Portland's Only Charter Middle School Set To Close

By Rob Manning (OPB)
Portland, Oregon June 28, 2016 1:45 a.m.
SEI Founder and President Tony Hopson Sr.

SEI Founder and President Tony Hopson Sr.

Ifanyi Bell / OPB

Portland’s only charter middle school is closing. But the nonprofit running the school appears to be positioning itself as a ready partner when Portland Public Schools opens two new North Portland middle schools in two years.

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The nonprofit Self-Enhancement Inc. has told parents it will close its middle school program after the coming school year.  It's not accepting any new sixth graders for its last year.

The SEI Academy opened in September 2004, just as PPS was combining elementary and middle schools into K-8 programs.

SEI Academy is considered one of the best schools in the state based on the achievement of low-income students. In 2013 and 2014, the Oregon Department of Education named SEI Academy a "model" school, meaning it was among the top 5 percent of schools with a high proportion of students living close to the poverty line.

In a letter to parents, SEI president Tony Hopson said he sensed the school was not improving.

"Over the past two years with many staff changes our efforts have been steady but not as successful," Hopson wrote to parents.

At the same time, he pointed to changes that PPS is making to bring middle schools back to North Portland.

"With return to the middle school offerings by Portland Public Schools, we at SEI do not see the need to continue to provide our own separate middle school academy," Hopson said.

A few hundred parents packed a meeting at Ockley Green school, to consider possibly accelerating plans to convert the building to a middle school. Parents co-hosted the meeting with Portland Public Schools, March 1.

A few hundred parents packed a meeting at Ockley Green school, to consider possibly accelerating plans to convert the building to a middle school. Parents co-hosted the meeting with Portland Public Schools, March 1.

Rob Manning / OPB

Portland Public Schools intends to open at least three middle schools on the east side, including two in North Portland: Ockley Green this fall and Tubman in fall 2017. However, the PPS board of directors has only officially approved the Ockley Green Middle School.

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PPS has also signaled its intention to turn Roseway Heights K-8 in Northeast into a middle school in 2017, but the board hasn't voted on that.

Portland district leaders received a memo June 24 from its District-Wide Boundary Review Advisory Committee. The memo emphasized the complexity of establishing new middle schools while maintaining strong programs at schools set to shrink from K-8 programs to K-5 elementary schools.

The memo doesn't specify the inclusion of outside organizations like SEI. Instead, the memo wrestles with broader questions, such as a "fundamental tension" between communities that want immediate improvements and others that feel beleaguered by repeated changes in the past.

The boundaries committee suggests taking from August to December to craft a new set of recommendations for boundary and building changes in North and Northeast Portland.

SEI is in its 35th year, so it was around long before Portland Public Schools approved a charter for the middle school — and whatever happens, the nonprofit intends to keep going after the middle school closes. Before it opened the middle school, SEI ran summer programs and offered mentoring, after-school programs and other support for North Portland youth, especially young African-Americans.

Hopson said he would like SEI to partner with Ockley Green and Tubman schools, as they open.

Jefferson High School

Jefferson High School

Alan Sylvestre / OPB

In his letter to parents, provided to OPB by Portland Public Schools, Hopson said, "We believe that now is the time to not only partner with Portland Public Schools to increase the SEI services at both Ockley Green and Tubman to make them the best schools possible for all students, but also to increase attention on our African American students."

Hopson's nonprofit has shared in recent praise for Jefferson High School's increasing graduation rate, where SEI has provided one-on-one help for students. Jefferson's 2015 graduation rate was well above the state average, at about 80.5 percent — with African-American students as likely to graduate as any other student at the high school.

But SEI has also drawn criticism for its cozy ties to Portland Public Schools. Some parents have questioned the value of district contracts with SEI, including agreements headed to the Portland school board this week, worth $1.5 million. The lion's share of those contracts relates to SEI's work at Jefferson High.

In the letter Hopson sent parents earlier this month, he was particularly focused on getting SEI involved at the Harriett Tubman Middle School. It's a school with deep ties to inner North Portland's historically African-American community. Tubman  currently houses students from Faubion K-8 while that building is rebuilt. It last housed its own program in 2012, when the Young Women's Leadership Academy was closed amid PPS's unsteady budgets and low enrollment at the school.

Boise-Eliot-Humboldt School is reflected in the windows of a yoga studio and bakery in North Portland.

Boise-Eliot-Humboldt School is reflected in the windows of a yoga studio and bakery in North Portland.

Rob Manning / OPB

Draft plans for Tubman call for it absorbing middle school students from four schools as they change from K-8 schools to elementaries. Two of those schools have significant African-American student populations: Boise-Eliot/Humboldt (57 percent) and King (46 percent); the other two have smaller ones: Irvington (18 percent) and Sabin (16 percent).

"We hope to fully integrate our efforts into Tubman Middle School going forward," Hopson wrote. "It is our hope that given the past history of Tubman Middle School it would maintain an African American culturally specific option that our students can take part in."

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