Money for an out-dated "schools" paradigm

Portland Public Schools is placing a $548 million bond measure on the May ballot. If approved by the voters, the money will be used largely for capital construction of new or expanded schools.

Question: Why would PPS want to spend a half billion dollars on bricks and mortar in this internet age? The money will simply be propping up an out-moded paradigm, one built on school-based education.

Certainly we can spend education money more wisely in today’s world.

Rows of desks, schedules of one-hour "modules," and long bus rides are at odds with the world students know and the nature of the times. Outside the school (and often in it), students are immersed in a private place defined by rapid-fire communication.

It’s haphazard “learning” through dizzying dexterity and hand-held computers.

Logically, education should tap into those communication devices and networks, which, like television before them, are the greatest teaching tools yet invented.

And yet, as it was for television, the question is what are those little “smart” devices teaching?

Right now, as far as needed education is concerned, not a lot.

What could they be teaching? It would take a lot less than $548 million to find out and get started restructuring education to fit the findings.

As for bricks-and-mortar schools, let’s make them into community learning centers. One of the “courses” would have the kids teach the rest of us how to use technology. We could teach them how to use it constructively.

Imagine the creativity that would be unleashed if we ended this now ever-growing technological generation gap.

"Other" answers for Portland's future

I’ve just filled out “The Portland Plan” questionnaire. The planning bureau says the 10 minutes I spent on it will influence life here for the next 25 years.

We can only hope. A lot of us went through this drill five years ago with Mayor Potter's VisionPDX. Oh well.

This time we respondents are told that our answers will help identify “the things that affect our daily lives, such as safety, neighborhood livability, quality education and affordable housing.”

The 22 questions are mostly multiple-choice. Each has a tacked-on“other” option for grumpy free-thinkers like me.

As you will see, the choices say a good deal about "planner think." Because respondents are allowed to pick only one choice, the form leads to a lot of head-scratching, hair-tearing and soul-wrenching. (By the way, which of your children DO you love the most?)

Accordingly, I resorted frequently to filling in “other” with my own wild words and warped visions.

Here are four examples of where the questions took me.

Question #1: "What should Portland’s priority be for creating jobs over the next 25 years?" The six choices were predictable. Choices like “market our products and services to other countries and regions” and “assist neighborhood businesses” and “provide worker training programs.” Remember, you can choose only one answer. I decided to go populist and wrote in “limit excessive executive compensation and use the money to hire the unemployed to build high-speed passenger rail."

Question 4: "What is the most important action Portland can take to improve high school graduation rates?" Note the presumption that high schools are a good thing. Anyway, the options included “recruit and retain great teachers,” “provide better facilities,” “involve businesses in schools.” Remember, you can choose only one. I wrote in “teach parents to teach.”

Question 5 also dealt with schools, never questioning their relevance in the computer age: "Over the next 25 years, many schools will need to be renovated and some rebuilt. What improvements does your neighborhood school need the most?" Choose among “Warm and dry buildings” (as opposed to cold and wet?), “modern technology and classrooms” (how about modern technology and no classrooms?), “improved access and security (moats, attack dogs, strip searches?).” Actually the final choice “expanded community uses” came close to my thinking. I wrote, “Year-round, inter-generational learning centers.” Picture this: I’m sitting in a park on a summer’s day with a 12 year old teaching me how to use my smart phone (at last!).

Question 12: "For you, what is the hardest part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle?" The choices were “time for exercise,” “a place to exercise,” (how about “will to exercise”?) “a full-service grocery store,” “cooking healthy meals” (as opposed to a sick meal? They mean “healthful”) and “stress—not enough time to relax.” Which ONE would you choose? I scribbled in “the lure of deceptive advertising.” I didn’t flesh out the answer, but advertising is constantly trying to get me to eat crap and plant myself on the couch watching more deceptive (and clever and entertaining) advertising and programming (which is only a further lure to get me to watch more advertising).

In my other answers, I also made a pitch for sidewalks and trails, neighborhood micro-buses and zoning that encourages corner grocery stores.

The questionnaire did not ask — but should have — whether Portland communities like Hillsdale should be given a measure of autonomy (along with money) from the City. The answer, in case you were wondering, is: YES.

Your turn: You can fill out the questionnaire on line by going to www.PDXplan.com

Learning communities vs. school inequity

I have two conflicting views about schools today. Well, I probably have a lot more than that, but two significant ones have emerged in the past few days.

They jelled last night at a meeting five of us had with my Hillsdale neighbor, and now new school board member, Ruth Adkins.

The five of us are members of something called “the Coalition for Commercial-Free Schools.” The name pretty much says it all. We don’t think our schools should be exploited for marketing purposes, no matter how much corporations are willing to pay the strapped schools for exclusive access to our kids.

That said, my conflicting views don’t have anything directly to do with commercialism in the schools.

No, it’s an even bigger problem than that.

Ruth shared with us the Portland school district’s apparent interest in having schools and their communities work more closely together. That’s a move in the right direction.

For sometime I’ve argued that schools and their communities should be one — that we should consider our schools being wall-less. We should think of them as having permeable membranes, if you will. Kids, parents, grandparents, teachers, business owners, lawyers, carpenters, fire-fighters, housewives and househusbands — everybody — would flow through the school and through the community.

We would all teach each other.

And if you don’t think kids can teach you anything, I have a question for you: When was the last time you text-messaged?

So that’s one view: Communities and schools should be one. In essence, we shouldn’t have schools but community learning centers. Ideally, communities would BE learning centers, or more exactly, learning communities. (And that means striking up a new relationship with media and the time we spend with it — but don’t get me started….)

So here’s the conflict. Late last year I volunteered to read a few thousand community responses to the Mayor’s Visioning Project, VisionPDX. My assigned readings happened to be about schools. A major theme in the responses was that Portland suffers gross inequities between schools in different parts of the city. Our children simply aren’t being granted equal opportunity in the classroom.

Something has to be done about the problem. Unfortunately, I don’t see the solution in community learning centers, or learning communities. If anything, prosperous communities will have prosperous learning centers, and poor communities will have poor learning centers.

Indeed the inequities could become much worse under my proposed “permeable membrane” approach.

So as I talked this through with Ruth and the others Wednesday night, I invoked an idea I have floated about developing model Portland Town Centers, a model Hillsdale Town Center being one of them. The idea is to pair town centers (and communties) that are diverse. Lents and Hillsdale, for example.

How can we help each other? What can we learn from each other? I’ve even thought that measurements of success should yoke the progress of the paired communities. Unless both succeed, neither does.

Have I resolved my conflict about learning communities? Not really. At best, it is a hypothetical resolution to a hypothetical problem. Until we reshape our schools and our neighborhoods into learning communities with community learning centers, we won’t have the luxury of addressing this kind of problem.

Still, if the school district does indeed move ahead with linking schools and communities, it should do so in a way that ends educational inequity in Portland.

A wish list for Hillsdale — and beyond

Mayor Tom Potter's election night comments about the defeat of charter revision disturbed me. He said he no longer would push for change in Portland's form of government although he obviously feels it is needed.

If he doesn't return to the issue, who will? And, more importantly, when? The next mayor likely will be one of the current commissioners. They seem quite satisfied with the archaic, fragmented system we have.

Potter's words remind me of just how achingly long change can take. Increasingly I'm realizing that many of the changes I want to see happen in Hillsdale won't occur in my lifetime.

More and more I am resigned to maximizing the possibility of eventual success rather than actually witnessing it.

I’ll settle for hope and the knowledge that I’ve done what I can to effect change here.

For the record, here’s what I’d like to see happen:

I want to see the mess of utility wires put underground in the Town Center. It will cost $1 million in today’s dollars.

I want to see the Hillsdale plaza with its tiers of sheltering solar panels shading farmers
stalls. That too likely will cost $1 million.

I want to see DeWitt Park extended to Sunset Boulevard to create a plaza fully in front of the library. Another $ million. The kind of money Bill Gates makes in a day.

I want to see Hillsdale (in league with Multnomah Village and Bridlemile and perhaps Hayhurst or Southwest Hills Residential League), represented on a reconfigured and reformed City Council of 20 or so representatives elected by neighborhood coalitions. I have no idea what it will cost, but it won’t come cheap, media-driven politics being what it is.

I want to see our schools transformed into true inter- and multi-generational community learning centers. In this 21st Century maelstrom of change, we must go well beyond “no child left behind” to no person left behind. There’s no telling what that might cost, but the cost will be worth it. My guess is the greatest cost will be measured in volunteer capital, which is no cost at all by current budgetary standards.

I want to entice people to abandon the four to five hours each day they waste glued to their TV sets. I want them to devote that time to helping each other and their community. The regained hours (15 full years in a life span of 80 years) would be a huge investment of the human capital mentioned above.

I want to know by name all of the neighbors within two blocks of my house. Yes, even and perhaps especially, the ones whose dog barks incessantly beginning at 6 a.m. Knowing my neighbors costs only time — time well and joyously spent.

I want there to be one car per household and a small grocery and bus stop within easy walking distance of every Hillsdale household. If zoning allowed it and incentives were in place, it would cost nothing and might just help save the planet.

I want those grocery stores to sell only produce grown in an area no more than 60 miles from Portland. Market forces should take care of that, as we are seeing with our farmers market.

Beyond Hillsdale, I want an America that once again stands for justice, peace, equality and fair play. I want an America that is strong not in its self-righteousness or its military but in its magnanimity, morality and humility as a one nation among many.

I began this by saying I was in a time bind. I am unlikely to see any of these goals accomplished within my lifetime. I have come to accept that. My hope now is to help plant seeds so that future generations will reap the benefits.

Note: For the next four days, I will not be posting on The Red Electric as I will be out of town. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and inviting yours when I return.