An Invitation to Connie Van Brunt
by Steve, July 27th, 2007Poor Connie Van Brunt. Before she acceped her new job as head of the Portland Schools Foundation, she had “never been blogged about critically”. But as soon as her new job was made public, Portland neighborhood schools activist Terry Olson took notice. (I later filed a little response to the Oregonian’s puff piece on her, as did Terry.) Since then, Ms. Van Brunt has complained to anyone who will listen that “there is a solid misconception about me” and “I didn’t think there was a clear understanding of me.”
One of her Chicago friends even jumped to the defense of Van Brunt and charter schools in the comments on Willamette Week’s Web site: “She is most dedicated to the children themselves, not simply any ‘-winged agenda.’ … Charters are a response to the woefully bureaucratic and poorly managed public institutions.”
Neighborhood schools advocates can be forgiven for suspecting that someone who has worked for the Chicago Charter School Foundation and advocated charter schools as a solution for minority kids might want to continue the recent trend of public education policy in Portland. That trend sees school funding flowing from poorer neighborhoods into wealthier ones, with neighborhood schools left to “compete” with charters, alternatives, and special-focus schools for the crumbs that remain.
I’ll tell you who has a misconception. It is people who think Portland Public Schools bear any resemblance to Chicago. In the first place — and this is critical, hence my continued harping on it — there are no majority black attendance areas in Portland, yet there are majority black schools. Segregation in Portland Public Schools is a direct result of PPS policy, not demographics. Portland’s neighborhoods are remarkably integrated, and becoming more so. The culprit in inequity in Portland is the PPS open transfer policy which threatens neighborhood unity and the very livability that is so vaunted here.
So here’s my invitation to Van Brunt. I’ll allow that perhaps we’ve got you all wrong. Maybe you’re not a one trick pony shilling for the likes of Gates and Broad and other school privatization proponents. I invite Ms. Van Brunt to be the first civic leader in Portland to acknowledge that the open transfer policy of PPS has created a two-tier system of education in our neighborhoods.
If she’s really interested in educational opportunities for poor and minority children, I challenge her to call for equal opportunities — not “separate and equal”, like the abysmal Jefferson cluster redesign, but truly equal — across the Portland Public Schools district. In a city unique for its middle class (Jack Bog notwithstanding) not having given up on neighborhood public schools, I challenge Van Brunt to call for a comprehensive plan to reinvest in our poorest neighborhoods. I’d love to know what she thinks of my New Deal for Portland Public Schools as a starting point.
There you go, Connie. This is an opportunity for you to clear up all of our misconceptions. I look forward to hearing from you.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Love the “Jack Bog notwithstanding” disclaimer.
Great post. I think you’ve hit on something –the transfer policy leads to segregation– that you should keep hammering. Be aware, however, that the board is still in the process of refining and tweaking the policy.
School choice is the big stumbling block. I think the district ought to emulate the Beaverton model, where options are centralized and neighborhood schools are left intact. Inter-neighborhood school transfers, it seems, ought to be easy to end.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
I don’t know about “easy,” Terry. Looking at the gerrymandering effort now afoot, that might be only the beginning if the Board were to end n2n transfers.
July 28th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
I had the notion that Portland has been spending money on its poorest schools. Is this the meaning of “I challenge Van Brunt to call for a comprehensive plan to reinvest in our poorest neighborhoods?” Or is the proposal really to put money into business investment, streets, etc? If I don’t know the meaning of the proposal, a possibility exists that Ms. Van Brunt will also wonder.
July 28th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Marvinlee: When people transfer out of schools, they take state tax money with them. That’s the divestment I’m talking about.
Jefferson High School is a glaring example of the neighborhood divestment caused by PPS’s open transfer policy. In 2006-07, 662 students in the Jefferson attendance area went to other neighborhood schools, taking over $3 million dollars with them. Jefferson is left an underfunded, racially segregated shell of a school without the electives and extras offered at Lincoln, Grant or Wilson.
It is true that more money is spent per student in some poorer schools, largely due to federal Title I money. But I’m talking about distribution by neighborhood. Open transfers are causing massive amounts of state money to flow out of the poorest neighborhoods and into the wealthiest, causing a multi-tiered, segregated system of public education in Portland.
Shamefully, this is a direct result of PPS policy. It is disingenuous to blame demographics.
When I talk about reinvesting in our poorest neighborhoods, I’m talking about keeping that state money in the neighborhoods where people live. We can create this funding equity by clamping down on neighborhood-to-neighborhood transfers. Magnets and special focus options can still be offered, but every neighborhood would have a fully funded set of schools, from pre-K through high school, with no more and no fewer options and extra curricular programs than any other neighborhood.
We have the resources to make this happen; we just need the political will.
July 30th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Hi all —
From the statistics, we know that richer, white parents disproportionately take advantage of the transfer system in Portland Public Schools. We know that in some cases, this increases the minority and poverty concentrations in schools where high proportions of neighborhood kids transfer to other schools.
An outside audit last year offered good background on that: http://www.multnomahschools.org/reports.htm
In my own files, I have some data from the 2005-06 school year on the the demographic profile of PPS kids living in the neighborhood vs. the kids attending the neighborhood school. I just asked for the more recent numbers, but here are a few old ones:
47.9 percent of the PPS students living in the Jefferson attendance area that year were African American; Jefferson’s enrollment was 68.4 black. This is a clear case of what you are talking about.
Other schools also show increasing numbers of minority students after transfers out of neighborhood schools:
– Students living in the Humboldt area are 50.9 percent African-American; those attending Humboldt are 64.6% African American.
– Boise-Eliot residents are 59.5% black, enrollment is 60.2% black.
– Woodlawn goes from 50.1% to 55.1% black as result of transfers.
I’m not sure I can agree that Portland’s neighborhoods are “remarkably integrated,” and getting more so. . . . gentrification may be increasing the number of white, middle class residents in some poorer, more heavily minority areas (while those who can no longer afford to live there head east). And in some working and middle class areas — think Sellwood, inner Southeast, I could go on — housing prices are going up so high that only the rich can afford to move in. I worry that economic and ethnic diversity is diminishing in a lot of areas.
On the funding side, because school funding (at the state and district levels) is largely tied to enrollment, schools that are losing kids lose staff and money. Portland Public Schools does offer some extra General Fund staffing to schools with more kids in low-income families, and federal dollars go to those schools as well. In general, schools serving lower-income neighborhoods have significantly higher per-student spending and smaller class sizes than schools in richer neighborhoods. They also have greater needs . . . . the school district and School Board continue to struggle with and refine school staffing and support to try to help kids in every school.
We also compile profiles of every school’s demographic, staffing and funding data every fall once the October enrollment reports come out. The ones from last fall are at:
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/schoo.....nrollment/
We’ll update them this fall.
Our School Board plans to take up the issues of transfer policy this fall, and I’m sure would be happy to hear from any of you. You may email them at SchoolBoard@pps.k12.or.us
I know the transfer policy is a hot topic on this and other blogs. I hope the data I’ve shared helps the discussion . . . .
Sarah Carlin Ames
PPS Communications
sames@pps.k12.or.us
July 30th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
We could quibble over terms like “reintegration” and “gentrification”.
One thing that is beyond debate is that Portland’s neighborhoods are more integrated, by income and race, than Portland Public Schools.
This is a result of policy. That policy needs to be fundamentally changed.
August 1st, 2007 at 11:51 am
I love it when PPS officials act like they’re listening to the public.
August 1st, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Whether she’s listening or not, I also question her stats.
Jefferson sits in a neighborhood (Humboldt) that is 40% black and also serves to King (42.3% black), Woodlawn (43% black) and Vernon (43% black). But it also serves Overlook (9% black), Arbor Lodge (6.9% black), Kenton (14% black), Concordia (27% black) and Piedmont (27% black).
I’m not sure how the district came up with the 47.9% figure, except perhaps there are a ton more high school aged kids in the Humboldt, King, Woodlawn and Vernon than in the other neighborhoods.
But no matter. Even if it is accurate, that’s a pretty significant difference between the attendance area and the school population, which is nearly 70% black.
August 20th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
[…] Unfortunately, figuring out who made those PR-friendly changes to the PPS page is like finding a needle in a haystack. Of course, the shiniest needle in the haystack happens to be Sarah Carlin Ames, a spokeswoman for the school district who regularly adds her two cents to blogs that are critical of the district. Examples are here, here and here. […]