SENTINEL NEWS REPORT: by Roger Anthony

Jefferson Rejects Academies?Members of the Jefferson Parent Teacher Student Association will go before City Council Wednesday to present a resolution calling for the end of Portland School District policies that they say perpetuate cycles of discrimination.

The resolution was read to members of the Portland School Board Monday -- in the three-minute increments allocated for public testimony.

The School Board's monthly meeting was held in the auditorium of Jefferson High School, the Board choosing to follow the lead of Portland Mayor Tom Potter, who has moved his office into the North Portland school for the week.

Potter was on hand for the opening of Monday's meeting, which began with an upbeat, congratulatory feel.

That vanished quickly, as Jefferson Principal Cynthia Harris presented a plan that would eliminate two of the self-contained academies at the school -- the first step, perhaps, in reconfiguring Jefferson once again.

The academy system, which is also used at Roosevelt High School, the other North Portland public high school, creates smaller, self-contained "schools within the school" at each building. There are five such academies at Jefferson, including both all-boys and all-girls academies.

Members of the JPTSA, while supportive of Harris' plan, bluntly told the board that it didn't go far enough.

"This is a very small first step in the right direction," Steve Rawley told the board. Rawley, a North Portland resident who said he "hopes to become a Jefferson parent," called for a return to a comprehensive high school structure. "And 'comprehensive' means more than just tearing down the walls between the academies." He called for the board to reconsider the district's transfer system, a policy that JPTSA member Nancy Smith said "increased racial and socio-economic discrimination."

If nothing else, the transfer policies severely curtail enrollment in North Portland public schools. That, in turn, fuels a cycle in which class offerings are cut back because staffing numbers at the school fall.

Nicole Breedlove, parent of a Humboldt Elementary student, presented the board with a chart that illustrated the problem.

Breedlove listed the electives offered to seventh-graders at Humboldt -- once-a-week classes in art, computer tech and "movement" -- and compared them with the choices available at Skyline School in Northwest Portland. Skyline, by contrast, has full Physical Education classes twice a week, both music and band three times per week, Spanish, a twice-weekly computer lab, twice-weekly library sessions, and a parent-led program in art literacy.

Under questioning from board member Sonja Henning, District Superintendent Carole Smith told the board that Harris' proposal was, at this point, simply "ideas that are under discussion."

-- Roger Anthony