It is refreshing to be on the same side of an issue with the entire school board. The Portland Public Schools board of education unanimously voted down all four charter applications in the current cycle last night (with Sonja Henning absent).

Following a rhetorical lead by David Wynde, who enumerated the myriad choices already available in the district and explicitly rejected an absolute free market approach, several board members made sweeping statements in opposition to increasing the competition for our neighborhood schools. One might get the sense (if one were an optimist) that the pendulum has reached its maximum free-market position and could conceivably begin to swing back.

In the interest of equity, let’s hope so.

At several points during the discussion of the four proposals, board members expressed concern about the schools being able to provide “comprehensive” education to their students. I hope the irony isn’t lost on the board members that this is a concern for the students of Jefferson boy’s academy, not to mention all the other “small schools” that were carved out of the formerly comprehensive Jefferson, Roosevelt, Madison and Marshall.

Also on the agenda was the facilities plan, and some prep work for floating a capital bond.

Here’s a preview of my position on any new construction bond: I will not support any PPS bond unless and until the board articulates a goal of a comprehensive high school in every neighborhood. I will actively campaign against a bond that sets in stone the narrowly-focused academies at schools in our working class neighborhoods.

I seriously hate to sound like a libertarian, but until this board and administration demonstrate a commitment to equitably distributing what they’ve already got, I will fight against any further revenue.

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PPS area directors and principals of Vernon Elementary and Jefferson High will meet tonight with community members who petitioned the district to change attendance area boundaries to take them out of the Jefferson cluster.

Jefferson cluster families have been calling attention to the inequities in our cluster for three years, and have been met with absolute silence from the district. So it’s a bit of an affront that the district would only feel compelled to address this fundamental issue when confronted by residents of Beaumont-Wilshire. Not to denigrate these people, who are just trying to get what’s best for their kids, but don’t the rest of us matter?

This is a great opportunity for all Jefferson cluster families to come out and see what kind of excuses and promises the district will make.

Here’s a letter from Carole Smith announcing the meeting.

The meeting is tonight at 6:30 at Vernon Elementary School, 2044 NE Killingsworth.

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Let’s forget about the Portland Public Schools’ radical transfer policy for a moment. I know I’m sick of talking about it, and we know the school board has delegated their policy-making responsibility to their brand-new superintendent to ponder for a few months. (In other words, nothing’s happening on that any time soon.)

Let’s forget about race, too, since prominent members of Portland’s black community don’t have a problem with a certain level of racial isolation in our schools. It’s never been about race for me anyway (but race is an indicator of economics, the real issue).

I’m also really bored with the charter schools debate. This is about policy, not personal choices.

So let’s talk about equity. If certain elements of Portland insist on a little piece of privilege at the expense of not only the working poor, but also an increasing segment of the middle class, let’s just take that economic issue head-on.

Portland Public Schools are grossly inequitable.

At the macro level, we have nine neighborhood high schools, spaced relatively evenly across the district. Of these, five are traditional, comprehensive high schools. The other four are split into small academies with extremely limited educational opportunities.

All of the comprehensive high schools are located in the wealthiest parts of Portland. All of the limited high schools are located in the poorest parts of Portland.

At the micro level, neighborhood elementary schools have dramatic differences in program offerings, sometimes within the same ZIP code. One school may have all the “extras” — PE, music, counseling, library, technology specialists — while the next school over has none of these, and more kids in the kindergarten room, too.

Of course school choice is supposed to address this problem, giving parents the “right” to attend a school across town if their neighborhood school doesn’t have the programs every child needs. We know that choice has instead exacerbated the problem, but I promised I wasn’t going to talk about that.

Any policy maker without a tin ear to equity would insist on a policy that seeks to reduce inequity in Portland Public Schools. If we are going to keep a radical transfer policy that causes inequity, we are going to have to invest in remediation in the form of much higher spending per student in the clusters with high out-transfers.

We’ve got to insist on an equitable school in every neighborhood. That means all nine clusters have a traditional, comprehensive high school, and equivalent enrichment programs at all neighborhood elementary schools. If anybody thinks they can do this without seriously reforming the transfer policy, I would give them my full support in trying.

Ultimately, we have to acknowledge that neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers need to be seriously curtailed, if not banned entirely, to sustain equitable schools in every neighborhood. But evidently that’s too farsighted for some to grasp.

So I’m up for putting some pressure on Carole Smith to propose a plan to remedy the gross inequities the transfer policy causes as a part of her report to the board in January. (I will be writing a letter to Smith soon, and posting it here.)

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PPS Custodians Rally Against 30% Pay Cut!

Tonight, Monday November 19th 6:00 PM

BESC Building 501 N. Dixon (Just North of the Rose Garden/Memorial Coliseum)

Come Join Us In Supporting Portland Public Schools Custodians and Nutrition Services Workers in Their Struggle to Win A Fair Contract!!!

Come Let The PPS Board Members Know That People Care About Clean , Safe , Well Maintained and Operational Schools… and that PPS Workers Deserve Decent Wages, Benefits and Working Conditions!!!

(From comments on this blog)

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To the Members of the Portland Public Schools Board of Education:

I am writing to you in lieu of public testimony at the hearings today on the applications for the Ivy Charter School and New Harvest Charter School. I strongly urge you to reject both applications.

This recommendation is both general and specific.

At the higher level, we must look at the proposed siting of these schools in North and Northeast Portland, and place it in the context of what has happened to the neighborhood schools in these areas. These are the areas suffering the greatest declines in enrollment due to out-transfers, and that have subsequently suffered school closings and cuts in program offerings.

As neighborhood schools in these areas have been gutted or shut down, private and charter schools have sprung up like weeds to replace them, glimmering illusions of hope for beleaguered families wanting smaller classes and basic educational enrichment.

Our first priority as a district needs to be the restoration of equity in the neighborhood schools across Portland, a move that would reduce the demand for charter schools and neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers. If we instead ignore the equity issue and approve more charters, we perpetuate a cycle that is deadly to our goal of strong neighborhood schools.

More specifically, you should oppose Ivy Charter School on the basis of its overlapping board with an existing private school. Though supporters may assure you they have no plans to convert the private school, it seems they are using a loophole to establish a new school that will eventually absorb the private school. This may be allowed under the letter of the law, but it is certainly against the spirit of the law. This alone should be enough for you to reject the application. If you need more reason to be concerned, Ivy would be located two blocks from the closed Meek school, and half a mile from Rigler Elementary (61% capture rate) and a mile and a half from Scott Elementary (59% capture rate). This application is an affront to anybody concerned with strong neighborhood schools.

Please reject the Ivy application on these grounds. Let them appeal to the state if they want; at least it won’t be on your conscience.

The New Harvest application was a mess, as you know, and there should be no reason to approve this school. Their lack of budget expertise, their shambles of a curriculum proposal and failure to articulate plans to achieve their lofty goals show a general lack of skills and knowledge necessary to run a school.

I know all of you can appreciate the external pressure schools like this can place on enrollment at neighborhood schools. At the last board meeting, you discussed ways to reduce this kind of pressure. I hope you see this as an opportunity to do so. A “no” vote on these charters is a “yes” vote for strong neighborhood schools.

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Somebody foolishly decided it would be a good idea to give me another platform (besides this, my own sometimes-creaky printing press) to spout my insane communist rhetoric. I just wrote a post about the proposed Homer Williams/Mark Edling land grab involving Lincoln High School over at Metroblogging Portland.

I encourage you all to pop over there and join the conversation.

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I’m a bit wonky about numbers… some of you might know this about me. So I have a couple different ways of tracking visitor stats for this blog. One of them is AWStats, which analyzes my Apache logs and gives me nice reports. The other is Site Meter, which uses an image and some JavaScript embedded on each page of the site. I like Site Meter because it gives me an instant look at who’s on my site at any given time, and organizes data by visit, which is cool. Today I just happened to take a look, and lo and behold, I got four visits from my friends at Portland Public Schools, all within about 45 minutes. Glad you guys are reading!

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The Portland Public Schools Board of Education finally took up the open transfer policy, sixteen months after city and county auditors requested they clarify the purpose of the policy.

One little problem: They didn’t clarify the purpose of the policy.

Nobody on the school board, and nobody in the administration seems to have a clue why we have this policy.

The discussion began with a staff report on the policy, which came off as very defensive. I asked Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) president Jeff Miller what he thought of the presentation.

“The staff presentation resembled a promotional pitch more than a serious analysis of the student transfer policy and its consequences,” said Miller. “On an issue of such importance, a school board is entitled to expect better.”

The presentation was primarily given by Judy Brennan, the program director of the Enrollment and Transfer Center. The report carefully avoided any discussion of rationale for the policy, and glossed over the racial and economic segregation that it causes. Evidently district staff feel an 11% increase in poverty in the Roosevelt cluster and a 20% increase in racial isolation at Jefferson High is “slight.”

In order to make the PPS transfer policy look good, they compared our district to Boston, Minneapolis, St. Paul , San Francisco and Seattle. And what do you know, we do look better compared to them.

They engaged a marketing research firm (for $71,000) to put together focus groups (which appeared to include very few black people), and guess what? They found lots of people who are really happy with the policy! Everybody loves school choice! (Well, 174 people do, anyway, and we paid $71,000 to find them and video tape them.) This was a major part of the presentation.

Finally, Brennan admonished against even slight changes to the policy. (It was at this point that it became very clear that she was selling the policy, not investigating it.)

The recommendations of the report are to

1. create a standing committee of staff parents and community members (but not students, as student representative Antoinette Myers later took issue with)
2. create a strategy for increasing familiarity with neighborhood schools
3. implement a boundary change policy
4. focus on diversity issues
5. think about replicating successful programs into underserved areas, and
6. help students who transfer.

In other words, let’s just keep dancing around the issue, and not really do anything about it.

Due to a quirk in scheduling of public comment, I had the opportunity to speak immediately after Brennan’s presentation. Here’s what I said.

Sixteen months ago, city and county auditors noted the increased racial isolation caused by the open transfer policy. They also noted that this policy is at odds with other district priorities, like strong neighborhood schools.

I presented you with my own study in September showing that this policy leads to an annual diversion of tens of millions of dollars of public investment from Portland’s neediest neighborhoods and into its wealthiest areas.

And now we have this report which fails to answer the central question first posed 16 months ago: What is the purpose of the open transfer policy?

This report completely ignores the neighborhood funding inequity my study showed, and glosses over the racial isolation and concentration of poverty the district’s research shows. The report talks about the “slight” increase of poverty. But is an 11% increase in the Jefferson cluster slight? It calls its effect on racial and ethnic concentration “similar.”

In 2006 Jefferson High had an attendance area student population that was 47.9% black, yet the school was 68.4% black. Do you really consider a 20% increase “slight?”

The study also fails to address the most egregious indirect result of the open transfer policy, our two-tiered system of high schools.

There are two kinds of neighborhood high schools in PPS: comprehensive schools, with a full range of options for all students, and schools split into academies, with limited options. Is it an accident that the rich get comprehensive schools and the poor get academies?

Finally, the report fails to address the local control of administrators over FTE budgets, which leads to gross programming differences between neighborhood schools, fueling the demand for neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers.

In this report, Portland is compared to other districts that seem to have been cherry picked to make Portland look good. They are called peers, even though no serious demographer would consider Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis or St. Paul to be peers of Portland.

The report relies heavily on market research, presented as if it were statistical data. Using marketing techniques instead of scientific research shows a distinct bias against discovering the truth.

The problems caused by this policy are clear. You all know them: racial and economic segregation, diversion of public investment from the neighborhoods that need it the most, a two-tiered high school system, and the fragmentation of communities.

What we don’t know is what problem this policy is supposed to solve. Instead of addressing that simple question, you’ve given us a lot of hand waving about how much better we are than Boston, how much people really like the system, and how it only “slightly” increases racial segregation and the concentration of poverty.

I say, if you have a policy that increases segregation, you darn well better have a Very Important Problem you’re solving. Why can’t any of you tell us what that Very Important Problem is?

This was followed by board discussion, which I found very interesting. I thought I saw glimmers of understanding from Dan Ryan, Dilafruz Williams, Ruth Adkins and Sonja Henning. Student rep Antoinette Myers seems to get it more than the voting members.

Dan Ryan talked of seeing that “there is equity in every neighborhood school.” Dilafruz Williams spoke of a “segregated city by race and by class.” Ruth Adkins used the term “white flight.”

After a bit of this, Sonja Henning finally cut to the chase. “I’m just still slightly confused and somewhat curious to hear from my colleagues, what do you all think the overall goal or objective is or was for this policy?” she asked. “Without some objective or goal, everything else is just talking around the surface.”

This threw things into a little bit of a tizzy. Ruth Adkins jumped in by quoting one of Brennan’s power point slides about promoting diversity, but when pressed by Henning, said “The unintended effect effect of it has been… a way for people to feel like they can escape their school if their neighborhood school isn’t good enough.”

Yes, that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? I was glad Ruth had the guts to come right out and say that. And of course, it just leads to more inequity.

Still, nobody managed to articulate a legitimate rationale for allowing neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers.

But at least they talked about equity. Even Trudy Sargent got into the act on this, questioning the local control over enrichment programs, and suggesting that the board could mandate music in every school. She talked about better TAG programs in every school. “How do we make the district more fair in what’s offered to kids,” she asked, “And that’s what’s at the bottom of this, is equity across the district, so we have strong neighborhood schools in every district.”

Of course it was all lost on Bobbie Regan, whose most noteworthy contribution was in wondering if we should pay for transportation for tranfers like our “peer” districts in Boston and San Francisco do, and also if we should remove the guarantee of neighborhood schools.

But despite these glimmers of hope and understanding by a majority of board members, nobody dared ask why we would need neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers once we have programming equity.

And shockingly, as the discussion came to a close, the one change they suggested to the staff recommendations was to bump up the priority of helping students who transfer.

This was not lost on PAT president Miller.

“During their discussion, some Board members insisted that PPS could be doing more for those students who transfer,” he said. “The Board should ponder the wisdom of such a course. Encouraging more students to leave struggling schools is likely to further harm those schools.”

Which puts us back in the vicious cycle of poor schools being drained of enrollment and funding. Somehow or another, this school board, even while showing they’re just about, almost, not quite able to get it, can’t quite put all the pieces together.

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Portland Public Schools staff weighed in on two new charter school applications yesterday, and have five pages of questions for the applicants.

The founders of New Harvest Charter School (NHCS), much discussed over at the Urban Mamas “Activistas” blog and on this blog, got a major wakeup call from the PPS staff who reviewed their application.The New Harvest application “does not yet demonstrate the capacity to successfully start and operate the proposed charter school,” wrote the reviewers in their recommendation that NHCS founders withdraw their application.

District reviewers evaluate each section of the charter school application: General Information; Mission Statement and Purposes; Educational Program; Support for Learning; Accountability; and Financial, Business and Organizational Plan. New Harvest failed to get staff recommendations for General Information; Educational Program; Accountability; and Financial, Business and Organizational Plan.

Under General Information, New Harvest was dinged for letters of recommendation dating back to 1994, not identifying their design team, failure to clearly outline a daily schedule for grades 3-7, poor accounting of annual instructional hours, and nebulous claims about providing “40-120 minutes per day of P.E.” without showing how this could work with their schedule. Reviewers were split on whether the applicants showed sufficient demand in St. Johns for this school. Survey data were inconsistent and not clearly presented.

Under the Educational Program section, NHCS stated expectations but did “not provide sufficient concrete strategies for achieving them.” The reviewers were generally frustrated by vagaries about how the applicants would handle ESL and TAG students, how foreign language instruction and arts would be integrated, and how state, local and national standards would be applied. Reviewers “again expressed concerns about the school calendar and daily schedule,” and wondered “how New Harvest will ensure students’ progress toward eventual diploma graduation.”

Under Support for Learning, NHCS organizers promised to seek staff who “demonstrate a commitment to healthy lifestyle choices and sharing greater health awareness” and who “[A]re willing to take courageous, creative action in helping students achieve academic, emotional, social and physical success.” Nice feel-good sentiment, but the reviewers note “The application does not name or describe the standards for those criteria.”

It goes on and on like this. I’m not even halfway through the application review at this point. Later, in the Financial, Business and Organizational Plan, reviewers note “Financial and management experience and expertise appear to be minimal throughout the organization.”

The reviewers seem to be saying, in other words, you can’t just say “We’re going to have a groovy school,” wave your hands in the air, and get your charter approved. Which is a Good Thing. And it is a lesson for people who see something glittering and assume it’s gold (like the parent who thought NHCS would have a 16-1 teaching ratio, and that’s all she needed to know).

Ruth Adkins, Trudy Sargent and Bobbie Regan, the school board members on the Charter Schools committee, were obviously less than impressed with this report, according to Wacky Mommy, who attended on behalf of families concerned about neighborhood schools.

Further adding to their chagrin was the fact that the NHCS organizers almost missed the meeting entirely (due to what the organizers described as “technical difficulties”), showing up with ten minutes remaining. Oblivious to the excoriation their application had already received, they handed out a thick “addendum”, a move met with a reminder that ther application was due in its entirety on July 16.

If they choose not to withdraw, the NHCS organizers will have to face a serious grilling at a November 13 public hearing. It seems highly unlikely they would succeed.

The other charter application reviewed yesterday was for the Ivy Charter School, a proposed Montessori school two blocks from the closed Meek Elementary, half a mile from Rigler and one and a half miles from Scott, existing PPS neighborhood elementary schools. Ivy got a conditional staff recommendation for approval, subject to satisfactory responses to two pages of questions.

Is Ivy an intended conversion of the Montessori of Alameda 21st Century School? That’s the biggest question. That would be illegal under state law. Ivy shares at least one board member with that school, located a block from the proposed Ivy site.

If the school board eventually approves Ivy, this will be yet another example of a private or charter school (or both) swooping in to fill the void left by closed neighborhood schools. This would be yet another step down the road to the privatization of our public schools.

Update: Don’t forget to read Wacky Mommy’s own account of the meeting at her blog.

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As I’ve written here before, there is no political will on the Portland Public Schools Board of Education to reverse their effectively segregationist open transfer enrollment policy.

The school board knows about the racial isolation brought on by this policy, and the annual shift of tens of millions of dollars out of our poorest neighborhoods into our wealthiest. They know full well that the balkanized “academies” at Jefferson, Roosevelt, Madison and Marshall do not give students adequate educational opportunities, and they know full well that this encourages even more out-transfers from those schools.

But they are certain, from their own “market research,” that “School Choice” is a “strength” of the district.

This is all becoming more clear as the Student Support and Community Relations committee continues to meet, and prepares for the November 5 board meeting, where this will be a major agenda item. Look for committee recommendations to “tweak” the policy to make it simpler. But don’t expect any recommendations to ameliorate the devastation this policy has caused to our poorest neighborhoods.

Simplifying the lottery can mean only one thing: removing or relaxing any kind of weighting that might have given advantage to poor or minority students.

I think it’s safe to say that there is a deliberate pattern here, foisted upon our district: in tight times, screw over the populations least likely to complain, and make sure the middle class neighborhoods get the best of the best.

The school board is creating a time bomb. In the neighborhoods expecting the most demographic growth, they’ve closed schools, sold or leased the buildings, and have completely gutted the high schools. In ten years, everybody’s going to be saying “What the hell happened?” and everybody will pretend they don’t know. I’m telling you right now who’s responsible: Ruth Adkins, David Wynde, Bobbie Regan, Dan Ryan, Sonja Henning, Trudy Sargent, and Dilafruz Williams.

None of them has the political courage to stand up to the corporate-dominated Portland Schools Foundation and say “Enough!”

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