News Amid a fresh $13 million budget crisis last July, Portland Public Schools eliminated 27 positions from its central office to save $3 million.Among the jobs that Superintendent Carole Smith cut was one full-time position for a senior program manager in the district's facilities department. That job belonged to Doug Capps, a long-time district employee who was also once a Portland School Board member.Well, ...   More

News Portland Public Schools Superintendent Carole Smith has backed off plans to redraw the attendance boundaries around Sabin K-8 School and Alameda Elementary School in Northeast Portland, bowing to intense pressure from parents who said they were concerned the process to boost attendance at Sabin was too fast.That means there will be no changes to those schools' neighborhood attendance zones for the ...   More

News About seven weeks after putting her on paid administrative leave, Portland Public Schools this week fired Diana Fernandez, director of the district's department for teaching English as a second language.The change comes on the heels of a Nov. 30 decision by the Portland School Board to make wholesale reforms to the ESL department, which has been plagued by numerous state and federal findings of severe ...   More

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News One huge, unresolved issue surrounding Portland Public Schools' high-school redesign concerns career training. Under Superintendent Carole Smith's School Board-approved plan, Benson Polytechnic High School will offer fewer career-training classes to a smaller number of students. However, the remaining eight high-school campuses will offer students access to jobs-focused classes that they now lack. To ...   More

News As part of her high-school redesign, Superintendent Carole Smith in September proposed closing the high school at the 206-student Harriet Tubman Young Women's Academy, leaving it as a far smaller sixth- through eighth-grade middle school with 150 students. Smith's predecessor, former Superintendent Vicki Phillips, created the academy as an offshoot of Jefferson High School in 2007. Yesterday, ...   More

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 will pitch a six-year, $548 million construction bond to the Portland School Board tonight as part of her plan to rehabilitate the district's aging campuses. The bond, which would cost an average homeowner in the school district about $300 a year in additional property taxes, goes to the School Board for a vote on Dec. 13. If approved by the ...   More

News Grant High School's new principal is continuing to shake things up at Portland Public Schools' biggest high school. In a lengthy online letter to students, teachers and parents, Principal Vivian Orlen said she was "saddened" to see what transpired at Grant on the last day of "Spirit Week" in October, when seniors dressed in togas as part of a school tradition stretching back decades. "What ...   More

News Remember the 8-year-old Portland boy who was suspended for a day earlier this year for bringing a toy gun to Duniway Elementary School? The boy got that punishment last February because Portland Public Schools policy treated toy guns the same as "simulated weapons." That meant the third-grade student automatically faced a minimum punishment of suspension. The result outraged Aron Anderson, the ...   More