Portland’s alternative education high school students and their teachers finally have a building to call their own, after years of being shoehorned into makeshift spaces in far-flung corners of the district.
At opening ceremonies on Saturday for a light-filled new Multiple Pathways to Graduation building — also known by its Chinook name, hayu alqi uxyat, meaning many future paths…
“Also known by its Chinook name” is hysterical. It’s the perfect encapsulation of political correctness gone amok. First, of course, no one will call it this virtually unpronounceable series of words. Second, it’s unclear from the article that the Chinook have anything at all to do with the alternative school (though one former principal—they seem unable to get anyone to actually stay and run the thing—is named “Lorna Fast Buffalo Horse”). Are students of Chinook heritage overly represented in among alternative students? (Could be.) It’s clear that tax-payers, not any Native American tribe funded the building, so the “Chinook name” business seems performative. (“We care about Native Americans, but not enough to do anything that matters.”)
A larger issue, however, may be spending $64 million on a building for 400 at-risk students. Why bad students—which is what we mean when we say “alternative education” or “vulnerable students”—deserve better facilities than good or mainstream students is a bit of a puzzle. This is not an argument that they deserve nothing, of course, but that’s a lot of money to spend on kids are dismal at academics.
Anyway, you can read the article about the rest of the school rollout—behind schedule and one helluva mess by all accounts—and discover it’s what one would expect from Portland. They throw extraordinary amounts of taxpayer money at a problem, discover it’s the wrong problem or an incomplete solution, and everybody involved gets angry and disappointed that all that money didn’t fix things.