Builders Take Charter School to East Multnomah County

By Libby Tucker

Four school districts in east Multnomah County are backing a construction industry charter school proposal rejected by the Portland Public Schools board of education in December.

The Parkrose, Centennial, Gresham-Barlow and Reynolds school districts support the proposed Academy for Architecture, Construction and Engineering, which would open in 2008 to 250 high school students from all four districts.

The east county school districts “were almost the antithesis of the folks in Portland Public Schools; they really wanted it,” Dick O’Connor, executive director of the Oregon Building Congress, a nonprofit construction industry organization for youth that’s leading the charter school effort, said.

“And it was not ‘Do you have to jump over these hurdles,’” he said, “it was a ‘How can you make it happen?’”

The students would alternate classroom time at their home high schools with hands-on training from building professionals at the Willamette Carpenters Training Center and the Northwest College of Construction.

“We serve a middle class and poor working class community,” Michael Taylor, superintendent of Parkrose School District, said. “This is going to take those kids who know the laboring world and give them some trained skills to take out into that market.”

Only 33 percent of the state’s ninth graders that finish high school go on to college, according to a United States Chamber of Commerce education report card. The report card which gave Oregon an “F” in post-secondary and work-force readiness.

Low continuation rates and lack of skilled workers have led many Oregon school districts and business partners – including the construction, automotive and health care industries – to consider opening their own schools, said Jim Schoelkopf, a specialist for career and technical education with the Oregon Department of Education.

Two such facilities – The Center for Advanced Learning in Gresham and the Sabin-Schellenberg Center in Milwaukie – have opened in recent years. And proposals in Springfield and Medford are under consideration, Schoelkopf said.

“We’re starting to see conversations about how high schools in geographic proximity can provide the (technical) training without competing with each other,” he said. “Those centers are focused in a particular industry area, and in more depth than” the shop programs of the past have offered.

The charter school model is essentially a public-private partnership between an industry and multiple school districts. Instead of building an independent school that poaches students from existing districts, the new charter schools act as an extension of local high schools.

The Oregon Building Congress’ proposal for east Multnomah County is slightly different from the one it presented to the Portland board of education last year. The OBC’s Portland proposal combined the technical and academic training under one roof.

The Portland Public Schools board turned down the OBC’s proposal, in part, due to concerns that the proposal didn’t make clear how curriculum, assessment and teacher training would fit within the charter school’s proposed budget.

The Portland-area electricians, carpenters, masonry, and sheet metal trade unions also support the new proposal, submitted to the Oregon State Board of Education in March by the Oregon Building Congress.

The building industry, which faces a shortage of skilled workers as the baby boomer generation retires, hopes the new school would expose students to a career path that doesn’t necessarily include a college education.

“The schools have basically departed from doing any industrial arts training and are focused primarily on basic educational skills,” Tom Goodhue, executive director of the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association, Columbia chapter, said.

“The school systems have left the kids behind,” he said, “and have not been giving them the same exposure to different occupations.”

The industry will provide the space and equipment for students’ technical training for a few days each week. The school districts provide the academic coursework necessary for a high school diploma.

“I think that will be one of the real trends in education is to have these various partnerships and small training centers still attached to the mainstream high school,” Parkrose superintendent Taylor said. “So it’s not a stand-alone charter school in that it’s all things to all kids. It’s a satellite of the mainstream schools so kids still have a sense of belonging to their school.”

(c) 2007 Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.