Mission: Portland Empowered strives to ensure that student and parent voices are reflected in policy and practice within Portland Public Schools. Students and parents are experts on what they need to be successful in education, and our
Youth Engagement Partners and Parent Engagement Partners are critical assets to education reform in Portland and beyond. We also share the knowledge and tools Portland Empowered develops to deepen the impact of student and parent engagement initiatives in Greater Portland and across the country. Portland Empowered is housed at the Foundation for Portland Public Schools.
Project: Portland Empowered (as YCE) engaged youth to discuss issues impacting them during the pandemic and with regards to systemic racism. PE crafted a list of recommendations for what schools in Maine can and need to do to be anti-racist that can be customized to the unique challenges and opportunities within different schools/districts, established a youth-adult partnership learning environment where youth and adults articulated learning and growth with regards to racism and youth engagement/leadership, elevated youth voice and provided a model others could employ.
Outcome: Ultimately, this work helped deepened understanding about core issues like racism, youth engagement and youth-adult partnership across a broad cross section of youth and adults, generated ideas for how to measure short and long term changes around racial equity, and broadened our network of district leaders, school staff and youth leaders committed to the issue of anti-racism.
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