providing parents with the truth about the public education system

Lincoln has publicly entered the school closure discussion.  The Lincoln Stand for Children representative just testified before the board encouraging them to consolidate schools now.  She told board members not to cave to political pressure.  Lincoln can’t withstand the kinds of cuts the superintendent has proposed. 

The Lincoln Long Term Development Committee  wants to build a brand new high school.  Let’s consolidate following Option 7B.  Close Lincoln first!

There was a time when I sympathized with the PPS superintendent and board as they made what I believed to be difficult budget cuts.  My views on that changed while I was working at the PPS Central Office. 

The superintendent doesn’t have to make all of the cuts she’s proposing.  District administrators haven’t heard the expression take care of your pennies and your dollars will take care of themselves.  Complain about district administrators holding meetings at hotels and a PPS Communications representative will be there defending the practice because it’s just a drop in the budget bucket. 

Just as predictable as the annual sky is falling cry is the manner in which the cuts will be made. 

Pay attention to all Central Office cuts.  Superintendent Smith has recommended cutting 5 Central Office Communications positions.  It won’t be Robb or Sara or Lolenzo or Matt…the lowest level staff will be cut.  Staff that make less than the cost of a hotel contract for administrator meetings.

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.

The following story is from the Oregonian archives:

District aims wrecking ball at Whitaker
History – The school board OKs borrowing $2.1 million to raze what’s become an eyesore
Thursday, August 24, 2006
PAIGE PARKER

Vandals inspired by Whitaker Middle School’s vacant, dimly lit hulk have made a mess out of a building already burdened with one of Portland’s messiest pasts.  This week, the Portland School Board pledged again to clean it up, giving district officials the go-ahead to borrow $2.1 million to raze the building.

Wrecking crews could begin knocking down the Northeast Portland school in early November, said Kerry Hampton, the district’s property manager. It could take as long as three months to completely clear the site, he said.

Marcia Taylor, who has lived across the street from the school since 1974, says she’ll be relieved to be rid of the building. Three of her children attended the school when it was Adams High School.

“It’s just really been a shame,” Taylor said. “It was just a beautiful school when it was built.”

Students haven’t attended the school since district leaders closed it in 2001. Whitaker was built in 1966 with windows that didn’t open, a flaw that contributed to the buildup of radon. A leaky roof and lack of ventilation encouraged the growth of toxic mold, and a host of other structural problems made the 268,899-square-foot building too costly to repair.

And though the community uses the adjacent track and grounds, the school itself is riddled with graffiti and garbage, and boards cover most of the windows.

Whitaker neighborhood students now attend Tubman Middle School, a seven-mile haul across the city by bus. Apart from the toll that traveling takes on students, leaving the school vacant has cost taxpayers. Since 2002, the district has spent just shy of $700,000 in maintenance, utilities and insurance for the empty building.

The district will borrow the demolition money, Hampton said, because interest on the loan will cost as much or less than the district now spends maintaining the building. After the building is gone, the district intends to sell the southern 5.8 acres of the approximately 10-acre site to a residential developer. Hampton estimates that the land will bring in at least enough to repay the loan, with as much as $787,000 left over.

But construction of a replacement school, which former Superintendent Jim Scherzinger promised five years ago, will have to wait. Portland Public Schools’ construction bond expired in 2005, and the district doesn’t have money to replace the school.

The school board passed a resolution in 2005 that sets aside half of the proceeds from the future sale of Washington High School for capital improvements at the Whitaker site. With an elementary school costing between $12 million and $15 million, and a middle school ranging from $18 million to $23 million, the district must raise much more to replace Whitaker.

Michelle Ovando, chairwoman of the Concordia Neighborhood Association, said neighbors hope the district sells to developers who will build affordable homes that fit in with the neighborhood.

“We’re anxious to get that school brought down. It draws in gang activity and drug activity,” Ovando said. “It’s a big building and easy to hide behind.”

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

I’m going to take a few days off.  Anyone wanting to submit posts can email them to me at carrie.adams@comcast.net.