Category — ESL

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.

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!