Scrutiny of Portland schools' spending, priorities is reasonable, not racist: Editorial Agenda 2016

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Portland Public Schools administrative headquarters in Northeast Portland.

(Helen Jung/Staff)

For 15 minutes, Ellis "Ray" Leary railed against board member Mike Rosen, accusing him of conducting a "public bullwhipping" and comparing Rosen's inquiry into his $207,000 no-bid contract to the tactics of a slave owner.

Leary, whose I AM Academy nonprofit provides support and services for about 100 African American male students in Portland Public Schools, contended at Tuesday's board meeting that his agreement was singled out for scrutiny, revealing an "at best dishonest, and at worst, racist" view.

Leary's umbrage is somewhat understandable, in that his well-regarded nonprofit was included in board discussions and news stories that detailed the district's sloppy management of millions of dollars' worth of no-bid contracts. But his condemnation of Rosen and those directors who supported re-evaluating contract practices is misplaced. Without the scrutiny that they are bringing to the district's spending and priorities, Portland schoolchildren have no hope of getting entrenched inequities in classroom instruction, course offerings and even access to textbooks addressed by a district that has shrugged off the needs of its poorest students for years.

Editorial Agenda 2016

Despite Leary's view, board members looked at many other contracts, finding that the district has failed to enact reforms recommended in 2005 by a Multnomah County audit. There was little evidence that district staff regularly evaluate contractors' performance. And as Leary's contract showed, district staff were authorizing work months before bringing contracts to the board for approval, which is required by law. Due to board pressure, the staff has tightened up some practices.

Portland Public Schools' contracting procedures are only one area upon which Rosen, fellow board member Paul Anthony and others have focused their attention, however. They are examining administrator pay, a hot-button topic for taxpayers and teachers alike. In the past two years, administrators, including Superintendent Carole Smith, have received double-digit salary hikes, despite already making six-figure salaries. Teachers saw 2.3 percent raises. An audit is underway.

Parents have weighed in as well, identifying questionable no-bid contracts, including an $11,000 agreement granted last year to a friend of then-communications head Jon Isaacs to produce a nine-page spreadsheet with no written analysis.

Individually, these expenditures may seem small. And such scrutiny may feel uncomfortable, intrusive or insulting to those whose contracts or salaries are under review. But their discomfort isn't and shouldn't be the point. Being able to pay for basic educational needs of students throughout the district is.

Consider the criticisms of parents in just the past several months. They have, on their own, researched disparities in classroom instructional time, where students in many low-income neighborhood schools receive hours less each week than their counterparts in wealthier Portland neighborhoods. They have found that students in some schools don't get instruction in algebra if the school deems that there are not enough students worth devoting a teacher to the core class. And the district has acknowledged that it has been using federal poverty funds that are supposed to pay for extra academic supports to cover regular curriculum needs instead.

Even the school board meeting where Leary made his comments shows how the district can't cover basic needs despite receiving $600 million in taxpayer money. Board members wrestled with how to cover the cost of textbooks for students and library books for high-poverty schools. These are not luxuries, but they have to be made priorities by a school district whose administration views questions and scrutiny as acts of war.

In the end, both Anthony and Rosen voted against the budget. As Anthony noted, "I believe we are seriously underinvesting in supports for our historically underserved and high needs students -- both in terms of outside programs and institutional supports and in terms of our own academic programming."

"Our poorest schools," Anthony said, "continue to go without critical resources, our (special education) inclusion continues to be seriously under-resourced, yet the process is so contrived that the board cannot weigh established funding against these needs, and so they go unfilled."

Too many times, the district's answer for why it can't do x or y is that it lacks the resources. If that is the case, then it only makes sense for board members to look where its dollars are going and whether the district is managing them responsibly. But resisting oversight or trying to cast it as racist won't help fix the deep inequities that are hurting students throughout the district.

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Unfortunately, last Tuesday's meeting revealed that some board members are unwilling to take the heat. Vice chairwoman Amy Kohnstamm, who has clashed over some of the efforts to scrutinize spending, chastised fellow member Steve Buel at one point for characterizing a past staffing strategy as "willy nilly." Such a reference, she intoned, was "insulting." Board member Julie Esparza Brown agreed and urged other members to remember to show respect.

Yet Kohnstamm and Esparza Brown both gave Leary a standing ovation after he had just spent a quarter of an hour accusing Rosen of racist and paternalistic intentions. Board chairman Tom Koehler and director Pam Knowles -- who smiled and nodded throughout Leary's address -- joined them. Such strong support for someone who is willing to paint a board member as racist for asking the district to follow its own policies comes across as sharply more insulting than using the term "willy nilly."

Such dysfunction only shows that the district may still be a long way from operating with the financial discipline that taxpayers deserve for the $600 million they send to Portland Public Schools each year. It's something taxpayers should keep in mind if the board opts to ask them to fund another $500 million or more in a bond this year.

-- The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board