A mom addresses her daughter's graduating class

My friend and neighbor Ruth Adkins, who is an elected member of the Portland School board, addressed the Wilson High School graduating class recently. Among the graduates was her daughter Jane.

Parents no doubt will relate to this part of her short speech.

We live around the corner from the school, and I've seen a lot of you coming and going over the years. I have my own memories and perspective on your busy lives as Wilson students. Baseball games, the bright lights of the football field, soccer and softball down at Rieke. Basketball in the gym. Students out on the track running up and down the bleacher steps – it made my knees hurt just to look at you.

Visiting the preschool program and seeing the power of high schoolers teaching little ones. Choir and band performances. Standing shivering in the Hillsdale shopping center for the December holidays. Musicals, plays, and one-acts from the drama department, from "Merry Wives of Windsor," which as a former Renaissance Studies major I have seen times, to "Rent" and "On the Razzle" this year – with you guys totally blowing us away every single time.

Seeing the bus return from Outdoor School with tired and grubby and happy student leaders. Seeing students serving the community by planting trees on campus, helping pull weeds on clean-up days, coming around the neighborhood to collect empty bottles or recycle our Wilson Christmas tree. Reading The Statesman and the yearbook and getting more glimpses of your opinions, passions, humor and opinions.

Walking past the display cases in the hallway and always seeing something beautiful and inspiring, whether ceramics, drawing, prints, sculpture or photographs.

And then senior year and the joys of college applications, and grownups like me endlessly asking you where you were applying, where you got in, where are you will go.

I particularly want to thank the counselors and teachers for all their hard work in getting those letters of recommendations done and helping with application. Everyone's hard work has paid off and now you are heading out to colleges near and far. Many have with gap year adventures planned or careers lined up.

I know my list has just scratched the surface. It's pretty amazing just thinking about all you have done in high school. You must be exhausted. But of course, the reality is you are just getting started. Your energies and talents are great enough to take you just about anywhere. I know you will ably represent Portland Public Schools and Wilson, wherever you go. So dear Class of 2009, on behalf of the school board, as a neighbor, and as a mom, I'm going to miss you. I wish you all the very best.

Ruth Adkins' school board recommendations

Ruth Adkins is a Hillsdale school activist who was elected to the school board two years ago. Here is her letter to friends in which she makes her endorsements in the current board election. If these are the folks Ruth wants on the board, I'm for them.

Dear friends,

By now you have probably received your ballot in the mail. This is a very important election for our schools – and in a low-turnout May election, every vote counts!
I am voting for my Board colleagues Martín González (Zone 4) and Trudy Sargent (Zone 6), and Scott Bailey (Zone 5).

Martín was appointed by the Board last year to finish Dan Ryan's term, and now is running for a full 4-year term, with our unanimous support. Martín brings to the Board many years of experience as a community organizer and as a tireless, effective advocate for parents and children. He has done a very good job representing not just his zone but the needs and concerns of the entire district, in particular communities that haven't always had a voice at the table. He isn't afraid to tackle tough issues like teacher and principal quality, and equity in district decision making. Martín is an important and courageous voice on our Board and I look forward to continuing to work with him in the future!

Scott Bailey is my choice for Zone 5. I've always been impressed by Scott's tenacity and smarts. His economics background as well as his long experience as a schools advocate will be a great asset on the Board. Scott has been deeply immersed in PPS issues for years and he knows how to constructively bring about needed change in the district. Scott is running in the most strongly contested race, so I am including additional info about him below.

Trudy is running unopposed. She is working extremely hard on behalf of Portland's kids and I look forward to continuing to work with her as we face the budget crisis and other challenges.
Thanks to everyone for your support for our public schools, now more than ever. Don't forget to turn in your ballot by May 19!

—Ruth

"The Pen" isn't enough

You may want to check out my thoughts about commercialism in Portland's public schools as they appear here in yesterday's Portland Tribune.

My colleagues at the Coalition for Commercial-Free Schools get pretty excited when things like this get published.

I'm more skeptical. The pen may be mightier than the sword but....

Change results from civil engagement and finding agreement. If the school board is willing to meet with the coalition over this issue, we have the possibility of change.

At best, the article may get the board's attention and offer a basis for discussion.

I might add that while newly elected board member Ruth Adkins, who is from Hillsdale, didn't oppose the deal that slathered the Blazer logo on 10 school basketball courts, she agrees that creeping commercialism in the schools needs to be addressed.

The coalition is hopeful Ruth will provide a forum for establishing a school board policy eliminating such blatant commercialism in our schools.

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.

Will voters take newspapers' advice and vote for Adkins?

Ruth Adkins, my choice for Portland School Board from our Zone #1, has won endorsements from every major paper: The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, The Portland Mercury and Willamette Week.

That's a remarkable feat given that she is running against an incumbent, Doug Morgan, who is no slouch. Where Ruth beats Doug is in her passion to involve communities in decision-making and to keep neighborhood schools open.

With a bean-counter's outlook, Doug backed Portland Schools Superintendent Vicki Phillips in shutting them down during his tenure.

So now we will find out just what all those endorsements are worth. They can't hurt, but just how much will they help?

One other note about Ruth, who is a Hillsdale neighbor. She was an organizer of our Friday evening peace vigils at Sunset Boulevard and Capitol Highway. And while she could have been out knocking on doors for her campaign these past few weeks, she has reserved Friday evenings to be with us with her anti-war placard in hand.

Hers is to the point. It reads,"NO!"

She knows that money spent on war is money diverted from real social needs, like quality schools.

Her anti-war stance is another reason to vote "YES!" for Ruth.