May 8, 2019
Page 7
Mississippi
Alberta
North Portland
Vancouver
East County
Beaverton
D anny p eterson /t he p ortlanD o bserver
Shanice Clarke, a career educator who runs a resource center for black students
at Portland State University, is running for Portland Public School Board, Zone 2,
representing inner north, northeast and southeast Portland. Ballots for the May 21
election are in the mail.
photo by
photo by D anny p eterson /t he p ortlanD o bserver
Michelle DePass grew up in northeast Portland where she still lives and where
her mom and grandmother were teachers at King Elementary. She is running for
a position on the seven-member Portland School Board to make a difference for
students, motivated by the alarming outcome disparities for kids of color and other
problems in the school district.
Board Candidates Make their Case
Clarke calls for holistic, new approach DePass has deep roots to community
by D anny p eterson
t he p ortlanD o bserver
Shanice Clarke, 27, a career educator,
aims to improve outcomes for disadvan-
taged students and students of color in the
Portland School District by being elected
to the district’s seven member board of di-
rectors, from Zone 2, representing schools
that feed into Jefferson and Cleveland high
schools in inner north, northeast and south-
east Portland.
Clarke has traversed a personal and
winding path that led her to becoming an
advocate for education, a goal she calls her
life dream.
“I dedicated my life advocating for stu-
dents,” she told the Portland Observer. “I
really identify with the true value of doing
holistic work with students.”
A first generation Jamaican immigrant,
Clarke has the experience of navigating
some the obstacles that can come with
families who are recent immigrants. She
moved frequently between her home island
and the states while growing up. She also
painfully learned how a disadvantaged stu-
dent can fall through the cracks in school
and not get the help they need.
In her case, as a young girl, Clarke said
she was not supported by guidance coun-
selors and teachers after experiencing a
troubled home life of trauma, addiction in
the family, and loss. Rather than investing
in her, they issued “a lot of suspensions
and detentions,” which ultimately led her
to not completing high school in Boston,
Mass., she said.
Not to be deterred, Clarke followed up
by getting her GED and pursing degrees
in higher education.
She would go on to receive a Bache-
lor’s in Human Services and a Master’s in
Educational Leadership from University of
Northern Colorado, where she studied cul-
turally responsive pedagogy and researched
better ways of serving diverse students.
Today she runs a resource center for
black students at Portland State Univer-
sity, the Pan African Commons, located
inside PSU’s Diversity and Multicultural
Student Services Department.
“I love being on the front lines with
C ontinueD on p age 8
D anny p eterson
t he p ortlanD o bserver
Michelle DePass, 58, has deep roots in
the community; something she knows is
an asset in her bid for a Zone 2 seat on
the Portland School Board, which encom-
passes parts of north and northeast Port-
land, where she was born and raised.
She is one of the two African American
candidates vying in the May 21 vote-by-
mail election for a seat governing Ore-
gon’s largest school district, a position
vacated by Paul Anthony after one term.
Currently the seven member board has no
black members.
DePass is the Community Engagement
and Policy Coordinator for the Portland
Housing Bureau, where she is focused
on advising the bureau on how best to
connect with community, serving low to
moderate income people seeking housing.
The first thing DePass mentioned as a
top priority for the school board was clos-
ing the racial achievement gap, as outlined
in a recent Oregon Secretary of State audit
of Portland Public schools, a report that she
called “disturbing,” but not surprising.
by
“We’ve known--community members
have known for a long time that black and
brown children are being failed. They’re
not failing. The system is failing them,”
she said.
DePass would address those failings by
“aligning our budget spending with our ra-
cial equity plan,” she said.
“The whole idea behind equity is that
we direct more resources to where there’s
more need. It’s not spreading equal re-
sources across the city because some of our
schools are doing just fine,” she said.
The daughter of a Panamanian immi-
grant father and New Orleans ancestry on
her mom’s side, DePass moved around a bit
when she was a child, bouncing from Cen-
tral and South America back up to the states,
but most of her schooling from elementary
through high school was in Portland.
Both her mother and grandmother were
teachers at King Elementary in northeast
Portland for years. And Like her mom, De-
Pass has experience as a single mom. She
raised two boys, ages 18 and 20, who both
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