SENTINEL NEWS SERVICE

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights notified Portland Public Schools on July 15 that it was opening an investigation of the district based on a complaint against PPS filed by Marta Guembes. Guembes claims that the school district has consistently failed to provide adequate programs for ESL (English as a Second Language) students in the district, and this failure constitutes a violation of the children's civil rights.

The complaint was filed on May 7 by Guembes, known locally as an activist in the campaign to rename Interstate Avenue after labor leader Cesar E. Chavez.

In its notice to PPS Superintendent Carole Smith, the Department of Education stated the claimant believed that PPS had failed to provide students of Limited-English Proficiency (LEP) at Madison, Roosevelt and Marshall high schools with services necessary to insure equal opportunity in the educational program.  The claimant, Guembes, also believed that the schools failed to provide information in an effective manner to parents of LEP students about "their children and school programs and activities."

The district was asked to submit, within 15 days of the filing, responses to a 15- point list of documentation requests on the LEP program, including, but not limited to, the LEP evaluation procedures; methods of teaching; programming and enrollment statistics at the district level and at the three schools in question if they differed. 

Three years ago, North Portland's Roosevelt High School launched a small-schools program that divided the high school into three smaller learning academies. One such smaller school was the Spanish English International School (SEIS). In theory, SEIS provides specialized programming in English and Spanish.

More as it develops.