Parents, teachers, school officials and community members packed High Street Cinema to watch and weigh in on the controversial documentary "Waiting for Superman," which explores America's public education.
The Salem-Keizer chapter of Stand for Children invited about 150 people to the private showing to start a conversation about education in the Salem-Keizer School District.
"We feel it's important to get the entire community involved because learning doesn't happen just in the classroom," said Ellen Keithley with Stand for Children, a grass-roots child advocacy group.
The film's director, Davis Guggenheim, who also directed "An Inconvenient Truth," focused on students in some of the nation's worst public schools as the students and parents pinned their hopes on winning the lottery for local charter schools.
The film strives to generate the same outcry for school reform that Guggenheim's last film created for climate change.
It already has elicited strong opinions from all sides for its depiction of teachers' unions and school administrators as well as its portrayal of charter schools.
Stand for Children held a panel discussion after the movie's emotional climax in which kids find out their fate as the charter school lotteries are drawn.
Houck Middle School Principal and panelist Susan Rieke-Smith was struck by one thought as she watched the movie: "This is not my school, that's not my feeder and that's not my district."
As Houck Middle School's student population went from 20 percent to 80 percent poverty during the past five years, its test scores actually improved, she said receiving applause from the audience.
Although Salem-Keizer doesn't resemble what the film called "drop-out factories," or schools that fail to graduate more than 40 percent of its students, Salem-Keizer still can take away the film's central message, said Four Corners Elementary principal Phil Decker, who was in the audience.
Poverty should not be a barrier to success, he said.
"We need to be relentless in serving all of our kids and hold everyone to high expectations in helping all kids succeed."
Jane Killefer, the Salem-Keizer Education Association president and a panelist, said teachers support education reform that's research-based, collaborative and sustainable, but she disagreed with the film's depiction of teachers' unions as bad and pointed out that Oregon teachers don't get tenure, a criticism of some states in the movie.
She also said the film tried too hard to find a silver bullet.
"In most cases," she said, "there's not a quick and easy solution."
sknowlto@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6735
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