Lincoln High School

Dear PPS Families,

Every special education student deserves a high-quality and equitable learning experience. This belief is born from my lived experiences as an educator, and from my relationships with students receiving special education services and their families. Students that receive special education services are our community’s children, and the reason why many of us became educators.

Our community made a commitment to our special education students when we reimagined PPS, and directed us to celebrate the diversity of our learners. Guided by those shared commitments, we aspire to reduce how often we exclude students while offering a full range of special education services and programs.

We want to operate with self awareness, address our implicit biases, and eradicate discriminatory systems. 

We also want to acknowledge the interruptions in staff assignments and student services as a result of staffing shortages during the 2021-2022 school year. We continue our efforts to recruit paraeducators, and we hope members of our community will consider pursuing this rewarding and high-impact work. 

We will weather these challenges and continue to build special education services that are supportive, inclusive, and rooted in academic achievement.

Here are facts about special education services at PPS as they stand today.

We know we share these commitments with our educators and their union, the Portland Association of Teachers. We want to reassure our community that PPS will continue to provide an array of special education services, and make investments–not cuts–to support students and their families receiving these services. The Association and the district both want the best for our students, and we are partners in this critical work. We will explore how to achieve that during our contract negotiations, but we know we begin that conversation with the same underlying values and priorities.

You can learn more about our contract negotiations here, or tune in next Tuesday (11/1) at 2pm to watch the next bargaining session with the teacher’s union.

We thank our educators for their passionate advocacy on behalf of our students.

Sincerely,

Dr. Cheryl Proctor
Deputy Superintendent of Instruction and School Communities