Mom questions spin doctors’ salaries while school funding's tight

PORTLAND, Ore. – KATU’s On Your Side Investigators have discovered Portland Public Schools spends a half-million dollars on spin doctors - staff members in communications and lobbying positions. Meanwhile, schools have struggled with overcrowded classrooms. Below is the annual salary information on five employees in PPS’s community involvement and public affairs department:
Chief of Communications and Public Affairs: $124,500
Director, Government Relations - $98,047
Sr. Manager/Community & Staff Engagement – $82,197
Sr. Manager/Community & Staff Engagement - $82,197
Manager/ School News & Social Media - $71,534
Here’s how the annual salary totals for their communications departments stack up:
Portland Public Schools - $458,475
Sacramento City Unified School District - $393,408
Manatee County School District - $210,921
www.katu.com/news/investigators/Mom-questions-spin...p;c=y
#PPS PortlandPublicSchools #OEA #OregonEducation #PTA #Portland #pdxevents #PDXSchools #PortlandChildren
https://chumly.com/n/2828a69

The Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission is considering a proposal called"Pay-It-Forward.”

"Pay-It-Forward” Is a Step Back: By Joel Grey of The Cascade Policy Institute. The Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission is considering a proposal called"Pay-It-Forward.” This pilot program would give free tuition at a state university to one thousand high school graduates each year, beginning in 2016. In exchange for free tuition, students would cede 3-5% of their paychecks over a twenty-year period. Although the program is intended to become self-sustaining, it would cost between $6.5 and $20 million each year for the first twenty years until that happened. This is an example of a government proposal that is not well thought out. Yale tried a similar experiment in the 1970s and eventually forgave much of the debt years later. Many students overpaid for their education, while 20% defaulted. Oregon shouldn’t repeat Yale’s mistake.
oregoncatalyst.com/27796-payitforward-step.html?ut...alyst)

OBAMACORE BAD TO THE CORE

Common Core was invented by a handful of Washington-based education"experts” five years ago and bankrolled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But it took off when the Obama administration put $4.3 billion in state education grants called Race to the Top in the stimulus bill. President Barack Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan made it clear the surest way for states to qualify was to adopt Common Core. Some states took it unseen, since the first grant applications were due in January 2010, and the standards were not written until months later. New York adopted Common Core in July 2010, in return for $697 million. All in all, 45 states signed on to a program that had never been tested in even one school. Contrary to what the public is told, Common Core is not about standards. It’s about content — what school kids are taught. In the social studies framework approved on April 29 by New York State’s education authorities (but not parents), American history is presented as four centuries of racism, economic oppression and gender discrimination. Teachers are encouraged to help students identify their differences instead of their common American identity. Gone are heroes, ideals and American exceptionalism.
www.humanevents.com/2014/06/11/obamacore-bad-to-th...-core

Why Don't Public Schools Give Parents What They Want?

"No principal or teacher will get a raise for attracting more students to his or her school. A successful manager in a private business gets a raise, or gets hired away for a bigger salary. A successful entrepreneur expands his or her store or opens a branch. Can one imagine a public school choice system allowing a successful principal to open another school across town and run both of them?" Educational Savings Accounts A innovative concept that is capturing the attention of young parents and new policy makers. Going beyond the voucher or tax credit idea for school choice, ESA’s introduce market concepts that help parents become active shoppers for educational services, thus improving their quality while reducing costs.
www.cato.org/blog/why-dont-public-schools-give-par...uffer

Gov. Kitzhaber undermining rights of parents!!

Governor Kitzhaber has put himself in charge of Oregon’s Education System and Oregon’s healthcare network: the Oregon Health Authority. As a result of this double take-over, there is a Triple Threat to our children and their families. That threat includes the Network of School Based Health Centers (SBHCs); the grades K-12 Comprehensive Sexuality Education Standards that the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) promotes; and the Annual Adolescent Sexuality Conference in Seaside (ASC). And what makes this Triple Threat even more unreasonable is that the governor is using our money to pay for it!
oregoncatalyst.com/25291-gov-kitzhaber-undermining....html

Oregon failed to earn transparency categories for per-pupil expenditures, total expenditure data, and average salary data.

A recent report gave Oregon an F- for financial transparency in education. How does Oregon compare to its neighbors Washington and California? Before people make financial decisions, most seek out information in order to make better choices. But according to a recent report by the Cato Institute, when Oregon voters are tasked with making financial decisions about K-12 education, they are hard-pressed to find the information they need, let alone interpret what is available.
cascadepolicy.org/blog/2013/09/oregons-opaque-k-12...ances