UPDATED (below)
The Portland School Board has stymied the latest attempt to further charterize Portland Public Schools by turning down the application of the Emerald Charter School.
No big surprise there. The board hasn't been big on charter schools for some time.
But neighborhood schools? District policy --meaning school board policy-- hasn't necessarily been kind to them, either.
Willamette Week --Beth Slovic once again on top of things-- reports that K-8 school consolidation --compounded by the recent spate of neighborhood school closures-- is endangering the lives of school children in outer Southeast Portland trying to walk to their "new" school, Clark K-8 @ Binnsmead.
What's the problem?
"...heavy traffic creating trouble spots for young children... ."
Kids could be driven to school, I guess. Some of them anyway (low income community, you know.) But that creates, or contributes to, other problems. Like childhood obesity, which can be as deadly as getting hit by a car.
On a brighter note, Steve Rawley and Peter Campbell (Campbell has written several posts for PPS Equity) have been selected to serve on the superintendent's Enrollment and Transfer Advisory Committee. The committee membership, in fact, seems heavily weighted toward the city's poorer schools, the ones that have been most negatively affected by the district's choice and transfer policies.
Winterhaven's Rita Moore (she too has written for PPS Equity) was also selected.
That said, the language of the press release seems to limit advice to "priority and preferences in the school choice lottery", and "guarantees in student assignment." And "other issues".
Maybe that last one --the all important "other issues"-- will open the door to a complete overhaul of the transfer policy, which apparently exists only for the benefit of Portland's advantaged students.
UPDATE: In a joint report by the city and the school district, the woman in charge of the Cully-Concordia neighborhood improvement project, Debbie Bischoff, says
"Strong schools and strong neighborhoods are inexorably linked."
The three schools in the Cully-Concordia neighborhood are poor and overcrowded. Together they capture only 60% of the school children who live in the area. The remainder transfer out, primarily to other, presumably wealthier, neighborhood schools.
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