Fans of Jefferson High: "We deserve to be treated like everybody else" | OregonLive.com

Fans of Jefferson High: "We deserve to be treated like everybody else" | OregonLive.com

Fans of Jefferson High: "We deserve to be treated like everybody else"

By Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian

May 18, 2010, 8:58AM

Loyal supporters of Jefferson High turned out Monday at the Self Enhancement center to say: Don't change the plans to make the school into a comprehensive high school much like, but slightly smaller than, those planned for seven other neighborhoods in the city.

A series of speakers, many of them Jefferson alumni, told Superintendent Carole Smith and the three school board members present not to pursue anewly hatched plan to move the core four-year career-technical program from Benson High to the Jefferson campus.

Without saying anything negative about Benson or mentioning how career-tech would or would not fit at a rebuilt Jefferson, supporters of the school indicated they are offended by that proposal. Many speakers noted the long list of decisions by past school boards and superintendents that harmed Jefferson, including a 1998 "reconstitution" of the faculty that cost the school some of its greatest teachers.

The appeal of seeing the school rebuilt to offer a full curriculum, including music, fine arts, an array of college-level courses, two foreign languages