The Superintendent Who Listens, part five: Tycoons and Welfare Moms
Fanning south from the gritty industrial strip along the Columbia River to the leafy suburb of Lake Oswego, Portland Public Schools enrolls students from the extremes of wealth and poverty. Rich kids and poor kids ride bikes and play ball in neighborhoods that bump right up against each other — the children of lawyers and tycoons living in gracious old neighborhoods like Irvington, Alameda, and Eastmoreland. The children of laborers and welfare moms, sometimes just blocks away, growing up in the humbler neighborhoods of Albina and Sabin and Lent. Inner-city families in peeling rentals and subsidized apartments can see million-dollar mansions hanging on the wooded slopes of the West Hills just across the river. It’s not a town where country-clubbers live in gated enclaves far removed from crumbling slums, but a town with mostly middle-class homes sprinkled with pockets of exclusivity and struggle. In Portland, kids from both ends of affluence go to schools within a few minutes’ drive from each other. Often, in fact, they sit side by side in the classroom.
Ben Canada moves between the two worlds with an easy grace. The duality sometimes shows in his clothes. He’ll wear a dark-blue suit and a crisp white shirt, conservative, quiet. But around his neck hangs a flamboyant, Save the Children tie splashed with kids’ drawings in reds and yellows, rockin’ and shoutin’.
More important, his comfort with all kinds of groups in all kinds of settings shows up in his day-to-day dealings in the district. For a quick snapshot, take the morning of October 14. Even before the sun rises over Mt. Hood, Canada is standing in the library of Harriet Tubman Middle School talking with two dozen student leaders about urgent issues on the district’s agenda. On a mural above him, the image of the school’s namesake keeps vigil over her legacy as a freer of slaves. Here, his audience is teens of all colors in sweatshirts and jeans. Breakfast is bagels and juice. Background music is rush-hour traffic on I-5.
By 8 o’clock, Canada is standing under a crystal chandelier in Meier & Frank’s elegant Georgian Room downtown, chatting with the chairman of Oregon’s venerable department store chain. After delivering a heartfelt speech about the importance of volunteers to the vitality of schools, he gives hugs and kisses to six senior citizen "Role Models" being honored by the city’s prestigious OASIS program. This time, his audience is middle-aged community pillars in suits, and silver-haired ladies in black velvet hats. Breakfast is croissants and fresh fruit. Background music is live piano tunes by Gershwin and Kern. If it troubles him that his is the only African American face in the crowd, it doesn’t show. Relaxed and smiling, he looks right at home.
The deep smile lines around his eyes and the extra pounds around his waist suggest a man who attacks life with pleasure. Unlike Canada’s predecessor, who seemed uncomfortable in the limelight and was rarely spotted in public, Canada relishes the attention. Only a year and a half into his tenure, his face is as familiar in Portland as the twin towers of the Oregon Convention Center or the arching span of the Fremont Bridge. Portlanders who watched the six o’clock news on the first day of school saw the smiling superintendent at a bus stop, talking to kids and waiting to board. Hundreds of students have come home with news that Canada was their sub for the day, or dropped by their classroom to visit. "He gave me his business card, and told me to e-mail him!" one sixth-grader said proudly. His first year in Portland, Canada’s smile was seen in nearly all of the district’s 100 schools and at more than 700 meetings.
The demand for his presence grows. Everyone in town wants him on the roster. He hates to turn down speaking invitations. His solution when he can’t make it in person? Make it on videotape.
The day before his Africa trip, he’s trying to wedge one last taping session into his frantic schedule. In the basement of Jefferson High School, the district’s TV crew fiddles with the teleprompter while the PR team pencils in last-minute edits to two scripts — one for the Oregon School Public Relations Association’s annual conference and another for a district-sponsored leadership institute for principals, events he will miss while overseas.
When the superintendent finally strides through the door, unfazed by his 30-minute tardiness, he slides comfortably into an armchair surrounded by klieg lights. Looking calmly at the camera, he launches into the hastily written script without even a dry run. "Hello, everyone. I’m excited to join you in today’s conference on nurturing and developing leadership..."
