Sept. 22, 2005: Applegate bus stops: Separate and unequal safety standards for Portland children

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE —Sept. 22, 2005

Separate and unequal safety standards for Portland children

Portland Public Schools still refusing to add a bus stop to ensure safety of N/NE students told to cross MLK Blvd. Neighborhood Schools Alliance contacts: NE-Lakeitha Elliott, 503-287-1430; SE-Cindy Young, 503-232-6559; SW-Ruth Adkins, 503-977-2933 An open letter to the Superintendent and Portland School Board from the Neighborhood Schools Alliance Since February, parents from closed Applegate Elementary School have been telling you their children need additional bus stops so that their children can travel safely to their new school, Woodlawn. Parents and community members have spoken at Board meetings, made phone calls, written letters, and organized demonstrations. PPS did add one bus stop, but requests for an additional one (at the corner of NE Rodney and Morgan, just west of MLK Blvd.) are not being honored. The last we heard, PPS was looking into the unspecified “cost” of adding a stop. What is the cost of one injured or killed child? NSA has just learned that this week that two new bus stops have been added for students at Abernethy Elementary School, and they aren't even in the official Abernethy catchment area. The newly added bus stops are more than a mile from Abernethy, which now has a catchment area that stretches from the river to SE 39th. Is the PPS Transportation Department balking at putting in the Woodlawn stops because they are less than a mile from Woodlawn, or because a walk signal and crosswalk will supposedly protect children crossing four lanes of traffic on MLK? Vicki Phillips recently assured a City Club audience that PPS is different now, and it was the the old PPS that "favored bureaucracy over positive action." PPS still looks as if it is favoring bureaucracy over positive action when it refuses to provide a simple bus stop so children will not have to cross a dangerously busy arterial like MLK Blvd. Supt. Phillips claims that PPS is focusing on "raising attendance rates, and making sure our students have the social services and support they need to arrive at school ready to learn," but PPS's own Transportation Department cannot even respond to common-sense safety requests from concerned parents. Supt. Phillips sounded as if she was bravely confronting racism in her speech to the City Club: "To make any progress closing the achievement gap for our students of color and those from low-income homes, each and every one of us must examine our assumptions about our students, about the curriculum we use, the way that we teach and how we interact with our community." The ease with which the majority white, middle-class Abernethy students received additional bus stops, in contrast to the difficulty and resistance that Applegate/Woodlawn parents have had, points to a racist, socioeconomic bias in PPS’s interactions with different members of the community. Neighborhood Schools Alliance condemns this unequal treatment and demands adequate bus stops for the safe transportation of ALL children to their schools. Anything short of that is business as usual for PPS, and puts our precious children at risk.