VerticalResponse

As many parents have noticed, it was a rough start to the new year for SES. The year started with many facilities issues that we are still in the process of working through. Here is an update on issues inside and outside the school building.

Inside

In the last six years the population at Sunnyside has grown considerably to its current population of 585. This has stretched our resources and has led us to use spaces for educational purposes that were once used for storage, library and other non classroom uses.

The building was not designed for this extensive use and we have had to be creative and work hard to accommodate our students. We have done this with very, very little assistance from Portland Public Schools. PTSA has raised money, parents have done the work and teachers have moved and painted and made significant accommodation.

Some of these accommodations did not meet fire codes and so, over Christmas Break, the district made changes that they believed were necessary to meet fire codes. This included eliminating the doors on the fifth grade rooms and the temporary wall between the library and Logan's room.

We understand that this is causing concern and discomfort for many children and staff. I am sorry and wish it could be different. I will continue to work with PPS on a long term plan to meet fire codes while assuring adequate teaching spaces for staff and children. While I realize that, in the past, parents funded many of the prior projects, I do not feel that this is possible to fix the current problems and so we will need to wait until the district determines when they can finish these projects.

On a positive note, PPS facilities has told us that, pending a final budget decision, SES will get a "portable" that will contain two classrooms. This will be installed over the summer to relieve some of our overcrowding issues.

I will share any news I receive on these projects. I appreciate your understanding.

Enrollment:

As many of you know, SES has been in talks with PPS to review and attempt to adjust the school's enrollment process. This letter is a way to update you about what's happened and to provide you with a philosophical understanding of where things stand.

When SES teacher Jan and I founded the Environmental Middle School almost 15 years ago, an essential element to the mission of the school was to accept children from different regions of the city. We saw a need to provide a school that bridged communities within Portland both through enrollment and the curriculum. We saw as an essential part of the learning process the concept that students and families would purposefully choose the school and the curriculum.

For the last six years we have recognized and expressed concern about the school's shrinking ability to meet this goal. Indeed, over the years, the school moved from enrollment by application to enrollment by lottery to, now, primarily a neighborhood school. Since moving to SES, the staff has struggled with what these changes mean to them both personally and professionally.

Site council has struggled with this for six years as well. Last year site council proposed to PPS, changing the school's enrollment policy to a 100 percent lottery with a preference for neighborhood children, based on available slots. We learned recently that PPS did not accept this proposal, nor has it offered another option. This means that the number of children who can come to the school through the lottery is shrinking every year.

The staff wonders how they can live out the school's mission under this circumstance and is in deep and thoughtful conversation about what this means to them as individuals and a staff. It is important to most staff members that students/families choose to be here and that no one is forced to attend a focus option school that is not of their choice.

It is also important to staff that the environmental focus option be available to students through a fair and equitable process rather than the luck or privilege of their address.

On a philosophical note: There are two concepts of school in this conversation. One is the physical building of Sunnyside School and one is the "environmental school" which is composed of a mission and vision and set of curriculum practices. The "environmental school" has moved in its life from Sarah's dream to a box of ideas to a living room discussion to a middle school at Abernethy to a K-8 at Sunnyside. It is not seen as a particular place but a way of being and learning in the world.

When something, anything fails to meet its original mission, it must change that mission, it must accept that the organization is no longer valid as it was conceived, or it must make accomodations for that mission.

On a practical side, the school is very crowded and to accomodate students we will need to add space. This year, as things stand, we will be able to take, in the lottery, only siblings in kindergarten and about 25 sixth graders. It has been seen as essential that we add midddle schoolers in sixth grade so this is important, from my perspective, to preserve.

In addition, because of over-crowding a new system of verifying addresses for neighborhood families will be intiated next year.

I sincerely hope this helps.

Sarah

Outside

As many SES families know, the school has been working for several years to create a safer outside environment for students and staff. This process has been long and cumbersome because of a 1980 agreement between Portland Public Schools and Portland Parks & Recreation that gave Parks control of the school grounds North from Taylor St. (basically the middle of the playground). To be clear, PPS owns the entire school block, but PP&R controls the large section of grounds, which it calls Sunnyside School Park.

Starting in the spring, PPS formed a task force with SES parents, neighborhood association representatives, PPS staff and PP&R staff to try to work out a compromise agreement. SES had three goals that the school felt were a significant compromise in order to help improve safety while recognizing the need to maintain the park as a community gathering place. The goals were: to add fencing (Sarah proposed a low, artistic fence that would serve as a border rather than a barrier) to send a clear message to adult strangers who may enter the park during school hours; to have exclusive use (posted on clear signs) of the school grounds during school hours, with exceptions for pre-school groups such as Children's Club; to be able to, like most other schools in the district, go through a reasonable process to make changes to the grounds (adding play equipment or creating a new garden).

The group had difficulty reaching consensus. The neighborhood association vehemently opposed any new fencing and did not wanting to grant exclusive use to the school for the entire school day. The school felt that anything less would not serve student safety needs. Over Christmas Break, Commissioner Nick Fish, in conjunction with C.J. Silvestre at PPS, decided to move ahead with a proposal that they felt was the best compromise that they could reach at this time. It is a plan that the school does not support. In it, PP&R will issue the school an exclusive use permit for school days that allows only school use of the park (excluding an as yet to be determined section in the north-east corner) from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. This plan would start March 1, 2010, and expire at the end of this school year when PPS and PP&R would re-evaluate the plan. PP&R would add plants and boulders to demarcate the line between the area of the park that will be left open to the community at all times and the area that will be permitted for exclusive use by the school for five hours a day.

Again, the school does not support this plan, nor do SES teachers or the PTSA Board. They don't feel that the original requests were unreasonable nor that the proposed plan will adequately safe-guard SES students. A group of parents who have been involved in this process have set up a meeting with Commissioner Fish's office for next week to voice their concerns and we encourage parents to voice their own concerns or suggestions to City Council, PPS and the School Board.

In addition, a PP&R staff person will be speaking about this issue at the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association (SNA) meeting Thursday, January 14 at 7 p.m. in the SES cafeteria. We encourage Sunnyside neighborhood families to attend that meeting and voice their opinions or to send a message to the neighborhood association by calling (503-295-1699), emailing (board@sunnysideneighborhood.com) or add a Facebook comment to the SNA page.

Sincerely,

Your SES PTSA Board