Jefferson Redesign

The PPS school board still neglects to take action that would address many policies that have resulted in a classist and racist school system in Portland. Not surprisingly, the so-called "achievement gap" also persists. Here is an excerpt from an article by Paul C. Gorski of Teaching Tolerance, which should be read by everyone in positions of power and influence over PPS (school board members, superintendent, Portland Schools Foundation board members and staff, and certain other "community leaders" who have imposed or allowed top-down reforms on low-income schools):

"It's all too easy, for even the most well-meaning of us, to help perpetuate classism by buying into that mindset, implementing activities and strategies for "working with parents in poverty" or "teaching students in poverty" that, however subtly, suggest we must fix poor people instead of eliminating the inequities that oppress them.
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Portland Public Schools are at a turning point. In many ways, the Portland District seems near collapse. Glaring funding inequities plague the poorest neighborhoods of Portland, with public schools closed and merged and buildings leased out to the highest parochial school bidder. Schools are segregated economically and racially — especially in middle and high schools — to a degree disproportionate to neighborhood populations.

We need a New Deal for PPS. I have more exploration of the problem and suggestions for a solution on my
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Have you read the Gates grants awarded to PPS for transforming the district's high schools? You might want to get informed about what Bill, Vicki, and their friends at the Portland Schools Foundation have planned for Portland's public schools. The Gates grant application submitted by PPS and the Portland Schools Foundation in Fall 2005 indicates that PPS plans to actively support a wide array of partner-operated (charter) schools and school leadership models within the district, such as community governance models.

Watch what's happening at the pilot school (Jefferson) to understand what might be spreading to other schools.
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Jefferson High School Governance: It Takes a Pillage?
May 11th 2007 12:05pm

BY: Beth Slovic | 11 comments

Last week, WWire has learned, Portland Public Schools Superintendent Vicki Phillips and acting Jefferson High School Principal Cynthia Harris entered into a formal agreement with Self Enhancement Inc. CEO Tony Hopson to create a new governing body at Jeff: the Jefferson Community Advocacy Board.

Harris, who spoke with WWire this morning, says the new board will not replace Jeff's recently revamped Site Council, but will instead act in conjunction with it. "I see it as a full partnership," Harris says.
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I just posted this on my blog. (If you don't mind a little coarse language, it's uncensored there. I don't know why I can't write about Portland Public Schools without cursing....)

The news today that Vicki Phillips is stepping down as Portland Public Schools Superintendent comes as good news to those of us who have been critical of her leadership.

Perhaps her three-year legacy can best be summed up in three words: Jefferson Cluster F***. The planning for Portland's only majority black high school and its feeder schools has been an abysmal failure of imagination and leadership. With only token community input, Phillips produced a disjointed plan that the community overwhelmingly rejected. The Jefferson campus was to be segregated by gender, with Tubman Middle School closed and the building used for an all-girls 7-12 school (two miles from the actual Jefferson campus). The boys would get their 7-12 school in Jefferson proper (shared with three other 9-12 "acadamies"). You see, you can't trust young black men around young women. Also, you need discipline, so these 7-12 schools would require uniforms.
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Hopson/SEI has enjoyed a more powerful decision-making voice than any other single person/entity at Jefferson High School during the last decade at least. We all see how successful that run has been.

Not only is SEI an outside private organization that has no business being in the decision-making business at Jefferson, it is a COMPETING charter school that draws numbers away from Jefferson area schools.

What is going on indeed! Vicki Phillips and school board: an explanation is in order.

Dudley do-wrong
Was Leon Dudley the best principal candidate for Jeff? Documents obtained by WW suggest not.
BY BETH SLOVIC

Last year, Portland Public Schools paid an executive search company $33,000 to find a new principal for Jefferson High School, WW has learned. After the company narrowed the national search to five candidates, Superintendent Vicki Phillips selected Leon Dudley from Dallas. She called him "a dynamic leader who has proven his success at urban schools much like Jefferson."

Last week, in the latest blotch on Dudley's troubled tenure and on Phillips' eventual legacy, district officials announced Dudley is on leave and a new administrator will run Jeff for the rest of the school year.
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