Health Clinics Stimulus
Demolition Reconsidered
Additional doctors, nurses and
support staff will be hired at
county health clinics to care for
poor and uninsured patients
Mayor Sam Adams postpones a
decision on tearing down the
Memorial Coliseum fo r a minor
league baseball park
See story, page A5
‘City of Roses’
Al
Top Fashions Lined Up
.portlandobserver.
www.portlandobserver.çQm
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Volume XXXVIV. Num ber 16
TLWeek in
The Review
See story, page A2
Wednesday • A p ril 22. 2009
High Schools Do Over
Portland is set to
host the Ebony
F a sh io n F a ir
Friday nigh,
at the C o n ­
vention C en­
ter, featuring
the latest trends and unique
styles by the best designers in
the world. The 51 st annual event
will raise money for local schol­
arships. See sto ry, page A9.
39th Avenue Least Historic
A city panel evaluating the his­
to ric sig n ific a n c e o f three
streets under consideration for
renaming after migrant labor and
civil rights hero C esar Chavez,
said 39th Avenue had the least
historic value when com pared
to the other choices, Broadway
and G rand Avenues. The pro­
posal now goes to the planning
commission.
Door Opened
to Prosecutions
President Barack
O bam a left the
door open T ues­
day to prosecuting Bush ad
ministration officials who de­
vised the legal authority for
gruesom e terror-suspect inter­
rogations, saying the United
States lo st" our moral bearings
with use o f the tactics.
AmerICorps National
Service Expanded
President O bam a signed a $5.7
billion national service bill Tues­
day that expands Am eriCorps,
giving students a way to earn
m oney for college and foster
ing people's desire to m ake a
d if f e r e n c e , su c h as by
mentoring children, cleaning up
parks or buildings and w eath­
erizing hom es for the poor.
King Family Bills Memorial
The fam ily o f the Rev. Martin
Luther King has charged the
foundation building a m onu­
ment to the ci vil rights leader on
the National Mall in W ashing­
ton, D .C . about $800,000 for the
use o f his w ords and image - an
a r r a n g e m e n t o n e le a d in g
scholar says King would have
found offensive.
SF Mayor Runs for Governor
X
Ly 4 P M
|fi
San F rancisco
M ayor G av in
Newsom an-
nounced his
candidacy for
« « S I California gov-
“
em or Tuesday,
offering him self as an heir to the
same groundsw ell for genera­
tional change that helped send
President Barack O bam a to the
W hite House.
Mortgage Fraud Crackdown
The U.S. Attorney for Oregon
and die FBI say they're expand­
ing efforts to crack down on
m ortgage fraud in the state.
Prosecutors say that nearly all
m ortgage fraud cases involve
false representations on m ort­
gage loan applications, typi­
cally falsification o f income, li­
abilities or em ploym ent.
Portland Public Schools General Counsel Jollee Patterson (from left), Superintendent Carole Smith and Board Member Bobbie Regan listen to propos­
als to remake the city's public high school system.
Implications
for embattled
neighborhoods
considered
by J ake T homas
T he P ortland O bserver
Big changes are on the horizon for
P o rtla n d hig h sc h o o ls. A te am a s ­
sem bled to take a hard look at the city ’s
public high school system recently un­
veiled three ideas to radically reshape
w hat schools students can attend and
how their curriculum will be shaped.
A lth o u g h e a c h o f th e n ew a p ­
proaches are largely conceptual and
their details are still being hashed out,
a took at the num bers reveal that there
co u ld be huge im p licatio n s for em ­
battled neighborhood high schools that
have seen th eir enrollm ent num bers
drop and have had to grapple with ru­
mors that they are facing closure.
A com m ittee appointed by Superin­
tendent Carole Sm ith spent the better
part o f a year soliciting thoughts from
g roups and in d iv id u als representing
b u sin ess, p aren ts, teach ers, and the
Portland City Council.
The com m ittee cam e up with three
broad conceptual ideas aimed at clos­
ing the achievem ent gap, ensuring that
high school students had equal access
to q u ality co u rses, and help in g stu ­
dents develop career-oriented skills.
U nder the first idea, 9th and 10th
graders would attend small academies.
Closing any of Portland’s high
schools is a touchy subject,
since they often are cherished
social hubs for the communities
they serve.
At the end o f 10th g rad e, stu d en ts
would chose from several different ca-
reer/interest tracks that are still being
hashed out, but could include areas like
the arts, health care or engineering. Stu­
dents w ould be assigned to neighbor­
hood sch o o ls, b u t co u ld tran sfe r if
space allows.
The second idea would assign stu­
d en ts to th e ir n eig h b o rh o o d school
un less they opt to atten d a m agnet
school with fixed enrollm ent by geo-
continued
on page A3
Raymond Burell III
holds up a copy o f
‘Vancouver Avenue:
Yesterday, Today
and Forever, ’ a
beautifully illus­
trated book depict­
ing the history of
VancouverAvenue
First Baptist
Church, one o f
Portland's most
historic African-
American
congregations.
PHOTO BY
M ark W ashington /
T he P ortland
O bserver
Egypt Temples Discovered
Archaeologists in the Sinai have
unearthed four new tem ples
am idst the 3,000-year-old re­
m ains o f an ancient fortified
city that could have been used
to im press foreign delegations
visiting Egypt, antiquities au­
thorities announced Tuesday.
‘Vancouver Avenue’ Chronicles Lives
Historic
retrospective
goes to print
To mark the 65th anniversary o f
V an co u v er A venue F irs , B a p tist
Church, one o f Portland’s most his­
•Scommuni ry tervlcc
toric A frican-A m erican c o n g re g a­
tions, the church has com m issioned
a g o rg eo u s o v ersized , h ard b o u n d
coffee table book.
The special retrospective book fea­
tures a trem endous collection o f re­
stored historical photographs taken
during the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and
80s. M any o f the im ages w ere re-
cently d isco v ered in a dusty attic
tucked away some 50 years ago by
the church’s form er pastor's wife.
A portion o f the book has been
dedicated to an an thology o f rare
fam ily h isto rie s o f local A frican
Americans who cam e from the rural
south to build and foster new lives
and long-tim e roots in the Portland
and Vancouver area. M any o f these
families migrated from; Texas, Louisi­
ana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama,
and Oklahoma.
A lso featured in the book is a ge­
nealogical gem, a birth and death reg­
istry o f early m em bers, som e 800 in-
continued
on page A 7