Page 14
September 5, 2018
Supporting Tubman and KairosPDX
C ontinueD from p age 2
the air since Portland Public Schools of-
fered only a one year lease of its former
Humboldt School site and imposed a rent
increase of over 30 percent—with just a
month’s notice.
KairosPDX leaders say the school needs
a five year lease to provide stability while
they find a permanent location in the his-
torically black Albina district of north and
northeast Portland. Tubman is looking for
support in its first year since re-opening as
the only middle school in Portland to serve
a majority black population.
The students at KairosPDX outperform
black kids at other schools three fold, the
school’s co-founder and executive direc-
tor Kali Thorne-Ladd said last week at a
news conference calling for support for the
school.
“We’re here today because we believe in
a better future for black children,” Thorne-
Ladd said, ahead of a school board meet-
ing where supporters showed up in droves
wearing “Black Kids Matter” T-shirts and
singing what’s considered the black nation-
al anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
“Kairos is a family to me. Kairos is a
place where I can depend on others, where
people can help me, and I get smarter every
single day,” a student, Zahire Hardy, said at
the press conference.
“I never felt like I had a community. I
see in my son that he has a community and
he’s fearless,” Zahire’s mother, Wazirah
Hasan, added.
KairosPDX is backed by prominent
members of the black community, many
of whom also testified at the school board
meeting. They’re asking Portland Public
Schools to allow the school to fulfill its
mission of closing the achievement gap for
kids of color.
Citing the school district’s “shameful
history” of not caring about educating
black children, retired State Sen. Avel
Gordly, in a letter presented to the board,
demanded “board policies that are right,
just and fair for our children’s education.”
“We are here demanding that you…
commit to putting in place the resources
that will lead to a quality, non-racist edu-
cation for black children and all children
in Portland Public Schools,” Gordly said.
Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero
signaled on the same day that he’s open
to negotiating a solution both parties can
agree on, saying the district is committed
to disrupting racial inequalities and ensur-
ing the success of all students.
“We appreciate the work that the Kairos
school community has done and we share
the same cause. We will work actively to-
wards resolving the facility question, and
are confident we can come to an acceptable
agreement,” Guerrero said in a statement.
A year ago, Portland Public Schools
considered displacing KairosPDX with
ACCESS Academy, a diverse program
for highly-gifted students, but one that is
majority white. A public outcry, including
from Mayor Ted Wheeler, pressured the
board to let the school stay in their current
location.
The building had not been a neighbor-
hood elementary school for four years by
the time KairosPDX moved in back in
2016 and it’s unclear whether the school
board has something in particular in mind
for its future use.
Even so, it is district policy that “each
charter school is responsible for secur-
ing its own school site,” according to the
district’s website. Back when KariosPDX
moved in to the former Humboldt school
building in 2016, it was the first time PPS
leased one of its buildings to a charter
school.
The district’s equity goals notably list
providing “every student with equitable
access to high quality and culturally rele-
vant instruction….even when this means
differentiating resources to accomplish
this.”
Partnering with organizations who have
demonstrated “culturally specific exper-
tise…in meeting our educational out-
comes,” is also a listed goal the district has.
The African American Community Co-
ordinating Group is a group of African
American leaders and community mem-
bers that formed two years ago in response
to increased gang violence whose mem-
bers include educational advocate for the
African American community Ron Hern-
don, Joe McFerrin of Portland Opportuni-
ties Industrialization Center, and Self-En-
hancement Inc. Executive Director Tony
Hopson. Since its formation, they’ve held
gatherings at SEI to address topics such as
education, housing, and jobs, Hopson told
the Portland Observer. Last year they put
pressure on the school district to keep Kai-
rosPDX in their current location when the
school faced displacement.
photo by i rene m arion /p ortlanD b ureau of t ransportation
Artful rocking benches designed in collaboration with community youth of color
and graduate art students line North Russell Street next at the Urban League of
Portland headquarters.
Black is Beautiful
C ontinueD from p age 3
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workshops to determine the designs. The
youth proposed benches that can rock back
and forth, which the graduate students used
their schools’ equipment and resources to
create. In addition, decorative tiles were
hand-painted to reflect positive messages
of the black community.
“Black is Beautiful,” “Do it for the Cul-
ture,” “Black Power,” “Support One An-
other,” and “Honor Those Before Us” were
some of the positive themes created for
the tiles, which were donated by the near-
by nonprofit ReBuilding Center on North
Mississippi Avenue.
A local African American husband-
and-wife artist duo, Cleo Davis and Kayin
Talton Davis, created a similarly com-
munity driven public art project back in
2012, called the Historic Black Williams
Project.
The couple installed a visual archive of
stories, memories and history from black
community members with informational
signs posted all along Williams Avenue, a
once thriving corridor of the black commu-
nity that included a high concentration of
black churches, businesses, social services,
organizations and nightclubs. That project
was also supported by PBOT and the Re-
gional Arts and Culture Center.
After hearing about the latest beautifica-
tion project, the Davis’ and Portland archi-
tect Matthew Miller, aligned their design
program with the Urban League’s project.