School equity activists challenge violations of Portland school policies

Leading the charge is my pal Lynn Schore of the Neighborhood Schools Alliance. 

Lynn and Shei' Meka Newmann, in testimony to the Portland Planning Commission, claim that the reconfiguration of the district's poorest high schools into small school "academies" is in direct violation of Portland's City School Policy, in particular the first goal, Equal Access to Education:

"Promote equal access to and benefits from quality education for all Portland residents regardless of their race, sex, age, religion, handicap, or their economic or cultural background."

Sounds like they're onto something.

They also charge that the closure of several Portland neighborhood schools violated another of the City's School Policies:

"Goal 2 of the City School Policy lays out minimum nine month process before any schools can be closed.  Our neighborhood schools and neighborhoods were generally given a six week to two month process from the time when the schools were announced to close and when they were gaveled closed by the PPS School Board."

Challenging poor decisions by PPS administrators --hasty school closures, high school reconfigurations, and the replacement of middle schools with pre-K- 8 elementary schools in the poorest parts of the city-- on technical appeals to city zoning laws and stated city school policies may sound rather nick-picky, even desperate.  But given the intransigence of the current superintendent and the school board, it's a legal challenge that just may work.

(The pertinent Portland zoning and planning regulations regarding schools can be found here.  It's interesting to note that the chapter of the document relating to schools and school sites begins with:

"The City recognizes that schools have a special relationship to the community."

I think we can all agree with that.)

Comments

[trueblue]

There's nothing nitpicky about the approach. Some of the rules the Board violated in closing schools were originally adopted in response to the over-hasty closure of other schools. They were designed to prevent that from happening again. I believe this is (or was) a viable lawsuit. While it would be preferable not to sue the Board, as long as it is run by bad actors like Wynde and Regan, and other right- thinking board members are behaving passively or losing interest, it is an option that must be considered. This Board must be brought to task.

[Zarwen]

I finally figured out what has been bothering me about this "small schools model." It's not a new idea at all; it's just that, in the old days, such a small high school was called an "alternative school."

PPS already had plenty of alternative high schools before Gates and Broad dumped their money into slicing and dicing up four of our large comprehensive high schools. The underlying message seems to be that poor/minority children cannot succeed in a comprehensive high school, so that option must be removed from where they live and replaced by these small, alternative schools housed in their former regular high school.

Talk about racist and classist! No wonder the students have been fleeing in droves. With their tiny enrollments, I bet you could house all 12 (or whatever the number) of these silo academies in one building. Let's do that, rename it "Portland Alternative High School," and then convert the rest of them back into regular comprehensive high schools so they can get their students back!

[Steve Buel]

Zarwen,
Beaverton has 5 comprehensive high schools, all very equal in curricular offerings, whose attendance areas cover their entire district. It is difficult to transfer from one to another -- you need a pretty good reason. Then they add on the "option" schools where students can apply for a more specialized learning experience. That is the way it should work. You are so right on.

[Terry]

That's one way of looking at it, Zarwen. Another way is considering small schools as what they should be and what the original research called for --"schools wtihin schools" or "small learning communities."

Consider the elementary school self-contained classroom. That's a classic example of a "small learning community", or a small school within a much larger one.

At the secondary level the same ideas could apply. Assign a team of teachers, say three, maybe four, a common group of students randomly selected. The teaching team has responsibility for core academics, as well as monitoring the social and emotional welfare of "their" students.

The Phillips/Gates "silo" model, unfortunately, fails the test of a good small school model by preventing students from taking advantage of opportunities available in the larger school.

And of course the fact that it's only being used in poor and minority schools is a criminal --and racist-- misreading of small schools research.