The Portland Board of Public Education next week will consider a resolution to form a committee that would evaluate and make recommendations on changing the school district’s attendance boundaries for pre-kindergarten to 8th grade students.
Attendance boundaries are the means by which the district determines what school students shall attend.
[RELATED: Portland Schools Seek to Spend $224,000 on Hiring English Language Teachers for ‘new arrivals’…]
According to a summary of the proposal by Portland Public Schools (PPS) Superintendent Ryan Scallon, the community advisory committee would be tasked with recommending changes “to address demographic disparities that lead to inequitable resource allocation across the district.”
Scallon states in his summary that the proposal would support the Board’s top priority in their Comprehensive Plan, “Equity,” under which the district “strives to be an anti-racist, inclusive district by vigilantly supporting each student to achieve their potential and rooting out systemic inequities.”
[RELATED: South Portland School Board May Restructure Elementary Schools to Improve “Diversity”…]
Several Maine school districts have considered similar proposals to restructure their schools or redraw enrollment boundaries in the name of “equity,” including Regional School Unit 22 (RSU 22) and South Portland.
The last time that Portland Schools adjusted the boundaries or added new schools to the district was during the mid 2000s, per the proposed resolution.
Since that time, the district has undergone significant demographic changes, which, according to the resolution, has resulted in “substantial imbalances in the enrollment and demographics of our elementary schools,” particularly in regard to “students who are economically disadvantaged, experienced homelessness and/or multilingual learners.”
The demographic changes “contributes to inequities among the elementary schools for our students,” the resolution states.
In her 2023 State of the Schools report, Portland School Board Chair Sarah Lentz stated that thirty percent of students in the district are actively learning English, eighteen percent are supported by special education services and seven percent are homeless.
The proposed committee would be comprised of 12 to 14 members to be selected by the Board’s Appointments Committee in August, and would include members of the Board, staff representatives, current students, parents, and other community members.
The committee would begin their work at the start of the 2024-2025 school year, and would be required to present a report of their findings to the Board regarding any proposed changes to district’s attendance boundaries by February 2025.
The Board is slated to discuss and vote on the resolution at their Tuesday, June 18 Business Meeting.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="28667 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=28667">8 Comments
Good luck. Wait until the parents find out their kids would be BUSED across the city so the Woke district can play dumb games and pretend to be RACE-NEUTRAL. This will not fly.
I’m sure the “12-14 members” will be doing this “service” gratis so there will be no strain on the budget. (He said with tongue firmly in cheek) And I’m sure there will be an intense search to find only the best qualified people.
So, spend the long dollar to purchase a nice dwelling in an attractive part of town with schools offering a good education for your children, only to have them climb on a bus for a ride into a tough part of town. Then you can worry about both their education and their safety. The democrat/socialist approach.
Scallon states in his summary that the proposal would support the Board’s top priority in their Comprehensive Plan, “Equity,” under which the district “strives to be an anti-racist, inclusive district by vigilantly supporting each student to achieve their potential and rooting out systemic inequities.”
This just marxist commie bs!
The City is not what it use to be. Not safe. Stay away.
Why don’t we simply have an AI programed to be completly color, economic and politically blind redraw all voting districts?
Think about this, the people on this ‘committee’ in all likelihood have their kids in Waynflete, Cheverus, etc. so they are unaffected by this. How’s that working for you Portland? The Marxists own your city now, you get what you vote for, ENJOY!
Watching Marxism fail in real time is quite entertaining. Oh, gotta go…popcorn is ready…