SES

Mission Statement

· Incorporate members of the greater Portland area into our community via the Sunnyside Environmental School.
· Insure that the community commitment to environmentalism is passed on to our youngest community members.
· Environmentalism involves more than planting trees and recycling. It involves social justice and community integrity. With these things, the dignity of all the earth shall be provided for.


Articles of Achievement (Goals)

· Generate curriculum for K-5 entails a high level of academic achievement in the ‘three R’s.’ People who are well spoken, well read, and able to research using all available methods are more likely to be effective leaders and community members.
· Maintain and Support the proven 6-8 curricula.
· Use the vehicle of service learning to ensure that high standards of civic responsibility to environmental causes are passed to the next generation.
· Support the ethical education provided by parents in ways that enable all students to participate fully in the community. This includes maintaining the highest examples of dignity, respect and inclusiveness for all members of the community.

Demographic Target

· This list is for parents who live in the district boundaries for Sunnyside School. It is also and more importantly for people who are committed to the kind of environmentalism and community involvement that we have been creating and sustaining in this area of Portland since before I moved here 10 years ago. That said it is important to state here that part of our beliefs about environmentalism and community are that the neighborhood parents are extremely important to our cause of e&c (environmentalism and community) because they are the interface of the school with the community at large.
· Important Note: We need to co-opt the word community. We are no longer neighborhood parents; we are community parents. Practice this in the mirror because it is the most important thing we can do to ensure that the community, which involves parents and children as well as businesses and home owners will have a stake in building a school that reflects who we are. Words have more power than you can realize.

Order of Business

· We need to identify committees in existence already that need our support. We need to commit one person from this list to each of these committees. That person will be responsible to generate summaries of the proceedings for the list to enable all of us to keep informed.
· We are going to need to generate recommendations and documentation on curricula for K-5 that conforms to our long-term goals. We will need to find teachers and possible district employees to support our work on this.