The View from Hillsboro - Advocating for Public Schools

Witness our schools

80 people attended today's performance of Witness our schools by Sojourn Theater at Glencoe high school in Hillsboro. Next week is the last weekend of performance of this incredible piece on our Oregon public schools. If you have not had the chance to see it during the many performances during the past nine months, head to Roosevelt High School in Portland on April 25 at 7 PM. It is an incredibly powerful portrait of our schools and of the opinions of Oregonians about them.


It is hard for me to describe what Witness our schools is. It is based on interviews of 500 Oregonians about public schools, and the words of the play are often those of people around the state.

For me, those words were often the words of my neighbors. In the past few weeks I have knocked on hundreds of doors, introducing myself as one of the candidates for school board. The dozens of conversations that I had on doorsteps and living rooms match precisely the ones in Sojourn's piece. I saw the talented actors play parents who are involved in their schools and in their kid's education. I saw them play educators who work hard to do what is best for their students in spite of federal and state mandates, and who don't get the recognition they deserve from some parents and from the community at large. I heard the voices of people in my neighborhood who don't see the value of public schools because they don't have any connection with them.

Many of the voices that I heard today were those of students. They were very well represented in the audience. It was very interesting to participate in the discussion after the play with those high school students. They really deserve to be heard, because of their personal experience and because of their vested interest in the quality of education.

Not surprisingly, the audience was made of people who were very vocal about our schools. They are students, parents and teachers who want to be equal partners in shaping the future of our schools.

posted by Unknown @ 8:42 PM