Oregon Foundations Team Up to Aid Their State’s Public Schools

When Sue Hildick interviewed in 2004 for the job of president at the Chalkboard Project, a new foundation-supported education group in Portland, Ore., she was struck by something

the organization’s founders said.

“They reached consensus on every decision,” says Ms. Hildick, who had worked previously as the head of a local Red Cross chapter. “I really scratched my head and said, ‘Is that really possible? Do organizations really work that way?’”

The consensus-driven approach seemed particularly surprising given that the organization’s founders were hardly the most obvious allies. They were not a tightly knit group of like-minded activists, but were instead executives and trustees from five of the biggest foundations in Oregon. And while the grant makers had each worked on education issues before starting the Chalkboard Project in 2004, they tended to tackle those issues from different political perspectives.

But despite that diversity — and in part because of it — the foundation leaders decided to put their collective weight behind improving the public-education system. The grant makers felt that as a nonpartisan voice, they could help to resolve the education debate’s political gridlock.

In the two years since Ms. Hildick joined the organization, the Chalkboard Project’s leaders have not reached consensus on every single issue. But they have created a strong set of partnerships, reached out to thousands of people in Oregon, and established a model for collaboration they believe can be an effective way for philanthropy to solve social problems.

Some national grant makers agree. The Chalkboard Project has won support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle, and the Intel Foundation, in Hillsboro, Ore., among others. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., has donated nearly $200,000 to chronicle the project’s work in the hope it can be useful to groups in other states.

Foundations “don’t tend to play well together,” says Ted Chen, program director in youth and education at the Kellogg Foundation. “That really caught our eye.”

Frustration Over Social Problems

The Chalkboard Project emerged after Doug Stamm, the newly appointed head of the Meyer Memorial Trust, held a dinner for some of his colleagues at other foundations. As the executives started talking, they discovered they shared frustration over the social problems facing Oregon, which had been aggravated by the technology bust and the recession of 2001 — and with the failure of political leaders to find effective solutions.

Hunger and unemployment rates had soared and the state’s education budget had been stripped bare. Unlike most other states, where schools are paid for in large part by property taxes, Oregon’s schools receive money from a general fund, and compete for support with other social services. Meanwhile, the state’s lack of a sales tax has meant that funds for the state’s schools have been among the most volatile in the nation, according to research done by the Chalkboard Project.

Even the political cartoon strip Doonesbury took note, calling Oregon a “loser state” after some of its school districts sliced as many as three weeks from the academic year to save money.

In 2003, the five organizations — the Collins Foundation, Meyer Memorial Trust, and Oregon Community Foundation, all in Portland; the Jeld-Wen Foundation, in Klamath Falls, and the Ford Family Foundation, in Roseburg — started a sixth, Foundations for a Better Oregon, with grants of $250,000 each. One executive and one board member from each of the five foundations lead the Chalkboard Project.

After deciding to focus first on education, they established the Chalkboard Project as a program of Foundations for a Better Oregon. As a starting point, Chalkboard’s board members tried to widen the debate on education policies beyond politicians, teachers, administrators, and parents. They were particularly interested in hearing the perspectives of the 75 percent of Oregonians who do not have school-aged children. The project’s members believed that if they could get people talking about education, that dialogue might extend to other policy issues as well.

“We hope the byproduct of this would be a renewed sense of public spirit and enthusiasm throughout Oregon,” says Mr. Stamm.

To that end, the organization mounted a massive statewide effort to ask Oregonians what changes they would like to see in the education system. Over the past two years, it conducted polling and telephone interviews, held more than 400 neighborhood meetings, and spoke with parents, teachers, business leaders, administrators, and policy makers in all of the state’s 36 counties.

Chalkboard then sought to weigh the findings against what researchers and other experts had determined to be the best ways to improve the schools. It brought together consultants and education experts to debate the recommendations made by Oregonians, and then formed committees of teachers’ unions, administrators, and others to help turn the recommendations into policy proposals. This month, the group released 13 recommendations, a final version of which it plans to lobby the state’s Legislature with when it meets in January 2007.

The Chalkboard Project has also begun a handful of pilot programs based on the results of its polling. The group started the Open Book Project, which is designed to make school-budget information available online, a response to taxpayers’ concerns that schools might not be spending their money efficiently. And Chalkboard created a program to encourage businesses to give employees more time to volunteer in the public-education system based on recommendations from the public that cited local involvement is a key to better schools.

Diversity’s Advantages

The work has depended upon significant commitment on the part of the foundation trustees and executives who make up Chalkboard’s board. To avoid disagreement on potentially incendiary issues, Chalkboard’s trustees met with a consultant for a year before hiring any staff members and developed the framework by which they would operate. The group agreed to try to reach consensus on all issues, but to stop short of giving any one foundation veto power.

And they often return to old issues to make sure everyone feels comfortable with the decisions that have been made.

“We’ve done a lot of preventive work to make sure we’re not going to have a time when we fracture,” says Ms. Hildick.

Another organizational challenge has been keeping trustees and staff members at each foundation from losing interest in the work. The project has taken more time than many of the foundation leaders anticipated. Initially, Ms. Hildick was hired for a one-year term, but now the board expects that Chalkboard’s work could last another 10 years.

The diversity of the grant makers’ perspectives, meanwhile, has more often been an asset than an obstacle, say the foundation leaders. They have brought in experts of all political stripes to help them sift through the results of their polling and research, and they have thought more carefully about issues on which they tended at first to disagree.

For example, Chalkboard’s proposals on the hot-button issues of school budgets and accountability reflect a middle ground: They call for the state to save money by reducing health-care, transportation, and other costs, but also to provide a guaranteed level of support for every student. The group did not call for a major overhaul of the tax system.

“We’ve opened our minds to broader solutions than if we were working alone,” says Greg Chaillé of the Oregon Community Foundation.

Looking for Results

But as the Chalkboard Project moves from research and polling to lobbying for passage of the proposals it offered this month, some schoolteachers and others remain skeptical of how much the group will be able to achieve.

Courtney Vanderstek, interim executive director of the Oregon Education Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, says that while she is pleased that the Chalkboard Project’s leaders have demonstrated a financial commitment to improving public education, she disagrees with the way they have approached the issue. “I don’t think the best way to write public policy is with public-opinion polls,” she says.

Ms. Vanderstek also says that an advertisement campaign Chalkboard designed to draw people to its Web site was inflammatory and portrayed schools in too negative a light. The campaign showed students wearing sandwich boards with statements such as “My teacher only has time for the problem kids.”

After complaints from the teachers’ union and other people, Chalkboard turned the statements into questions.

Ms. Hildick says the campaign served its purpose: raising the profile of the organization and getting people to think and talk about the state’s education system.

Ed Dennis, chief of staff for the state Department of Education, agrees with Ms. Vanderstek that the Chalkboard Project’s polling and research may not translate into real improvements for schools. Until the Legislature meets in 2007, when Chalkboard will try to get its proposals adopted, he says, the jury remains out on whether the organization has made an impact.

That said, Mr. Dennis adds: “If they manage to do any of this successfully — even just half of this agenda that they’ve charted out — they’ll be in a tremendous position to influence people solving problems.”