my closest friends and family.  I stay because Marshall students are the strongest, most accepting young adults I know (and I work with student council kids from all over the state).  They are fighters.  They are survivors.  They are also used to change . . . change in their school, change in their family situations, change in their financial situations, etc.  I feel that staying provides them with a little stability that many of their lives do not afford them.  If any of you, or I, were put into their situations, we would not be as strong as they are.  It is truly impressive. [Read more →]

PPS administration has attempted to frame the high school redesign issue in a way that pits low-income area schools against each other.  They would be happy to see Marshall attack Jefferson, Roosevelt or Benson but why should we?

Each of those schools have suffered from PPS actions or inactions.  Those schools along with Marshall have been underfunded, denied resources, mismanaged and neglected while Lincoln, Wilson, Cleveland and Grant have benefitted. 

The question isn’t why does Jefferson or Roosevelt get resources that Marshall doesn’t?  The question is why does Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland and Wilson continue to get so much more than everyone else? [Read more →]

Do you remember this?

Diversity and Development

Under Construction Since 1964

Please check back in a few decades.

It was replaced with this:

 Nothing!  The page has disappeared.

The PPS superintendent and board may have wanted to avoid discussion about race in the high school redesign but we shouldn’t.  PPS has a long history of discriminating against students of color and poor students.  Now that the district has invested some money into Courageous Conversations, let’s see if they can have one. 

 Here’s another link to a report on PPS ugly history:

Detailed report on the history of PPS and the Black United Front

Let’s be clear on Superintendent Smith’s high school redesign proposal. 

She is recommending that 3 Marshall Campus schools close and a new school opened on the campus.  She is also recommending that Benson High School close and a new program is housed on the campus.

Both recommendations are in violation of  PPS School Initiation and Closure policy 6.10.030-P.  Where are the School Initiation and School Closure Reports?  Is she planning to produce those after the board votes?

 Superintendent Smith’s recent recommendation to cut paraeducator and bilingual educational assistant staff is certainly consistent with PPS history.  Like a playground bully, Smith picks on the weakest members.

Her recommendation to close Marshall is just one more example of that.  She doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Grant or Lincoln or Wilson so she took the easy route.  She doesn’t expect resistance from the Marshall community. 

Her high school redesign plan closes Marshall without giving parents or students the opportunity to be on the focus school redesign team.  I’m sure that’s because the “redesign” will be the old design, certain to fail. 

The small focus school at Marshall isn’t going to open.  There isn’t any student or parent interest in it.  Remember the Young Men’s Academy?  The high school redesign plan says a representative from Marshall (staff member) wanted a small school at the campus.  One person wants it so the community suffers?

The parents and students in the Marshall area have been saying for years that they’ve been cheated by the small schools concept.  They weren’t happy with the small schools because they didn’t offer anything. 

The high school redesign is our chance to FINALLY get a decent shot at a public education. 

The superintendent couldn’t justify her recommendation to close Marshall based on the SEER data so she added bullshit criteria and lies.  One of the essential factors that informed decision-making was “local understanding of the city’s topography, neighborhood’s sense of community, and travel routes.”  How does she measure the neighborhood’s sense of community?  Do they complain about paying premiums for their homes?

Another essential factorinforming Smith’s decision-making is the opportunity for unique partnerships.  David Douglas isn’t going to lease Marshall.  The letter from David Douglas superintendent Rommell (Smith’s friend) says she’s encouraged by the possibility of providing opportunities for David Douglas and Marshall students.  How encouraged?  Has David Douglas made a commitment to lease Marshall?  Or does Smith expect the PPS board and community to assume David Douglas will be leasing Marshall when closing the school?  Has Smith seen David Douglas’ proposed budget?   

New homes are cropping up everywhere in the Marshall cluster and enrollment at Marshall has increased since 2004.  One issue Smith said she plans to address in the high school redesign is “very large enrollment at Harrison Park”.  That would be our multiple award winning Clark Elementary which was merged with Binnsmead Middle School illegally.  Harrison Park’s enrollment is very large because of the district’s decision to close Clark while the area was seeing significant growth. 

Here’s a profile of Marshall High School now:

How does closing a school that serves a higher than average percentage of students who are poor, minorities, and/or have disabilities promote equity?  It doesn’t but it does make them an easy target.

Calvin Henry
541 745 5570 

This Wednesday’s Willamette Week included a blurb about proposed changes to PPS English as a Second Language (ESL) program. 

The district wants to cut 23 bilingual educational assistants (EAs) and replace them with 12 ESL teachers.    That would be a mistake. 

The bilingual EAs are often the only ones in the schools able to speak the language of the students and their families.  The district can’t even find 12 bilingual ESL teachers. 

No Child Left Behind requires the bilingual educational assistants to have a minimum of 2 years of college or the equivalent.  When NCLB first passed, the PPS Human Resources department asked all bilingual EAs to submit their transcripts to HR for review.  Many of the bilingual educational assistants were college graduates in their home countries and some were teachers prior to moving to the United States. 

Bilingual EAs submitted their foreign transcripts to HR but they just sat in a box for over a year.  The assistant director of HR refused to use Title I funds to cover the cost of translation and evaluation of the transcripts even though that was an allowable use of Title I funds.  She claimed it wouldn’t be fair to other employees.  Never mind that she didn’t have a problem with administrators hiring their kids for “Limited Term” positions. 

It would have been to HRs advantage to have the transcripts evaluated because the bilingual EAs would have been a natural pool of candidates for a career ladder program.  They were already working in the schools, college educated, committed and BILINGUAL.   

PPS HR administrators have long argued that they can’t find bilingual ESL teachers.  While working in the PPS HR department, I researched the effectiveness of the Bilingual Teacher Pathway program.  The career ladder program is a partnership between PPS and Portland State University.  The PSU website says:

The Bilingual Teacher Pathway (BTP) is a teacher preparation program designed to fill critical shortages of bilingual education/ESL teachers in the Portland metropolitan area. This is accomplished by recruiting and supporting bilingual/bicultural educational assistants so they can become licensed teachers.

My research found that 1/3 of the program participants became teachers, 1/3 left PPS and 1/3 remained in bilingual educational assistant positions with the district.  That meant that the district was investing their resources into a program with a 33% success rate.   

The program has the potential to be effective but like most activities involving equal opportunities district administrators create barriers to equity. 

Those barriers contribute to the rapidly increasing gap between Oregon’s teaching staff and student diversity.  Oregon Department of Education’s State Report Card shows a 30% minority student population compared to a 5% minority teacher population.  What’s worse is that the minority teacher population has remained virtually unchanged since 1998.

The ESL program clearly has problems but it’s not because of having too many bilingual EAs.  They should not have to take the fall for the incompetence of district administrators.

The superintendent and board need to put their money where there mouth is and invest it in the kids.  No more bull shit about how they’ve cut Central Office staff.  It’s actually doubled in the last 10 years.  Keep the bilingual EAs, cut twelve of those Central Office administrators (I could provide a list) and hire the 12 bilingual ESL teachers!

I’m looking for someone from PPS to write a guest post on the proposed changes to the PPS ESL program.  The guest author may post anonymously if preferred.  I will not disclose your confidential information.  Please contact me at carrie.adams@comcast if you’re interested in writing a post.

One More Thing…

I just got to thinking, that I went on in great length regarding the joke of an education my nephew received in Portland Public Schools special education, without telling you what he’s doing now. After the hearing we pulled him out of Marshall due to the same old same old. We gave ‘em one more chance at Lincoln High while we were waiting for them to pay up on the remedy, but within a week we knew that too was a bust.

After he was finished at Sylvan Learning Center Joseph got a job where the idea was for him to develop work appropriate behavior in order to become competitively employed. He’s been there for the last 4+ years as one of their best employees. The problem is that he’s still not doing what he loves most… working with numbers. Last Spring we decided to do something about that.

We put together what is called a “Person Centered Plan”, where the people involved in a person’s life gather with a facilitator to discuss someone’s hopes, dreams, and strengths. When we were finished, we had a solid plan on steps to assist Joseph with getting into the numbers racquet (couldn’t resist). He now is moving in the right direction.

First we got him a calculator/adding machine. He’s learned to make a monthly budget and has done really well with this. We purchased a laptop with a printer and software having to do with accounting type stuff. He’s enrolled at Clackamas Community College, where he’s taking some basic computer classes this fall. By all accounts he’s doing great. This winter he’ll be taking a class on Excel and may get an internship doing some data entry or basic accounting. He tells (yes, he can say most of what he’s thinking these days) anyone who asks him that he wants to eventually work in a bank. For Joseph; he’ll go as far as he wants to go.

Joseph was never unteachable. He was never physically aggressive. He was never any more difficult to educate than any other kid. He was failed by the education system in Portland.

REALLY THE END