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How long are we going to talk about the disparities in the public education system?  People have been talking about the over-representation of minority students in SPED and the disproportionate discipline rates for students of color for decades.  PPS comes up with new solutions annually but what are the results?  New reports showing more of the same.

In the last few months, I’ve heard from three different parents who said that their children were suspended or expelled for extended periods of time and they never even received a written notice or participated in a hearing.  All three parents are African American and two of the students are in SPED.

The district claims to be addressing diversity issues in part through ”hiring culturally and racially diverse teachers, aides and administrators and supporting them with mentoring, peer collaboration, skill development and leadership opportunities, while matching their skills to the needs of students in the schools they serve.”

Sounds impressive but what has the district done to move towards that?  Even though the district’s Human Resource Information System (PeopleSoft) has the capacity to track languages, PPS doesn’t track language.  How is that matching educator’s skills to the needs of the students?

PPS is currently in a “partnership” with the Portland Teachers Program and the Bilingual Pathways Program. Both programs were created to increase teacher diversity.  Listen to people involved in those programs and they’ll tell you it isn’t much of a partnership.

I know from my work in PPS HR department that there are many bilingual educational assistants who have teaching degrees from other countries.  PPS could easily create a career ladder program to get them licensed in Oregon but HR administrators have been resistant to doing it.

So what will next year’s plan look like?

Recently, I requested public records on the Marysville fire situation because I wanted to know why the district wasn’t moving forward on rebuilding the school. It’s really pretty simple. PPS has already spent the insurance money.

Records show that PPS has collected $3,084,040 in insurance recoveries but they’ve spent $3,539,002 for a net loss of $454,962.

What did taxpayers get for that? Very little.

PPS has paid $368,309 for security services at the school since November 10,2009. That’s $682 per day.

PPS claims that they’ve made $1,160,059 in repairs. Architects and engineers were paid $576,315.

The most surprising expense is $454,553 for transportation from Marysville to Rose City Park. The reason that it’s so surprising is that it’s vastly different from the transportation costs associated with school closures.

Last year, I requested public records detailing the district’s savings from past school closures. The “report” was bullshit. It looked like someone spent 20 minutes creating a spreadsheet to satisfy my request. You would think that since the district has been talking about the need to close schools for so long that they would actually track the savings but it’s clear that they don’t.

I’ve created the table below to show the difference between what PPS reports transportation costs to be for the purposes of school closure “savings” and an accounting for how Marysville money was spent:

Why would transportation be so much more expensive for Marysville students?  Marysville to Rose City Park transportation costs break down to about $1600 per day.

I’d like to know how much of the bond campaign has been charged to Marysville.  There’s no way that PPS has spent $3 million on the school already.

Do you remember when PPS saved millions by outsourcing the custodial work?  No?  Well Heidi Franklin, PPS former Chief Academic Officer, must remember it because now she’s trying to outsource the print shop at Mt. Hood Community College.  She called in an impartial consultant (Office Max) to help.  Here’s a recent memo from Heidi:

MEMORANDUM

To: Members of the Board

Dr. Ski

Dr. Hay

From: Heidi Franklin

Date: June 6, 2011

Re:      Print Shop

Print Shop Situation: Recently, several factors have contributed to the current state of confusion regarding the savings included in the budget for the operations of the print shop.  Unfortunately, many unintended consequences of our decision to outsource our print shop were realized over the past week.  I believe what follows is the only substantive change to the budget we need for you to make (and hopefully approve) at this time.  I sincerely apologize for this late notification of the situation and the need to amend our budget.

Contributing Factors:

Communication: When the budget detail was recently published on the web, print shop staff among others saw that there was no budget for personnel in the print shop.  This is the main impetus for the rash of e-mails and phone calls that has ensued this last week.  Clearly my attempts to inform staff of what was happening proved inadequate, and understandably much upset resulted.  I have personally and publicly apologized to those most directly wronged.  While that helped some, further steps are required.

New Information: I learned last week that there is a clause in the Classified Employee Association agreement that requires formal notification to the union whenever the College is planning on outsourcing work performed by classified members.  Therefore, time needs to be built into the process to allow for this notification, for the union to respond, and for the union’s response to be considered.

The Proposed Solutions: While we can’t unring this bell, we can conduct a process going forward that is responsive to the number of concerns that have now come to light.

Process: A thorough analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing the print shop requires gathering data on the types of services and volumes of work that the College needs, as well as getting an understanding of the breadth and depth of services provided by vendors.  As the recent e-mails have demonstrated, there is controversy around the steps for gathering this data.  If the results of this data gathering and analysis phase lead to the conclusion that outsourcing would save significant dollars while maintaining or improving service levels, then the College has two ways to proceed:  (1) issue an RFP and solicit proposals from all interested vendors, conduct a selection process, and negotiate a contract with the chosen vendor; or (2) do a cooperative procurement by piggybacking on a contract that is already in place with the state or another government.  Office Max has such a cooperative purchase contract with the City of Vancouver and with Western States Contracting Agency (WSCA).  Other vendors may also have such agreements.  These are worth exploring, since the pricing tends to be more favorable due to economies of scale with larger volumes than a single, stand-alone contract.

Budget Impact: It seems reasonable to assume that the data gathering and analysis phase, which typically would take two to three months, will take longer given the summer timing.  In the meantime, the print shop needs to continue its usual operations.

Therefore, I am requesting that the two full-time positions (manager and assistant) and some part-time/student positions be restored to the adopted budget for now.  This will add a total of about $229,000 to expenditures and reduce contingency by the same amount.  Contingency reserves for the 2011-12 adopted budget would then be $3.57 million, or 5.6 percent rather than $4 million, or 6.5 percent.

So it’s been a few months since my final Cheating in Class post and much has happened.  The PPS bond failed, Marshall closed, new school board members were elected and I’m working with youth in foster care.

One other thing that has happened since my final post is that I’ve made several new friends through the blog.  Portland parents, out-of-state parents, and employees of other districts have contacted me seeking information about PPS or help in resolving specific issues.

I’ve decided to restart the blog because I’ve realized that it was more useful than I thought.  There’s so much that we can do collectively.

I’d love to have people write guest posts so please contact me if that interests you.  You can reach me at carrie.adams@comcast.net.

Thanks everyone for the support!  Here’s a link to our education advocacy website:

http://oregoneducationadvocates.com/?page_id=8

I’ve hit a milestone in life where it’s time to take an honest look at where I’ve been, what I’ve accomplished, how I feel about my successes and failures and what I want to do next.

My work in education has evolved over time.  I started out advocating at the individual student level then quickly moved to school level; joined an activist group and tackled k-12; worked in early childhood, k-12 and community college systems; served on the Portland Schools Foundation board of directors, volunteered to tutor and mentor youth and started this blog. 

My passion for this type of advocacy in education comes from my own background of poverty and instability.  I attended 7 schools before graduating from high school.  There was a teacher that took a special interest in me at just about every school.    These days many kids aren’t so lucky.

Several years back, I worked with siblings whose mother had sold them to a known pedophile who later sexually abused them.  The kids became wards of the state and placed in foster care.  After reviewing the kids’ records, the juvenile court judge ordered that they be evaluated for special education services.

The parent and I requested that the school psychologist conduct the evaluation.  He called a meeting a few weeks later and told us that based on what he reviewed in the students’ records, the kids didn’t qualify for SPED.  He said that there had to be a certain number of points difference between the child’s performance and cognitive ability.  Supposedly, the siblings were low performing but their performance was in line with their ability.  I didn’t know any better and I accepted that.

A couple of weeks later at conference time, I asked to see the siblings cumulative files.  I was given two empty files.  They didn’t have anything but labels.  None of their records had been transferred from their old school.  This meant that the school psychologist had lied.  We walked the files over to the school psychologist who then admitted he hadn’t reviewed them.  We made another request to have them evaluated but this time by an outside evaluator.        

That situation opened my eyes to what was happening to youth in foster care.  They get lost in the education system. 

Six years ago, I was hired to tutor and mentor JaNae (not her real name).  JaNae was a sophomore who was failing most of her classes.  I had to make several trips to her school before they were even able to locate her file.  Once I did, I learned that she had missed over 150 classes and her foster mother hadn’t been notified.  The school had been sending autodialer messages to her old foster home. 

JaNae had an IEP for a math disability but she excelled in reading and writing.  She knew that  she had a disability but nobody had told her about her strengths.  Instead they encouraged her to work towards a modified diploma.  She didn’t want a modified diploma.  Thank goodness she was stubborn.  She went to evening and summer school to catch up.  She ended up graduating on time with a standard diploma. 

My work with JaNae, the siblings and other youth is the most meaningful work I’ve done.  It’s where my heart is and it’s why I started this blog.  Those are the kids whose lives I want to impact. 

Superintendents, school board members, administrators and teachers have come and gone but the problems in the system remain.  Kids can’t wait.

This is my final post.  I’m returning to working directly with youth.  I’ve started a company that focuses solely on education advocacy for youth in foster care.

Thank you for reading this blog and for contributing to the efforts to improve the education system.

Today’s Willamette Week story is probably the most enlightening story I’ve read on the current Mayor.  It doesn’t seem like he’s grown since the days when he dreamed of being a farmer.  From Sum of Sam:

If you weren’t mayor, what would be your dream job?

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a farmer.  

Growing what?

I don’t think I thought it through that much.

Do you think if he had actually planted something he might have learned to implement his ideas? 

Be sure to catch his comments to the question about Mike and Jean.  “We were all laughing our asses off in the office because it shows you have no idea how bad things are for people out there.”  Sure we do!

I attended the Mayor’s Education Summit this past Monday.  Actually, the cradle to career program that has been put together is the first initiative by city leaders for the last 20 years which has a pretty good chance of having a positive impact on the education of children in Portland. It is kind of nice because it is also about the first decent thing Portland Schools Foundation has done for poor kids – PSF is heading it up. I certainly wish it incredible success.

The whole idea is that the city’s agencies coordinate their actions to positively affect the overall lives of individual kids in what are referred to as wraparound programs. Since it is obvious, or would seem so, that the children most in need of these programs and therefore the likely recipients of the programs are generally children from lower economic backgrounds, it is great to see somewhat of a shift from worrying only about kids in the Big Four schools to focusing on kids in other parts of the city. Good stuff indeed.

I do have one major worry however. I know the middle grades in schools in lower economic parts of the city are a mess. Generally the education is horrible and is the genesis of the huge dropout problems in Portland. This rotten education seems to have spread to East County as economic problems have beset these parts of Portland and the testing culture has devastated curriculums and extra-curricular programs which engage kids in school. So, if the city and other county agencies and businesses spend huge amounts of financial and human capital on the cradle to career programs does that mean the education within the schools themselves in the middle grades will go unaddressed?

Certainly a better approach would be to make sure there is also a parallel program to address the middle grade mess.  But I don’t think the city’s or the school district’s leaders understand this.  The cradle to career programs will be undercut by the three lost years at the middle grades which will still feed dropouts at alarming rates into the fabric of our city. For without schools which somewhat work in those poor neighborhoods, the number of kids needing help will continue to overtax agencies. And for many kids, instead of cradle to career the program will become infancy to ignorance.

Here’s another staffing change at PPS.