Archive for category: FPPS News

Step Up Award Provides Financial Assistance to Portland High School Multilingual Student in the Make It Happen! Program

The Foundation for Portland Public Schools is thrilled to announce Didon Maombi Heri as the latest Portland High School student chosen to receive the Step Up Award, now in its 4th year. The Step Up Award at Portland High School provides funding for students in the Make It Happen! program who would otherwise have to forego school-year extracurricular opportunities in order to work after school and/or on weekends. Didon, a rising junior at Portland High School, will receive $1,250 per semester until graduation for her last two years of high school.

A small awards ceremony took place at Portland High School on May 19, 2021. Award creators Bill and Ann Weber; Portland High School Principal Sheila Jepson; and Make It Happen! staff members Danielle Wong and Tim Cronin spoke at the event.

The Step Up Award is the creation of Ann and Bill Weber, parents of two PHS graduates, who state: “We know kids are more motivated to come to school because of extracurricular activities. The opportunity to work as a team or lead a group effort is invaluable to growth and developing leadership skills which can often lead to better grades. Many kids aren’t able to take full advantage of extracurricular activities because of family responsibilities or the need to supplement the family income. The Step Up Award allows deserving kids a chance to grow and mature and become more productive citizens through involvement with athletic or co-curricular activities.”

Make It Happen! is a nationally recognized college readiness program designed for multilingual high school students. Students who attend Portland’s three high schools work closely with site coordinators, volunteers, and community partners to build competitive academic profiles for college admission and learn how to navigate and access financial aid. In addition, Make it Happen! students are encouraged to take challenging classes, improve their standardized test scores, engage in leadership activities, community service, and career readiness opportunities.

Didon Maombi Heri was selected for her passion and engagement in a wide variety of activities, internships, and leadership positions, as well as her strong academic performance. Didon is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since she’s been in Portland, she has been involved with the Women’s Rights Club, the Inside Medical Club, the Telling Room, Portland Empowered’s Youth Engagement Partners, Upward Bound, Peer Leaders and more. Didon also enjoys photography, swimming, basketball, languages, and movies. She dreams of becoming a cardiovascular surgeon and remaining an activist.

“The Portland Public Schools is very grateful to the Weber family for providing our students with the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities, giving them the chance to engage more fully in the educational experiences offered at our schools,” Portland Superintendent Xavier Botana said. “This family’s generosity is a prime example of how individuals and other community partners can truly make a difference in the lives of our students by supporting the Foundation for Portland Public Schools and its goal of improving the opportunities available to PPS students.”

The Portland Public Schools, with its Make It Happen! program, was announced as a Grand Prize winner in the National School Boards Association (NSBA) 2021 Magna Awards program. The below video was created to celebrate Make it Happen! and the accomplishments of all the multilingual students participating in the program.

 

The pandemic has meant Rippleffect’s Cow Island is off limits, forcing the Portland-based organization to shift its programming.

After a summer and fall of programming pivots due to the pandemic, Rippleffect is planning to get creative again to get Portland middle school students outside this spring.

The nonprofit organization will get students outdoors and physically active at parks near their Portland schools, according to Executive Director Adam Shepherd.

He said he hopes to get the students back out to Cow Island, the organization’s private Casco Bay island, for day and overnight programming by fall.

“Our goal is to get the kids as far afield as possible while still feeling safe,” Shepherd said.

But until then, he said, finding outdoor opportunities is important to give students a chance to connect, and reconnect, with each other.

“Many students are spending the majority of their time on a screen and remote learning,” he said. “Individuals are on their own and not having that invaluable human to human connection.”

For two decades, Rippleffect has worked with between 4,500 and 5,000 students in third through 12th grade throughout the year. The group was founded on the belief that “outdoor experiences can build upon the strength of leadership in individual students, challenge them to become leaders in groups and improve their ability to be leaders in their communities,” Shepherd said.

“Our platform to do that is the outdoors,” he said.

For the last few years, funded partially through a $20,000 grant from L.L.Bean, Rippleffect has been providing four-season outdoor experiences for all of Portland’s 1,430 middle school students. Those experiences range from a day at a city park or at Bug Light Park in South Portland or Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth to sea kayaking and trips to Cow Island.

This past fall, because busing or getting on a boat to Cow Island was not practical during the pandemic, Rippleffect shifted to bringing the adventure to the students. Programming took place at Baxter Woods for Lincoln Middle School students and Deering Oaks for King Middle School students.

Andi Summers, executive director of the Foundation for Portland Public Schools, which raises money for school programming and initiatives not funded through the budget, said the partnership with Rippleffect provides experiences students wouldn’t have otherwise.

“These experiences not only inspire young people to get exercise and be outside, they also give students a chance to build trust and relationships with each other and their teachers that carry over into the classroom and create a foundation for collaboration, taking chances and working through challenges,” she said.

Rippleffect’s programming during the pandemic with King and Lincoln students has been different, but the goal is the same, Shepherd said.

“The focus is still outdoor facilitated experiences and using challenges or games to authentically connect kids,” he said.

The organization also introduced Adventure Academy, in which 35 students across greater Portland attend Rippleffect programming on remote learning days, spending the morning on academic work and the afternoons doing things like sea kayaking, hiking, rock climbing or, more recently, snowshoeing or ice climbing.

The program has helped Julie Lannon’s son, Colin, an eighth grader at King Middle School, stay focused on his academics while providing him opportunities not traditionally offered in school.

Colin, who has participated in Rippleffect programming in the past, was old enough to stay home alone, she said, but not three days a week. She was looking for some sort of structure and sense of normalcy for her son, and Rippleffect’s Adventure Academy seemed to be the right fit.

“I believe in the whole concept of the healing power of being outdoors,” she said

Lannon said she is glad Rippleffect was “able to think outside the box” and offer the program.

Portland Forecaster Article by Michael Kelley

The Foundation for Portland Public Schools received a grant from the Edward H. Daveis Benevolent Fund of the Maine Community Foundation. With these funds, the Portland Public Schools PreK program will create an interactive, multilingual video resource for families to learn strategies of how to support their children at home around the Maine Early Learning and Development Standards. A creative approach to the equity, achievement, and whole student goals of the Portland Promise. Thank you Maine Community Foundation!

Article from The Forecaster, by Micheal Kelly

Portland school officials hope a $10,000 grant from UNUM that the Foundation for Portland Public Schools received last month will help to diversify the district’s staff and complement work underway in the Portland Promise, the district’s goal of rooting out systemic inequalities and attracting and retaining a diverse and talented staff.

“We see this as an effort to accelerate and deepen equity work that is already happening,” said Andi Summers, executive director of The Foundation for Portland Public Schools.

As Portland’s student body has become more diverse, the diversity of those who teach them has lagged behind, something Portland Public Schools Human Resources Director Barbara Stoddard hopes this new funding will help with.

Stoddard said there is not a target in terms of how many educators of color the district is looking to hire through its diversification efforts. The goal, however, is to diversify the workforce at all grade levels.

“We need a diverse staff at every school and every grade level,” Stoddard said.

In 1989, fewer than 10% of Portland students identified as Black, Indigenous or people of color (BIPOC), but by 2010, that percentage had grown to 35%. Currently, 48% of students identify as BIPOC. Since the district began tracking racial demographic data on staff in 2016, the number of employees of color has risen from 6.6% to 10%.

“When I talk to students they often tell me how important it is to them to have a faculty that more closely reflects their experiences and backgrounds,” Superintendent Xavier Botana said. “This has been a priority for us as a district for the past four years and while we’ve made gains, we have a great deal more work to do.”

Over the last few years, Summers said “there has been increasing research that show when children, particularly Black children, see just even one person who is a reflection of what they look like, it makes them feel more comfortable,” which can have “an achievement and graduation rate impact.”

How exactly the money will be spent has not been finalized yet, but Stoddard said it will be used to boost the city’s internal and external human resource. Internally the money may be used to support employee’s course work to obtain certification or licensure testing or for mentoring individuals looking to transition into a new role within the district. The money could also be used for district leaders to travel to out-of-state recruitment events and invite existing staff of color to join to advocate for the Portland School System.

“We feel our existing staff is the best ambassadors for Portland Public Schools,” Stoddard said. “In the past we have not had money for recruitment efforts beyond state borders.”

Summers said some of that out-of-state effort could include recruiting in areas where there are a lot of teachers of color or at historically Black colleges, as well as work to get foreign-trained teachers and educators certified and employed in Maine.

Stoddard said recruiting a more diverse workforce to the state of Maine and Portland will be challenging.

“If we want to attract candidates outside of Maine, we need to share information of who we are, what are our values and about the city,” she said.

Increasing the diversity of staff in the state’s schools is also something the Maine Department of Education is working on. Tamara Ranger, an educator excellence coordinator for the Maine Department of Education, said through the department’s Teach Maine campaign, the Educator Talent Committee is in the early stages of a strategic plan to, in part, recruit, hire and retain educators of color, create more interest among students of colors to become teachers and decrease barriers to becoming educators in this state, and support the current educators of color in the state. The Maine Department of Education does not have a breakdown on the racial demographics of educators in Maine.

“If we can create a supportive system for educators of color in this state, it can be a big selling point for educators of color coming from other states,” Ranger said.

Emily Doughty, the department’s educator effectiveness coordinator, said additionally she and other representatives from the Maine Department of Education joined 40 educators from other New England states on New England Secondary Schools Consortium’s Task Force on Diversifying the Educator Workforce on a report of regional recommendations to increase the racial, ethnic and linguistic diversity of the educator workforce in New England.

Furthermore, in its efforts to combat racism and inequalities in education across the state, the department is conducting an equity audit of its policies and hiring practices, investing in racial equity training for department staff and working to reduce the barriers of state certification for internationally trained teachers, among other things. To that end, as part of the emergency order from Gov. Janet Mills, the department may issue an emergency certification through Sept. 1 to individuals who have a four-year degree, are in a teacher preparation program or who have been similar credentials in other countries. The order also states the department can issue teacher certifications to individuals who are certified to teach in other states or countries, but who are not certified in Maine.