It's time we do something to help children in Oregon succeed.

#orcot #orpol #orgop #multgop #pdxevents #portlandia #PPS #oregoneducation #pdxschools #portlandpublicschools


https://chumly.com/n/284ff82

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

Portland School Board approves 28 percent raise for Superintendent Carole Smith

Portland School Board members voted 5-2 to grant Superintendent Carole Smith a 28 percent raise and a three-year contract extension, bumping her pay up to $247,000 and making her the highest-paid schools chief in Oregon. In addition to the raise, the board has also increased Smith's tax-sheltered monthly payments from $1,500 to $2,500. Teachers union vice-president Suzanne Cohen said the board should put more money back in the classroom, instead of giving Smith such an increase.
www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/08/port...rpt-1
#PERS #PPS #portlandpublicschools #pdxschools #portlandschoolboard #pdxevents


https://chumly.com/n/27b8568

Oregon teachers union calls for moratorium on Common Core reading, math tests!!

Oregon's teachers union is calling on state schools chief Rob Saxton to cancel state reading and math tests in spring 2015 because it says the new exams Oregon plans to give are unproven and too hard. Giving them, the union says, would harm students by making most of them feel like failures. Saxton said Monday that he won't consider canceling the tests, which he acknowledged will be challenging, because they are geared to what Oregon students need to know to succeed in college and on the job. Saxton said he refuses to have Oregon lag behind all other states in switching to teaching and testing students according to the Communist Common Core State Standards.
www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/05/ore....html

More than one-third of Top 50 PERS recipients are retired educators!!

Most of those are retired college professors, primarily from fields such as math, science and engineering. But four of Oregon's Top 25 PERS pensions go to retirees who worked in K-12 education, including retired Lake Oswego Superintendent Bill Korach, former Portland Public Schools human resources director Steve Goldschmidt and retired Beaverton Superintendent Jerry Colonna. You can see the whole list, obtained by Oregonian investigative reporter Ted Sickinger, in a searchable database by The Oregonian and OregonLive.
www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/04/mor....html

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

Oregon schools, get ready for the Cadillac tax Editorial

The mandates of the Affordable Care Act, once so pleasantly abstract, are raising visceral questions about fairness and affordability. How can Oregon school districts dodge the Cadillac tax in ways that are fair to teachers? How should they structure total compensation to keep the teaching profession attractive? Also, how can they offer good health insurance in ways that are fair to the taxpayers footing most of the bills? There aren’t easy answers, which is precisely why communication is so important. Embracing the popular parts of Obamacare was easy. This is the hard part.
www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/12/orego....html

Get tips for making the most of your parent-teacher conference

Parent/teacher conferences are Monday and Tuesday. Here are some tips to make the most of them from PPS (available in six languages). www.pps.k12.or.us/news/9300.htm

Flunk Factories The ugly truth about Portland’s high schools.

Portland’s four-year high-school graduation rate of 63 percent is 14 points lower than Beaverton’s, 12 points lower than Hillsboro’s and six points lower than Salem’s. That puts Portland at the bottom of the barrel in a state that has the fourth-lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation. Portland’s rate of graduating minority and low-income students is also worse when compared with other districts. The problem is not a lack of money. Portland’s per-pupil spending is, on average, 19 percent higher than the three other aforementioned Oregon districts’ and 24 percent higher than Long Beach’s."The bias toward alternative education and special-interest groups is actually cutting the programs that are working for diverse populations,” says Lainie Block Wilker, a Northeast Portland activist who has tried to reverse the district’s effort to drive students away from Benson.
www.wweek.com/portland/article-21514-flunk_factori....html

Portland Parents Pushing For More High School Class Time

Do You Have A Student In a Portland Public High School??
A group of Portland parents is asking Oregon education officials to determine whether the state’s largest district is meeting minimum instructional time for its high school students.
Portland Public started a block schedule at its high schools two years ago. It meant students were often in free periods or study halls, rather than in academic classes.
Parents pushed back last spring, so the Portland school board spent money to add high school teachers and cut back on study hall time.
Unsatisfied parents have now filed a complaint with the state, claiming Portland is still falling short. District officials say they want to do more, but say they’re not forced to legally, because the study halls count as instructional time.
www.opb.org/news/article/portland-parents-pushing-...-time

More Money, Same Problems for Oregon Schools

Instead of investing too little, Oregon schools have failed to invest their scarce resources in the right places, namely students and teachers. A major part of the problem lies in the hiring of an ever-increasing number of administrators and non-teaching support staff who are soaking up highly valuable but limited funding. A report released by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice shows that Oregon had a 47.3 percent increase in the number of administrators and non-teaching support staff from 1992 to 2009. This astounding growth more than triples that of students and teachers, which only grew by 15.4 percent and 12.7 percent respectively. Oregon schools now employ more administrators and non-teaching support staff than they do teachers.
cascadepolicy.org/blog/2013/08/more-money-same-pro...hools