The Village, Community & Disappearing Schools

Importance of Community, Public Education

I was reading about the Village Building Convergence (http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/projects/vbc) sponsored event at my daughter's elementary school ( Lewis Elementary): a neighborhood school project that integrates garden-based education and village-building, place-based education. I'm hoping to get involved with that.

In the last month, I and my family have had the opportunity and privilege to participate in our immediate, local community and neighborhood school:

• Talent Show
• Lews Earth Day event where parents, teachers and volunteers from PSU.
• An Art Night celebrating the fantastic artwork of our children and the inspiration they receive from local examples of art and nature.
• Run for the Arts event where my daughter earned money for school art programs by running (walking laps around the school)

In 2007, This May All Go Away

Our local neighborhoods and the concept of community are being slowly whittled away and compromised by well-intended administrators that are creating centralized and impersonal solutions for public school funding challenges:

• One SE elementary school will be closed: our SE neighborhoods are now competing against each other - neighbor pitted against neighbor - to make sure their school is not the one to close.

Parents & Neighbors of SE Districts 6 & 7: Say NO

Wouldn't it be nice if all of Public School districts 6 & 7 stood before the School Board, arms linked together, and said: "No, None of our schools will close. We do not accept that solution. We live here because of the empowering of local community; we will not participate in compromising our children's education nor will we give up our control over that local choice -- we care for our local community."

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Everyone in Portland should be focused, concerned and active in empowering local economy, education and choices. While Portland as a whole seems to be comprehending this, certain parts of our city and branches of government are missing the point: you cannot measure everything in short-term return on dollars....

....Or if you think you or we can, then at least give us the facts by which you are making this business decisions: it's our money, our neighbors and our children.