Category — Marshall

This year’s incoming Freshman class at Marshall would have been its largest in years but then Carole Smith got involved. 

Prior to board approval of Smith’s recommendations for high schools, Smith announced that Marshall wouldn’t be taking incoming freshman.  Parents of those students were sent letters saying that their kidswould be going to the recommended feeder schools.  The counselors from the new feeder schools then forecasted Marshall freshmen. 

A few weeks later, Smith announced that Marshall would be taking incoming freshmen but Marshall students still wishing to attend their new feeder schools could do that.  Kids were then re-forecasted for the fall.   

In a period of about a month, Marshall went from it’s largest incoming freshmen class in years to no incoming freshmen and now they’re at about half of where they started before Smith’s involvement. 

Do board members pay any attention to this?  Every time the school closure issue comes up the superintendent and board members blame the schools for declining enrollment.  I’m sure that’s much more comfortable for them than accepting responsibility for their own actions.

Tonight a group of Marshall parents attended the David Douglas school board meeting because the Marshall site was on their agenda. 

Given that the superintendent was instructed to continue (or maybe begin…the story changes regularly) discussions with David Douglas about sharing the facility, you would think that the superintendent would have at least attempted to have a serious conversation with them about it.  But that’s not what was described at tonight’s David Douglas meeting.

David Douglas superintendent Don Grotting kicked off the discussion by saying that PPS superintendent Smith wanted him to talk with the David Douglas board about their apprehensions around partnering at the Marshall site. 

David Douglas board members apprehensions come from a few places.  First, PPS has yet to articulate a plan for shared use of the site.  According to a David Douglas staff member, PPS started the conversation by saying “what can we do for you?”  When pressed for specific ideas for shared use of the site, PPS was reluctant to articulate what they had in mind. 

David Douglas board members asked if PPS has brought any ideas forth since the initial discussion.  NO.  Board members said they didn’t feel it was their place to tell PPS how to use their building.  One board member said “they should have a plan on how they want the building used.” 

Other board members said: 

• We’re not going to be their saviors
• We’re spinning our wheels until they can come up with something
• I don’t see us going into a cold planning session for the facility
• I’d support any solution that makes sense for staff and students and is cost effective

The only area where PPS was able to provide any clarity was on the issue of a boundary change.  Superintendent Grotting asked Carole Smith if she’s willing to support a boundary change and she said no. 

Every day brings a new reason to secede from PPS.  The district won’t provide an adequate education for students in the Marshall cluster.  They won’t let neighborhood students stay in the Marshall building.  They aren’t serious about a focus school.  They aren’t willing to fully utilize the building. 

We have formed a group called Eastside Equity Now and we are collecting signatures to change the district boundaries. 

We will be at Ed Benedict park (SE 100th and Powell) Saturday and Sunday 2-4 PM. (Update – we’re awaiting confirmation on this.  Unlike PPS, we don’t want to piss off an entire community).  More dates and locations will be announced soon.  Please email me at carrie.adams@comcast.net if you’d like to volunteer to collect signatures.

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.

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.

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

June 16, 2010

Dear Superintendent Smith and Members of the School Board,

I need to be honest – I wasn’t going to write this letter.  I had given up on the process some weeks ago when, after 200+ members of the Marshall Community came together to speak and plead for a comprehensive school on their campus ,Superintendent Smith presented her revised proposal which recommended the slow and painful death of Marshall Campus.  Today however, I received an email from Superintendent Smith, wishing me “relaxation and rejuvenation this summer.”  Please allow me to tell you about the start of summer for so many of us…

Yesterday was the last day of school for students on Marshall Campus.  As the freshmen, sophomores and juniors walked out of their classrooms, many gave their teachers hugs, and asked, “Will I see you this fall?”  My freshman English class spent time talking about their own plans for the Fall…  Many have younger siblings who would have been freshmen next year.  Because of the recommendation to not allow freshmen at Marshall Campus (no matter their interest), many parents are looking to pull these older siblings as well.  After all, what parent would want their children at two different high school campuses? 

Our principals are scrambling around – strongly desiring to create a master schedule with teacher names, classes, and student rosters.  But they too are in the dark.  They have been given estimates on which to create a “Worst-Case Scenario” schedule.  They have to reevaluate program needs, and examine teacher seniority.  These decisions are not easy – especially considering that all of these actions were already completed two months ago; schedules were complete, contract exceptions filed and approved, hiring completed.  They now have to start over.

Teachers know that all this is going on.  We are grasping to find any information we can: seniority within the building, seniority within the district, any rumors whatsoever about whether or not we have a job next fall, let alone if it may be here.  Meanwhile, we have been teaching our hearts out, trying to keep some sense of normalcy in the lives of our students.  Normalcy in a time of grieving. 

Our students, who have been fighting for their schools (whether as individual small schools, or as a comprehensive campus) for nearly two months, are grieving.  They see the news, and see in the Superintendent and Board’s recommendations, that their actions and desires do not matter.  They see that their voice, which asked so strongly for a comprehensive school, and for more time, was ignored.  They see that Benson students got what they wanted by skipping class on a walkout.  They see themselves attending school, getting an education, making their demands on their own time rather than their teachers’.  They see that Jefferson students get a voice in the media because of the color of their skin.  They see that they are ignored because they are poor.  They get the impression that they don’t matter to their own school district.

What many don’t see is the impact of having the freshmen pulled out from underneath us.  Students haven’t realized that they will lose anywhere from 25-33% of their teachers.  Students haven’t realized that they will lose elective classes.  Students haven’t realized that they will lose JV sports.  Students haven’t realized that they will lose out on so much that makes up a high school education. 

All of this in the name of “EQUITY”.  Isn’t that what this is all supposed to be about?  Creating an EQUITABLE education for all students of PPS, regardless of their ZIP Code?  Yet the proposal not only plans to ship these kids OUT of their ZIP code in order to get that “equitable” education – it also aims to provide the current students of Marshall’s three small schools a LESS THAN equitable education as the District “phases out” BizTech High School, Pauling Academy, and Renaissance Arts Academy.  How is this fair?  How is this equitable?How is this right?

By taking our freshmen, many of whom truly wanted to come to one of the three small schools, we are being set up for failure.  The staff we will lose as a result of having no freshmen severely limits the educational opportunities we can offer our students.  The sloppy process being followed here takes away any rights that we as students or staff should have gotten:  students’ right to apply for a transfer passed in February; staff rights to apply for new positions in Phase One passed in early April.  Only in late April did we find out that our schools’ livelihood was at risk.  And only two weeks ago, in early June, did we learn that it was critical, and that the District is placing a DNR tag on our doors.

I cannot imagine being an eighth grader in this neighborhood these past few months.  In February, these students filled out an application stating their desire to attend BizTech, Pauling or Renaissance (or any of the other schools in the District).  Just a few months later, these students received a letter saying that while their school was slated for closure, they could choose again: they could indicate their desire to remain committed to technology, science or art, or opt to go to their “new” neighborhood school: Madison or Franklin.  Then, just a few weeks later, they were sent yet another letter saying that they would not get to go to any of the three schools on Marshall Campus, nor Benson; rather, they would be sent to their NEW “new” neighborhood school of Cleveland, Franklin or Madison.  How confusing this must be for a 13-year-old!  And the uncertainty of not knowing where your friends will be in the Fall Semester must have certainly put a damper on their promotion celebrations.

Our Second Language students are being inundated with letters from the District, as well as from the ESL departments at Franklin, Madison and Cleveland.  They are being led to believe that they must transfer.  Over the past few weeks, countless students have brought in these letters to their ESL teachers, or to our ESL Educational Assistants asking, “What does this mean?  Do I have to leave?”  They love the small classes in their schools here.  They love that they are able to be fully mainstreamed into classes that are still small.  They love that they are part of the community alongside every other student in their small school.  They do not want to leave.

This is awfully late in the year for such drastic decisions.  It is unfortunate that the end of a two year process has to happen so quickly and at a time where those so dramatically affected have lost all opportunities to make a choice about their own future.  As for Superintendent Smith’s hope for “relaxation and rejuvenation” this summer – it is not starting off well.  As I clean my classroom, it is bittersweet; anticipating the summertime (or summer job, in my case), while also uncertain about where I will return to in two months.  Will I return to my students at Marshall, or will I get a phone call mid-summer informing me of my placement elsewhere? 

Emily Paddock
BizTech High School
English/History/Digital Media Teacher
Marshall JV Girls Soccer Coach

Tonight I watched the rerun of last Thursday’s public hearing and work session and I couldn’t help but notice some of the inconsistencies in board member’s arguments. 

Why are board members suddenly questioning whether it makes fiscal sense to close Jefferson when they didn’t ask the same question about Marshall?  Board member Ruth Adkins said her analysis showed that there wouldn’t be enough of a savings from closing Jefferson to warrant doing so.  What did her analysis show the savings to be in closing Marshall? 

Adkins also argued that closing Marshall made sense because the current small schools on the Marshall campus had demonstrated some success.  She said that the district could build on that “success” by closing Marshall and re-opening a new small focus school.  In her mind, it didn’t make sense to open a focus school at Jefferson because there wasn’t a demonstrated need or desire for one and there wasn’t a defined plan for one.   

Ruth sets a very low bar for success at Marshall.  Against community wishes, the campus originally split into 4 small schools.  One school died off right away.  Another is on the federal watch list and it would have to make major changes next year.  Of the three schools on the Marshall campus now, only about one half of the students are at benchmark in math and reading.   Just over 40% of the students living in the Marshall attendance area attend the school. 

As for the argument that a focus school at Jefferson isn’t a good idea because there isn’t a demonstrated need or demand for one…we’ve been saying exactly the same thing about Marshall. 

The district has NO EVIDENCE that there’s a demand or need for a focus school on the Marshall campus.  About 200 people showed up at Marshall’s community meeting recently but you didn’t hear much about it in the press.  Not one person at the Marshall meeting testified in support of a focus school on the campus.

I’ve already written about the district’s shady plan for a focus school at Marshall.  It has no chance of success. 

Let’s pretend for a second that Ruth is right and a focus school could actually build on the success of the small schools at Marshall…how does reducing the size of the proposed focus school “build” on that?  If small schools are successful because of the relationships that are developed in smaller learning environments, how does forcing a larger number of kids out of their neighborhood and into someone else’s large neighborhood school strengthen relationships?

I’m not advocating for Jefferson’s closure.  My point is that the arguments being used for keeping Jefferson open should also be applied to Marshall. 

Both schools need to remain open.  The costs associated with closing them far exceed any anticipated (rarely realized) savings.  Marshall and Jefferson closures would increase the drop out rates and decrease academic achievement. 

As the superintendent’s high school resolution stated (when she was still trying to portray the high school redesign plan as being about equity):

According to a 2006 Alliance for Excellent Education issue briefing, a 5% reduction in the dropout rate of male students across the state of Oregon would decrease crime related costs by $21 million and would increase the annual earnings of this population by $30.

According to a 2009 Alliance for Excellent Education economic report, a 50% decrease in the dropout rate of the seven county Portland Metropolitan area would result in:

• $38 million in increased earnings
• $25 million in increased spending and $9 million in additional investing.
• $108 million in additional home sales.
• The creation of 300 new jobs and an increase in gross national product of $47 million.
• $4 million in increased tax revenue.
• 61% of these additional high school graduates would be likely to pursue some type of post-secondary education.

The bottom line is that poor, minority, English language learners and students with disabilities at both schools are having to carry the budget deficit burden for the entire district.  It’s not only morally wrong but it’s a civil rights violation and legally wrong.    Here’s a brief look at the student populations that the majority of the board are expecting to subsidize the education of wealthier students: