Rita Moore's full response to Portland school board candidate questionnaire

Business Portrait of Rita Moore

Rita Moore, a former Portland Public Schools parent who has remained an active advocate in the system, is running to replace school board member Steve Buel, who represents Zone 4.

(Courtesy of Rita Moore)

May's election will dramatically change leadership in Oregon's largest school district, with three seats on the seven-person board up for election. It's a crucial time for Portland Public Schools, which is in transition following a lead in drinking water crisis that upended the district. On that same ballot, voters will be asked if they want to trust Portland Public Schools with a $790 million construction bond. The new school year will bring with it a new superintendent, who will be expected to hire for several critical positions and rebuild trust and create a culture of accountability auditors have said over and over is sorely lacking.

The Oregonian/OregonLive sent a questionnaire to each candidate who will be on May's ballot. Here are Rita Moore's answers, edited for length.

Name: Rita Moore

Seat You're Running For: Portland Public School Board, Zone 4

Occupation: Policy analyst

Education: PhD, political science

Do you have children who attend or attended Portland Public Schools? If so please provide details:

Yes, one son who attended Winterhaven K-8 and Cleveland High, graduating in 2013. He will be graduating from Goucher College in May 2017.

What inspired you to run for the board?

I grew up in a poor, working class family with a father who never graduated from high school. But I received a great public education in Boston, was the first in my family to attend college, and have had a fulfilling career and an interesting life. Education was my ticket out of poverty. I want all of our children to have the kinds of opportunities to thrive that I did.

I have been actively involved in PPS for the last 15 years. From long service on multiple advisory committees, I have developed expertise in the budget and enrollment issues and have a reputation as a critical friend to the district.

With new leadership – the arrival of a new superintendent and a complete turnover in the School Board – we have an opportunity to re-make PPS into the kind of school district our children deserve and this city needs.

What is the single most pressing issue facing Portland Public Schools and why?

The single most pressing issue is the need to transform PPS into an effective organization that can rebuild trust with students, parents, and the community. PPS is cursed with a dysfunctional organizational culture and a chaotic management structures that have undermined PPS's core mission of educating our children. Over the last few decades, PPS has made a series of momentous decisions that have turned out spectacularly badly, primarily because of poor planning, poor implementation, and poor leadership.

With new leadership, we have the opportunity to rebuild. Rebuilding PPS into a district organization that works is the essential first step to dealing with the small mountain of accumulated crises that we face.

What is Portland Public Schools' biggest asset and why?

PPS is the rare urban public school district that still enjoys overwhelming support from the community. The vast majority (approximately 80%) of school age children attend PPS schools. And the electorate has shown time and time again that they are willing to vote for new taxes to support schools if given something worth voting for. PPS has a workforce of teachers and staff who are talented, qualified, and work small miracles with students every day in challenging circumstances. There is a huge reservoir of good will among parents, teachers, staff, and community members just waiting for leaders to transform PPS into a transparent and effective organization.

Imagine you've been on the board for a year and everything has gone well. What would you anticipate being your proudest accomplishment? Please be as specific as possible:

I think the most significant collective accomplishment for the new board in the first year would be creating a new atmosphere of collaboration, transparency, and common purpose that would provide the foundation for a consistent, productive relationship with the new Superintendent.

In terms of specific issues, I would hope that by the end of the first year, we will have made substantial progress toward developing a workable strategy to resolve the persistent problems of enrollment imbalances across schools. These imbalances have contributed to the stunning disparities in the educational opportunities available to students depending on where they live.

Define how you would view your role as a board member:

As noted on the PPS website, board members must run from the zone in which they reside, but are elected by voters city-wide and represent the entire school district. Unanimity of opinion is not required, but consensus should be the goal.

My role as a board member would be to help create processes and develop relationships with my colleagues that adhere to these principles and enable the board to fulfill its important responsibilities as outlined below. I also believe that if a board is functioning well, individual board members will support collective decisions. The new superintendent will need a board that is supportive and establishes clear, consistent expectations.

Define how you view the role of the school board as a whole:

In my view, previous Boards have largely failed in their responsibility to supervise the Superintendent and exercise appropriate oversight of district operations. This is precisely where PPS's performance has been weakest. The superintendent's job is to manage the district; the board's job is to establish actionable accountability measures by which to evaluate performance. In addition, it is the responsibility of the board to ensure that the district's budget is aligned with the strategic vision and priorities established. In order to perform this task, best serve students, and fulfill our fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers, I believe that board budget discussions should be substantially more transparent.

Should school board members go through the superintendent to talk to staff, principals, etc? Why or why not?

Board members should be focused on big picture, systemic issues. It is the responsibility of the superintendent to manage the district according to the priorities established by the board.

Board members need to be sufficiently engaged with stakeholders (staff, principals, teachers, parents, students, community members) to understand how policies are playing out in schools, but under normal circumstances should not interfere with day-to-day operations. Generally speaking, the primary contact for board members would be the Superintendent. Finding a balance can sometimes be tricky to navigate, but Board members need to be aware of the dangers of both micro-management and isolation.

Portland Public Schools is facing a budget shortfall, setting the stage for hard cuts ahead. If elected, how would you make those tough choices? What areas would you cut first? What would you advocate stay off the chopping block?

PPS is back in familiar territory: an austerity budget that threatens students' education. Since I am not privy to the specifics under consideration, I will speak in general principles:

  • The highest priority should be preserving direct services to students and keeping class sizes as small as possible.
  • The Central Office budget should be scrutinized for discretionary expenses that can be cut without jeopardizing the district's core mission
  • It appears that there may still be some significant efficiencies possible on the academic side of the house through restructuring and clarification of roles and management structures.
  • I endorse the current plan to employ zero-based budgeting processes to clarify the value of expenditures.

Portland Public Schools will have a new superintendent next school year. What kind of relationship would you hope to have with him and how will you develop this?

I look forward to having a great relationship with our new Superintendent. Dr. Dickey brings the right talent, experience, and skills to the district. As an academic specialist, he will be able to establish a coherent vision of the kind of education our students need to thrive and rebuild our capacity to deliver it efficiently and effectively. Since he will be arriving in July in the midst of a budget crisis, it will be particularly important for the board and the superintendent to take advantage of the summer months to listen to each other, share perspectives, and establish strong working relationships and a common vision for moving forward.

How will you hold the superintendent accountable?

In past years, the school board has established a long list of priorities and criteria for evaluating the Superintendent's performance. In my view, these efforts have not been particularly useful as evaluative tools and contributed to the kind of prolonged and pervasive mismanagement that produced last year's crises.

The district needs to have a short list of priorities – 2 to 3 – that could be genuinely actionable within a 12-month period, along with goals and appropriate metrics to permit a comprehensive evaluation of performance toward meeting the goal. Increasing the graduation rate is, obviously, a critical goal for the district, but is not appropriate as an annual criterion for evaluation, since it is the product of 12 years' worth of district efforts.

How will you balance the interests of students and teachers as represented by their union, should those interests be at odds?

My first priority is always the best interests of children.

Past teacher contracts included some components that presented barriers to best practices, especially around hiring. But most of those were successfully resolved during the last contract negotiations. I was very pleased to see that the current negotiations are being conducted within a framework of Interest Based Bargaining. As a trained mediator, I strongly believe that this is a more productive approach to bargaining than the high conflict approach that has historically poisoned labor – management relations in PPS. My understanding is that negotiations are proceeding well and hope that they will be successfully concluded within the next few months.

How you will handle disagreements with fellow board members?

As an adult...I know how to disagree without being disagreeable. I think it is important to remember that everyone on the board is a volunteer and I believe we all come to this position with only the best of intentions. Our job is to ensure that we have a great school district that nurtures and supports our students while giving them the best education possible. I believe that honest communication is essential to all productive working relationships. As a mediator, I know that acknowledging conflict and working through it together through respectful dialogue is the best way to arrive at positive, durable resolutions to problems.

Interim superintendent Bob McKean has pushed the district to pick priorities, stressing that in a time of transition the district can't do it all. What are three priorities you feel need to be that forefront and why?

1.     Supporting the new Superintendent in restructuring the Central Office and transforming PPS's organizational culture to one of strong fiscal management, transparency, and accountability to ensure that children's needs are the highest priority.

2.     Ensuring that our schools are healthy environments for kids, teachers, families and community members. I believe we will be in a good position to address the health and safety issues if the bond passes in May. If it doesn't pass, we will have to make some painful choices.

3.     Restoration of the middle school model and setting a strategy to resolve persistent enrollment issues that have driven shocking inequities in educational opportunities available to students.

What metrics will you be watching as a board member?

Having worked all day every day with performance metrics for the last three years, I have a healthy respect for both the value of meaningful metrics and the dangers of pursuing poorly constructed metrics.

It takes time and information to develop a solid, comprehensive set of metrics. At the moment, I can offer some general categories of data that I will be focused on:

—   Impact of budget cuts on students' educational experience, including course offerings, enrichments, support services

—   Central office expenditures by department and how it impacts capacity to serve schools

—   Enrollment trends by school and grade level

Portland Public Schools has said it wants to improve its equity work. Where can the district do better in this area and how can it make that happen? What role could you play in these efforts?

Structural inequities in educational opportunities contribute to lagging outcomes for children of color. More than a decade into the K-8 reconfiguration, we still have under-enrolled schools that persistently fail to provide students in the middle grades with anything like the opportunities available to those in middle schools. Principals and teachers report that these students are showing up in high school unprepared to thrive academically, socially, or emotionally.

This is just one example of the many ways that the rhetoric of equity is being undermined by the reality of structural inequities. We need to be more intentional about taking concrete action to address the barriers to students' success through a more equitable distribution of resources.

What strengths would you bring to the board? Why, essentially, is it crucial the voters choose you?

I have 15 years of experience working within PPS as a mother, an advocate for our most vulnerable children, and as a volunteer on multiple advisory committees. I have expertise in the budget and some of our most important problems and a demonstrated commitment to fighting for equity and the best interests of our children. As a former college teacher, I have seen how prepared PPS graduates are to succeed in adulthood.

I bring a career's worth of experience in system change, policy analysis, and project management that will inform my decision making on the board.

With me, what you see is what you get. I have been a critical friend to the district for many years: never afraid to point out problems, but always with an eye toward working together to fix them. I have a bias toward taking action because our children can't wait.

What is your stance on the movement to privatize education?

I am fundamentally opposed to efforts to privatize education. Free public education is America's gift to the world. It has been the foundation of our society, the bedrock of our democracy, and the engine of economic growth, producing the American dream and making the US the capital of innovation.

Privatizing education is not good for students or this city. I am completely opposed to it, as is the vast majority of voters and residents of Portland. Public education is a door that all kids have the right to walk through and which we as a society have the obligation to fully fund.

How will you engage with the community?

I am a community activist, parent and hope to be board member. While school board meetings are an important mechanism for people to talk directly to the school board, they are accessible to a relatively small number of stakeholders. I believe that Board members should be accessible in a variety of ways, including visiting schools on a regular basis.

— Bethany Barnes
Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany here: bbarnes@oregonian.com

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