portland-tribune-031..

A4 NEWS
The Portland Tribune Thursday, March 14, 2013
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Board: Both candidates oppose
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Koehler, a father of three who
runs his own renewable fuels
consulting firm, joined a group
of Benson alumni and industry
leaders to denounce the enrollment
cap.
“(Career-technical education)
allows students to see a clear
pathway to living-wage employment
after high school and can
turn students on to the possibilities
of a two- or four-year college
education in a specific field,” he
told the board. “If we are serious
about equity, we need to be serious
about CTE.”
He and the others acknowledged
the board’s efforts to try to
boost the comprehensive high
schools that are under-enrolled
— namely Roosevelt, Madison
and Jefferson.
“While I understand past decisions
and the need for enrollment
balancing in order to create
strong neighborhood schools
as well as choice programs, I am
uncomfortable with stifling success
and ignoring demand,”
Koehler said.
The board did not take any action
on Benson’s enrollment
Monday night because there was
no formal proposal before it. District
staff could bring the issue to
the board in the future.
Robb Cowie, a PPS spokesman,
says there are no immediate
plans to discuss changes to
the enrollment and transfer policy.
But the situation at Benson is
“not fixed in stone,” and the role
of CTE at the school and districtwide
may be reexamined as high
school enrollment picks up and
as resources become available.
The other candidate running
for the Zone 6 school board seat,
Consuelo Saragoza, feels similarly
about the cap on Benson’s
enrollment.
“(The cap) needs to be looked
at; I think we’re missing an opportunity,”
Saragoza told the
Tribune in an interview before
her campaign announced via
Facebook that her father passed
away, and she had to leave town
to be with her family.
Saragoza, a senior adviser of
Public Health & Community Initiatives
for the Multnomah
County Health Department, says
she’s well aware of the delicate
balance between school choice
and neighborhood schools.
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She’s been following the
board’s efforts to boost enrollment
at Jefferson, where a large
chunk of Benson students transfer
from.
“I think there will have to be
hard decisions made,” Saragoza
says. “We have two incredible
programs we should capitalize
on.”
Importance of education
For Saragoza, running for the
board isn’t a new idea: someone
approached her with the idea
eight years ago, she says, but she
felt her daughter was too young
for her to make
such a time
commitment.
Now Saragoza
says she’s
ready to put in
the time, and
wants to push
the envelope on
the district’s equity
discus-
SARAGOZA
sions.
“Using my public health hat, I
try to look at the root cause of
problems,” she says.
Born and raised in a small
town in Nevada, she says her family
was one of a dozen or so Mexican-American
families. “My parents
didn’t have any education,
but knew the importance of education,”
she says.
While growing up, Saragoza
says she was told by people in her
community such things as,
“You’ll never make it in college.”
At one time, she says, “I thought I
couldn’t be a teacher because I
wasn’t white.”
Saragoza went on to earn a
bachelor’s degree in education
and Spanish from Southern Oregon
University, and a masters of
public administration from the
City College of New York.
For most of her career, she has
held management positions: she
began as a teacher in Ashland,
then directed a program for migrant
and English Language
Learners.
She ran an alternative learning
center in Woodburn for students
at risk of dropping out of school
and joined the Portland group
now called Impact Northwest to
supervise work with Native
American and Latino students.
Since 2000, Saragoza has been
a director at the county; she’s also
been program director and executive
director of the Oregon
Council for Hispanic Advancement.
In 2010, she was appointed to a
four-year seat on the TriMet
board, but since
her school board
campaign began
she’s taken a leave
of absence from
the board.
Saragoza has secured
endorsements
from Oregon
House Speaker
Tina Kotek, former
Multnomah County
Commissioners
Serena Cruz
Walsh and Maria
Rojo de Steffey, as well as six of
the Portland School Board members.
Board member Bobbie Regan
is endorsing both Saragoza and
Koehler; Sargent, the retiring
board member, says she likes
both candidates but hasn’t yet
decided whom to endorse.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Catalyst for change
Koehler, for his part, has secured
a line-up of big-hitters in
Portland’s circle of influence including
endorsements from congressman
Earl Blumenauer, Rep.
Jules Bailey, Sen. Jackie Dingfelder,
Gretchen Kafoury, Eileen
Brady, Tom Walsh, Nancy Hamilton,
Jefferson Smith, Liz
Kaufman and others.
He’s built connections with
many of those leaders from his
past work.
Born and raised in Portland,
the last of six boys, he attended
Catholic school and earned a degree
in economics from Oregon
State University. He served a
two-year term on the Corvallis
City Council, starting at age 24,
while he was in school.
In Koehler’s early career he
worked as a community organizer
in Nicaragua for the national
grassroots group Neighbor to
Neighbor, then on Gretchen Kafoury’s
first City Council campaign
and as transportation outreach
coordinator for Blumenauer.
Koehler wants parents and
teachers to be at the forefront of
reform. To see gains in the graduation
rate and closing the
achievement gap, he wants to
make sure the district invests
wisely and focuses on key priorities
like having topnotch
principals in
every building.
Koehler also
wants to build a culture
of innovation.
For example, he
cites an online resource
called the
Kahn Academy,
which offers free
learning technology
that teachers
could use to “differentiate”
their lessons
to their students’ wide range
of abilities.
Koehler, who fashions himself
as a “catalyst for change,” says he
began having discussions with
people about a year ago about the
future of the school system.
Those talks morphed into a
run for the board seat when it became
open. He has a son and
daughter at Cleveland; his older
daughter graduated from Cleveland
last year and is at the University
of Oregon.
Besides the Benson enrollment
cap, both candidates have a
slightly different take on another
recent board matter.
Koehler isn’t satisfied with the
Jefferson cluster enrollment balancing
process that resulted in
the merger of Chief Joseph and
Ockley Green schools.
“In hindsight, it was not well
done,” he says. “The process
stirred up the whole community,
and all that controversy didn’t
have to happen.”
Saragoza, however, saw the
dialogue as an improvement on
past public processes. “I would
hope it’s a beginning the district
will take seriously, to make sure
people are coming to the table
before, not after,” she says.
For more: http://tomforschoolboard.com/,
http://saragozaforschools.info/.
16th Annual Home Builders Foundation Auction & Gala,
benefitting local homeless and transitional housing shelters
Governor Hotel
614 SW 11th. Ave
Portland, OR
“I am
uncomfortable
with stifling
success and
ignoring
demand.”
— Tom Koehler,
PPS Zone 6 candidate
Cocktail attire, Black tie optional
$100 per ticket.
$1500 per corporate sponsorship table seating of 10
Please call Nicole at 503.684.1880 to reserve your seats
Presented by
Portland Public
Schools board
candidate Tom
Koehler is the
father of three
PPS students, a
former Corvallis
city councilor
and an opponent
of an enrollment
cap at Benson
High School.
TRIBUNE PHOTO:
CHRISTOPHER
ONSTOTT
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