providing parents with the truth about the public education system

My first language is English and I can’t figure out what the hell is going on on the ESL department’s directory page:

http://www.pps.k12.or.us/departments/esl/1131.htm

Do I read left to right, right to left, laying on my side, standing on my head?

I noted in a recent post that a charter school (Self Enhancement) is receiving Title I funds.  SEI is the only PPS charter school receiving Title I funds and their academic performance is poor.  I emailed PPS General Counsel Jollee Patterson to inquire as to whether a charter school has to meet the same NCLB standards as public schools.  Here’s the district’s response:

From: Kristen Miles

Sent: Friday, November 04, 2011 3:42 PM
To: Jollee Patterson
Subject: RE: Title I question

Yes, they are.  Once a charter school qualifies for and receives Title I dollars, they are required to produce the same deliverables and can have the same school improvement sanctions placed on them that a district school does.  As a charter school, however, a failing Title I charter school can also be non-renewed or
closed for poor academic performance without going through the school improvement process.  Hope that helps –

Kristen Miles

Charter Schools Program, Senior Manager

Today’s Business Registry search through the Oregon Secretary of State’s Corporation Division shows that former PPS HR Director Hank Harris still has not registered a private consulting business with the state of Oregon.

After Harris’ sudden departure from PPS, the district reported that he left his $100K + position to start his own consulting company.  Rumor is that he was forced out.  Did PPS buy him out?

I haven’t heard anything about it in the media yet but Stacey Sibley, a well-liked and respected former PPS administrator is suing the district for defamation, retaliation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and battery.  (I may have missed a claim)

Why was Stacey treated so badly?  Because she reported safety concerns within the Special Education Department and a friend of the SPED Director (Joanne Mabbott) was the person responsible for creating those safety concerns.  To be clear…there were serious concerns about student and staff safety.

That’s right.  When Stacey reported the concerns, Joanne Mabbott told her if she continued to talk about the problems, she would be written up for insubordination.  Stacey refused to back down and she was gradually stripped of her responsibilities and demoted.

I expect PPS to lose this lawsuit.  The trial begins November 14th.

This story was updated on 10/30/11 to add clarification to the total amount allocated per student.

Imagine a school that receives $10,036 per student in general funds (includes direct, classroom, building and central supports) and spends $12,500 for non-instructional services provided by an outside contractor.  For the most part, general fund expenses are fixed so the school would be receiving the $12,500 on top of the general funds ($22,536 – total for the students served by the nonprofit).

To be clear, these students are not SPED or ESL necessarily.  If so, the dollar figures would go up significantly.  The students being served are general education students.

Imagine that the contracted services at one school include: case management of 40 students, family engagement for 23 students, after school services for 40 students, and mentoring of 40 students.

What would you expect student outcomes to look like for those students?  Would you expect the school’s performance to be 12% lower in reading, 17% lower in math, and 25% lower in science than comparable low-income schools?

What if I told you that the contracted services were being provided by a nonprofit organization that also runs a charter school and the charter school’s performance looks like this:

Reading – Grades 6, 7 and 8

48% meeting benchmark

Math – Grades 6, 7 and 8

29% meeting benchmark

Science – Grade 8

25% meeting benchmark

Imagine that the same nonprofit organization contracted with PPS ($2700 per student) to provide “support and advocacy” for 40 freshman and sophomores at a troubled high school.  Would you expect the graduation rate to improve?  If it didn’t improve, would you expand those services to the entire student population?

Those scenarios are all real.  The nonprofit organization is Self Enhancement Inc.

Last year PPS contracted $1,168,000 in services (not including charter school funding) with Self Enhancement Inc.  SEIs contracts with PPS have increased over the last few years with very little evaluation of if or how their services are improving outcomes.  Why isn’t anyone questioning whether or not Self Enhancement’s services are making a difference?

Anyone interested in copies of SEI’s 2010/2011 contracts can email me and I’ll send them to you.

PPS board member Martin Gonzalez recently raised a question about the criteria PPS uses for determining school boundaries.  He got a laugh when he talked about the senselessness of the school boundary map.

I think in the Marshall closure issue one of the key factors in determining Marshall student reassignments was poverty.  I believe that PPS intentionally reassigned kids to ensure that Franklin and Madison fell just below the Title I poverty target.  This prevented those schools from getting Title I resources.  Franklin and Madison took on the high need students from Marshall.  They should have taken a proportionate share of the Title I funding too.

I hear a lot of talk about equity but only for students the Equity Director Lolenzo Poe seems to believe matter.  Those are the students in the Jefferson and Roosevelt areas.

Check out the 2011/12 Title I schools:

Arleta K-8

Astor K-8

Atkinson K-5

Beach PK-8

Boise-Eliot PK-8

Bridger K-8

Chief Joseph PK-5

Creative Science School K-8

César Chávez K-8

Harrison Park K-8

Creston K-8

Faubion PK-8

Grout K-5

Humboldt PK-8

James John K-5

Kelly K-5

King PK-8

Lent K-8

Lewis K-5

Markham K-5

Marysville K-8

Ockley Green K-8

Peninsula K-8

Rigler K-8

Rosa Parks K-5

Roseway Hts K-8

Sabin PK-8

Scott K-8

Sitton K-5

Vernon PK-8

Vestal K-8

Whitman K-5

Woodlawn PK-8

Woodmere K-5

Lee K-8

George

Hosford

Lane

SEI

Jefferson

Roosevelt Campus

Pursuit of Wellness Ed.

School of Arts, Communications & Tech

Spanish-English Int’l School

How does SEI ( charter school) receive Title I funds but reassigned Marshall students do not?  Are they held to NCLB standards?  Why is a disproportionate share of Title I resources focused on schools in two clusters when the need is just as great in outer SE Portland?

As you probably know, the PPS board has changed the structure and time of their board meetings.  They meet more often as an entire board instead of holding subcommittee meetings along with the regular board meetings.  The meetings start at 5:00 now (so convenient for most parents).

Did you know that the board has also changed the location of their meetings?  They now meet in what they call the “Windows Conference Room” AKA the Dixon Diner.  The meeting location is ridiculous.  It’s very small, no seating, the sound is bad and it isn’t conducive to citizen testimony.  The BESC has a Board Room.  Why aren’t they using it?

The Windows Conference Room is located on the second floor of the BESC.  When I arrived at the board meeting tonight, there was a sign on the main doors that said the meeting was upstairs but ALL of the doors were locked.

I waited outside for 10 minutes then snuck in as someone was leaving.  Once upstairs, I let Dennis Tune (head of PPS security) know that the doors were locked.  He disappeared for a few minutes saying he would take care of it.  Meanwhile, district administrators apologized for the locked doors.

About an hour later, I went downstairs and found the doors locked again.  This time someone else was outside trying to get in to go to the meeting.  I went back upstairs and told Dennis that the doors were locked again.  He looked at his watch and told me that they couldn’t leave the building accessible to all so it was going to stay locked.  He should have sat at the main doors to let people in.  They advertised a “public meeting”.

Does the board want community involvement or not?  Nothing says welcome like locked doors.

Seattle Schools - Dean Rutz.Seattle Times

The Seattle Times is reporting that Seattle Schools failed to predict an increase in enrollment and now the district is holding class in hallways,purchasing portables and reopening schools that had been closed.

The district is now reopening some of the same schools it had closed in 2006 and 2009 amid fierce opposition from parents and community activists.

By next year, about half of the 12 shuttered schools will be back in operation — after millions of dollars were spent in closing and reopening costs. But the reopened school can’t accommodate all the extra students, and a tight budget prevents any new building construction until at least 2016.

Seattle officials say they didn’t see the increase in enrollment coming:

Asked why officials didn’t predict the enrollment increase, School Board member Peter Maier’s answer is simple: “Conditions changed.”

He pointed to the new assignment plan and the recession. But several parents dismissed those factors, complaining district officials ignored warnings about the possibility of rising enrollment.

The assignment plan, adopted in 2009, guarantees students a seat in the school closest to their home. That’s important because under the old choice system, some parents — especially those arriving in the middle of the school year — decided to avoid the risk of having their children assigned to a faraway or low-performing school by not enrolling them in the public system. Those families are now coming back, officials said.

At the same time, the recession has rendered some families unable to afford private school, officials said.

That may be only part of the story, though. Admissions officers at several Seattle private schools said their enrollments have suffered only slightly since the recession.

PPS has always been a step behind the Seattle School District.  How much of this sounds familiar to you?  How many of the same players have the districts shared?  Will Portland be next?

The PPS Board is set to discuss possible boundary and program changes at tomorrow night’s board meeting.

Do you remember the controversial PPS STARBASE program?  It’s controversial because the Department of Defense uses math and science education as a ploy for gaining access to elementary students.  The students who are mostly low-income are targeted for future military recruitment.

PPS administrators have said that children are not exposed to military staff in uniform and they’re never around weapons.  STARBASE’s own website has shown pictures of kids with men and women in uniform.  Children have been photographed on tanks.

Last year, PPS board member Bobbie Regan toured the STARBASE site to see if parent concerns were valid.  She reported that children weren’t targeted for recruitment and they weren’t exposed to military staff in uniform.  The school board voted to renew the STARBASE contract.

The contract is up for a vote again this Monday.  This year Trudy (and maybe Pam) expressed interest in touring the STARBASE site.  No doubt their investigation will be as thorough as Bobbie’s.

Meanwhile, the military has a new strategy for recruiting children.  It’s a mentoring program for at-risk 6th graders:

DOD STARBASE 2.0 differs from our regular STARBASE-Atlantis program in that instead of one day a week for five weeks at the academy, these kids spend one afternoon per week with a mentor for five months working on a team project at their school,” said Nick Jordan, director of the STARBASE-Atlantis academy at Naval Base San Diego. “These kids are older, and all are veterans of STARBASE-Atlantis. In addition to STEM-related activities in the 2.0 program, the students and their mentors work together on numerous goal-setting and teamwork activities.

To find out more about STARBASE, check out Communities for Alternatives to STARBASE Education.

Every day I work with parents who have lost custody of their children because of their failure to protect.  Reynolds School District failed to protect students from a staff member who sexually harassed and possibly sexually assaulted (depending on how the state defines it) students and staff.  What should happen in this situation?