In this Edition

PTA Meeting Cancelled: Below

Message from Wilson HS – Lunar New Year Celebration: Below

PTA Nominating Committee for 2020/2021 – Respond by 1/22: Below

Wilson High School Regarding PPS Bond Measure: Below

Girls On The Run: Below

The Green Routine – Composting! Below

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Upcoming Events

No School – MLK Day: Monday, 1/20

PTA Meeting CANCELLED: Tuesday, 1/21

No School – In-Service Work Day: Monday, 1/28

WHS Lunar New Year Celebration: Thursday, 2/6

February Restaurant Night at Von Ebert Brewing: Wednesday, 2/12

 

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January PTA Meeting Cancelled

 

Attached is the PTA Agenda with updates from the Board members. The PTA meeting scheduled for Tuesday, January 21 is cancelled. If you have questions, please email the appropriate Board member. The next PTA meeting is Tuesday, March 3. Thank you.

 

peace & courage, 

Jim Shikany, PTA President

 

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Wilson High School – Lunar New Year Celebration

 

Dear Wilson Cluster:

 

The Asian Pacific Islander Club and Allied Wilson Advocates for Racial Equity (AWARE) would like to invite the K-12 Wilson Cluster to our Lunar New Year Celebration.

 

The event will be catered, and attendees are also welcomed to bring something from their family new year tradition as well in an educational context.

 

The event will be Thursday, February 6 in the cafeteria from 5-7 PM. Featured will be a Lion Dance, catered dinner and craft and activity stations.  Our photography teacher has also offered to set up a portrait studio for families and groups.

 

Attached is our event flyer.

 

Happy 2020 and we look forward to ushering in the Year of the Rat with you!

 

Aloha,

Jamie

jsuehiro@pps.net

 

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PTA Nominating Committee

 

Hello Odyssey Community,
The PTA will have open positions for next year, and it’s time for us to form a Nominating Committee to get those positions filled. Please email me by Wednesday 1/22 if you’d like to be on the committee.

And.....if you ever wanted to be on the PTA board, now is your chance, the following positions will need to be filled:
President
Vice President
Treasurer
Secretary
678 Coordinator

Please email me with any questions or further information! See you on Tuesday!
Jamie Clary
Jamieclary@outlook.com                                       

 

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Message from Wilson High School Regarding Bond Measure

 

Dear Wilson Neighborhood Community,

 

Now is the time to let the PPS School Board know that Wilson, Jefferson, and Cleveland should be included on the 2020 Bond! 

 

A modernized Wilson would provide students with state-of-the-art learning facilities for generations to come.  While much has changed since 1957, Wilson facilities have not.  It is time to ensure that all PPS high schools, including Wilson, Jefferson, and Cleveland, provide students with 21^st century learning opportunities.

 

These are some highlights from preliminary modernization plans for Wilson High School:

• Wilson students will stay in the current building while the new building is constructed. 
• New building will include modernized classrooms, science labs, career-and-technical education spaces, fine and performing arts facilities, athletic facilities, and more.
• The Wilson pool can remain on camps.
• No expenditures are needed for bussing and temporary classrooms - money can be directly invested in the new facilities.
• The 2020 bond will keep the current tax levels unchanged.

 

Please contact PPS School Board members and share this simple message: The time has come to modernize Wilson, Jefferson, and Cleveland.

 

Andrew Scott (Wilson)- anscott@pps.net

Michelle DePass (Jefferson) - mdepass@pps.net

Amy Kohnstamm (Board Chair) - akohnstamm@pps.net

Rita Moore (Vice-Chair) - rmoore5@pps.net

Scott Bailey - sbailey@pps.net

Julia Brim-Edwards - jbrim-edwards@pps.net

Eilidh Lowery (Cleveland) - elowery@pps.net

 

Erica Caldwell

Business Manager
Wilson High School

office:  503-916-5280 Ext 75211
cell:  541-521-8282

ecaldwell@pps.net
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/schools/wilson/

Si usted necesita ayuda en traducir este mensaje, llame al 503-916-3582 para español.

 

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The Green Routine

 

It’s a new year, y’all! Are you ready to take a big stand for our environment? Reducing and composting your food waste is a big way you can cut down on your environmental impact. At Odyssey we are beginning our “Lunchroom Revolution” NEXT WEEK on Tuesday, January 21. We will be collecting and cleaning milk cartons for recycling as well as composting all our food waste. We are part of only five schools allowed to pilot this plan and we need your help! Please consider spending a few days assisting our students to adopt this new, earth-friendly process. SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR LUNCHROOM REVOLUTION.

 

Join the Trex Challenge! Please bring your soft plastics to collect at school and we may win a bench for our playground from Trex. See the attached flyer for what types of plastics can be sent to Trex for recycling/reuse. There are two in the entry, and one downstairs in the K12 hallway. If you live near a Trex collection site (Fred Meyer or New Seasons), you can drop off your waste directly to those collections and email me (ezahniser@gmail.com) how much it weighed to count toward our Odyssey challenge. We’ve already collected close to 100 lbs of plastic waste!

 

Last week our recycling drive collected two truckloads of styrofoam, and nearly 50 lbs of plastic cling. A big thank you also, to Green Team volunteers who turned out to manage the recycling and install a Little Free Library for Odyssey.

 

Odyssey Eco-Events:

·     Lunchroom Revolutions: Collective actions have more impact than individual choices! Help our community collectively make big improvements to our environmental impact through composting and better recycling in our school cafeteria. Follow the link to be a part of our modeling conservation behaviors to the next generation.

 

Weekly Eco-Tip:

 

In case you missed it last week, food waste is big, big contributor to global warming. Landfills are the second largest human source of methane emissions, and food rotting in landfills is the largest source of these emissions. The gas rotting food emits, methane, has 24 times the impact on the climate as CO2. In the US alone, we send over 50 million tons of food waste to landfills each year. The production of lost or wasted food generates the equivalent of 37 million cars’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions annually. The USDA estimates 30-40 percent of our food goes to waste. So what can you do?

 

·       Buy only what you need – especially when it comes to perishables.

·       Plan ahead before you hit the grocer – having a weekly meal plan goes a long way toward making use of what you have before it goes off or out of date.

·       Get creative with leftovers – discover recipes for common leftovers here!

·       Store food properly – Guess what? Lots of produce stores longer when NOT in plastic – check out these techniques to help your lettuce last.

·       Use your freezer! Save leftovers you don’t want to revisit just yet and discover batch-cooking for fast and waste-free weekday meals.

·       Pack a low-waste lunch – know how much your kiddo needs and don’t overpack. Go even more low-waste a lunch with reusable containers and cutlery (no single use plastic baggies!)

 

And the big one: Compost! If you live in Metro Portland, you can compost all food, including meat, right at your curbside. The benefits of composting are vast. Here’s a list of composting benefits from the EPA:

 

·      Compost reduces, and in some cases eliminates the need for chemical fertilizers.

·      Compost promotes higher yields of agricultural crops.

·      Compost can help aid reforestation, wetlands restoration, and habitat revitalization efforts by improving contaminated, compacted, and marginal soils.

·      Compost can be used to remediate soils contaminated by hazardous waste in a cost-effective manner.

·      Compost can provide cost savings over conventional soil, water and air pollution remediation technologies, where applicable.

·      Compost enhances water retention in soils.

·      Compost provides carbon sequestration.

 

Dear Odyssey Community,

I am honored to have been chosen as the new Odyssey principal.  Since starting my teaching career in Florida almost twenty five years ago, I have been committed to transformational learning and am excited to move to Odyssey and the embrace of experiential learning.  

I spent the bulk of my teaching career in Brooklyn teaching high school and it was during that time that I was part of forming 9th grade institutes which committed themselves to interdisciplinary learning and team work.  It is with great excitement that I look forward to more of this work at Odyssey.

During my time as an administrator I have served at high school, k-5, and k-8 levels and am looking forward to returning to the k-8 world.  This is truly a journey that I am honored to be on and looking forward to meeting all of you and getting to know the students, teachers, staff, and families.

I grew up here in the PNW and my two sons are enrolled in PPS.  I will have a 7th grader and 9th grader next year and truly understand how important it is that our schools provide opportunities for our children to grow academically and emotionally.  Critical thinking is key and I truly believe that by being self-reflective and choosing empathy and understanding, we can prepare ourselves for engagement in the world around us.  

I am excited to get to know you and please do not hesitate to introduce yourselves and stop by and say hi once we get the new school year up and running.  Looking towards a great year together!

Best,
Dr. Eryn Berg

eberg@pps.net 

Graduation rates in Portland Public Schools rose to 80.5% for the 2018-19 school year, reaching the district's highest percentage since the state of Oregon adopted a four-year cohort model in 2010.

PPS staff are invited to attend Decoding Dyslexia's "Implicit and Explicit Race Bias" Informational Night on Monday, Feb. 10, from 7-9 p.m. at the Providence Medical Center's Amphitheater Room (4805 NE Glisan St.). The session will examine the educational disparities among Oregon’s Black and Brown youth in literacy, reading, math, and disciplinary actions. Decoding Dyslexia's research has concluded that it would be beneficial for educators and administrators to evaluate their personal biases and to acknowledge how these biases play out in classrooms and educational environments. The presentation will include an interactive activity to help you see yourself and others with more compassion and empathy. Click here to view the event flier and here to RSVP. 

In this week's PPS Pulse: 7 from PPS honored at Dr. Martin Luther King tribute event; girls wrestling continues to grow in PIL and state

Seven community members with connections to Portland Public Schools were honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award on Monday as part of the 35^th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute event at the Highland Christian Center.