My Monthly Column – March 2020

PS families: Social distancing critical to keep everyone safe

By Xavier Botana

The new coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is evolving rapidly, and the Portland Public Schools has closed all its facilities until March 30. We are transitioning to remote learning and have arranged for the distribution of school meals. I’m writing here now with another important message: It’s critical for families and students to also do their part during this crisis to help keep everyone safe.

We recognize the hardship that the school closure represents for families and our staff. I didn’t make the decision to close lightly – it was an extremely difficult choice but we determined that it is the most responsible one to protect everyone’s health. Our students and families also need to take this situation very seriously. Everyone should understand the very real potential for additional community spread of the virus if they don't practice “social distancing.” 

It’s important that families don’t think of this closure as a series of “snow days” in which students are free to indulge in any social activity they want because the learning will be made-up at a later date. Activities like gathering in groups, holding sleepovers, going out to eat or have coffee with friends and roaming the neighborhood will potentially add to community spread of the virus. . Parents, I’m asking you to please take responsibility for suspending these activities and limiting your family’s social contact as much as possible!

Social distancing is  socially responsible during this crisis. Please read: “Social Distancing: This is Not a Snow Day,” by Dr. Asaf Bitton.

https://www.ariadnelabs.org/resources/articles/news/social-distancing-this-is-not-a-snow-day/

Families, please also make clear to your children that this is not a holiday from learning. Remote learning begins Wednesday, March 18. Schools will be taking attendance and we are establishing expectations for work completion.

I sent a letter to families on March 16 that details how families will be able to access learning materials and tech devices.  The letter also details how our Food Service Department will begin distributing meals starting March 18 to students 18 and under at these sites: Riverton, East End, Presumpscot, Rowe and Peaks Island elementary schools, King and Lyman Moore middle schools and Deering High School. Families should go to the site most convenient for them.  

Read my letter here. https://www.portlandschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_1094153/File/News%20Items/COVID-19%20Letter%20to%20Families%20March%2016.pdf

When picking up food at our distribution sites, we encourage families to continue to be proactive in reducing the risk of COVID-19 by not congregating at the sites

once meals have been distributed. Also, to maximize social distancing, families are asked to only come to pick up learning materials at distribution sites/your child’s school if your child is not able to access the materials online. Please only pick up tech devices if your child doesn’t have an alternate device at home.

I will add here that, given the challenges around the COVID- 19 crisis, I have withdrawn from my recommended FY21 school budget a proposal to implement a reconfiguration of our elementary schools. I feel it’s responsible to take a step back and work on an implementation plan with a longer timeline. With public meetings curtailed because of the virus, it would be difficult to have a meaningful public discussion about the proposal at this time. I propose implementation in the 2021-2022 school year, which will give us time to engage the community in this important step towards a more equitable system.  

The evolving nature of this pandemic is uncharted territory. However, we will be able to confront the challenges it poses if we all pull together as a community in support of our students. Stay safe.

My Monthly Column – February 2020

Equity Drives the Portland Public Schools

By Xavier Botana

I’m delighted the Portland Board of Public Education began Black History Month by voting to rename a school for Portland civil rights icon Gerald Talbot. That Feb. 4 vote means Riverton Elementary School will become the Gerald E. Talbot Community School, starting this fall.

This exceptional community leader’s list of accomplishments is long. He’s an educator, author, historian, civil and human rights activist, founding president of the Portland NAACP branch and Maine’s first African American legislator. He helped pass the Maine Human Rights Act and establish the Maine Human Rights Commission.

In short, Gerald Talbot has long been a champion of equity for all. It is fitting to name a school for him because – as Maine’s largest and most diverse school district – Equity is the foremost goal of the Portland Public Schools. And as we begin our 2020-2021 school budget process, we must continue to prioritize our investments to advance our Equity goal.

In 2017, our district set an ambitious agenda for improving education in Portland with the Portland Promise, our strategic plan. It has four clear, measurable goals– Achievement, Equity, Whole Student and People – to help prepare and empower our students for success in college and career.

Equity – reducing the achievement and opportunity gaps for our economically disadvantaged students and students of color – is the centerpiece of our four goals. However, we have a long way to go to reach Equity. When we compare the data of our non-economically disadvantaged students with those of our least advantaged students and students of color, we see great disparities.  

As a world-class progressive city, Portland cannot be satisfied with those outcomes. I know I’m not. To make progress on this front, our FY21 budget must continue to invest in programs, services and initiatives designed to reduce the persistent opportunity gaps between students.

The state’s school funding formula gives less state aid to districts with high valuation, like Portland, because we’re expected to contribute more locally. The state aid outlook is more positive for Portland than we initially projected, but our district still receives only about 15 percent of its revenue from the state. About 80 percent of our funding comes from local property taxes and 5 percent from federal or other sources.

Like any organization, we have rising costs for salaries and benefits every year.  With limited revenues and increasing costs, we must ask ourselves: How do we best manage our priorities to continue to have quality schools and also provide our least advantaged students with the support they need?

Portland taxpayers have consistently supported their schools, but simply adding to the budget to cover increased costs and make necessary investments yields a high burden on local taxpayers.  That is why we are looking for ways to make room in our budget for equity-focused investments, such as improved opportunities for English language learners and students with disabilities.

During the Board’s budget planning process this fall, Board members expressed willingness to consider revisiting existing programs and activities if needed to make room to advance our Equity agenda. Options could include moving from the current K-5 model to a primary/intermediate school model and evaluating programming such as co-curriculars and elementary school world languages, alongside our annual right-sizing staffing ratios across our schools.

The budget process is just beginning. Our annual public budget forum is on Feb. 26, at 6 p.m. at East End Community School, before I present my budget proposal to the Board on March 10. I look forward to hearing everyone’s ideas on how we can provide a quality education for all of our students.

My Monthly Column – January 2020

A regional approach to challenges will help Portland schools thrive

By Xavier Botana

Mainers strongly identify with the cities and towns they live in. We Portlanders, for example, are very proud of our great city and all it has to offer. But Portland didn’t become great all by itself. Portland is the seat of Cumberland County and its success is linked to the success of other cities and towns within our region.

Thrive2027 is an initiative seeking to capitalize on what Portland and the other communities in our region can do if we work together collectively, instead of in our “silos.” Launched in 2016 by United Way of Greater Portland, Thrive2027 is built around three ten-year goals to make Cumberland County better and stronger in the areas of education, employment and health.

As superintendent of the Portland Public Schools, I strongly believe in the value of a regional approach to address educational and other challenges, so I have become a member of the Thrive2027 Council. The Council is made up of leaders from government, corporate and nonprofit sectors throughout the county who advise and oversee Thrive2027 to ensure its success.

Cumberland County is Maine’s most populous county and is already a great place to live for many. However, the three Thrive2027 goals, created by and for community stakeholders, are designed to make it stronger for ALL residents in the 28 communities of our county: Baldwin, Bridgton, Brunswick, Cape Elizabeth, Casco, Chebeague Island, Cumberland, Falmouth, Freeport, Frye Island, Gorham, Gray, Harpswell, Harrison, Long Island, Naples, New Gloucester, North Yarmouth, Portland, Pownal, Raymond, Scarborough, Sebago, South Portland, Standish, Westbrook, Windham and Yarmouth. 

The three goals are to ensure that:

• More kids have a strong start in school so that they’re reading at grade level by the end of third grade.
• More people have the education and employment opportunities needed to afford to live and work in Cumberland County – to thrive, not just survive.
• More of our neighbors live longer, healthier lives.

When it comes to our children’s learning, the first goal is vital. Research shows that third-grade reading ability is a key indicator of future academic success. In the 2017-2018 school year, 59 percent of the county’s children read proficiently at the end of third grade. By 2027, the goal is to hike that to 70 percent.

Strong pre-kindergarten programs can help students reach that goal. My column in September was about the Portland Public Schools’ plan to expand our pre-K program over the next five years in an effort to eventually offer pre-K to all Portland 4-year-olds. Any efficiencies and savings that might result from a regional approach to pre-K expansion would benefit everyone.

The second and third Thrive2027 goals might not seem to be education related, but they are. With the prices of homes and rents rapidly increasing in Cumberland County, schools in Portland and other communities are serving an increasing number of homeless students. In 2017, just 65 percent of households in the county paid less than less than 30 percent of their income for housing. Boosting that number to 70 percent by 2027 will help ensure more youngsters have a stable home environment, making it more likely they’ll succeed in school.

And doing more to promote the health and well being of families also leads to better educational outcomes. 

The idea behind Thrive2027 is collective action. By bringing people together around a common goal, all working at it from different vantage points, I believe we’ll be exponentially successful. In the end, we’ll get more than the sum of our individual efforts to help Cumberland County communities thrive.

My Monthly Column – December 2019

A diverse staff is a boon for all students

By Xavier Botana

When I became superintendent of the Portland Public Schools, Maine’s largest and most diverse school district, one consistent message I heard from students, parents and members of the school board and community was that they wanted our faculty and staff to better reflect the diversity of our students. That’s why we made staff diversity a key part of the People goal in our Portland Promise, the district’s strategic plan.

This is the last of four monthly columns I’m dedicating to discussing important investments in the Portland Public Schools’ 2019-2020 budget. The initiatives embody our Portland Promise goals of Equity, Whole Student, Achievement and People. I’ve previously discussed our pre-kindergarten expansion initiative, our behavioral health continuum and our efforts to strengthen our core curriculum. This column focuses on our work to realize our People goal by attracting, supporting and retaining talented and diverse staff.

The data is clear: Having teachers of color is very good for students of color. It also shows that staff diversity benefits ALL students.

An article in the April 2019 issue of Educational Leadership, a publication of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), focuses on data analyses showing that “having even a single black teacher in elementary school can make a tremendous difference” for black K–12 students, “improving a student's trajectory far beyond the elementary years.” http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr19/vol76/num07/The-Impact-of-Teacher-Diversity.aspx

The article says: “Being taught by a black educator is so salient that it can affect whether or not a student of color not only finishes high school, but enrolls in college.”

Other students also benefit from learning from diverse teachers. According to a

Scientific American article: “Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/

When launching our Portland Promise in October 2017, we set a People goal target of having 10 percent of our staff be persons of color within five years. Just 6.7 percent of our staff met that definition in the 2016-2017 school year. Last school year, the number had climbed to 7.5 percent. We hope to continue to make gains toward our goal.

Here are some steps we’re taking to increase staff diversity:

·       The summer of 2019 marked the third year of our educator diversity program, called TeachPortland. The program provides high school, college students and adults in our community interested in teaching the opportunity to gain classroom experience and relevant professional development. We had 44 participants in the program this year, and ultimately hired five participants this fall.

·       In January 2019, we launched the Education Academy at The New Mainers Resource Center at Portland Adult Education (PAE). The Education Academy assists new Mainers trained as teachers in other countries to become licensed educators here. We had 11 Education Academy graduates this spring and most are working in our schools – three as teachers; three as educational technicians; and one as an AmericaCorps/Vista staff assistant at Riverton. Another volunteers at King Middle School while awaiting work authorization. This year, we have 11 more students enrolled in Education Academy programs.

·       Just last month, PAE and Southern Maine Community College agreed to partner in a new initiative called Building the Pipeline to enhance workforce training and educational opportunities for new Mainers.

All of these initiatives will aid us in building a workforce that better reflects the wonderful diversity of our student body. I firmly believe that we will only be as good as our talented and diverse staff. I’m proud of the work that we’ve done and look forward to continuing these efforts.

My Monthly Column – November 2019

Developing a ‘vertical’ districtwide content vision for curriculum

By Xavier Botana

We’re working to realize the Achievement goal in our Portland Promise by strengthening core instruction through a quality curriculum, strong teacher leadership and sustained professional learning. One way we’re doing that is by going “vertical” when it comes to our curriculum.

This is the third of four monthly columns I’m dedicating to discussing four new initiatives in the Portland Public Schools’ 2019-2020 budget. The initiatives embody the goals in our Portland Promise, our district’s strategic plan: Equity, Whole Student, Achievement and People. I’ve previously discussed our pre-kindergarten expansion initiative and our behavioral health continuum initiative.

This month, my focus is on how we’re working to strengthen core instruction. Research shows effective supports, quality curriculum, and collective teacher efficacy improve student achievement. This work is connected to not only our Achievement goal, but also our Equity goal.

Under the leadership of Melea Nalli, our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, we have created Core Content Vertical Teams to enhance curriculum development. We began these teams last year in math and we’re adding English language arts, social studies, science and health vertical teams this year. By “vertical,” we mean that what students learn at one level – whether it’s at the elementary, middle or high school level – will prepare them for moving on to the next level.

This is a change because, in the past, we haven’t focused on curriculum development from a districtwide perspective. These vertical teams will now give us a bird’s eye view of our curriculum across all levels. That will allow us to develop a shared and coherent vision for instruction at all levels, based on current research and evidence-based practices, and mesh our districtwide content vision with school instructional visions. 

It also will help bring a lens of Equity and high expectations for all students to our current practices, and ensure we’re evolving to meet the needs of all our students in core content areas.  Additionally, we’ll be better able to share best practices, analyze curriculum and data, and look at instruction to inform decision making around curriculum, structures, professional development and policy.

In short, the vertical teams will help everyone at the elementary, middle and high school levels to know what we’re teaching, how we’re teaching it and what our instruction is telling us.

Another way we’re working to strengthen our core curriculum is by taking a critical eye toward content and perspective. We are taking such steps as diversifying materials and content, allowing students to demonstrate mastery in diverse ways, and ensuring what is being taught is relevant and engaging to all students. Research shows that this is a core strategy to improve outcomes for all our students and help realize our Equity goal. 

One example of this is the Wabanaki Studies curriculum we’re developing. The Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes are known collectively as the Wabanaki, or “People of the Dawnland.” Some of our students are Wabanaki, but we consider teaching about Maine’s Indigenous peoples necessary to give ALL our students a comprehensive understanding of the history of our state and our nation. 

To ensure we’re creating an accurate, culturally responsive, Equity driven curriculum, we are partnering with the Abbe Museum and tribal leaders from across Maine. We are also using a decolonizing framework to help ask tough questions about what we teach, why we teach it, and whose perspective we’re uplifting. 

We’re also working to develop a social studies curriculum around holidays that focuses on more culturally appropriate ways of celebrating holidays in the diverse and inclusive setting of Portland’s public schools.