Hillsboro, OR Public Schools

Our elected representatives in Salem are only a few weeks away from finishing their work and going back home, where they can finally go back to campaigning for the 2006 elections, surely posturing one more as the defenders of public education, just like they did in 2004. Most of the commissions have shut down, and very little of substance has any chance to be approved at this point. Both the...

At the budget committee meeting last night, Hillsboro School Superintendent Jeremy Lyon replied to a question from one of the committee members about the proposal of outsourcing the custodians' positions. He said that we need to look at all that is not strictly within our core competence, which is educating children, to look for ways to save money. Basically, the vast majority of classified...

This evening we have the annual town hall meeting for the Hillsboro 2020 vision. 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Hillsboro Civic Center 150 E. Main Street, Hillsboro I will attend, and see what is the new vision for the city when it comes to education. A few months ago I attended a presentation of the results of the previous five year vision implementation, and I did not see much related to local...

An article in today's Christian Science Monitor talks about the Rift over recruiting at public high schools, with a PTA at Garfield high school in Seattle passing a resolution against recruiting on campus. High schools are struggling with a similar issue as the No Child Left Behind Act requires that schools receiving federal funding must release the names of its students to recruiters. Some feel...

A few days ago, we received an email message from the Hillsboro School Board chair Monica Cordrey. It was in regards to our previous post on the strategic planning meeting, where I expressed the concern that the team assembled for the strategic planning was not really representative of our schools, with too many people from the top of the district org chart and too few parents and teachers. Chair...

I began a very long day in Salem, yesterday. I was with a group of school advocates from the Oregon PTA and Stand for Children, who attended the House floor discussion on HB 2727. Iw was fascinating to see the pure arrogance of the republicans and of the speaker Minnis to eliminate the right of the minority of being heard. And the total lack of attention that the majority pays to the "special...

The Oregon form of government requires an informed public aware of the deliberations and decisions of governing bodies and the information upon which such decisions were made. I read this snippet of chapter 192 of the Oregon Revised Statutes at the Hillsboro School District budget committee yesterday evening, to make the point that while the school district follows the letter of the law in...