NO OUTRIGHT CLOSURES are on the horizon for Portland’s high schools. However Marshall High School will shrink to become a magnet program and Benson Technical High School will limit its enrollment to 800 half-time juniors and seniors, who will be co-enrolled at one of the district’s eight other high schools.
Those eight schools will become “community comprehensive” schools with balanced enrollment and a standard set of academic offerings. Students will be required to attend the community school in their part of town, unless they are accepted to the 400-student “focus option” program at Marshall.
For the first time, the district will also stop parents from transferring kids in gentrified neighborhoods to other schools across town. Transfers between schools will only be allowed under certain conditions, such as when a student wants to continue a language immersion track.
Portland Public Schools (PPS) Superintendent Carole Smith fought back tears of apparent pride as she presented her 88-page recommendation to the Portland School Board on Monday, April 26.
“This will provide access to a strong and broad core curriculum for the first time to every child in the city,” she said.
Smith also considered models that called for closing one or two additional schools, but decided to minimize the number of closures.
Some schools—like Roosevelt and the perennially neglected Jefferson—will start out with fewer students, around 900 compared to the other schools’ 1,300.
Since school funding is allocated on a per-student basis, the district will need to provide a subsidy to those schools so they can offer the standardized academic programs.
“We’re going to build up the programs there before we require people to attend them, says PPS spokesperson Matt Shelby.
Jefferson High will see an expansion of its college partnership program, in which students work toward credit from Portland Community College (PCC). Jefferson alumna and former staff member Angela Braxton-Johnson is hopeful about the redesign.
“An increased partnership with PCC would be amazing,” she says. “And the increased core offerings, that’s something that’s been needed for a long time.”
Your line: “For the first time, the district will also stop parents from transferring kids in gentrified neighborhoods to other schools across town” makes it seem that parents wanting to give their children a safe worthwhile education are racists. That’s fucking bullshit!
We all know that the school district is biased as to what schools they decide to spend the money at & a few of the schools are located in areas with high crime. In many cases their are classes that are only offered at one school. If anything it’s the elitist people bitching that their school’s money is being spent on poor kids who transfer into their school. The boundaries for the desirable schools is already small and with this new plan they’d be shrunk even more.
In the end this will lead to more fraud (folks using friend’s addresses inside the school boundary they wish to attend) and a spike in charter school enrollment. It will also have a lovely side effect of slowing the fall of property values in the neighborhoods which align the desirable schools. After all, nobody wants their kid’s school to have hookers in front of it (like Madison High) or have gang shootings within blocks of it (like Jefferson). Not to mention that both of those schools have less than a 70% graduation rate. Transferring your kid into Grant or Benson at least places them in an environment where about 90% of the kids graduate.
While you might not be able to buy the best house for your family, you shouldn’t be slighted by a writer in a free weekly for wanting to give your kids the best chance at an education.
Fuck you, Stefan Kamph
Stefan Kamph, attend a community meeting and get a reality check. This proposal will do shit for the students of Benson and Marshall- especially Marshall. Not only does Carole Smith plan to sell out our school to David Douglas, she is walking all over the Lents community- and believe me we are tired of being walked all over and taken advantage of just because we don’t have the resources to hire, say, a lawyer (Lincoln). Food for thought: Not one member of the school board has ever put their child through a Lents community school. What’s that say about where their priorities and loyalties lie when it comes to school funding?
Marshall has been steadily improving ever since we initiated the small schools system. After a mere five years, Smith is already trying to take away any chance we have to succeed. That is fucked up. She knows full well she could use any of the empty schools out there in PPS for her “focus” school- but why do that when she can get rid of the kids in outer SE and eventually sell Marshall off to the David Douglas School District?
All the Lents community wants for Marshall is the SAME resources and the SAME opportunities that west side schools have. Even if that means taking away our small schools and making Marshall into a comprehensive, fine, we will take it. Just don’t take away Marshall.
Portland Mercury, where is your voice for the community? For the students? That’s what I would love to hear. Portland needs to know the consequences of Smith’s “equitable” proposal. There is no equity here. Just a lot of taking advantage of the poor. Don’t stand up for that shit!