SE Portland

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1174620326...

Kellogg parents dismayed with district
Schools - Portland administrators admit communication with parents has been poor Friday, March 23, 2007PAIGE PARKER
Wounds that opened last year when the Portland School Board voted to close Kellogg Middle School have yet to heal for some parents, who say the district seems to have forgotten about their children.

Kellogg, along with Clarendon and Rose City Park elementaries, will close at the end of this year as the district converts ailing middle schools into K-8s.
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Below is the Dec. 8 press release from PPS communications--can anyone in these affected schools post a comment or blog with your thoughts, explaining what this all means? What do folks think of the options? Decisions will be made at the Mon. Dec. 11 Board meeting.

BINNSMEAD AND WINTERHAVEN OPTIONS
In a facilitated conversation over the summer and fall, parents from Binnsmead Middle School, Bridger and Clark elementary schools and the Creative Science School focus program (now at Bridger) grappled with the charge of finding a way for each elementary program to grow to K-8 while phasing out the Binnsmead middle school program.
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Here are my thoughts related to the Sellwood boundary discussion at the Oct. 23 Board meeting, which I sent to the Board and to the Oregonian's Paige Parker— 1. I totally agree that boundary changes/adjustments should happen regularly as needed. David Wynde alluded to other districts simply sending out announcement letters regarding boundary changes (i.e. not having elaborate & lengthy community deliberations). I have to say, this sounds like a good idea — as long as staff are absolutely certain they have redrawn the boundaries accurately and appropriately. Community input should still be considered (and in the case of Sellwood, the community was essential to coming up with this creative solution), but would not be a requirement before the District takes action.
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reprint from:

http://tinyurl.com/kxkcd

PPS School Closures - Admitting Mistakes Will Be Too Late
I'm reflecting on the recent news by auditors (one since quit because of the lack of transparency of the School Board) of Portland Public Schools:

* School Choice option and magnet schools are causing more segregation.
* Administration mistakes put poor at the bottom of list for having a choice.
* Superintendent admitting that this is serious and will get fixed.

So, parents blindly accept PPS decision to close schools and to be involved in a "Community Discussion" of school reconfiguration and academic improvement options (discussing the possibility of solutions that include keeping all neighborhood schools open -- NOT an option allowed by the PPS).
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I was also in attendance at the community conversation in Sellwood last night and while I see where Jim Dow is coming from I also want to applaud the school reps for their determination. I believe that in a stressful environment like that, one very human response is to try to be calm and agreeable. In other words, try not to make it any worse than it is. I think this is what Jim is getting at with his references to sheep. However, although some of the school reps seemed to buy the rhetoric from the facilitator that they should “move along if we want to get anything done”, the group as a whole was not led down the path laid out by the facilitator. Of course the PPS plan was to lead the group through a few quick meetings to a forgone conclusion and call it a triumph of community involvement. I was pleased to see that the reps took control of the meeting, demanded data to support the argument for closure and introduced a lengthy list, (perhaps too lengthy) of options that were not being offered to them.
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Here is a re-post of a blog entry I made last night at:

http://tinyurl.com/pctq2

PDX PPS Slick SE Community Discussion Tonight.."BAAAA...BAAA"

First PPS Professionally Facilitated SE Community Discussion a success? "BAAA...BAAAA"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Portland, OR
CONTACT: Jim Dow, 503-502-0113

A little background on the Portland Public School District Conversations (partial re-print of the news release):

NEWS ADVISORY - May 24, 2006
Contact: Sarah Carlin Ames, 503-916-3212, sames@pps.k12.or.us
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As the Southeast cluster prepares for their 15 minutes of community involvement, take a moment to inform yourselves about one of the key players in this back-handed sham of a process. I speak of Portland Public School's Chief Operations Officer, Cathy Minceberg.

Minceberg was the COO in Houston under Rodney Paige and helped to orchestrate the "Texas Miracle", a period of time when the Houston schools made unbelievable advances in raising test scores, cutting the drop-out rate and virtually eliminating school related crime and violence. Riding the wave of this success, Bush appointed Paige to be his Education Secretary and champion of No Child Left Behind. (Paige is also fondly remembered for his quote that the teacher's union is a terrorist organization.) Soon after that appointment it became clear that the Houston Schools had taken great liberties with the facts of their school's performance. Test scores rose by holding back 9th grade students who were not likely to test well. Then they simply advanced them to 11th grade. School suspensions dropped by having students arrested instead. That way they were not "suspended" they were sentenced. Minceberg was a part of it all and when the chickens came home to roost, she and many others jumped ship. Now she is here to bring the same miracle to Portland.
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