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Parkrose superintendent’s first-year report

LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

When she first came to Parkrose as its new school district superintendent last year, Karen Fischer Gray was admittedly ignorant of the area (although she knew more about Parkrose than Portland, thanks to the Mid-county Memo). A year later, she is a confirmed community booster.

Parkrose School District Superintendent Karen Fischer Gray
MEMO PHOTOS: TIM CURRAN
Asked about highlights of her first year, she replied, “We won our homecoming football game for the first time in five years! Go Broncos! It was either Madras or Roosevelt we beat, I forget. Crowds of people turned out.” (It was Madras; the varsity football team recorded its best season in years, going 2-7. The other win was vs. Roosevelt.)

When the topic turned serious, she said, “It was a very steep learning curve for me, getting to know a new community, a new city and lots and lots of new people. It’s my first year working with a new administration team and board.”

And what did she learn?
“I love the feeling of Parkrose. It’s like a separate town. The people are super-dedicated and they really care about their schools.” Told of the chaos of 10 years ago, when former Parkrose School Board members Karen Rutledge and Sallie LaValley (abetted by Peg Billings) played havoc with board proceedings, Fischer Gray said, “On the board now are five intelligent, articulate, collaborative people, the antithesis of dysfunctional. (They, and the staff, are) intelligent, dedicated, the highest caliber I’ve ever seen.”

And they have to be, for this district faces major challenges. Referring scornfully to a recent daily paper story about “all-white” Portland, Fischer Gray said, “We’re working with an amazingly diverse group of students.”

The statistics tell it. Ethnically, 20 percent of the district’s students are of Asian or Pacific Island descent, 21 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are African-American, 2 percent are Native American, 44 percent are Caucasian and many are immigrants from the former Soviet Union. In addition, 67 percent are from families below the poverty line; 42 percent are from families with a high level of mobility, meaning they are homeless or close to it; and 21 percent speak a language other than English at home. For Shaver Elementary, the last three figures are even higher: 92 percent are in poverty, 69 percent are mobile and 40 percent speak English as a second language. There are 30 languages spoken by Parkrose students, with the most common being Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese. “It’s super-important for us to be culturally appropriate,” Fischer Gray said. “How to do more with less.”

Of course this last statement is necessary, as they have ever-diminishing resources to do this with. Even before the current recession, the district has had inadequate and unstable state funding.

“Last year the state started to rev up (to address the problem) and then backed off.” And now? “I came from a place (Coos Bay) where we had enormous budget cuts, and now (here) we’re facing enormous shortfalls. We’re not going backward; I just refuse.”

Among her ongoing agendas are instituting professional learning communities. This means instituting “a systematic way of analyzing student data. We ask four questions: What are the students learning? How do we know they’re learning it? What do we do when kids don’t get it? What do we do when they already know it?”

Fischer Gray has also gotten to know something of the local political structure and, once again, she is favorably impressed. She participated in the creation of the East Portland Action Plan, due for enactment this month. She sees the fact that the Portland City Council was willing to schedule a rare night session outside City Hall a second time as a testament that City Council wants to work things out for east Portland. Both Mayor Sam Adams and Multnomah County Commission Chair Ted Wheeler have been working with all five of the school districts that serve Portland, and Fischer Gray finds them “collaborative, inclusive and intelligent.” Of former Mayor Tom Potter, who kicked off the EPAP process, she said, “He was nice; I just didn’t get to know him.”

Adams made a major statement by holding his inauguration at Parkrose High School. Fischer Gray saw this as a sign that “our new mayor doesn’t see 82nd Avenue as a dividing line; (he wants) a united city.”
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