News  One year ago, the parent of a Portland Public Schools student sued the district with claims a new Wi-Fi network in his daughter’s middle school was poisoning her and potentially harming other students.    More

News In Portland Public Schools, it’s not only curriculum and academic standards that are changing. The standards for school lunches are changing too, due to a federal mandate.Gitta Grether-Sweeney, head of the PPS nutrition services, says next year the school district won’t get reimbursed for lunches where a child does not select at least one fruit or vegetable.Grether-Sweeney says meals aren’t expensive ...   More

News Wieden+Kennedy took a break recently from selling Old Spice and hanging with Clint Eastwood to sell a different kind of product: Portland's public schools.At a Feb. 16 conference called "GOOD Ideas for Cities: Portland," put on by GOOD, the non profit and quarterly magazine dedicated to look for solutions to public problems, representatives from the Pearl District advertising firm unveiled their plan ...   More

News At one high school in Portland, only 38 percent of black kids graduate in four years, according to data released by the Oregon Department of Education on Friday. It’s Lincoln High—the worst in the district for black students graduating on time, according to data released for the 2010-11 school year.Lincoln, meanwhile, has the highest overall graduation rate among PPS high schools (84 percent), ...   More

News African-American students across Multnomah County are being suspended and expelled from middle and high schools at nearly 3.5 times the rate of white students, according to a report released Jan. 10 by the Multnomah County Commission on Children, Families & Community.The report finds disparity among the treatment of Hispanic and Native American students as well—a trend that's been also been found ...   More

News We know times are tough for government agencies. They’re cutting services—and sometimes trying to raise taxes—because of the recession. But a study by WW reveals there’s one sector of government that seems to be not only surviving, but thriving: public relations. Public agencies of all kinds have communication offices that employ squadrons of spokespeople who sometimes outnumber the reporters ...   More

News Portlanders for Schools, the election committee with a $1.1 million war chest, plans to hire paid canvassers to go door-to-door for the two Portland Public Schools tax measures on the May 17 ballot.A spokesman for the pro-tax campaign says it's increasingly difficult to reach voters, especially younger voters, by phone. As a result, the campaign is knocking on doors this weekend and the next to talk ...   More

News Portlanders for Schools, flush with cash for two campaigns to increase property taxes for schools, today launched two TV ads designed to provoke maximum sympathy for the multimillion-dollar measures. (Sidenote: The latest figures from the state elections division show the Portland Association of Teachers union recently donated $100,000 to the campaign, bringing Portlanders for Schools' total to $1 ...   More