COMMUNCATIONS AND INVOLVEMENT DURING CRISIS

COMMUNCATIONS AND INVOLVEMENT DURING CRISIS

Portland Public Schools, as well as most other school districts in the country faced tough decisions when COVID 19 began to infect communities throughout the US.    Michelle DePass joins us for our next virtual PI Network to discuss communications and involvement during COVID and other crisis. Michelle, a former Cascade Chapter Board member and a recently elected board member for Portland Public Schools, will talk about the school district’s rapid responses to the COVID 19 pandemic during the 2019 and 2020 school years.  She will discuss the information that went into cancelling the last several months of school last year and restarting this year with not only a pandemic, but also ongoing protests in the city and wildfires on top of it. 

Presenter: Michelle DePass

Michelle is a Portlander born within walking distance of where she currently lives. A long-time IAP2 Cascade Chapter board member, she was recently elected to serve on the Portland Public School Board for a four-year term starting in July 2019.

She attended elementary school in Caracas, Guadalajara and Washington DC before returning to Portland to attend high school at Jefferson and graduating from the Metropolitan Learning Center lovingly called "camp run amok" by her mother.

She is the single mother of two boys ages 18 and 21, both Benson High School graduates. She got them to school late exactly once, and, and has cooked twice a day for their entire school careers.  She does not watch television, has above average parallel parking skills, loves to cook and knit, and was just starting to read again for pleasure before her board duties kicked in.

She is passionate about education and children, fashion, architecture, cities, transportation, housing and addressing generational poverty.