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Parkrose School Superintendent Michael Taylor to retire by end of year

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

As this issue of the Memo went to press, Michael Taylor was preparing some very unwelcome news. At its May 24 meeting, the popular Parkrose School District Superintendent planned to tell his board that he intends to retire at the end of this year.

Why? Because, Taylor said, it is time - both for him and for the district.

“I’ve been at this for 32 years,” he said of his career in education. “I’ve had five-way bypass surgery and dealt with prostate cancer. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time here, but I want to enjoy life, spend time with my family and my grandchildren. I’ve been here eight years. That’s a pretty good time to lead a district.”

It is also the right time for the district. “You don’t want the district to hire a superintendent, then switch on him,” he said. “You don’t want the new superintendent to be confronted with a huge staff turnover or labor unrest.” At a district where Taylor previously worked, “In a year they had four superintendents, and the principal positions at all the schools turned over. You’d have to start all over again.”

In contrast, the Parkrose district has a stable, functioning board. It has long-term labor contracts. It has principals in all its schools that are likely to remain there for some time to come, “although a few may come or go.” In short, “This is the time.”

Still, he wants a good transition. “It’s important that the board goes through a year-long process of deciding where it wants the district to go - then, from that, does a superintendent search for someone that matches those criteria.”

Taylor is certainly leaving the district in much better shape than he found it.

In the 1990s the Parkrose District was a scene of constant turmoil, with conflict between board members, between members and the superintendent, threats of legal action, and near de-certification of the district. For all that, Taylor said he began with several advantages, one of them a prior relationship with Interim Superintendent David Cloud. “What he was able to do was sort out a number of issues and identify and articulate the real problems involved,” Taylor said. “He was able to be extremely candid with me. He was able to make predictions about whether I could work with certain people or not, and he was very accurate. Without that perspective, it would have been a lot more difficult.”

Perhaps, but Taylor has done more than just stabilize the district. He closed one school while instituting open enrollment among the five remaining elementary schools and reassigning staff - the sort of change that has recently created turmoil and anguish in the Portland district.

He also changed methods for decision making and planning, giving principals more power in many areas while instituting collective decision making in others. In the Parkrose district, each principal has charge of instruction, assessment, special education, and talented and gifted programs. “They have to know how to do it, and that takes a couple of years,” Taylor said. “This gives each principal ownership of his building and a real stake in its success. Some districts bypass the principal. I keep that to a minimum.”

That’s not to say schools have authority over everything. “If you give a school all their money, they’ll choose (helping a) kid over roofing every time,” Taylor said. “You have to budget for heating for the coldest winter. The school is likely to spend it on field trips, which is not necessarily good fiscal management.”

Instead, “We have a series of initiatives that we agree collectively to fund. We sit down at a table and decide what we’ve done. What do we keep? What do we need to do collectively?”

One collective decision is what’s known as “curriculum alignment.” “This is deciding what you teach each student and when you teach it,” Taylor said. If each child has 50 or 60 teachers during the course of their education, each teacher shouldn’t be completely responsible for what the child learns.” However, without some kind of overall guidance, “It’s easy for (the student) to miss something. You have to put into play a long-term strategy.”

While saying “All I’ve tried to do is set up a system for getting a quality staff,” Taylor added, “I challenge anyone to do as well as this district is doing, teaching the kids we teach.” The final clause is significant. With families in poverty increasingly settling in east Portland, local school districts have special challenges.

“Kids come to us with very different backgrounds and reading sets,” Taylor said. “Some come from households with minimum books, just TVs and PlayStations. We have to pick them up where they are.

“It used to be okay for kids to leave and go into the workplace or the military. Now, if they don’t have minimal skills, there’s nowhere for them to go. They need greater math and writing skills than ever before for any job. They have to understand how a machine works.”

A critical factor, he said, is parent involvement. “What is the relationship between parents and kids about learning? Is just going to school okay? What does the parent tell the kid about learning? ‘It’s okay to be math-ignorant - I was’ - no wonder the kids don’t learn. They may be great volunteers, but not necessarily supporting the kids in their learning journey.”

Taylor has made himself part of the larger community as well, becoming a regular at Mid-county business association and Parkrose Lions meetings. “Schools are the community, and vice versa,” he said. “As long as the district is called Parkrose, you can’t separate it from the community; it’s part of the image. Because this is a defined community, the most common experience for everyone here is the schools.” Thus there are shared projects and support, such as the $3,000 in scholarships that the Parkrose Business Association annually donates.

“Then there are the intangibles. Because I know them (business leaders) it’s much easier for me to call to get appropriate advice, and know whom to call. They’re also much more likely to call me. This is a chance to go into their world.”

Taylor is himself a true Oregonian. He received his secondary education from Oregon College of Education, Western Oregon State College, Oregon State, Portland State and the University of Oregon. He spent 15 years in the La Grande school system and another nine in Ontario schools, the last five as superintendent.

While not second-guessing his decision, Taylor said, “I worked for my father when I was 14. Counting that, I’ve worked for 42 years, and there was just 18 months when I was unhappy where I was working. I thoroughly enjoy coming to work every day. I will miss that. I’ll miss the people. This is a great district with a long tradition of quality going back to the ‘60s. With new challenges, it’s back. I hope it will be able to maintain and sustain the growth of the last four or five years.”
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