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Next Steps: Enrollment Balancing
10/13/2016Dear Portland Public Schools Community,
I accepted the role of Interim Superintendent of Portland Public Schools (PPS) at a challenging moment in time. During my first month on the job, I initiated an assessment of the programmatic and system priorities identified by the Board of Education for the 2016-17 school year. After these priorities were established, a number of additional priorities emerged that also require attention:- Addressing environmental health and safety issues;
- Further due diligence for a Bond for 2017;
- Continuing Interest Based Bargaining with the Portland Association of Teachers; and
- Engaging in a national search for a permanent superintendent.
Additionally, the district has numerous vacancies to fill; at the end of last week there were 55 non-represented employees at central office; this does not include numerous vacancies in maintenance and other areas of operations.
At the board meeting on Monday October 10, I recommended that the opening of Roseway Heights and Tubman Middle Schools be delayed one year, until the fall of 2018. As I explained to the Board, the district does not have the operational or organizational capacity to open the middle schools in 2017 as originally planned and complete the other priorities. The Board of Education agreed to delay their opening until 2018-19.
This was a very hard recommendation for me to make. We need equitable programming across all of our schools and I feel a tremendous sense of urgency to ensure our students have the quality they deserve. The District Boundary Review Advisory Committee (DBRAC) acknowledged in their Values and Policy Framework that the district should implement change as quickly as possible, but that it must be done well. Sadly, we could not open Tubman and Roseway Heights next year with the quality program those communities deserve.
Next Steps
On Monday, October 17th at 6pm, DBRAC will host a meeting at the Blanchard Education Service Center (501 N. Dixon) and I will walk them through the rationale I provided to the Board and explain the work underway to develop an updated district middle school program model. There will be time set aside for public comment on the information I am sharing with DBRAC. Meeting materials are available here.
There are also some implementation options for the 2017-18 school year that the Board and I are asking DBRAC to provide recommendations on:
- How to balance K-5 feeder schools to Ockley Green that would ensure Chief Joseph 5th graders would not remain on the Ockley Green campus next year
- Options to support middle grades programs, which could include consolidating small programs for 2017-18 or adding short-term staff to current K-8 sites
- Options to address overcrowding where possible during the 2017-18 school year.
Copies of the memos and background information that I provided to the Board of Education are available here. We will be updating the Growing Great Schools website as more information is available.Thank you,
Robert McKean
Interim Superintendent
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