Equity and Excellence
Issues and Solutions
​As a dedicated advocate for our community, I aim to bring transparency and accountability to our school board, ensuring every voice is heard and every student thrives. Join me in this pursuit of a brighter educational future for our children.
Portland Public School’s Strategic Plan
The school board recently adopted a strategic plan with little input from the public. That plan outlines 5 strategic priorities that John has reviewed and formed some thoughts on priorities (PPS priorities are in small print):
Equity: Keeping equity at the center
Portland Public Schools strives to be an anti-racist, inclusive district by vigilantly supporting each student to achieve their potential and rooting out systemic inequities.
I wanted my daughter to grow up in a multicultural setting like the Portland Public Schools offers. While the vast majority of inequalities are behind us, some inequities exist. Portland schools do a great job providing tools to help youth work through these issues and will help pave the way to a future in which all individuals thrive and succeed.
Portland schools are dedicated to equipping our youth with the tools needed to navigate these challenges, ensuring a future, where everyone can thrive and succeed. We can come together and create a more equal and supportive environment for all individuals. Supporting a diverse and inclusive future for our children needs to come before all else.
Achievement: Enhancing Academic Excellence and Equity
Implement a universally accessible, rigorous, and equitable curriculum that prepares students academically and ignites a joy of learning, through consistent, high-quality instruction and engaging, grade-level tasks that challenge and inspire students.
John Rousseau's goal will be to prioritize student success above all other initiatives. He aims to enhance educational outcomes by advancing the implementation of a strong literacy curriculum and promoting financial literacy. Our children deserve dedicated teachers and the necessary tools and resources to empower and guide them towards a brighter future. Our teachers need to have ample resources to prepare students for college, career and a successful life.
Whole Student, Connected Community: Cultivating Inclusivity and Belonging
Nurture supportive, inclusive school communities that promote belonging and engagement among all students, their families, and the broader community.
John Rousseau believes that It is important to implement a plan that focuses on child well-being (SEL), student relationship building, cultivating inclusivity and belonging to help create a positive competent school culture.
-Students and teachers should have a sense of belonging in the community. It is important to bring everyone together.
- We need to champion our adult education program, it is the most diverse student population in our school system.
- Students should be able to earn academic credit for employed learning experience that teaches life skills. Financial literacy should be taught as an accredited course in high school.
People: Developing Staff, Leaders, and Organizational Culture
Elevate recruitment, retention, and staff development practices focused on ensuring instructional excellence and cultivating an inclusive work environment that supports collaboration and staff well-being.
John believes we need to focus on our academic staff and streamline the central office operations to reduce unnecessary upper management positions.
John Rousseau believes school management needs to focus on recruitment, retention and restoring faith in human resources, especially in the wake of the recent payroll debacle.
John Rousseau believes that we need to focus on professional development, onboarding and support of staff. Teachers need additional resources to help overcome language barriers. PPS also needs to retain more special ed teachers
Systems: Streamlining Operations for Equity, Efficiency, and Accountability
Develop and implement consistent and clear operational procedures and systems that enhance equity, efficacy, and accountability across Portland Public Schools.
John Rousseau fully supports the need to streamline operational policies, procedures, reduce unnecessary upper management and cut any redundancies. Recent audits have shown that the school management needs additional oversight by people with business and financial backgrounds
School Funding
The school system currently operates with an approved budget of $154 million with an additional $7 plus million in federal and grant funding for a school system serving 6,650 PreK-12 students and 2,000 adult education students. This presents several layers to the question frequently asked, what is your position on the school budget.
John believes the schools need to have adequate funding to support the academic program to provide high quality education outcomes for our students. Currently, that is not happening. He also believes that PPS needs to foster the arts as much as it does athletics.
State Aid to Education
The common answer to the question of more money for our children is to say that the state is not providing its fair share of 55% of the cost of education. The state’s school funding system operates on a complicated formula called Essential Programs and Services which calculates the presumed costs of certain budget parts and then runs it through a formula that takes into account a communities property valuation. The result of this is that Portland is heavily penalized for having a robust commercial property tax base. The 55% becomes 15% of what the state says it should cost and 10 to 12% of what the city’s school budget is.
John believes this system needs to change. We need a Fair Funding Formula in this state that divides the cost of education evenly. With a Fair Funding Formula Portland schools would get in the range of $30 to 40 million instead of the $15 million we currently receive. As a Portland School Board member, John will use his influence to convince the Portland legislative delegation to support such a bill.
High School Consolidation
The School Board will be submitting an application to the state for funding of a consolidated school to replace the four high schools entities in Portland. There is no plan in place as to what that consolidated building would be located or look like.
John Rousseau believes that input should be solicited via committee to explore the new high school model. We need to have a plan in place to address the neglected high school buildings.
Elementary & Middle School Enrollment Balancing
The School Board has established an advisory committee to look at the re-balancing of school enrollments to more efficiently manage both the elementary and middle schools. This review is in the nascent stage and as further information is gathered, John will be looking at the proposed solutions and will provide a position at the appropriate time.
John Rousseau believes elementary students should go to school in their own neighborhoods with friends and siblings. Any plan to rebalance the schools should take this into account and work should be done to improve the academics of each discrete school.