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 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 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 CLARIFICATION: The business manager at Jefferson who is referenced in this report lost her job as a result of a layoff amid budget cuts. Jefferson High School's former principal, Cynthia Harris, is no longer on paid leave. She's just on plain leave because she let her administrative license expire July 31, and state rules prohibit Portland Public Schools from paying an unlicensed administrator. According ...   More

News In the upside-down world of Portland Public Schools where last-minute budget maneuvers have delayed staffing efforts, a handful of teachers are just now learning that they've been laid off. At Grant High School, the news hit the choral director, Katy Wagner-West, on Friday, less than four weeks before the start of school. And, just like the emergence of a Facebook group to save PE when it was ...   More

News Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith made an unsurprising announcement this afternoon that Toni Hunter, deputy district superintendent, would remain at Jefferson High School as interim principal for the upcoming school year. Smith also announced that the former Jefferson principal, Cynthia Harris, would remain on leave. But the announcement didn't say whether that was paid leave. PPS ...   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

News We wrote last month how Portland Public Schools was banking on Congress to OK federal spending that would allow the school district to fill the remaining $6 million gap in its budget. And today, the U.S. Senate appears to have justified that hope for a rescue—allowing the largest district in Oregon to preserve 60 teaching jobs—by clearing key procedural hurdles to permit a vote on ...   More

News In response to significant reductions in Portland Public Schools' special-education department, concerned parents met with school-district administrators downtown last night for a two-hour, kvetching-and-answer session. The special-education department's budget was originally slated to include $74.8 million in general fund dollars for the 2010-11 school year. But as the economic storm picked ...   More

News The Portland School Board announced last night it will fill the sudden $6 million hole in the school district's 2010-11 budget with reserves. That means Portland Public Schools will use a total of $22 million in reserves for the school year that starts next week. As a result, there will be no more cuts to staff this year. However, next year's budget will be especially difficult given the lack ...   More