Willamette Week has posted video of their panel interviews of candidates for City Council seats one and four on their Web site.

Randy Leonard is a shoe-in for seat four, but seat one has no incumbent (it is Sam Adam’s current seat).

Willy Week interviewed the candidates en masse, and there are some good exchanges on streetcars vs. sidewalks between Amanda Fritz and Chris Smith. Fritz has made it a top issue for her campaign to fund basic services in the neighborhoods first, and Smith seems to be running on expanding the streetcar city-wide.

Interesting contrast, and it’s also interesting to hear from the other candidates.

Just a hunch, but it would seem WW might just endorse Fritz.

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It seemed like Randy Leonard was pulling his punches when he wrote to me a couple weeks ago that he “was not convinced… that the Blazers were to blame for the deteriorating relationship” in lease renegotiation talks with the Winter Hawks.

Now he’s dropped the gloves.

In today’s Portland Tribune, Leonard tells us how he really feels.

He says “I felt like I was being played,” and “an impartial observer could conclude, ‘Am I in the middle of a used-car deal, or a problem with the Winter Hawks?’”

In addition to the lack of negotiation prowess, issues surrounding the price and quality of the big screens Leonard helped get installed at the Coliseum and bluster about moving to Salem have Leonard disillusioned with the ownership group of Jim Goldsmith, Jack Donovan and John Bryant.

You’ve got to give him credit for trying, but he’s now part of the legions of disgruntled Hawks fans who are increasingly resigned to the fact that their home town hockey team may soon be folding or moving.

I still hold out hope that the league will force a sale, and we’ll get an owner group that knows hockey, knows sports marketing, and knows how to negotiate.

Hey, it could happen!

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Stop the War, Bring the Troops Home Now!
This Saturday, join PDX Peace in the South Park Blocks for World Without War: a day of resistance and hope.
Where: South Park Blocks (SW Park and Madison)
When: Saturday, March 15, 2008
10:00-6:00 Action Camp featuring workshops, exhibits, performances, music, food and more!
2:00 Rally and March

More information

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With two wars raging and an all-volunteer military, the armed forces have to be pretty crafty to meet their recruitment goals. Inner-city high schools are a favorite place for them to target youth who might not have much in the way of opportunity, and Portland is no exception.

But here’s something I’ve never heard of before: The Navy is offering all-expense paid trips to San Diego for PPS educators.

Here’s the text of an e-mail that went out recently.

Dear Educator,

As the Education Services Specialist for Navy Recruiting District, Portland I would like to invite you to our upcoming Educator Orientation Visit to Naval Station San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado and Naval Air Station North Island, in Sand Diego, California this April 14-18th. As space is limited, please contact me via email or phone as
soon as possible.

The purpose of the tour is to familiarize educators and community leaders with the education, training, and occupational opportunities that are available to young men and women in today’s Navy.

While at the bases you will have an opportunity to view many young men and women who have taken advantage of the training and job opportunities only the Navy can provide. You will visit naval vessels and aircraft and receive first hand knowledge of the outstanding training that our sailors provide and receive. The Naval Station is homeport for approximately 60 ships and the workplace for 48,000 military and civilian personnel. During the tour, you will have the opportunity to observe training and interact with the officer and enlisted personnel in the work environment. Attached is a proposed itinerary.

As a guest of Navy Recruiting, the Navy will pay all transportation costs from Portland to San Diego. Lodging and meal expenses will be reimbursed by the Navy as well. Tour size is limited to 15 educators. Please contact me as soon as possible and we can go over the details.

I hope you will be able to join us in San Diego. I am confident the trip will be both educational and enjoyable. If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact me at 503 xxx-xxxx.

Warmest Regards,
[name withheld], M.Ed.
Education Services Specialist
NRD Portland

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The Portland City Council is in for a big shake-up this year, with the mayor’s seat and two council seats open. Randy Leonard is up for re-election in a third council seat. Only Dan Saltzman’s seat is uncontested.

A crowded field is contending for council seat #1, including Ethos founder and duck boat entrepreneur Charles Lewis and streetcar enthusiast Chris Smith.

We’ve also got John Branam, Development Director for Portland Public Schools; Jeff Bissonnette, of the Citizen’s Utility Board of Oregon; and Mike Fahey, about whom I know nothing (and who does not appear to have a campaign Web site).

But my vote, and the support of this blog, is going to community organizer Amanda Fritz. I like Amanda for a lot of reasons.

• She’s smart, and has unusual attention to policy detail.
• She has advocated tirelessly for transparency and accountability in City Hall.
• She has real skin in the game at Portland Public Schools, and has been willing to speak out to the city council about the shameful inequities in our public schools.
• She has demonstrated a long-term commitment to civic involvement, well before her last council run.
• She is not flashy or slick. She is very down-to-earth and real. What you see is what you get.
• She believes city policy should be focused on the neighborhoods where people live, not on “megabuck shiny projects”. “Let’s pay for the things we need, before we start shopping for things that might be nice but aren’t essential,” writes Amanda on her campaign Web site.

That last point really seals it for me. Portland politics is polarized between two extremes, neither of which serves regular working families.

On the one hand is a powerful, west-side elite that favors high-end condo and business development in our central city core, and all kinds of public subsidies to support it. This gang of land-grabbers supping at the public trough is aided and abetted by a passionately credulous cadre of “new urbanists,” starry eyed idealists who think Portland deserves a place with Vancouver, B.C. as a model city, complete with shiny streetcars looping the inner core, an aerial tram (to nowhere in particular), and more condo stock than we could realistically sell in the next ten years — yet they keep building more. It’s all “green” and “sustainable,” of course.

On the other hand, you’ve got rabid anti-transit libertarians who think everybody in city and county government are communists.

Through the yawning hole between these poles walks Amanda Fritz, talking about focusing the city’s policy on public safety, streets and sidewalks, affordable housing, and parks and community centers in the 95 neighborhoods where real people actually live.

Of the other candidates in the race, Smith and Lewis appear to be the serious contenders.

While I am in favor of mass transit, Smith’s focus on the streetcar seems almost all-consuming (I know he touts his background as a “Citizen Activist,” but his streetcar work is his most visible). This expensive “megabuck shiny project” doesn’t actually solve any real transit problem for the masses (one of its five main goals is to encourage downtown condo development), and costs the city over a million dollars a year to operate. While the city throws good money after bad operating the streetcar to lure high-end buyers to new condo neighborhoods, established neighborhoods go without transportation basics like sidewalks and paved streets.

Lewis seems to be all flash, spending public election money on political theatre filling potholes. He has no serious background in public policy.

In short, Amanda Fritz is the most well-rounded, community-centered candidate running for Council Seat #1. I hope you’ll join me in supporting her campaign and giving her your vote on May 20.

Note: Over on PPS Equity, I’m running more extensive coverage of the city council and mayoral races, including candidate responses to a questionnaire about public schools issues.

Update: If you want an Amanda Fritz yard sign, her campaign will be distributing them this weekend. Call 503-235-2295 or e-mail Robert to request one.

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Last month I went up against Republican House District 26 candidate Matt Wingard in the Portland Tribune in a pro - con about charter schools. (Some people think my argument for the greater common good won the debate.)

Today I found a speech Wingard gave to the King City/Tigard Women’s Republican Club yesterday. He’s got some real laugh lines, though I don’t think our suburban friends were laughing.

Wingard doesn’t shy away from bringing up the “negative stories…with details and headlines that are misleading and false,” but doesn’t mention that the central point — that he was convicted of striking his child on the head, leaving a welt — is not disputed.

But let’s not dwell on that. Matt’s an advocate for children in my neighborhood, it turns out: “…I have organized poor, minority parents in north Portland to go down to Salem, and face to face, demand from Democrats on the House Education Committee school choice for their children, even though they are forced to attend low performing schools.”

His weaseling distortion of this charter schools boosterism trip aside (he sure as hell doesn’t care about poor, minority children who want equity in their neighborhood schools), he better not come anywhere near my North Portland kids.

What’s worrisome to me about guys like Matt Wingard, all this literal and figurative child hitting aside, is the distrust of “smart people.”

“I think there is a lack of skilled people in our Party who are willing to step into the arena and challenge the certified smart people and the elected and appointed elites who are running Oregon,” said Wingard.

Is the Republican party declaring war on “certified smart people?” If so, they’ve found their man for House District 26 in Wingard, who has “shown time and again that I am not afraid to stand up to these people.” Why, he even stood up to Eric Sten! (I hate to say we have something in common in having some issues with Sten, but it’s for entirely different reasons.)

One last guffaw was about our mysterious “school district’s funding increases of 20 percent from the state.” I think we’re still waiting to get ours here in Portland.

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The campaign poster from my 1983 run for student school board rep. My slogan: “What is this crap?”

In a field of five candidates, I won the majority of the vote and served my senior year as the City High School student representative on the Iowa City Community School District Board of Education. Despite my “radical” message, I was very inactive on the board. As Wacky Mommy says, “I know Toni Myers. And you, my friend, are no Toni Myers.”

(No, I’m not running for school board, calm down… My cousin gave this to Wacky Mommy last summer, and she said I should post it for kicks.)

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My first-born child, one half of the reason I’m so insanely ferocious about advocating for our schools, frequently gives me grief because I never write about hockey or war on this blog. “You should rename your blog,” she tells me, and also “Why don’t you ever write about hockey anymore?”

You see, I didn’t start this blog to write about school politics. I started it as a personal blog almost two years ago, and I actually wrote about hockey and war. Then, a year ago, I dipped my toes into PPS equity issues, and it has gradually taken over my blog.

Let me just say this: I would prefer to not have to worry about this shit. Seriously, I’d like it very much if things were like they were back in Iowa City where I grew up, and every neighborhood school was pretty much just like every other neighborhood school, and they all had art, music and P.E.

But, sadly, we do have to worry about this shit in Portland. So in order for me to take back this blog for things that I actually find interesting — hockey, music, macroeconomics, the price of tea in China — I’ve launched a new Web site for PPS equity issues. To satisfy my eight-year-old’s obsession with things matching up, I decided to call it PPS Equity. It’s got a blog, but that’s not all. The most exciting thing to me is a community discussion forum. With a simple registration, anybody can immediately participate and start new discussions in any of a number of forums.

Down the road, I’m going to set up a PPS data dump, in order to streamline access to PPS enrollment and demographic information.

Now is a good time for this. My friends at the Neighborhood Schools Alliance have been hammering the district on equity issues for years, and now, with the Carole Smith administration, we seem to be getting traction. Which only means we’ve got to keep up the pressure.

Check it out. Explore a little, register for the forum, start a new topic in your school cluster’s section. I think you’ll agree PPS Equity is a better vehicle than More Hockey Less War for the cause. Thanks everybody for your support over the last year, and let’s keep the nickel rolling in a bigger, better venue!

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Now that the dust has settled after the Mayor’s Week at Jefferson High School, we in the community have had some time to think about things.

When Superintendent Carole Smith’s chief of staff Zeke Smith met with Jefferson community parents late last year, he asked for “proof points” that could be implemented at Jefferson by the start of the 2008-09 school year.

At the time, the only thing I could come up with (besides the idea of funding the school at two to ten times the district average per student in order to restore comprehensive programming) was to tear down the walls between academies.

So far, so good. They’ve announced their intention to do this.

But, like I said at the school board meeting, this is a very small first step in the right direction. (It’s what the community has wanted all along, and it will add teaching FTE at no cost, so it’s kind of a no-brainer for the district.)

In other words, this is not enough. In addition to this move, and the introduction of Advanced Placement (AP) classes, I would like to see the restoration of the music department at Jefferson. It is utterly shameful that a performing arts magnet school does not have a music program. I would like to see at least two FTE positions restored to Jefferson, one choral and one instrumental.

There is some amazing musical talent at Jefferson, but none of these student artists is getting high school credit for it.

But let’s not kid ourselves. You don’t start a band in high school by buying some instruments and hiring a teacher. We need to restore band to the elementary and secondary grades, too. I would like to propose Jefferson cluster elementary and middle bands. The teacher could travel among the eight feeder schools to give individual lessons, and have band rehearsals in the Jefferson band room. So that makes three FTE positions.

We’ve got to get serious in this city about our core curriculum, and music is part of that.

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After eight months of negotiations, Portland Public Schools is sticking to their “initial offer” of a 33% pay cut for our custodians. This is an insult to working people everywhere. This would guarantee the loss of many experienced custodians. They are already understaffed, and our children’s health safety will be further jeopardized if we don’t convince PPS negotiators to come to the table with a reasonable offer.

There is a rally Tonight, at 6 pm at PPS headquarters, 501 N. Dixon St. This rally will feature none other than SEIU International president Andy Stern. Stern will also be speaking at a forum tonight, America: A Country of Greed or Greatness? (7:30, First Congregational Church, 1125 SW Park Ave.)

Here’s a printable placard (53KB PDF) to take to the rally and the school board meeting that follows.

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