We had guest speakers, Kali Ladd, the Executive Director of KairosPDX School and Winta Yohannes, the Managing Director of Albina Vision Trust and they shared the vision of the Center for Black Student Excellence. The school bond measured that passed in November dedicated $60 million dollars for the creation of the Center. It was an inspiring presentation.
Here is a little information if you missed our meeting (from the PPS School Board Resolution, no. 6150, in support of CBSE):
"Equitable access to public education has long been a key component of the civil rights movement and fight for racial justice. Building on the legacy of advocacy for Black children in Portland, and catalyzed by the social movement for Black Lives, Black Portland community leaders have put forth the concept of the Center for Black Student Excellence (CBSE). This concept endeavors to center the experience, promote opportunities, accelerate outcomes, and celebrate the achievements of Portland’s Black children. This new collective impact effort channels the decades of visionary leadership and culturally responsive and pedagogically sustaining approaches of community-based nonprofits like Self Enhancement, Inc., and KairosPDX, among other Black-led, culturally specific organizations here in Portland. This emerging community-led concept seeks to unify and elevate the educational experience of Portland’s Black children and their families, connecting a constellation of community schools, such as Boise Eliot/ Humboldt Elementary, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, Tubman Middle School, and Jefferson High School, and Black-led community-based organizations in the Albina Neighborhood. The CBSE will work with the students, families, and community stakeholders to develop a coherent set of strategies that will positively impact student achievement and outcomes while affirming student identity, and will include promoting and supporting culturally responsive/sustaining teaching and learning, from cradle to career. The CBSE will serve as a living expression of Portland Public Schools' expressed commitment to Black Lives and will help advance PPS’s mission to prepare students to be compassionate critical thinkers, able to collaborate and solve problems, and prepared to lead a more socially just world."
We will continue to share information about the planning for the CBSE as we get it.
