[00:00:00] Speaker A: The truth can break through.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome back to Housing Voices. And again today we have Eric McGuire with us.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: I am so excited to continue our conversation.
We covered so much in our first part of this, of the episode. And I am really interested to hear from you. In your firsthand experience as an educator, you're kind of, in a lot of ways a frontline person dealing with the effects of our housing situation and what that does to our students, our teachers, our institutions as a whole.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: As a former teacher, I taught down in Houston and I was a minority teacher and my experiences there with the poverty, with the things I always had snacks in my class.
This was 15, 20 years ago when it wasn't quite as controversial at that time.
And I can remember some stories. Right. And experiencing. And that's a hard situation to walk into. And so I'd like to talk a little bit more about that.
The ripple effects of houselessness, poverty, not only on the students, but on the teachers. Right.
And how teachers are looking at it through both lenses because sometimes it's hard to look at things through a lens that's not ours. Right. We tend to have rose colored glasses on.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: Yeah. I think starting with teachers.
If, if you haven't been around long enough in Oregon to know the, the trajectory has been down in terms of the benefits that teachers get in the state.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: And benefits. Are you referring mostly to salary? Are you talking about health insurance? What do you mean? Okay.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: All of it has been about cutting costs. Right. And so Oregon, I was fortunate enough to have a tier one retirement shortly after I joined.
It was determined that it was not that that was too expensive. So we moved to tier 2.
Shortly after that, tier 2 moved to something that's not even called a tier anymore. So what teachers are walking into is not feeling as great of an opportunity, even though they're still walking into it. Arms open. Right. So first thing is like teachers are showing up already less economically stable than they would have been 30 years ago.
And so then insurance, as you know, is being constricted all the time.
I'm not even sure if Regents Blue Cross is even in the state anymore. I know my school district doesn't even use it anymore. And so all of that is to say that teachers show up less able to to bio after five or ten years of teaching. Right. I don't know if you listen to the, to our episode with, with John Wasilinski.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:57] Speaker C: Was he talked about the fact that he spends half of his salary on his home every month and sometimes he can't make it to the End of the month.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:06] Speaker C: So he has a roommate. So, like, there's. There's this really a risk in taking on a home as a young person right now, as a teacher.
So, I mean, I think that kind of gives you a sense of, like, where teachers are coming in at.
In terms of their economic viability in a profession.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: So teachers as a profession. Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. Right. So if we're not paying our teachers an equitable salary, giving them benefits, why are people becoming teachers?
[00:03:41] Speaker C: That's a great question.
People love the idea of teaching. I think it's a very romantic view.
And I've met a few teachers in the last, you know, newer teachers.
I have one in my family who's under 10 years, I think, of teaching. And so I kind of give them this.
Be really mindful of what your body's telling you before you get to year 15.
And if you don't feel like this is the thing for you for 15 more years, you need to direct your attention somewhere else.
And I don't say you need to, but I basically am saying if you have a calling of something else, you should really explore it, because odds are it's not going to be any different in terms of your economic viability than teaching. This is. I loved teaching because it was a great way to raise a family.
Right. Summer's off. You could travel with your kids. You know, all those things that a lot of people buy into.
But at about year 20, 21, 22, I was like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. But I was just way too late for me because I was already all the way in, so I don't know. Did that answer your question? I want.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:55] Speaker C: And tell me more.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: What are we seeing as a difference because of these economic factors in the quality of our teachers coming out?
[00:05:05] Speaker C: I think the quality is still very high.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:05:08] Speaker C: But what you're seeing are the statistics will show you that teachers are leaving much more frequently before year five and even year three. They're coming in, assessing what the job is like, and then they're bailing. Especially teachers of color.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Which Oregon has worked really hard over the last 10 years to raise the number of teachers of color that we. That we employ.
And so that is a problem in a state that has a history of exclusion.
So it's a. People are getting out earlier than I think they ever have before.
There's an arm of ODE called the EAC Education Advancement Council, I think, or something like that. And they. They're the people that dole out a lot of money to these districts for programs and everything, and they write a report every two years.
If you want to see the health of the education, the teaching force and others, you can look at that and it'll tell you exactly where we are. So, yeah, I think.
And you know, I mean, you. I'm 29 years older than you. You have a different view of the world now. And a lot of teachers are about your age and.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Well, I think it's a cost benefit analysis. Right. Where there are teachers that I know of that to keep up with the rising costs in their communities, they have to get a second job. Right, right. A side hustle or something. Right. They're driving for Uber or Lyft or doordashing late at night. Right. And then, then they gotta wake up early and go to school the next day. And teaching is not easy. It takes a lot.
[00:06:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it takes a lot of time.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: And then that then means maybe they're not able to do their job as well because they are super tired and exhausted, which is a normal human thing.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: Like teachers are humans too. And then the kids maybe aren't getting the teacher at 100% because they're tired from working their butts off.
[00:07:11] Speaker C: Right?
Yeah. Does that answer your question?
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Kind of, yeah, let's. We're going to keep going down the rabbit hole. Yeah. All right, let's do it.
So you've worked at several different school districts, right?
[00:07:23] Speaker C: I worked at two districts. I worked at all the different levels.
Middle school, elementary school, high school.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: How do you see the difference in the two different districts as far as the receptiveness to people who may not be housed?
How are they handling it socially? How are they handling it academically? Is there a difference based on race
[00:07:47] Speaker C: in terms of how they treat the individual students?
[00:07:51] Speaker B: From a teacher. Let's start with there. From a teacher's perspective, how are the teachers dealing with the poverty and the houselessness that some of these students are unfortunately experiencing?
[00:08:02] Speaker C: Boy, that's a really individual question.
Um, but I will say that I will give Beaverton some credit in that they do do their best to try to train teachers about what, what they're seeing and why they're seeing in terms of poverty or in terms of, you know, there's supposedly statewide training you're supposed to have on, on different racial issues and identity and all that stuff. So I think they try their best to give teachers something.
But in a school district like Centennial, I've been there two years, there's been nothing there's been no conversation that's been meaningful. And keep in mind that most districts have an hour every month to talk about equity, to talk about issues of poverty and shoes that arise from your community.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: One. One single hour.
[00:09:02] Speaker C: One hour usually a month, because there's usually one staff meeting and then there's one other, like, training meeting, unless you get, like, before, like, pre service in schools.
So the. I've been super disappointed because of this, the level of poverty.
And so I started asking those questions as only a second year employee. I had to. Actually, I would. This is my second year of probation in Centennial. I was a probationary teacher the last two years.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Are they bringing you back?
[00:09:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:09:36] Speaker C: Yeah, my third year.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Well, that's good. So it's interesting to me that what I'm hearing is that at Centennial, where there's a greater level of poverty, there's no talk about the poverty. There's no talk about the houselessness.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: No.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: How are the teachers, generally speaking? We don't want to call anybody out specifically because we are all human.
How are those students treated?
[00:10:03] Speaker C: It depends. On what? So we have teams.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: This is really a rabbit hole because Centennial is an antiquated kind of system that a lot of middle schools have let go of.
And so we are on a team where we each have about 130 students that we share between the six of us.
PE teacher, science, all the different areas.
And on our team, we have this conversation a lot because I have questions and I want to do things in our. In our. Like, we have one time of the day that's our academic. It's not an academic time. It's a time where you have about 40 minutes where you can do other things with kids.
There's a prescription of what to do, but we also try to fit in, like reading interventions, which we don't have.
I think a school would have reading interventions for sixth graders that don't read above third grade level. But no, they don't have that.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Okay, what are you seeing as far as students who are in sixth grade that are not reading at grade level?
Are there any characteristics that are in common?
[00:11:10] Speaker C: Yeah, they can't learn.
So they have ways that they've learned how to manage in a classroom without being able to learn. Some are able to sit by people they know they can learn from.
Very few of them have the skills to ask for help.
So you kind of have to identify that early on.
We have an amazing reading teacher in our group. And so over the year, the two years that I've been there, he's been able to raise the average score for readers 1 1/2 years.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: That's pretty good.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:45] Speaker C: And so, but, you know, then we pass them along to seventh grade and there still hasn't been any real intervention.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Do you think that the schools that you have taught at and from your position as a longtime educator and you're active in the educator space as well, is, do you think that these schools largely have the funding that they need if they wanted to do more?
Do they have the funding to do more?
[00:12:13] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:14] Speaker C: They're just making choices about what they want to fund and how they want People in the positions of superintendent, school board. They don't like to take risks, which is understandable in a lot of ways.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: But there's no single thing more important to a sixth grader than to be able to read, to learn.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:12:38] Speaker C: So, you know, sixth graders in our building still have two electives, and so they have an elective that's.
I don't art. I mean, I don't want to deny a kid art, but as a sixth grader, it's the last real time you have to, to feel like giving you interventions is a, is like a good thing for you as a seventh grader. Seventh graders hate. They don't want to deal with any of that stuff because they're just, it's a, it's a mark on them. So anyway, to me that's, that's where this, these two things meet is the housing, the insecurity, the poverty. Those things have don't just happen overnight. No kids live in that system year after year after year.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Are you seeing that the kids that are living in that system, where are they academically compared to the kids who, you know, have stable housing?
[00:13:35] Speaker C: They're, they're just, I don't know. The kids that have stable. I don't, I'm not able to compare them on that level.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:41] Speaker C: I know the kids that I can see that are identified as McKinney Vento. So that, that tells me a lot. And those children struggle.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: And can you define what that means to people who may not know McKinney Vientoe.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: It's a federal program.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: It's a federal program that supports families that I can apply for that. And Beaverton has a whole, whole building and group of people that work on that to identify kids that need that service.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: So low income housing insecure.
[00:14:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Are there are, are most of the kids who need that service applying for the service?
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Well, that's one of the things we were talking about before, in terms of community support is a lot of families have a language barrier.
Yeah. So kids will come to school and they're bilingual, which, you know, I tell them that's your superpower. Superpower. You need to embrace that. But their families are, by our. Are monolingual. And so the, the message doesn't always get back, even though we're translating materials and we're trying to give them information that's in their home language, whether it be Spanish, Somali, Ukrainian, Russian, whatever the case is.
So, you know, there's lots of. There's lots of hurdles to get over to communicate with families what their opportunities are.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: And teachers are at the crosshairs, the intersection of all of that. And you're really kind of facing all of that head on that, oh, I think that kid and their family may benefit from more supports. Xyz. And then you've got to pull in other people as well. And then if you're also suffering from the same problems that those families and that student are facing, then we're, you know, kind of in a sandwich here where now how do we support the people on the, on the front lines, like educators like yourself, that if you can't find a home and. And there are cities across the nation that have invested in workforce housing for teachers who can't afford to teach in or to live in the city that they teach in.
[00:15:47] Speaker C: Do you know where most of. I've never. I've heard of that, but I don't
[00:15:50] Speaker B: know where those are.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: There's Sonoma, I think, a lot in California as well.
There is also. I read an article, Illinois and Illinois school district is also providing some of their parking lot spaces for RVs so that housing insecure families can move into the RVs on their property as well.
Yeah. Corvallis, too.
[00:16:14] Speaker C: Okay.
I would like that program if I knew that a teacher that was buying a home or using a home from a district could pay for that home over time and, like, take it over and own it.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: I don't think that's from my understanding, at least in terms of the, the. The Sonoma example that I used. The district owns it. Yeah.
[00:16:35] Speaker C: So here's my problem with that, is that a lot of young teachers come into education and they feel like we're all in this together.
We're all here.
The teachers are here, the EAs are here, the administrators here. We're all here for one purpose.
And that couldn't be further from the truth in most situations. So I would not trust a school district to be Looking out for my best interest, especially when it came to a place where I was living.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Well, it makes sense.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: Especially if I lost my job.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Yeah, you were cut.
[00:17:07] Speaker C: Even if I didn't do anything wrong and I'm cutting, I just lost my housing.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Well, what if you want to move and are you able, while you're living in this, you know, I guess company housing or district owned housing, are you able to then save up money for a down payment on a house if you want to buy something somewhere else or where is that generational wealth building? Right. You're just, if you're a teacher in a, in a place like, you know, Southern California or Sonoma. So I'm just, I'm going into the teaching profession and I have to be okay with just renting a house ad infinitum and then that's it.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: Yeah, Yeah. I don't know the answer to that question, but I don't like the feeling of school districts being able to control it.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Yeah. You yourself wouldn't take the district up on, let's say, if the district that Centennial was in says, we built this workforce housing, you can move in, you
[00:18:04] Speaker C: can rent it from us or who's we?
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:08] Speaker C: Is it a royal we or is it the superintendent? Like, I don't, I don't trust. I just don't have a high level of trust for most people in those positions because I've seen how they try to influence the outcomes of their districts. And so like the one gaping hole in our state is that districts don't get held accountable, teachers get held accountable. We're putting a lot of pressure on teachers right now in this accountability act.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: To raise achievement levels.
And the districts where these kids are, are not being held accountable. Like, I don't know what the accountability mechanism is for them. For instance, to let.
For two years, I've had 35% of my sixth graders reading at third grade level or below for two years.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Heartbreaking.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: All of those students now are on their way to the high school.
Right.
And so like those moves that tells me right there that they are not interested in the overall health and well being of their district.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: They're just trying to make their, you know, get to their end points or their goalposts and then that's. That's it. And I feel those kind of company housing, I keep saying it, for lack of a better term, I think is a band aid to a larger problem, that it's not bringing around the structural change that we need.
And I don't think it really helps Anybody in the long run, it's good in an immediate sense that these people need homes and we need to get them housed.
But I don't think we should stop there at all.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: No. Can you give us some examples, cite some things, some good things that have happened in your experience with kids that are houseless.
What are some of the silver linings that you're like, oh, like this, this was a good thing that happened. Or how are the kids are interfacing with one another? Are they interfacing? Are they talking about their housing situations? Right.
Because there's a lot of social equity in there and that's a lot of confidence builder. Right. If I have to go in with the same clothes on that I wore yesterday, my confidence isn't going to be very high.
[00:20:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
I think that the, if we're talking about positive experiences, I would say that kids that do come into the school and somebody finally does recognize that they are struggling, their family's struggling, when they finally do get some support and they are taking home a backpack of food every other day and they are getting clothes and the clothes they are wearing are getting washed at school and given back to them. Like those things do really help the outlook of a kid in a day to day experience.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Oh yeah, right.
[00:21:06] Speaker C: And so I think that's super important that we're at the least at the very basic level, we're trying to find kids and make sure that their day to day experience cannot be detected by other kids because the bullying is rampant, especially with sixth graders. It's terrible.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:21:24] Speaker C: And we live, I live in a district that has kind of a really high up hierarchy of families that are quite well off, but most families are not. And so there's like this, there's a group of kids that do a lot of bullying.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: I'd like to hear a little bit more about that program or what you said about somebody going home with a backpack full of food or their clothes getting washed and you know, while they're in class one day. Is that something that's currently being instituted for this?
[00:21:55] Speaker C: That's what we do at our school. I mean, that's why I've heard of it is we have a washer and dryer there that we use. And so we'll try to get the kid to. We have one kid that just will not relinquish their clothing or their coat or anything. Like they refuse to do it. And their parents do not wash.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: They're.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: They're close.
So when that actually happens, it's kind of a cool Thing to, like, see them have some new stuff.
You know, the feeling of having something new and.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:22:22] Speaker C: Yeah. And then having a backpack that no one can see what's in that backpack, but they're going to bring home enough food for a couple days for their family.
So we have a clothes closet, a food closet. So that's where the counselors come in.
They do a good job of.
Of supporting kids in that way.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Is there enough food and clothes in there for the kids that need it?
[00:22:44] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, on a daily. Yeah, that's wonderful. It's identifying the kids that we can. You know, a lot of kids are very stealth about. About their situation.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah. On purpose.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: Because they've learned the stigma to it. So they do their best to come to school as.
As tight and wrapped up as they can, to look as normal as they can, whatever that means.
So there, there are.
In that system, you know, I was out with. On a bike ride with a friend of mine that I teach with, and we talked about just as a profession.
I've never been in another profession, mind you, but on balance, the. The teaching profession has really good people in it.
You know, they're just solid human beings. They care, they're empathetic.
They may not always, like, be. Well, be knowledgeable about their own interaction with kids in terms of who they are, you know, their identity and stuff, but they do care about people. And so that's a saving grace for a school like mine because there's a lot of people looking out for kids.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: That's really cool. I was at an emergency town hall for educators recently in Eugene put on by Lane county education workers.
And there was one very new teacher. He was just, I think, less than five years into the profession and was so dedicated and said. And he was laid off in the budget cuts that the Eugene school district had just gone through, similar to many other school districts across the state.
And he was like, it's really. It's really hard to be laid off. When I went into education and teaching, basically running towards a burning building is what he said he felt like. And I was leaning into the problems because I wanted to solve them. And then I am the newest teacher that was added to my school. And so I was the first person to be laid off.
[00:25:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
And. And I think the. The system of education tends to.
What's the word?
Turn and burn teachers like that because they take advantage of them and all the things that they do for free.
And so that's why I think that that number of teachers that are between three and five years is just that are leaving, not even being fired. But just leaving is so high because it's just such a burnout.
I don't know if you guys have ever heard of this term called moral harm.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:36] Speaker C: Yeah. So that's kind of how I felt this, this last year. Not this well, I felt like that this year.
But, but last year when I first got there, it took me six months to like physically recover from what I was seeing because I had no control over it.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:25:51] Speaker C: And so when you have no control over the outcomes and the, the well being of children and you know that the system is not doing them right.
It is like a somatic thing in your body that is reacting to that. And so a lot of teachers go through that process and they don't even know they're going through it. I happen to know someone who's a doctor and I was telling her about it and she's like, oh yeah, that's just a case of moral harm. You're being.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:15] Speaker C: You're put in a situation you have no control over.
And so that's kind of how I look at a lot of teachers is.
And a lot of them try to protect themselves from that. Like they just harden themselves.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:29] Speaker C: Having that emotional response to the kids.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I totally relate to that.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: It's also the moral harm of the child. Right. If you look, if you flip the coin to the other side.
[00:26:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Right. I mean it's just horrific.
[00:26:42] Speaker C: But that's, that's all embedded in their own socialization.
Like they're going through that on a day to day basis. That harm. Yeah. Years at a time.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:26:51] Speaker C: So then how. What does that do to your personality as you become a teenager and a young adult?
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Well, you're taught that, you know, people really don't care about you.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: I'm suffering. I am going through life fighting my, my, I see my family, they're good people. I'm a good person. And nobody sees that I'm struggling. So as I move through my life.
Okay. Nobody helped me, so why should I help you?
[00:27:16] Speaker C: That's exactly right.
[00:27:18] Speaker B: Well, and then it's the devaluing of education because they don't understand the worth that could be possibly obtained by going or doing or supporting your kids through.
[00:27:28] Speaker C: And there's too many other things, you know, that they just don't have that fundamental level of the Maslow's hierarchy or whatever it is, hierarchy of needs that they have to have to be able to learn.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: And that starts at home. It starts with, you know, Back to this podcast of we need to make sure that everybody has a safe, affordable home so that they can grow up safe, right? In having at least the bare minimum of what they need to go to school to learn. And that the teachers have a affordable, safe, comfortable home where they can put their best foot forward and best self forward the way that they wanted to when they signed up to be a teacher.
And then, you know, we get better educated kids, more capable human beings when they're exiting school. They can be contributing members of society. They can, you know, open a business, create that economic getting more specific about,
[00:28:26] Speaker C: like, what it's like for kids that have homes and kids that don't have a, have a home to be in.
Can't remember the author of this book is, but it's called Teaching with Poverty and it's in one of two books that I read about that. But the idea is that you can tell students who are school learners and home learners.
And so home learners are taught at a very early age how to hold a pencil, how to turn a page, how to look at a book, how to hold a book. School learners learn all of that at school. There's nothing happening at home.
And so that's one of the deficits you see in a lot of kids, is that I learned this when I taught at Hazeldale Elementary. I got transferred there during the Obama shifts, and I was taught how to teach reading. I'm not a trained reading interventionist, but I was so fortunate to be able to do that. And then I saw kindergarteners coming in that could not hold a pencil, did not even know how to turn a page.
So that experience taught me that it makes such a huge difference when you have, when you can learn at home.
A lot of these things that so many kids don't have a chance to do at home. So that's definitely an impact of not having solid housing and parents that can be supportive.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Well, we saw that also during COVID during the COVID pandemic, when I was doing education policy for the U.S. senate, and we were reaching out to school districts and to the state department of Education, trying to figure out what was working and what was not working and where kids were falling through the cracks because they did.
And there were so many stories of kids having to go to a fast food restaurant to use the WI Fi. Right. Just so that they could do their E Learning. Right. That is, they didn't even have Internet at home to be able to do that. And that kneecaps them.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I just this year, sixth graders are the first group of kids that weren't in school in kindergarten, pre
[00:30:35] Speaker A: K.
I hadn't thought about that during
[00:30:38] Speaker C: COVID so I'm really, really interested to see how these sixth graders come through this year and skill levels and reading levels and just to see if that has any impact.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that at all.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah, neither had I.
And it's just, you know, you've brought things up in my mind that I'm like, I haven't really thought about that. Right. Just the holding of a pencil. Right. I know not everybody reads to their kids. Right.
But I never thought about the fact of kids might not be learned, taught.
[00:31:11] Speaker C: There's so much that we teach our kids that's just intuitive to a lot of people. And like me, like, I raised my kids in North Beaverton, you know, during COVID I was home teaching. They were home learning. I could help them. It was a privileged thing to not have to go to work to a place. So, like, there's just a lot of things that we don't see when we have that privilege of not having to think about it.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Your parents both have to work to make rent and pay the grocery bill and then, oh, childcare on top of it. That is a rent payment in and of itself right there.
[00:31:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: And then what are you supposed to do?
[00:31:48] Speaker C: And what if you get Covid?
[00:31:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:31:51] Speaker C: I have never had.
[00:31:52] Speaker B: Me either. Wow.
[00:31:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I've been very fortunate. So I don't know if that's getting deep enough into the weeds here, but I'm happy to talk about more.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think it's just really good to really be able to say, oh, here's a difference that I can see. And it would be nice to see if we could get those differences noticed at the earliest of age for intervention.
Right. Because that's when you can make the biggest difference.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: Intervention's critical and I think it should be education malpractice to not offer interventions to kids. Like, if you. If you're a district that has more than 5% of your kids after third grade that aren't reading at grade level, you should be forced by law.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:38] Speaker C: To provide interventions. You cannot ignore that.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Well, prevention is cheaper always than rehabilitation. And if we can prevent the harm, it's much easier than trying to repair the harm.
[00:32:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: If we could just get some affordable housing. Right.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And diverse styles of housing. Right. I mean, here in Corvallis, there are a lot of older folks that are in there. You know, the house that they bought when they Had a family and they are aging in this huge house that could be, you know, occupied by a family with children. And they could go into a situation that's more accessible, safer for them, more affordable if they're on a fixed income.
It's, it's good for everybody to have different styles of housing, different costs for those styles of housing, because families are different. Right. You know, multi generational families who want to live together.
And I think that's really, really great. And that's part of, I think, the ethos and the fabric of our country. One of the good things that I love is like the melting pot and that we should have all different types of housing and styles of living because we have all different types of people that live in this country.
[00:33:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Can I say one thing, and you can cut this if you want to.
Several years ago I went through a program at PSU called Gender, Race and Nations. And I did 24 credits there during COVID as part of the process I went through to better understand my own role as a social studies teacher and my own identity as a white person in this country. But there was a quarter where I couldn't take classes. And so I decided that I always have a problem with Beaverton's boundaries and the way that Beaverton schools are, are like the, the, the schools where I was, Westview, Sunset, those are the schools with the least amount of poverty and the most wealth.
So that the PTOs and all of these other organizations that, that collect money, collects tens of thousands of dollars.
But when you go to the other end of the district to Aloha High School, you have a much different clientele there. Right.
And so I wanted to know why that situation exists. So I went in to the Beaverton City hall and I said, I want to talk to the planner. And he said, well, I just so happen to have these two PSU graduate students who did a study on Beaverton's housing and how it all kind of started. And it starts up in the Cedar Hills area. I don't know if you're familiar with Beaverton at all, but Cedar Hills was one of the original suburbs of Portland.
And so. But it was also developed during World War II, so it was heavily influenced by the GI Bill, which of course was all about redlining or exclusion of people of color.
And so if you start at that point and move south, what you'll see is that housing changes, as laws change to ex. To, to not let people discriminate by only building single family dwellings, which were too expensive and very difficult for people of color to qualify for.
And so as you go further south in Beaverton, you'll find more multifamily housing.
But you also, then you've hardened the boundaries in a way that the people who live where I lived. When you have boundary discussions, let me just tell you, the war begins when you have a boundary discussion. And those families, you would have thought that they literally were there since 1750, like they own their neighborhood. And when they say they don't want their neighborhoods to change, they say, well, we don't want our boundary to move below Highway 26, which is a whole part of a discussion about race and, and poverty. And anyway, so like really exploring how boundaries are constructed really let you into how housing impacts the way that schooling is provided for kids.
So I've kind of thought about just really radically changing boundaries and taking a school, like a low I school, and making it like a high, high level CTE school, which it kind of already is, but like taking it out of the boundaries and redoing all the boundaries based on the five high schools instead of the six. And then that school becomes the place where people want to go for the CTE programs.
But just being able to like, step out of the status quo, how can we reimagine what's more equitable for kids instead of.
We can't do that because it pushes against the traditions of redlining and all the things that have happened.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think we as Oregonians a lot of times forget that we are as much a part of our racist history of our country as any other state in the nation.
[00:37:41] Speaker C: Do you know, you probably know the answer to this question.
[00:37:44] Speaker B: I'm not a born Oregonian. I'm a transplant.
[00:37:47] Speaker C: When was the 14th amendment ratified in the state of Oregon? Oregon?
[00:37:51] Speaker B: I have no idea.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: I actually don't know either.
[00:37:54] Speaker C: 1973.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Yeah, 1973.
[00:37:59] Speaker C: So what I'm getting at is like Oregon's exclusionary history was allowed to continue along a path for a lot longer because they could stay away from what was happening on the east side of the river, the Mississippi. Right. Where there was a lot of cities that are like Portland had to go through a process of reconstruction and institutions that were made for, for people of color, specifically freed slaves, people that were enslaved and really is powerful to think about in Oregon's history, which is what we get back to, that question of why there haven't been people of color who have led this state.
Yep. And it's those institutions that have been solidified in Oregon in that way.
And so I think, you know, I think it brings to mind this idea that a lot of people have problems with school choice, like parents getting vouchers or whatever.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: That looks like we're just getting ready to ask you about that.
[00:38:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I know.
However, I, I just thought of it in my head.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: No, of course you did.
[00:39:06] Speaker C: But could there be a balance in those things? Does it all have to be all one or all the other? Because right now, the forces that are promoting school choice come from groups who are very anti teacher, very anti union, think that schools are not doing a good job in general.
You know, so we need to allow kids to have vouchers, but those kids are going to go to schools that don't have to admit every kid.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:39:39] Speaker C: And so that. That kind of exclusion is not good, I don't think, for a community.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: Well. And then that just allows the higher socioeconomic status kids to flee.
Flee a school or a school district that has been historically underfunded, that has, you know, talk about the, the segregation of the housing as well, that these houses are not worth as much, so then therefore they're not collecting as much property taxes, which means there's not enough money, which means there's not enough programming, which then means, oh, then my kid is not getting as good of education. So me, who can pay or, you know, send my kid, drive my kid to this charter school or another school somewhere else, then my kid can escape that.
[00:40:23] Speaker C: But then what are the characteristics of the school that you want to choose versus the one you're leaving? And why don't both those schools get
[00:40:30] Speaker A: those resources and students with disabilities get left behind, too? Because a lot of times those charter schools or those private schools don't admit them.
[00:40:39] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I'm. I have a mixed. I'm. I'm mostly against school choice, but I also think that there could be some creativity, too.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: I think it's nuanced.
[00:40:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: So what would you like for people to do? You're going to give people an action item, right. Of something to think about, an action that they can take that would positively, of course, you know, impact housing and kids and students and all of that.
[00:41:08] Speaker C: One action item.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: You can give multiple.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: Go to school board meeting.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: You can give people choices. Right. It could be simple as, hey, you know, bring food to schools. Right. When. When classes begin.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Go to a school board meeting.
[00:41:23] Speaker C: I, I could ask for one thing, One thing.
I would say we need people to vote.
People need to be engaged in what's happening, especially in their communities with school boards and importantly with right now. In Oregon, with the legislature, you need to have some level of engagement.
And finding a source of information is really the thing that is so hard right now. It's not hard if you know where to go.
I have. I don't know how many podcasts I listen to, but that's really where a lot of information is now.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:42:05] Speaker C: That's accurate, that's unfiltered and unfortunately, I don't know. I was looking at a substack today of somebody that was saying just Fox News has poisoned our ancient nation.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: Yes, it has.
[00:42:20] Speaker C: And so like, how do we. How do we extract ourselves from that to where the people that typically will engage with that media, how do we let them know that their plights in their lives with their families are tied to the people that they look down upon for no other reason than they are just different than them.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:42] Speaker C: Like their economic lives are intertwined.
And the sooner we can get people to believe that and to see that, it means that they need to be engaged with what's happening.
[00:42:54] Speaker A: You're only as safe as the most vulnerable people in your community.
[00:42:57] Speaker C: So we only have, even in a good year, we have what, 60% of people that vote.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: In a good year.
[00:43:03] Speaker C: In a good year.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:05] Speaker C: That's. That's a lot of revenue in Australia where you get fined for not voting.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:08] Speaker C: Well, also, you know, saying like, like there other people. Every democracies put a lot of weight on being a participant.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: In what's happening around you.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Well, as it stands right now, our system depends on people not voting, actually.
[00:43:23] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:43:24] Speaker B: We're not going to get into your voting platform. No, you're not doing that today.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Very different podcast.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: It is.
And for very different social media, Oregon
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Voices has those conversations.
[00:43:36] Speaker C: There's some coming up.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: I'm excited.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. We've got a.
You can cut all this, but we got someone coming from ode that retired or that left.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:43:50] Speaker C: And it's gonna be.
It's gonna be a groundbreaking.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: She's incredible.
[00:43:55] Speaker C: She is. And she gave me kind of the inspiration to like, I got more involved in this accountability bill, the Senate Bill 141. And so I filed a FOIA to the governor's office because I now know no one from the governor's Office wrote that 141 bill. It was Stanford Children and Future for a Better foundation for a better Oregon. Two people from those two groups wrote Senate Bill 141.
So I want all. I want all the signal chats. I want everything.
Because guess who's not involved in Senate Bill 141 educators.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:44:31] Speaker C: Not a single one testified publicly, provided any.
Any testimony through, you know, written response. Nothing.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
Which is insane.
[00:44:44] Speaker C: I'm way off track, but I just thought I'd share. That's. That's coming up. I'm super excited about it.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it's important to have. Have these. Those conversations. These conversations, because I think on the whole, people are dissatisfied with the system as it is. Right. The. The system as it, as it stands is. Is working for very few people and continuing to vote for the same people, continue the same policies, continue the same, you know, even at the city level, the same building codes or what types of housing is allowed and what's not, those all have huge ramifications.
And we have to talk about it, because if people want to do better for ourselves, our families, our communities, we have to know exactly what we're walking into and the entire scope of the problem.
[00:45:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: And I think in a lot of ways as well, that we have been tricked into thinking that the people who need help are the problem. Right. And that our rugged individualism will get us out of here and they just
[00:45:50] Speaker B: need to work harder, pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: But when it's a sixth grader that is at the intersection of poverty and racism and generations of struggle and poverty.
[00:46:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: How are they going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? And is it their job to do that?
[00:46:08] Speaker C: Yeah. No, I don't think it is. It's our job to. To make sure people can have a basic level of living. Living that's dignifying and is not a struggle every single day.
[00:46:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:20] Speaker C: You know, I think. I think what we're seeing in Oregon, I think we saw some of this in the primaries, you know, with the people that were elected to run in the general, with one exception.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:36] Speaker C: And that. So I'm not sure that it kind of gets back to that Overton window thing. Like people that are the moderate corporate Dems are starting to shift their conversations.
At the end of the short session, no one was talking about revenue.
No one.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:54] Speaker C: Now the conversations around revenue are popping up everywhere.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. When? In last month when both you and I were at the Capitol talking to legislators about education funding in particular, I was asking straight away, so what are we going to do to talk about expanding our revenue base and. Because we can cut, cut, cut and cut, but we're never going to cut our way into a thriving community.
Right. And if we are cutting down to the bone on our education, then what? Right. And I Think it's. We can't. But we can't cut our way out of a lack of money. And so I think instead we should be focusing on how can we make sure we have enough money to do the things that we absolutely need to do. And I was very surprised. I was expecting a lot of pushback, and I was very surprised that many of the legislators and the staffers as well, that I had conversations with, they're like, yep, exactly. We love that you brought that up. Those conversations are starting, and they're like, can you bring that up to other people you talk to, too? Because it. The critical mass, I think, is. Is starting. The energy is starting, and we need people to, you know, get out there and talk to their legislators and say, this isn't working.
[00:48:09] Speaker C: Now, some of those people think that 20, 29 is what they're talking about.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:48:14] Speaker C: And I think they're about to be put into their place. No, it's happening.
[00:48:18] Speaker A: Yeah. When I talk to.
[00:48:19] Speaker C: Even if it doesn't pass, it's happening now.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Yeah. This long session, which is really where a lot is done in the state legislature. There's the. The Christmas tree bill, and it's obviously the long session. So there's more time to do things instead of our 35 days in the short session.
No, we need to do it now. You cannot keep kicking the can down the road on housing, on education, on. On protecting our people in this state.
[00:48:47] Speaker C: There are a couple of housing bills in process right now. One of them is coming from the people that I know that are really interested in. In shedding a lot of red tape. That is not necessary. You know, as much as if you guys listen to her red abundance.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: No, I didn't bother. I'm not an Ezra Klein person.
[00:49:06] Speaker C: It's worth. It's worth looking at because it's.
That I think the concept is really important right now to talk about, because a lot of people that have been making policy have. Have. Are always about contraction. They're always looking through things in a negative light, a negative lens instead of the fact that there's more than enough in the system. If you look at the OCPP website and listen to those conversations, Oregon is doing really well economically.
I'm not sure why we're continuing to consider giving businesses tax breaks. They don't need tax breaks.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: The Oregonian just published a story, actually that corporate profits are up, executive profits are up, and worker wages are stagnating.
[00:49:54] Speaker C: Guess who all those people are. They're the people that make over $500,000 a year who need to be taxed at a higher rate.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: That's an idea.
Oregon center for Public Policy yeah, we talked about that before in the.
[00:50:09] Speaker C: They're kind of the arbiter of.
I don't. Kind of truth, economic truth. Like, they speak about everything that's happening in a way that's really easy to understand.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really plain speak, like direct.
It would be cool to talk with them.
[00:50:26] Speaker C: And actually, I think that we had on Juan Carlos, he said that the governor's database is cnbc.
Like, that's what he literally said. Like, that's where she's getting her data from is like cnbc. And he's like, here's our data set. Like all of these other people that are in. In it, you know, in a deep level, they're economists. And Oregon's metro areas especially are thriving compared to the rest of the country.
Bend is, I think, the number one metro area in the country in terms of prosperity right now.
So, you know, the conversation around continuing to allow for tax breaks is just not going to cut it.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Well, we really appreciate you coming on the podcast. Thank you so very much.
[00:51:16] Speaker C: You're very welcome.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: And I know we got off topic many times, but we enjoyed it very much.
[00:51:21] Speaker A: Well, I think it reflects the, I think the origins of Housing Voices where we wanted to talk about all of the facets of the housing conversations and how much housing affects. I think it's the argument is really simplified. The conversation on housing is really simplified down and like, okay, build houses and then it'll be fine. It's much more complicated than that.
[00:51:47] Speaker C: Well, the good news is you can edit, mix and match because I'm wearing the same T shirt.
[00:51:52] Speaker B: So are we. So it's like we came back day two.
[00:51:55] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:56] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us at Housing Voices. I'm Marty.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: And I'm Bri.
A special thanks to our partners MartyBulford.com and Cyanette.net for supporting thoughtful dialogue around housing in our communities.
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Until next time, this is Bri. Let's keep listening, keep learning, and keep building practical housing solutions together.
