School Community

Portland school board co-chairwoman Pam Knowles reacts with joy when she sees the initial tally of votes on a proposed local option property tax increase to save teaching jobs. She stood next to fellow board members Bobbie Regan (in white) and Ruth Adkins (in red) at the election night event.Members of the Portland school board avoided a rare public debate Monday over who should lead the seven-member panel by deferring discussion about changing leaders until September.

By then, the board that oversees Oregon’s largest school district plans to have sorted out whether and how to change the way the board operates.

Unlike in city and county government, where voters make the call about who serves as mayor and as chairman of the county commission, school boards decide for themselves which of their members will hold the gavel.

Every July, the Portland school board votes which member will serve as chair of the board and who will be vice chair. Typically those votes are unanimous.

But at Monday’s meeting, after current board chairwoman Pam Knowles was nominated for another six-month term as chair, board member Martin Gonzalez said he planned to nominate someone else for that role.

Gonzalez said he was doing so not because he opposed Knowles as leader but because he felt the upcoming debate over how the board will operate, including how the role of the board chair will be defined, should take place before a new leader is selected or Knowles is voted in for more time presiding over the board.

Other board members readily agreed, and the panel unanimously extended Knowles to continue as chairwoman until September and board member Trudy Sargent to continue as vice chairwoman during that time. Although they are formally designated as chair and vice chair, the two call themselves co-chairs, a practice Portland school board members adopted many years ago.

Knowles is a lawyer and businesswoman who, during her time on the board, has worked as chief operating officer of the Portland Business Alliance, as managing director of the Oregon Zoo Foundation and, beginning last week, as executive director for industry relations for  Oregon State University’s business school. That job requires her to work from both Portland and Corvallis.

The board currently does much of its work through committees that specialize in finance, student achievement and school boundaries, which gives significant power to the board members who head those committees. Each three-member committee digs into details in its realm and in essence make decisions for the full board.

Knowles, after learning more about how other boards operate, is urging her board to rethink the committee work, leave more details to school district staff and concentrate on doing more decision-making as a full board.

The board, including two newly elected members who cast their first votes Monday, plans to discuss and decide that issue in August, then make a longer-term decision about which members should preside over the board in September, members said Monday.

The Elizabethton City Council approved a roughly 25-cent property tax increase Thursday night, but did not allocate funding for a new football stadium.  

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The Elizabethton City Council approved a roughly 25-cent property tax increase Thursday night, but did not allocate funding for a new football stadium. Rain water leaks through the concrete bleachers at T.A. Dugger Field and has destroyed the locker rooms below. Superintendent Ed Alexander hopes council members will reconsider.

Click the play icon above to watch a video report.

TRANSCRIPT:

GEORGE JACKSON, reporter: “But if the city council doesn’t deliver a new stadium in the next couple of years, should they worry about losing you?”

SHAWN WITTEN, head football coach: “Not just me, but a number of coaches.”

NARRATION: In about a month, this stadium will be packed for the Cyclones home opener against Daniel Boone. The paint is new. The grass is green. But the foundation is crumbling.

MIKE WILSON, athletic director: “I’m not an architect, and I’m not an engineer. But I’m not really sure how you’re going to fix that.”

NARRATION: Athletic Director Mike Wilson says these bleachers drain the wrong way. Add rain and cracked concrete for a hot, humid mess. Moldy ceilings, rusty beams, and cracked cinder abound.

ED ALEXANDER, superintendent: “We cannot use the dressing rooms, but it appears for this year they have determined that it is safe for the outside to be used.”

NARRATION: Superintendent Ed Alexander wants to replace this stadium with a sports complex at Elizabethton High and expand classrooms at T.A. Dugger.

ED ALEXANDER, superintendent: “We hope that, on the second reading of this, they will reconsider. with the possibility of giving us, at least, 10 cents.”

SHAWN WITTEN, head football coach: “We feel that we’re doing what we need to do on the field and would like to have some city council support.”

NARRATION: Mayor Curt Alexander does not favor a property tax increase — period. He says the stadium needs to be rebuilt, but not at the expense of the city’s credit rating.

CURT ALEXANDER, mayor: “We’re replacing all nine of our electric substations. We’re getting a new water source…. We also did a bond issue for the school system last year to upgrade all of their facilities — add classrooms, add gymnasiums — and that was close to $7 million.”

Lots of credit goes to College Hockey News for really being on top of college’s hockey tumultuous realignment this summer. They broke a pretty huge story on the CCHA meeting with Atlantic Hockey about potentially taking four teams from Atlantic Hockey to help keep the CCHA a viable conference.

Some of the important info from the article:

-Robert Morris, Niagara, Mercyhurst, and Canisius are the four Atlantic Hockey schools being talked about in the move. It’s rumored that the four schools could be an “all or nothing” type of deal, which makes things stickier when trying to move four programs instead of just one or two.

-The conference TV deal and conference tournament could be sticking points. TV deal: They won’t have one. Problem solved. As for the conference tournament, with the balance of power shifting so far east, I wouldn’t be surprised if the tournament ended up in Pittsburgh.

-Those schools also aren’t interested in the CCHA if Alaska is in the conference.It becomes a little more imperative for the WCHA to find a way to make two Alaska teams in one conference work.

You do have to feel a little bad for Atlantic Hockey through all of this. They had to squeeze themselves a few years ago to fit Robert Morris and Niagara into their league, and now could lose 25% of their league to the CCHA. But as far as losses go, they’ll still be in reasonable shape with 8 teams, while the alternative almost certainly kills off some CCHA schools.

Breaking news:

The APS board just approved extending Erroll Davis contract for a year. He will continue to lead system for the next 12 months as it copes with CRCT cheating fallout.

You are in, Chair Brenda J. Muhammad told him after the unanimous vote.

Part 2 of the APS board meeting dealing with CRCT cheating report:

The board is about to return from a closed session that lasted nearly three hours. Board members and  Interim school chief Erroll Davis discussed how to deal with the 178 or so APS employees some of whom  have already resigned or retired who either confessed to cheating or are suspected of it by state investigators.

Davis says they cant work for APS any longer, but they are entitled to due process under the law

Lots of discussion during the closed session with folks in the crowd here about teachers whose careers are on the line for voice inflection as they administered the CRCT.  Seems like those folks may be able to fight the allegations of cheating. It would also seem that they could win their jobs back if the Professional Standards Commission did not find them guilty of any wrongdoing. Anyone have any insights on their situations?

Also, there is a sense of relief from some APS employees that the worst is finally over and that the system can move ahead, that employees can take a deep breath and go to work. As one person said, Change is good.

Also, some confusion. Will the APS board hire one of the two finalists next week, as had been expected? Or does this report, released Tuesday, change the time line and the job requirements? Are either of the two finalists up for this new challenge, a system reeling from a damaging report and a sullied reputation?

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — Sixth-graders going to Providence Middle School, you just got a new school.

The Huntsville Board of Education, at a special Saturday meeting, unanimously voted to transfer Providence Middle sixth-graders to Williams Middle – about 12 miles away on the west side of Redstone Arsenal – in an effort to ease overcrowding at Providence Middle.

The change takes effect with the start of school Aug. 8. Both middle schools feed Columbia High School.

Without relocating the sixth-graders at Providence, a minimum of six portable classrooms would be required at a cost of about $300,000. Meanwhile, Williams is operating almost 60 percent under capacity, school officials said.

In recommending the move to the board, new Superintendent Casey Wardynski said the option is “most favorable to the students.”

“My first priority is always going to be the students,” Wardynski said following the meeting. “They only get one shot at an education.”

Overcrowding at Providence, which houses both a middle and elementary school, has been an ongoing problem for the school system. Wardynski told the board that Providence has a capacity for 960 middle and elementary students but has 1,094 students to squeeze in.

With the available space at Williams, Wardynski said the move made sense. Projections are that Williams will not be overcrowded until 2015.

Under the plan approved by the board, the middle school students at Providence will remain there before moving on to Columbia. Meanwhile, those being transferred to Williams will have a “consistent” middle school experience, Wardynski said.

Providence Elementary will gradually move into the space vacated by the middle school.

“We looked for much better choices that would be more enduring and give them a consistent middle school experience,” Wardynski said. “You build team camaraderie and preparing for high school, and we didn’t want to deny the student the ability to do that.”

Teachers at Providence Middle would also move to Williams Middle.

Wardynski presented two alternate plans to the board but said neither was ideal. Adding portable classrooms at Providence wouldn’t be completed until mid-September – a month into the school year. And transferring all the students at Providence Middle to Williams would be too disruptive.

The largest drawback to the board-approved plan is that students will still be bused to Providence, then on to Williams, about a 24-minute ride. Students will now be picked up on their bus routes about a half-hour earlier.

While that plan isn’t preferable, Wardynski said transporting students directly to Williams would cost the system about $350,000.

“We don’t have that kind of money,” he said.