There is widespread recognition that Portland's public schools are under-funded and under-staffed (like most of the public schools throughout the United States). There is an ill-conceived initiative to reform the Local Schools Foundation. The LSF is the primary reason the better-functioning schools are able to function better, and this reform would kill it, in the name of equity. But if the answer is taking money from an already under-funded, under-staffed elementary school, then we're asking the wrong question. More info and to get involved: Save PPS Foundations
Dear PPS School Board members and District leaders:
My name is David Rovics and I am a parent at Richmond Elementary School. I am writing this letter to humbly ask you to reconsider the proposed reform to the Local Schools Foundations program and reverse the catastrophic reduction to our school budget next year, that would severely tax money we have crowdfunded, which has thus far served to nominally reduce the chronic under-staffing problem at Richmond, in order to slightly increase funding at other schools in the district.
I lived for many years in Boston, Massachusetts. Without making any real reforms that would increase much-needed funding for education, the city of Boston embarked on a program in the 1970's called "busing." The idea behind the program was this: since integrating neighborhoods had failed -- due to institutional racism, red-lining, and a housing market that was unaffordable to so many working class people (especially people of color) -- municipal leadership decided if we can't desegregate the neighborhoods, we'll seek to address the entrenched problems of racial inequality by desegregating the schools, by busing working class Black children to go to schools in working class white neighborhoods.
This policy was ended, because it was extremely unpopular, across the city. The reasons it was unpopular were complex, but the primary reason was that many people could clearly see that the problem with the schools throughout the city of Boston was chronic under-funding and under-staffing, and busing was a policy akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, without doing anything about the approaching iceberg. The proposed reform to Local Schools Foundations is exactly the same. It is a carbon copy of Boston's failed busing program, which seeks to redress inequality by taking from one working class community in order to give to another, without solving the problem of chronic under-funding and chronic under-staffing of the Portland Public Schools.
Like every one of the other schools in the PPS system, Richmond Elementary is under-funded and under-staffed. The only reason it doesn't feel that way is because of crowdfunding efforts on the part of Richmond parents and teachers, and innovative programs like having classroom interns all the way from Japan, getting college credit to work with the kids, in the Japanese language. These programs exist because of Richmond parents and teachers crowdfunding for the Richmond Elementary School.
A lot of parents also volunteer in the school, in order to make up for the chronic under-funding and under-staffing there, and to create a good environment for the kids. If these parents also wanted to volunteer in other schools, that would be very nice, but should they be required to do so, in order to be allowed to volunteer at the school their children attend? This is the sort of logic of the proposed reform.
The result of this reform will be to do the opposite of what it intends to do, just like with busing did in Boston. We all want racial equity here in Portland. (Or if there are people against racial equity in Portland, I haven't met them.) Different neighborhoods and racialized groups among the overwhelmingly working class student body that makes up the majority of the PPS system should not be pitted against each other like chickens in a cock fight, while the scions of the Portland establishment who refuse to properly fund our schools look on and watch the show.
This city and this state has tremendous wealth that goes untaxed, or is woefully misdirected. We have some of the worst-performing schools in the United States, which itself has some of the worst-performing schools in the so-called developed world. Where has a policy like this proposed reform created the desired outcome of racial equity and better schools for a city in the US or anywhere else? Nowhere. Where have such policies created conflict, division, and even worse educational outcomes? Lots of places, such as Boston. So, why not try something that has worked well, such as taxing the wealthy and those with high incomes to facilitate massive increases in funding for education, and much smaller class sizes? Why not look at what actually works in other places, and emulate what they're doing? We'll have to look outside the borders of the US in order to find such public school systems, but that's not hard. Given that Scandinavia has some of the best outcomes in the world, I'd say start there. We don't lack the wealth here in Portland, or in Oregon, or in the US. As a professional musician who spends much of my time in Europe, I see first-hand how things could be done differently, all the time. What we lack is vision, and political will.
But rather than come up with real solutions to the tragic problems of PPS, this proposal is just a mechanism to create a distraction, by pitting the working class against each other, neighborhood by neighborhood. Soon, someone somewhere in Portland will call us Richmond parents who are upset about this reform words like "privileged," "racist," "NIMBY," or any number of other things. I'm personally horrified by this prospect, on behalf of my friends and neighbors who have never faced such unsavory accusations, but I've lived in Portland long enough to know where this is probably going. so I'd like to address this question for a moment.
Richmond Elementary is a public, bilingual, Japanese-immersion school. As with all the schools, there are limited spaces for new students each year, but it's not an exclusive space. Naturally enough, though, a large percentage of the students have one or more parents who are Japanese or of Japanese ancestry. None of them have any interest in trying to compete with anyone with different ancestry or from other racialized groups in any way, and no one that I know is interested in trying to claim that they're more marginalized than anyone else in this society. But it bears mentioning that ALL of those of Japanese ancestry on the west coast who have been around the west coast for several generations had ALL of their property stolen from them by the US government, and they were never compensated for this in any meaningful way. Most of the rest of the Japanese parents recently immigrated from Japan or are living here temporarily. So when we're talking about wealth vs. income, and the multi-generational, inherited wealth that exists in some communities in Portland, it's worth bearing in mind that while lots of Richmond parents have decent jobs in the tech sector, so many of them are paying market-rate rents on apartments and houses that are constantly getting more expensive to live in. In my family's case, the sole income-earner is a musician. Our rent has gone up by 250% since we moved to Portland 16 years ago, and that's completely typical in this city. Squeezing out a few more dollars from my family and other Richmond families who are overwhelmingly living in similar circumstances is not the solution to chronic under-funding and under-staffing rife throughout the Portland Public Schools. Please try something else.
If the answer is taking money from an already under-funded, under-staffed elementary school, then we're asking the wrong question.
With respect,
David Rovics
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