Portland Public Schools and Physical Education: Progress but not total victory
By:
NWHF Staff
| Posted on: July 23rd, 2010
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Photo: Stephanie Yao/The Oregonian
Thanks in large part to the hard work of the Coalition to Save Portland PE, particularly the indefatigable Mary Lou Hennrich, Portland Public Schools will not completely gut its physical education programs in spite of upcoming budget restraints.
As Mary Lou Hennrich reported to PE advocates on July 20, the district established a “floor” for PE instructors in every elementary and middle school (0.5 PE Specialist in each building).
“This is one of those ‘half full or half empty glass’ situations,” she said. “When we first started down this road on June 25, Superintendent Smith had just recommended the elimination of ALL PE specialist teachers in PPS elementary and middle schools. During the past school year (’09-10) most schools had at least 1.0 PE teachers—so to have the decision announced last evening that they would maintain ‘a minimum of a half time PE teacher at each school building’ was indeed a victory. We believe that the advocacy of our Coalition to Save Portland PE played an important part in this decision. On the other side of the coin, however, is the fact that cutting the ‘09/10 staffing in half is definitely a big step backwards!”
Mary Lou and the Coalition to Save Portland PE are proposing two immediate steps:
1) Send a letter to Superintendent Smith, and the Board, with copies to all building principals, asking once more for their “plan” to meet the state PE curriculum standards in light of these cutbacks. We will also put them on notice that the Coalition will be monitoring the implementation of their plan.
The letter will also state that if the plan does not meet the current state law and administrative rule requirements for PE, that the State Department of Education should follow up and take action with the district.
2) Write a “dear principal” letter to each school principal, since it will now be up to the individual principals to meet building budget targets as they see fit and potentially “go higher than the 0.5 FTE floor,” at their discretion.
As Mary Lou says, “we want to be sure that they understand why a robust PE program in their building is essential to their students’ academic performance, positive behavior and health. They have not been in attendance at the Board meetings where these messages were delivered so persuasively and we think they should at least hear them through a well messaged letter.”
More info on the latest developments, and other resources, can be found at the Save Portland PE Facebook page.
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