PORTLAND, Ore. — Parents in Southeast Portland are in the middle of a heated debate over where their kids will spend 6th through 8th grades.
The Southeast Guiding Coalition, a community group made up of parents, educators and students, presented a proposal to the school board Tuesday night as part of the Portland Public Schools plan to balance enrollment and redraw boundary lines.
Right now some schools have too many students, while others have too few. And some buildings have more students than they were built to hold. But many parents feel their voices are not being heard in the rebalancing plan.
One of the main goals in the first phase of the plan is to figure out which schools would send kids to the newly-renovated Kellogg Middle School in the fall of 2021.
Parents at Creston K-8 School say they want equitable education for their kids
Meghan Kelley has a child in second grade at Creston, is also the Creston School PTA President, and disagrees with the proposal. She is one of the many parents at Creston who say they're worried about being among the last to switch from a K-8 school to a K-5. Under the proposal, their kids don't get to attend the revamped Kellogg Middle School next year.
“Creston would be the only school in southeast that remains a K-8 at this point,” said Lisa Kensel, who has two kids that attend Creston. She is also the President-elect for the Oregon PTA.
Portland Public Schools spokesperson Karen Werstein said it’s been the district’s goal for a long time to convert K-8 schools to K-5 schools, to offer equitable education.
But with Creston on tap to stay a K-8 for the next year, both Kelley and Kensel say their middle schoolers would be left out because those attending Kellogg would get more choices and academic opportunities.
"We have just over 100 middle schoolers," Kelley said. "So trying to provide a really robust academic program for 100 kids, divided into three grades, is pretty hard."
The proposal to the school board keeps Creston as a K-8 school until the 2022 school year, but after that it's still unclear where Creston's middle school students will go.
“This leaves a big question mark about what happens after that,” said Kelley.
Werstein said the Guiding Coalition’s proposal, that would keep Creston students from attending Kellogg and keep it a K-8 school, also intends to make sure Kellogg isn’t at full capacity on the day it opens. The group also aimed to serve as many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) families as possible.
She said the coalition also thought Creston could maintain its current operations for a little longer than some of the other schools in the area.
But Kelley said she believes the renovated Kellogg Middle School would be able to support the additional Creston students, especially in light of the renovations and new facilities.
“It was designed and built to accommodate that enrollment number," she said. "There seems to be plenty of room for our kids to be there,” she said.
Kelley said parents in the Creston community have also felt confused throughout the process, and left out.
There is similar sentiment among parents with kids in dual language immersion programs.
Parents with kids in dual language programs also concerned
Martha Almendarez Langland has two kids, with one in the Spanish immersion program at Atkinson Elementary. She said many in the BIPOC community weren't even aware that the district was making plans to redraw boundaries and balance enrollment.
“We have voices missing at this table. There’s voices missing,” said Almendarez Langland.
She said not only are there too few BIPOC community voices in the discussion, but also missing are the voices of students, teachers, and people representing students with disabilities. The lack of diverse voices in the decision-making process is concerning, especially since decisions are being made that will impact BIPOC communities, said Almendarez Langland.
She said after the second meeting pertaining to rebalancing, she had asked for materials to be translated for families in the community.
“To wait three months to translate documents that should be translated on a weekly basis is very problematic to me, knowing that there is at least nine weeks of data and information, that is hundreds of pages, that you have maybe two days to look through as a parent in your native language," she said, "to me that is not practicing racial equity at all in any way, shape, or form.”
She said there's an idea up for discussion to consolidate dual language immersion (DLI) programs, take them out of neighborhood schools, and move them to areas where a large number of native speakers live.
“[That’s] saying we only belong in that area and a lot of the Latinx community is feeling pushed out, segregated,” said Almendarez Langland. “They feel marginalized and not heard."
There's a similar feeling for some parents whose kids are in the Chinese dual language immersion program.
“When you move from inner southeast to outer southeast, you're kind of getting the message, 'Oh you don’t belong there,'" said Min Cai, who has a child in the Chinese immersion program.
She said not all BIPOC families live in one designated area, and trying to figure out transportation to a new program location would burden many parents.
Almendarez Langland said for some parents, the consolidation of DLI programs would mean choosing between their connection to others in their community or their cultural heritage.
Cai also said keeping DLI programs where they are would have positive affect on students as whole.
“The kids making friends with each other, what could be more valuable than growing up with kids from other cultures,” said Cai.
A student's perspective
Jackson Weinberg is a junior at Cleveland High School. He has participated in the Chinese dual language immersion program since kindergarten.
“It’s been a pretty amazing experience, most of my closest friends were adopted from China,” he said.
He is also one of the few students who are part of the Guiding Coalition, and he understands every move the group makes will come with some complications.
Weinberg said making a change to the dual language programs might limit options for students who may have started the program and wanted to be in it. He said it could present complications for graduation projection.
At the end of the day, parents in Southeast Portland said they just want to be heard.
“Really hear what the BIPOC families say,” Cai said.
Werstein confirmed PPS is aware of the need for more diverse voices in the decision making process and said there’s an effort to make sure more families are involved in phase two of the district’s rebalancing process.
Further discussions about what will happen to Creston students and most of the dual language immersion programs are expected in Phase 2, which is set to begin in early spring.
The school board is expected to make a decision on phase one of rebalancing plans in a couple weeks at its Jan. 26 meeting.
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