Lipscomb’s life is an exercise in education

On Sports

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Jul 29, 2010, Updated Jul 30, 2010 (1 Reader comment)

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Ed Lipscomb doesn’t make a fortune, but he has always considered himself among the richest men in Portland.

Since 1992, Lipscomb has been employed by the Portland Public Schools district, and since 1998 he has been a full-time physical education teacher at Harrison Park School in Southeast Portland.

“I don’t make a lot of money, but it has always been enough for me,” says Lipscomb, 59. “I love my job.”

Cuts to the school district budget have threatened Lipscomb’s job security for years. “That’s a good word, ‘threatened,’ ” Lipscomb says. “It has happened over and over and over.”

It’s happening again this year. Plans to trim $5.6 million in school staffing could include full-time P.E. specialists being reduced to half-time in elementary schools.

But even that is a bit hazy. Each school in the district has a different setup in regards to P.E. Some have no P.E. classes. Some offer them full-time.

School district officials’ hopes that more money would come from the U.S. Senate’s Education Jobs Bill were dashed on July 22, when the Senate failed to approve the bill. That means Oregon would not get about $117 million, which could have saved about 3,500 teachers’ jobs across the state.

Last year at Harrison Park, students in first through sixth grades got P.E. once a week for 45 minutes. Seventh- and eighth-graders had it five times a week for one of the three 12-week terms, then nothing for the other two 12-week terms. It’s obviously not enough.

“I’m not sure the public realizes what’s happening here,” Lipscomb says.

Lipscomb frets about losing his job. His wife, Yuri, is still unemployed after being laid off from her job with a travel agency a year and a half ago.

“I’m not sure what we would do if I got laid off,” he says.

But Lipscomb shows equal concern for the schoolchildren who need more physical activity than they’re getting at Harrison Park.

“When I was young, we did all kinds of stuff they can’t do now,” he says. “P.E. is more important for our youth than ever. For most kids, it’s all the recreation and exercise and instruction for athletic skills they get. It gives them the skills and shows them how fun it is and turns them on to continue a healthy lifestyle and keep participating.

“If they don’t have that, all they have is recess, which is maybe 15 minutes after lunch, sometimes less. If that’s all they get, what’s going to happen?”

I knew Ed Lipscomb when he was NCAA pole vault champion at Oregon State in 1974, clearing 17 feet, 4 inches. But there is much more to his story that I didn’t know.

Lipscomb grew up three blocks from Harrison Park in a family of five brothers and sisters. “It was basically a slum trailer court,” he says.

Lipscomb has two degrees from OSU. None of his siblings graduated from high school. His mother never got beyond fourth grade. His father, who left the family when Ed was 5, died of alcoholism and lung cancer. Lipscomb had three stepfathers, none of whom he regards with any fondness. The family was always on public assistance.

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