Past Engagement
In 2023, the Oregon State Legislature passed Senate Bill 1532 directing the Oregon Department of Education to develop and implement a statewide plan for students who are immigrants and refugees. The purpose of the plan is to address disparities in academic success, historical practices that have led to disparities, and the educational needs of immigrant and refugee students. The plan will include strategies to improve the learning and experience of immigrant and refugee students at school. As part of the plan, ODE will form an advisory group and will give grants to organizations and districts to implement the strategies in the plan.
ODE is partnering with Oregon’s Kitchen Table to hear from youth and families who are immigrants and refugees and community groups that support immigrant and refugee communities. ODE wants to hear from people what they would like to see in the plan. Your input will help ODE create the plan to better support immigrant and refugee students at school.
Oregon’s Kitchen Table is working with community organizers, doing individual interviews, and hosting community conversations between October and November 2024. You can host a conversation, join a conversation, invite other people to participate, or contact Eliot Feenstra at feen@pdx.edu to get involved.
Zoom Conversations
If you are part of a community-based organization, group, or institution that immigrant and/or refugee students and their families, please join us for a Zoom conversation to share what you would like to see in the Immigrant Refugee Student Success Plan. Register for one of the Zoom conversations through the links below:
- Tuesday, October 29, 4:30 - 6pm
- Wednesday, October 30, 9 - 10:30am
- Monday, November 18, 12 - 1:30pm (Click here to register)
- Tuesday, November 19, 9:00-10:30am - (Click here to register)
Interpretation and materials in other languages are available on request. Please let us know a week in advance if you need interpretation so we can make arrangements.