Nov. 16, 2005: NSA reacts to Superintendent's proposals, charter votes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE —Nov. 16, 2005 NSA CONTACTS: NE-Lakeitha Elliott, 503-287-1430; SE-Cindy Young, 503-232-6559; SW-Ruth Adkins, 503-977-2933

NSA is encouraged by Superintendent’s proposals, Board decisions on charters

• No closures = good news; citywide community planning a crucial next step • Board votes to give neighborhood schools a chance—Bravo! Portland, Ore. — Members of the Neighborhood Schools Alliance were in attendance and testified at Monday night’s Board meeting. We are extremely pleased that there are no school closures in these proposals. Additional neighborhood school closures, especially as PPS is preparing to ask voters to support a new I-tax, would have been devastating. A few comments on the proposals: • Skyline K-8 idea came from the community. Shifting Skyline Elementary School—a remotely located smaller school that feeds to a crowded middle school—to K-8 is a great solution, and one that arose from that school’s community. The PPS proposal provides a detailed analysis of the many educational and developmental benefits of K-8. We see growing momentum across the city for adopting the K-8 configuration based on community demand. • Middle school should still be an option, no matter where you live. We also want to underscore that the District’s position is adding K-8 for Skyline is a good move as long as families still have a traditional middle school option. We believe this same standard should be applied equally to the Jefferson cluster, where the Superintendent’s proposal, currently under study by the Design Team, would remove the traditional middle school option from this one area of town. • Board should decide on all proposals at once, including Jefferson. The Jefferson Design Team has been working extremely hard and we look forward to hearing their ideas for innovative reforms in the Jefferson cluster. However, the two-tiered Board approval process should be revised. The Board should be allowed to wait to hear what the Jefferson proposals are, and only then vote on all the school change proposals as a single package. • Base Sunnyside replication on community interest/needs. On the proposed “replication” of the K-8 Sunnyside Environmental School, our caution would be to make sure this replication is done well—above all, that the program is located in a school and neighborhood that wants it—that the program isn’t forced upon a neighborhood school, as has happened all too often with other special focus programs, resulting in conflict and family flight. Locating the program should not be just facilities-based (finding a building that is the right size), but community-based—finding a location where there is interest in and support for the program. • What is happening with Whitaker? The Board resolved long ago to build a new middle school to replace the toxic Whitaker site. There was no mention of this promise in the Superintendent’s proposals. What is the status of a new Whitaker building? • Community planning should be citywide, not just in “quadrants.” We look forward to the Superintendent’s announced community planning process. However, we feel strongly that separate processes for each quadrant of the city are not sufficient—there needs to be a citywide examination, especially to address any areas of inequity in school quality between areas of town. Also, we hope that this process will include stakeholders from the City, neighborhood associations, and community organizations as well as the housing industry to ensure the process truly steps back and looks at the big picture for how our schools fit into Portland’s long-term planning for livability. Working together on strategies to increase affordable housing, in particular, is absolutely critical to our city’s future as well as the survival of our public school system. True impact of school closure still not clear. We were very glad to see some data on costs and impact of closure in last night’s proposals. However, we believe more work needs to be done to ensure accuracy and completeness: • The student count focuses on what happened to existing students, but does not include those potential new families with younger children, who would have attended their neighborhood school but now are either homeschooling, attending private school or have moved out of district. • As noted in the Oregonian on 11/15, NSA member Cindy Young’s own survey of Edwards families (which includes siblings) indicates 46 children lost to PPS due to the Edwards closure, versus the District’s count of 18. This significant variance from the district’s data indicates further review is in order. • The District’s cost savings estimates do not factor in the loss of revenue due to those families who have left PPS due to closures. At $5,000 per child per year, those costs add up fast. • The Board has cited both financial and educational reasons as driving the closures. Many parents feel if the District had simply been more straightforward — the fact is, they closed these schools in order to fill up larger, nearby buildings — the entire closure process, while still painful, would have been much better accepted. Instead we were sometimes told the closures were to save money while at other times we were told the closures are all about providing better range of educational offerings at the larger school. We have yet to see any data on whether the educational offerings at the merged schools are, in fact, better than those that were at the closed school. Board did the right thing in halting new charter schools that would undermine neighborhood schools. NSA applauds Directors Williams, Morgan, and Wynde for their decisive and conscientious votes to turn down two new charters that would have drained students from the Jefferson cluster and Madison High School, and would have undermined the reform efforts currently underway in those schools. We note that these three are the most experienced Board members and also those who went through the closure process last year; they understand the significant adverse impact that charter schools have on enrollment. Regarding the Village Charter School, those Board members in favor noted that offering a Waldorf program would be a great choice for PPS to provide families. This sounds good in theory. However, while PPS can offer this choice to everyone, the likely reality of who would actually choose this elite option is upper middle class European-Americans. Providing a private school education for an exclusive group at public expense is a bad choice for PPS. It makes better sense, and will be far more equitable, to replicate aspects of the Waldorf approach into our existing schools. We hope that the charter applicants will do so in their neighborhood schools. The Neighborhood Schools Alliance is a group of parents, teachers, and community members from all areas of Portland working together to support and strengthen our neighborhood schools. For more information on NSA and to sign up for NSA updates & info, visit: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NSANews/