News A new poll paid for by Portland Public Schools shows a majority of Portland voters likely would support a $500 million construction bond to renovate and rebuild the district's aging campuses. Translation? On Monday, Superintendent Carole Smith is likely to announce plans to ask voters in the school district to OK a hefty tax increase when she goes before the Portland School Board to present her ...   More

News Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith wants the School Board to approve a $21.6 million renovation of the 89-year-old Marysville K-8 School, which burned in a fire last November. The recommendation from the superintendent is a more expensive alternative to rebuilding only the damaged spaces of the wood-frame building, which suffered about $7 million in fire damage up from an original ...   More

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News Last week's tweaks to Portland Public Schools' high-school redesign put hundreds of eighth-grade students in the district in limbo. That's because Superintendent Carole Smith proposed eliminating the ninth grades at both Benson Polytechnic and Marshall high schools this fall on the assumption (now incredibly shaky) that the Portland School Board would approve her plan to turn Benson and Marshall ...   More

News Superintendent Carole Smith is giving Portland Public Schools principals and vice principals extra time off this summer as she prepares to lay off more than 120 teachers amid the latest statewide budget crisis. "In this difficult climate, we will not be requiring principals and vice principals to work a minimum of 18 workdays during the summer," writes Hank Harris, the district's human resources ...   More

News Schools activist Carrie Adams provides this update today on Portland Public Schools' stated goal of sharing the Marshall High School campus with the David Douglas School District. The one-sentence summary? PPS is no closer to hatching a plan now than it was in June, when WW last wrote about the effort. The idea to share the campus with David Douglas emerged in April from Superintendent Carole ...   More

News Superintendent Carole Smith announced this afternoon that Portland Public Schools won't have to make as many cuts next year as the district had feared. That's thanks to the promise of new federal funding, which the district says will save many of its previously imperiled teaching jobs. Now instead of $19 million in cuts, PPS must make $13 million in reductions next year -- 52 positions in the ...   More

News The Portland School Board tonight gave the go-ahead to Superintendent Carole Smith to cut $13 million, not $19 million, from the 2010-11 school year's budget, trusting that federal lawmakers will make up the difference. But a few School Board members, notably Martín González, pushed back on the superintendent for not offering many details on her proposed cuts to the district's ...   More

News Portland Public Schools has released the details of Superintendent Carole Smith's plan to reduce spending at the district's central office. Those cuts (released Friday and posted above) will save $3 million a year and are part of a $13 million reduction in spending due to statewide budget cuts. The school district's general counsel would not provide a list of the proposed cuts until after the ...   More

News Parents of special-education students in Portland Public Schools hold out hope the school district will reverse course on its proposed cuts to programs for kids with learning disabilities. In a July 29 letter [PDF] calling the $3.3 million in proposed cuts "disproportionate and damaging," parents and other supporters of special education programs ask Superintendent Carole Smith to make fewer ...   More