Governor Kate Brown today announced that she will be convening a Healthy Schools Reopening Council to advise her and the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) during the Ready Schools, Safe Learners K-12 schools reopening process. The council will ensure all community voices––especially those representing school employees and Oregon’s Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other communities of color––have a forum to give feedback as school districts develop their plans for a safe return to school for Oregon’s students.

The council, which will meet over the next several months as districts develop their plans, and periodically during the school year, will be charged with:

• Giving feedback on equitable policies and practices for a safe return to school
• Informing additional guidance from ODE developed over the summer to help school districts implement their back-to-school plans
• Receiving updates on school district plans and implementation
• Reviewing COVID-19 status reports and evaluating outbreak management during the school year

The council will include elected officials, education community representatives, health representatives, and members of the public, with a focus on ensuring that a wide and diverse range of community voices are represented.

Among state revenue that is expected to be strained and with budget shortfalls already anticipated, some critics have suggested that Oregon Democrats staying focused entirely on “racial identity politics is a failure to really fix our disreputable education system here in Oregon (among a limping Oregon economy with severe unemployment problems). And it is the children who will suffer most from failed leadership unfortunately, and it continues in Oregon.

The Minority Republican leadership has also expressed concern over the Council convention. Senate Republican Leader Fred Girod (R-Stayton) issued the following statement:

“The bureaucratic regulations in the education guidance will make it extraordinarily challenging for teachers to focus on their critical job to educate our students. I am worried about the quality of the education Oregon students will receive, if they make it to the classroom, with so many distractions.”

The requirements to reopen confirm the struggle between government and the realities of working in the classroom. School districts and educators will be expected to focus on countless bureaucratic elements instead of directing that focus to their fundamental role: to educate students.

One can only hope and pray that our children who will grow up to be the leaders of tomorrow are not always so needlessly handicapped by the failures of those who are charged to oversee the difficult decisions involved in public education.


--Ben Fisher

Post Date: 2020-06-10 08:55:10

Last Update: 2020-06-11 08:55:38