In Wednesday’s articles about the very serious payroll issues in the Portland Public Schools (“School board chief rejected city’s offer to help fix payroll problems” and “At tense meeting, employees take district to task,” Page A1), once again it looks like the city, its residents and its media are all too eager to place assumed blame, rather than see the big picture or, dare I say, problem solve.
Members of the public, mostly employees and their supporters, listen as Portland Public Schools Superintendent Xavier Botana speaks at a school board meeting Tuesday. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
Portland Public Schools is underfunded and undersupported. The very people who dedicate their careers to keeping it afloat are attacked daily.
In this latest situation, I see a payroll department that disintegrated quickly. I can’t assume I know why. I see the immediate need to find a payroll system to administer to hundreds of employees. An exercise, any business owner can tell you, that would take months. While the errors are deeply problematic, no one should be surprised by them. I doubt anyone at Portland Public Schools, including our superintendent, feels complacent about these payroll issues.
The complacency lies more squarely with community members, various city councilors and members of the media who seem to think we can chronically underfund the schools and criticize them with no resources for solutions, and then grasp our pearls and point fingers when problems arise. Instead of simply forcing Portland Public Schools to come to the Portland City Council with hat in hand for approval of its budget, a more proactive solution might be for all of us to look at funding sources beyond property tax in order to provide our district with the vast resources it needs. (Are we too afraid to bring our local businesses into this discussion?) Perhaps then we’d have the educational and administrative resources to run the district as our students and all employees deserve.
Former Portland school board Chair Emily Figdor, right, listens as Superintendent Xavier Botana answers one of her questions during Tuesday’s meeting . “Instead of simply forcing Portland Public Schools to come to the Portland City Council with hat in hand for approval of its budget, a more proactive solution might be for all of us to look at funding sources beyond property tax,” Emily Chaleff says. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
I am no blind supporter of either the school board or of Portland Public Schools Superintendent Xavier Botana’s initiatives – each has been on the receiving end of my pointed input on more than one occasion. But these roles, laden with responsibility for which these individuals have signed up, have also become burdened with an unforgivable thanklessness from our city.
Let us not forget that Superintendent Botana originally and graciously gave us a two-year timeline for his departure, and then retracted that offer and said he would leave at the end of this school year. Anyone who has read the pages of this newspaper or attended a school board meeting wouldn’t wonder why. I hope this latest onslaught doesn’t hasten his timeline.
Our city is hopeful for a new superintendent by May 2023. If you were a thoughtful, skilled and experienced educational expert thinking about making a career change in one of the most contentious American educational climates in over half a century, is ours the kind of community that you would want to enter? Perhaps with a sword and shield.
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