Who's Dodging Bullets, And Who's Catching Them.

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WINNERS

With gas prices topping $3 a gallon at many Portland stations, oil is becoming a four-letter word. So please give props to greenies enjoying their karmic revenge while zipping by in cars powered by biodiesel, which last week was cheaper than many pumps' petro-diesel.

Multnomah Athletic Club members with criminal pasts can rest easy, safe in the knowledge that Andrew Wiederhorn can't "out" them. Wiederhorn had threatened, as part of his lawsuit seeking re-admittance to the MAC, to scour the club's files for members with criminal records like himself. But a judge last week dismissed that lawsuit.

The latest "class" lesson in Portland Public Schools tells us that elementary schools with well-heeled kids got to dodge the latest round of closures. Northeast's Hollyrood Elementary and Southwest's Rieke Elementary remain alive for the moment after votes last week by the Portland School Board.

Gresham will get some overdue love this summer from the Oregon Department of Transportation. ODOT promises to highlight the burb in upcoming sign makeovers along Interstate 84, so no one need ever worry about missing the exit for 207th Avenue again.

LOSERS

At least Gov. Ted Kulongoski can say he tops President Bush's rock-bottom poll ratings. But that's slim comfort, given that a poll released last week by The Oregonian and KATU showed a measly 43 percent of Dems want four more years of the increasingly vulnerable guv.

Sunday's Oregonian exposed Army recruiters who signed up an 18-year-old autistic Marshall High School senior. Their alleged refusal to even look at the medical records his mother offered guarantees them a bunk in a special circle of Hell below even payday lenders.

Future high-school students will no longer be able to buy Cokes and other sweet fizzy drinks in the hallway. The litigation-leery soda industry announced last week they're pulling sugary beverages out of schools within four years. No word yet how caffeine-starved teens plan on staying awake through English class.

05.09.2006 at 09:00 Reply

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Who's Dodging Bullets, And Who's Catching Them.Your snarky, misinformed and misleading "winners" item on well-heeled kids at Hollyrood and Rieke elementary schools dodging school closures demonstrates once again that WW is too often more interested in the sound bite than in the substance. As I'm sure you're aware but have so far failed to report in detail, Hollyrood did not escape the axe. The school will be open next school year but will be made a part of Fernwood Middle School thereafter. In other words, under the current plan, the only way the school stays open after next year is as an "annex" to Fernwood that can be closed at any time with little or no process. I hardly think this amounts to escaping. As for Rieke, the parents in that school are forced to act as recruiters for PPS and shell out money from their own pockets to keep their school open. If they fail to attract enough students, the school can be closed. While I understand the attraction of the hip sound bite (especially when it advances your cred as populist friends of the common man), it does not serve either your paper or your readers well. There is a lot of real news to report on the topic of school closures, much of it touching on issues and concerns that go to the heart of what makes Portland what it is. Here's hoping that in the future you can resist the easy sound bite and actually start covering this emerging story. —Sam Panarella

Who's Dodging Bullets, And Who's Catching Them.WW writes (Winners / Losers, May 10th) that PPS "elementary schools with well-heeled kids got to dodge the latest round of closures."Did you actually sit in on the board meetings last week? If so, you'd have learned that Hollyrood's program will (as originally proposed) close next year unless the building is converted to an "annex" for the K-8 Fernwood, while (contrary to the original proposal) the less "well-heeled" but still excellent programs at Humboldt and Astor Elementaries remain alive for the moment. Rieke survived because its enrollment has been consistent over the years, because it's in a cluster where elementary enrollment over the next decade is predicted to remain essentially constant, and because its unique location in a designated town center makes it a good place to think about trying to expand PPS enrollment rather than stick with the same old reactive doom and gloom that has dominated district closure and reconfiguration decisions over the last several years.Keeping these quality schools open for business and expansion is a far sight better approach than most recent PPS solutions. To suggest, as you do, that those decisions are motivated by some vague classism on the part of PPS is not only wrong, but a journalistic tactic that I expected to see in the playbook of the local evening news programs, not WWeek. Time for you to go back to school." —Jeff Dobbins

05.10.2006 at 09:00 Reply

Who's Dodging Bullets, And Who's Catching Them.Geez, your comments about Hollyrood ES and Rieke ES in your "winners" section really make me wonder about the quality of WW reporting this week...could you get any more obviously lazy in labeling this as a "classist" issue!? If you were truly "tuned-in" and not just looking to evoke some uninformed emotional response from your readers, you would have included Bridger ES and Humboldt ES amongst schools that weren't closed (and since I'm questioning your journalist talents this week, FYI, Bridger and Humboldt are not "well-heeled"). Humboldt, Rieke, Bridger, and Hollyrood remain open to their neighborhoods regardless of the socio-economics of the families that they serve. All are "right-sized" schools that work hard to successfully educate their students. What would have been more on target in your winners and losers for the week and what would have indicated that you had actually followed this story beyond the sound-bite level would have been to call PPS a "winner" (note the snarky quotation marks here). PPS successfully disenfranchised a portion of their ardent supporter base through this ill-conceived, ridiculously hasty, top-down, short-sighted reconfiguration plan that through much of its implementation (fortunately, Hollyrood, Bridger, Humboldt, and Rieke aside) will further corporatize public education in Portland.—SF Tufa NE Portland

05.11.2006 at 09:00 Reply

Who's Dodging Bullets, And Who's Catching Them.Even IF Hollyrood was kept (temporarily) alive because of quote-unquote "well-heeled" connections of the people who live nearby ... so, what of it?If quote-unquote "well-heeled" connections (parents of students?) in any way use their connections for their children's benefit ... well, wouldn't we all do the same thing? I think you would, unless your name is Marx, Lennin, Stern, Meeker or Zusman.But it's a moot point, because WW got the facts wrong, anyway. But we now at least know for a fact that WW is an advocate for spreading classist rhetoric, ironically for the obvious capitalistic goal of selling more papers. Frauds!—Your bias is showing, commarade!

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Who's Dodging Bullets, And Who's Catching Them.