Before the Portland
Public School District Board Meeting, July 27, 2021-Wear a Mask!
At The Actual Board Meeting -“Oh, Never Mind”
Parents in Portland, Oregon feel they and their children lived and still live in a nightmare.
Since March 2020. Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s gaslighting rule making pronouncements have parents feeling like pinballs bouncing around, back, and forth in some weird pinball machine of existence in Multnomah County. Wear masks don’t wear masks, wear masks, don’t wear masks.
Parents came to the meeting not wearing masks, so the board changed the rule to parents don’t have to wear masks.
How do you report on a meeting where the superintendent, Guadalupe Guerrero, and his administrative staff speak bureaucratic jargon full of repetitive phrasing that you begin to feel like Charlie Brown and his friends at school listening to the teacher? “Wah, wah, wah, wah…”
The reader should click the link to the video of the July 27, 2021, Portland Public School Board meeting to watch, listen, pay attention to the non-verbals, and discern for themselves, “What did they say?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR2tf09ac5k
70 to 93% of all communication is non-verbal. With all the board members and the superintendent and his assistants all masked up it was a challenge to discern the communication. Between garbled communication then vague communication when the numbers conversation popped in some wondered if Common Core Math was somehow a factor in not understanding what the superintendent was saying about the 15,000-student number, then the 1000-student number, then the 500-student number and finally the 750-student number.
Some audience members felt like sleight of hand was in motion even as a few of the elected board members attempted to search for numbers and demographic clarity themselves.
Mathematically 15,000 students who did some version of on-line learning represents about 32% of the student population of PPS. That is quite a sizable piece of the pie.
500 to 750 were the numbers the superintendent announced for an on-line learning academy the district had developed, but then it was stated it was only for students who were medically or mental health-wise affected by COVID-19. It will be done by lottery and parents will have to submit medical documentation to have their child on this on-line academy. EXCEPT: if the applications for the Academy are under 500 then medical documentation is not required. That brought quizzical looks to the faces of audience members attempting to follow the conversation at their seats as masked up board members spoke.
PPS contacted all 15,000 at the end of June by letter and then called 1000 of those identified 15,000. Audience members wondered why PPS does not already know if any student or how many students are medically or mental health-wise fragile due to COVID-19. A records request was sent to PPS to get a copy of the report generated from talking to the 1000 parents that would have been sent to the superintendent to review.
With the information from the superintendent that the deadline to apply for the 500-750 slots was July 30, 2021, board member Mr. Gary Hollands said that was a short deadline as well as noting the website to apply for the lottery was not user friendly.
Board member Julia Brim-Edwards comment on the 15,000 or the 1000 population was “Some people don’t want to mask or take precautions.”
Board chair Michelle DePass asked for demographic data on the 1000 and valiantly attempted to get feedback to have some assurance that single working mothers were given due consideration and support. After some starts, sputters, stammers and what seemed like a-go-around-the-bureaucratic-mulberry-bush jargon, the answer seemed to be moms’ babysitters would have to be the “home coaches”. For older students the answer seemed to be they could be left alone with the on-line academy. It felt like for those kids it was, “You’re on your own Spartacus.”
Board member and vice-chair, Andrew Scott took exception to an audience member’s teaching on the history of the government compulsory public school education system created by the 1854 Democratic Congress with its primary intention to indoctrinate. Scott stated public education is “…not to indoctrinate, it is to educate and make well-rounded individual whole citizens, residents of the community”. One parent who watched on-line commented on social media later what board member Scott said was “indoctrination”.
Board member Brim-Edwards took exception to an audience member’s noticing that in the discussion related to the new Mission Statement the word “parents” was never used and she stated, “Board members are parents” and that the district’s “…sole focus was on the students, that is what we are about.” She added that their mission statement would produce “…joyful, love to come to school…” students.
There was an endless repetition that the board would be guided by “local, state and federal public health experts.” Those public health experts are to weigh in at the August 4, 2021, board meeting. 6pm at 501 Dixon.
There was no mask discussion. No comment was made by anyone about the mask boxes advising all who read the box that masks are not for viruses. At an hour and sixteen minutes into the board meeting there was one quick comment about students who have “…depression and suicide ideation…”
Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero stated that “…a majority of the students will return in the fall…” and reiterated that all is “…on track…”
August 1, 2021
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