2012-07-16 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2012-07-16
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education - Regular Meeting - July 16, 2012

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this meeting of the board of education for july 16 uh 2012 to our television viewers all items that will be voted on this evening have been posted as required by state law this meeting has been televised live and will replay throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times i'd like to introduce our student representative for 2012-13 alexa garcia is a student at lincoln high school and this is her first board meeting of the year please join me in welcoming alexia again i'm also happy to announce that director regan has was elected to serve on the board of oregon school boards association having be previously served on the osba board i know the director reagan will continue to again to work with osba to provide statewide leadership on key educational issues so at this time if you would like to share anything would be you know what i didn't uh i wasn't thinking that i was saying remarks tonight but i will say that i'm uh really thrilled with the progress that osba has made over the past year and a half or so so when i left the board at that time i had indicated that i thought we needed a statewide organization that had a lot more vision and more action oriented some other issues that were going on during that time in the last year and a half both portland and salem school districts dropped off the board and they've made some significant changes and i think they're back in a pretty big way portland just rejoined and salem last week we joined the oregon school board association again and i think they're going to take their place again as a leader among education leaders in oregon advocating for our kids and for student achievement in oregon so i'm really thrilled to be back so and i'm more thrilled that osba is back thank you so we're going to continue with our agenda and we have first a presentation by martin de king's junior school summer programs are in full swing and king school is making great strides superintendent smith would like to introduce this next item yes it's my pleasure to introduce kim patterson who's the principal at king school and king has a lot of exciting things going on and she is going to uh take us on a little experience so that we all get to feel it well and thank you for having us here tonight superintendent smith and all of the directors i would really like to encourage i have um eol tagande my ib coordinator at king's school lisa collins the school improvement specialist quinn sanford the media specialist and julie davis one of my first great parents i want to really encourage them to come join me and i know that there are three chairs right back there so we are really a group and we all have a few things to say so we move things around at king and we're okay with that i hope you are so the very first thing that we want to do um we watch your board meetings with great compassion we get to spend a lot of time with children and you don't so we would like to take you on a virtual field trip so we've prepared a little video for you and we'd like to show it to you right now such a nice thank you sean we hope we show it to you right now be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice i have a dream improvement grant two million dollars all with three years three kings school has an extended school year yes kids go to school in the summer they don't have the summer slide today is real friends yeah field trips grab a partner is family
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is that big bull frog did did everybody touch it wasn't it cute yeah perk boy did we have fun their tummies are full they're just a little thirsty oh that was such a nice thank you sean king's school has operational flexibility king teachers have eight additional professional collaboration days on the district wednesday late openings teachers need time to be creators too library media specialists extend classroom curriculum collaborate with teachers to enrich the classroom experience provide school with media resources from books to ipads teach students to collaborate communicate and express themselves using multiple media promotes reading and information literacy spanish teachers introduce different world perspectives extend grammar and vocabulary skills promote open-mindedness respect and tolerance extend opportunities for students to be inquirers and risk takers to culture positive behavior coach leads kids in understanding how to be principled and caring pre teaches appropriate social interaction provides students with opportunity to reflect on their choices and actions set social emotional tone for the school king is an international baccalaureate ib school that provides both the primary years program and the middle years program an inquiry-based curriculum approach for students and a constructivist pedagogy to teaching teachers plan and reflect in grade level teams and have time for professional collaboration and curriculum development they have dancing and they have music they have ipads they have theater too school transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice i have a dream my four little children one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin
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but by the content of their character i have a dream today we wanted to take you on a field trip because we think that showing's better than telling but i'll do a little bit of telling and the teachers and the parents at king's school were charged as i am to literally transform our school and the school improvement grants the goal of them is that that school literally becomes a school that that every parent in a community would want their child to attend with the highest learning but that also that that school provides opportunities for a district to look at how to make gains for students and we want to suggest to you that when you see our state assessment results for this year later this summer that you will be pleased and that would we believe that some of the factors in our sig grant are really responsible for that and really it's the the extended school year we would love it if this year the superintendent and the board would look at the possibility of of the portland metro area having a balanced school calendar our our children come to school for the month of july and it's just an opportunity for our kids to take their learning to a deeper level and it means that we have absolutely as one of our students said no summer slide we're making strong gains and we think that's part of it we also think that it is absolutely imperative for teachers to have more planning time children need time to synthesize their learning into higher order thinking skills and teachers need time to collaborate and look at data and provide excellent curriculum and opportunities for children and at king's school teachers do have those that additional time and we believe that's also really paying off and so we we really would like you to um consider that in the upcoming year and then each of my team has a few things they'd like for you to think about i'm io el togande i'm the ib coordinator and we are an ib school we you know that philosophy means that we use inquiry based learning to try and create critical thinking culturally aware lifelong learners and the teachers of king we believe in that we strive for that we strive for our kids to be those things we are authorizing the pyp last year we had our authorization visit for the nyp we have a few matters that need to be addressed but we are confident that in the near future we will be granted that authorization and uh and again that's something that's very important to our school and and we all believe in and we believe that's part of the reason we've seen the gains that we've seen my name is lisa collins i'm the school improvement i'm fortunate to be the school improvement specialist at king and my job is to support the teachers with the core curriculum as well as to look at data and this year while at king while we were using the core curriculum and looking at data we also found some holes in metacognition for the students which the arts and the dancing and the holistic developmental scope and sequence that happens at king allowed us to shore up some of those gains and so as the school improvement specialist which was a position that was cut and then revitalized i'm happy to say it is important for us to look holistically at the students not just the core curriculum but also the supportive which is not as ms patterson this is not extra the arts are not extra but they're part of the glue that hold the whole whole student together and i'm quinn sanford and i'm the media specialist at king um and i guess what i would like to say is just thank you for the school improvement grant because it funds a good deal of my position and which provides a great opportunity for me to bring the information literacy strategies that i build into my library time with the kids into the classroom we've also had a lot of technology brought into king and we've been able to use my position as a way to collaborate with the teachers to get those informat information literacy skills in the lessons that they're using with the technology so my name is julie davis and my son is a first grader at king elementary and he's just back there he's here to cheer me on this is a little nervous making i i too am very actually very fortunate to be a king school it has been a great experience for my son and a great experience for me and i think a learning experience for both of us well i i have to credit teachers and ken patterson and behavior coaches and the media learning specialist with making these changes at king also parents have been a key part in making these changes happen i wanted to provide a list of things that we had done i just want to mention a few things that we've done to beautify the school and to change the culture at
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the school and then talk about one idea very briefly so during the revitalization of the king pta we have painted the dumpsters painted the playground we have started a learning garden in the courtyard we have 11 beds a series of barrels where kids get to go out and grow plants we had our first auction this year we raised twenty thousand dollars we've had some successes and really all of the successes are predicated on one thing and that is the fact that we are a very diverse group of people our pta is representative of our entire school which as you can see is made up for peoples from all over and i think that that's been the key to our success i guess that's one thing one message that i wanted to bring to you from the group of parents because i'm only i realize i'm just one person but i'm speaking for all of us when i say we're hopeful that diversity will be considered as we move into the enrollment balancing process that that would be taken into account we feel like the flight in our neighborhood from king school the transfer policy has been devastating for our school in terms of creating a stable funding rather than relying upon grants our funding is very much on a roller coaster and we look forward to that being stabilized and we hope that pps looks at that as being a key piece of what they want to see in the jefferson cluster rather than segregating the schools but bringing us together and really fostering strong neighborhood programs at all schools and being able to look at all parents in those neighborhoods and say any child will get a great experience here a rich experience here and not bend to those pressures that individually make parents flee and i'm not talking about just white parents fleeing schools that are traditionally considered african-american schools but flight across the board i mean segregation i think has been devastating for schools in portland and not just for kids of color who haven't been varying very well in standardized tests but also for white kids who live in a cocoon that honestly deprives him of a rich and important experience in being a human being on this planet so we encourage you to visit king school and we have our extended school year through through july 27th you're welcome any day i think you'll see wonderful things we'd love to give you a tour it's a delightful place to be and one of the pieces we hold really close to our heart is we are trying to give all of the children in the school the absolute best education possible we talk about all that all the time what does that look like so we are so excited about this turnaround arts recognition because it was simply one of the strands in our sig that we chose um just to push our kids to the highest level of achievement we really believe that the zone school and core curriculum work that we've done are mechanically excellent and they potentially build students who at the third grade are meeting standards what we believe there's a huge extra scoop that goes into the kind of excellence that this board would like for all students by eighth grade and tenth grade and retaining students um through high school that are successful and we believe that scoop is uh inquiry-based learning it's the arts it's synthesis it's all of those pieces that we're weaving in at king and we're weaving it for all students and we're looking at all of our students as value-added what should they bring to this school and they all bring something wonderful so you're welcome anytime for a real field trip come join us and thank you for having us here tonight thank you for coming and sharing thank you guys so were you dying to make a comment yeah i am i just i got i had the fortune this year of being um principal for a fraction of a day at king um and if you haven't been out there it is just an extraordinary staff and leadership and of course the kids are great across our district but it's just a really exciting time and a really exciting opportunity so do i do recommend folks if you can get out to get out to see them and i do hope that we as a district as we've done with roosevelt and looked at teacher evaluation look at some kind of enrollment or a balanced school year or something to make sure that we can support our kids so thank you all for being here i also wanted to suggest that maybe we could talk to david williams our government relations director to see if perhaps kim and her team could make a presentation like this to the legislature and to their education committee in particular because what you're providing to your students is exactly what we should be providing across the board to every child in oregon but it does take some extra resources but i think it would be worthwhile for them to see your movie and see your
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presentation and uh really feel it and i would agree with director belial in terms of the balance calendar one of the things that i'm most excited about in terms of our capital bond going forward is that we are going to be looking at having air conditioning in our buildings and that's not a extra it's a necessity if we want to eventually have year-round schools or balance calendars or have opportunities for summer learning in an environment that makes sense for learning to take place so i appreciate your presentation appreciate everybody just add a appreciation for using the opportunity of the sig funding to pilot things that you think that ultimately could be things that practices that we adopt district wide and i know the balance calendar is something that we've had interest in over many years and you guys are really piloting what difference does it make and we're getting really a strong statement of it makes a difference so thank you for that and thanks for your field trip for us tonight so can i just ask a question i'm assuming that um with the sig grant the summer the school during the summer is additional time so it's not what is often a balanced calendar which is spreading the school year out the same amount of time out over so that you get rid of the summer break so okay i just wonder it's an extended year it's an extended year yeah which is fantastic although the idea of a balanced calendar if you have the funds is that during those periods during the year when you have breaks rather than having 13 weeks at a time is that you can potentially offer a summer school type experience as you go so the supplemental education as you go so you give kids an opportunity to catch up as they're going as opposed to waiting to the end of the year failing and then having to catch up at the end so there's lots of opportunities but it requires some additional resources from the state but it's exactly what we all ought to be doing if we truly believe in 44 to 20 and 100 of our kids graduating from high school and i'm sure we can continue this discussion in regards to what one of the things that we can improve and we can do with additional funding unfortunately we have all the right names on the agenda that we need to move on so i wanted to move on to the student testimony miss houston is there anybody signed up for testimony thank you um so the next item is also uh testimony and that citizen comment uh is there anybody signed up no at this point okay so we move on then uh to the next item which is the sale of benson construction technology uh program house um okay so superintendent smith this one um so over the last since the 70s we've had 16 houses that have been constructed by benson students and then go on the market and they're sold to the public and carol campbell the principal of benson is going to tell us a little bit about the benson house that was completed this year and on the market and you've got a resolution in front of you and i got to tour the house it was fabulous it was a really great house so carol campbell principal of benson high school first of all thanks for giving us this opportunity to speak a little bit about the construction program at benson really appreciate it and tony francisconi is one of the construction teachers so he's going to chime into and talk about the program a little bit we just have a couple of few minutes before you do the resolution the benson construction program has been building houses since the 70s uh houses are spread out all over portland and we're trying we're doing some research right now to try to compile all of that so we have actually a visual record of those of those homes because it's pretty exciting my first year at benson this was probably one of the highlights of the year is participating in the completion of the house seeing the students put the final touches on it during the school year and then hosting an open house and then the ult the eventual sale of the house which took i think a weekend to sell it but it was it was really uh exemplary program that does provide a great example of something that goes on at benson that provides opportunities for students to get the sense of what it's like to be on a job site to participate in a career and which results in a pretty substantial sense of accomplishment on their part when the house is eventually finished so one of the things about about the program is that this house this house that was just sold was designed by students who graduated
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in 2009 the house was begun in 2009 students submitted some blueprints and they were selected to be this house so those students visited the house during the open house time to see the final product and we're very proud they're currently osu students in the architecture program and probably the only students at osu who've already designed and and had a house completed from their blueprints unfortunately because the loss of the drafting program the next house was designed by dick spees not unfortunate that dick designed it but that it's actually a very beautiful design and it's on display out in the lobby when you have a break and you're welcome to take a look at it but that it won't be benson students so we're one of the things about the program that we're trying to do is bring back an opportunity for students to get some design experience it won't be a full drafting program but we are working with our partners benson has lots of partners and we've invested in the some furniture and then we're going to get some help from people like dixbees and i've been in communication with marine fault from pge who is going to allow us to bring students into their design computer laboratory to see how pge uses the the aspects of design and drafting and sketching and drawing and planning and engineering so our hope is to bring that draft what was a drafting program that was just about building the house into the 21st century so students can get the experience of lots of different types of design so i'm going to let tony talk about the program good evening um the ben's nels one thing i wasn't mentioning is an nrc star certified home one of the things we do teach in our program is the current green sustainable building practices and as well as energy conservation this house could have got leed certification but we didn't apply for it to we probably we thought about it too late the next house will have some leed certification which is really the state of the art um in the construction industry and portland is one of the leaders both internationally and nationally in that field our this program is not designed to teach our students to be carpenters is to expose them to the whole world of the construction industry from engineering to architecture to carpentry to plumbing electrical framing um concrete construction the whole gamut so our students get to to you know experience this both hands-on as well as the theoretical part of it it's also a i call community or global project almost every student at benson high school has had some part of the ben snails from tim here issues electrical kids to wiring it under the auspices of west side to our communication students to advertise it to do webpage to our manufacturing kids who will produce a part that we can't get we have to go out from a heating duct to a specially fabricated piece of pipe as well as our automotive students who help us keep our 23 year old suburban on the road as well as our radio who promotes us so it's a really there's over every student at benson participates in this program in one form or the other it's not just my students we do the bulk of the work but the whole asp part of this project is to get benson high school involved my students and all their students can get community college credit through this program my students can earn up to 15 pcc credits tim's i think can earn more each department has a different level but a lot of our students will graduate with anywhere from in my program three to 15 pcc credits that are transferable it gives them a really good start in their careers and they know understand the sequence of building a house the engineering goes behind it as well as the material processes etc and i'll just finish with one of the things that i noticed this year being at benson and these these career technical ed programs combined with the um the core academic subjects teachers are beginning to they have been doing this before but this year in particular um getting kids involved in like in math class geometry class in what how does geometry connect to architecture in the building of a house so one of our math teachers partnered with the electric teacher and the junior electric students created an apparatus for them to test light bulb efficiency and then that class also got to go to the house on a field trip and do things like measure surface area and square footage and look at blueprints and what's missing from that is that they don't understand blueprints so that's why we think it's important for them every student at benson to have a sense of what it means to design something and what those look like and we are applying for grant money so we did apply for a mount hood regulatory commission grant this year and didn't get it but i've talked with the evaluators and they're very hopeful that we'll be on their agenda next year and maybe be able to fund some of the technology that we need for kids to move out of the sketching drawing phase into the computer technology that's out there
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now for design so thank you again for the opportunity and thank you to those of you who visited benson this year i really enjoyed meeting you and director belial for speaking at our commencement and director knowles was a principal for a day so thank you awesome and now over to bob alexander to talk a little bit about the purchase the sale of the house so certain yeah thank you i am bob alexander director of planning asset management it was my pleasure to come into this project with a terrific product that benson has produced it was a fun project for me actually to see such a quality product and be able to advertise that literally we had this out as was alluded to on the market for an entire weekend actually and got a great offer so the action before you today is to approve a purchase order for three hundred and twenty thousand dollars from ashley erdahl um as carol and tony mentioned the net proceeds of this sale less any of the closing costs and so forth go back into the program so it is self-sustaining i need to talk to them a little bit about buying a lot so we have a lot two years out from now but that's another discussion but fortunately the lot that we have for next year's house is adjacent to this one and again the plans are in the lobby and they look terrific so um again thank you and we're prepared to answer any questions about the resolution before you so the asking price price was 305 correct so was there a bidding war there was actually it was kind of nice in this economy to have that right actually the suggested price was uh in the high 200s and we actually put it out because um i i think both uh rich and and tony felt like they could this house was actually a higher value um so we did put it at 305 and there was a bidding war at 3 20. so great nice work yeah i'd also like to introduce rich weber who is another one of the instructors along with the tony so so i'd like to so let's move on to the to the resolution so that way we can if there are some additional questions or discussions and we can do that within that context so we're the board will now consider resolution 4627 authorizing the sale of benson construction technology program house on 4225 northeast mallory avenue do i have a mushroom and a second so i moved director sergeant moose and second and director regan seconds um the resolution is there any citizen comment on this item no is there any additional board discussion or comment i mean i just want to say how exciting and what a great opportunity thank you both to staff for for working with kids to show them that the wide range of opportunities that's available to both allow them to be anything they want to be in that and it's talk about tangible relevant real real work i just it's very exciting so and i really appreciate as i heard you carol talk about some of the funding challenges that you face and how creative your team is being about partnering up with other businesses so i just encourage um if there are other folks that have opportunities that that could do that to to contact you um because it's just it's it's fantastic education there's no no two ways about it any other i don't have a question i'll just say i did get to go out and tour the house when you had the open house and and it was fantastic to see the work that the students have done there and so whoever bought it i think is a lucky person to get a brand new house that that you know has a great design and and great finish to it well as a parent you know graduate from benson high school and and uh one that was a student with her issue i want to thank you i think for acknowledging the work of the other teachers and how this uh program basically impacts and has allows the participation for various students at benson um in in this project so congratulations on this work the board will now vote in resolution four six to seven all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all the post speech indicate by saying no resolution number four six to seven is approved by voter seven to zero we still represent the garcia voting yes thank you thank you again for all your work and
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so we move on to uh the student information system and this is a a new item but one that requires quick action on our part and super dan smith will introduce it it is and i'm going to ask maria inglesby who's the pro i.t program director and dustin millberg who is our i.t director to come on up and this one has this one's been in the works for a while so we're going to actually give you some background information on it and you've been aware that esses our current student information system was purchased and then they announced they were no longer going to support it so we've engaged in a process with a number of other districts i.t departments um in figuring out okay what's our next step so we're going to walk you through that process and then um and give opportunity for questions so marita and dustin hello good evening good evening um and thank you all for giving us an opportunity to explain this my name is dustin millberg i am the i.t director here at portland public schools and a proud parent of a future pps graduate so thank you for giving us the time we're also joined this evening by david wein who is our deputy chief financial officer to answer any financial questions that may arise and i believe we also have our chief operating officer cj sylvester as well as melissa goff our executive director of teaching and learning here to answer any questions that may come up relative to the teaching side this presentation's designed to be a brief overview of the information regarding the resolution and contract that are on the agenda tonight as a to further on what uh superintendent smith mentioned that the current student information system leveraged by the the district known as esis was implemented in the 2002-2003 school year and this is the system the district's application of record for all student information by which this the district reports up to the state to procure funding um for every student enrolled oh yeah oh yes can we get the next is that is this working here okay beautiful technology it's a wonderful thing we support it here at pps um the isis has been historically developed and supported by administrative assistance limited or aal and until late 2010 when it was acquired by pearson school systems shortly after the acquisition pearson school systems announced that as of july 1st 2013 the application would no longer be supported as a result this forced portland public schools as well as any other districts or esds currently leveraging the system to make a decision on how best to fulfill its student information system needs in 2011 districts from across the state formed a consortium to determine how best to address this issue pps was an active member in that consortium since its inception and serves currently on steering and technical committees to advise the resolution as the effort has progressed additional districts as well as educational service districts who were not leveraging aal have joined this consortium in an effort to help define the best student information system need to fill all districts needs in july of 2011 a formal request for a proposal was issued to seek a solution to this res this issue salem kaiser school district was fulfilling the role of lead procurement agency after rigorous evaluation and careful consideration of all the options the consortium agreed that the student information system known as synergy provided by education excuse me edupoint educational systems would be the best option to fulfill statewide student information system needs and in november of 2011 the award was formally announced the consortium continued to negotiate the effort and in march of 2012 a master contract was issued in working directly with the office of teaching and learning members of papsa and other key stakeholders at the district the pps team unanimously believes that this is this contract is in the best interest of the district and we've targeted a fall 2013 release date as our migration from the current student information system to the new synergy system and while this date is aggressive many individuals at portland public schools have been and continue to work with various other stakeholders and other districts who are making this migration to ensure that we have the appropriate strategy for clean migration marita inglesby is going to share a little bit of information about the work that's currently underway some timelines that may impact us and help us streamline our implementation process and after that i'll go into some financial details along with david wein thank you dustin i'm marita inglesby i'm the proud parent of three portland public schools graduates who are now off in the world and and doing well so have some history there
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um so we have been working very very hard over the past few months to to sort all of these developments out we have a lot of partners we've been working with across the state we have the consortium we have the state of oregon itself is very interested in what we're working on a lot of moving pieces that we've had to try to put together so in addition to negotiations with the vendor we have the multnomah esd they have formed a partnership with the other esds in our area and it's known as the cascade technology alliance so they see an opportunity to share resources and become more effective and more efficient at delivering services to their districts so while we were looking at a new student information system they decided they could deliver student information system services in a much more efficient and effective way so we were kind of staying connected to that work um we also had negotiations with our esis vendor pearson to try to get them to extend support for another year because we just could not and have them end support as of july 1st 2012 which they had told us they were going to do we were able to do that and get those negotiations finalized and get one more year because we just didn't have enough time to get everything done and in place so um the staff here at portland public schools have been looking at different opportunities for how we get this system stood up we've been partnering with multnomah esd for 10 years on esis that didn't necessarily mean that we would have to continue to do that for another 10 years we could implement a student information system ourselves here by ourselves we could partner with other districts maybe large districts it might make sense so we've been in negotiations and you know communication with a lot of different partners this has been going on ever since march when the contract with the vendor was negotiated and we have identified the cascade technology alliance solution as the most efficient and effective for us we've gotten very good pricing which we'll talk about next from multnomah esd we've gotten commitments that this alliance will serve us and our our schools and our students and our teachers and we feel that the shared resources that they're bringing forward only makes sense in this time of scarce resources across the state so we just recently made a proposal to our leadership executive leadership committee here and made sure that everyone was on board with getting this significant work started if if it's approved and now i want to bring it to the board for recommendation so thank you marita um as we mentioned before there are several financial considerations do you have a couple more down there so commitment across the district is going to be very important for this work it's going to be significant we're going to have a new way to communicate out to our parents and to our students about their progress all kinds of new reports we have common core standards being implemented this year those will have to be set up in the system so that teachers can use them as their monitoring student performance there's going to be a lot of training all teachers are going to need to be trained and then of course all the various communication every step of the way with our school community our parents and our teachers to get that going so we do want to make sure we have everybody at the table as we move forward with this great thank you so as i mentioned before there are several financial considerations which need to be addressed sooner rather than later if we were to meet the timeline presented here i'd like to call your attention to section 4 the fiscal impact section of the staff report that you were provided on this subject tonight the details in this section basically outlined that we seek to procure the synergy product from edupoint by leveraging the oregon cis consortium agreement at the cost of ten dollars per admr additionally we'd like to seek implementation and support services from multnomah educational service district at the cost of two dollars per student rather than implementing the system ourselves at the cost of ten dollars per student we feel confident in mesd's ability to execute as they have provided all of our student information system support to date additionally regarding funding portland public schools does have capital funding available in the amount of approximately eight hundred thousand dollars currently
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identified to cover most of the implementation costs of this specific effort but not all of the upfront costs multnomah educational service district has offered to finance a significant portion of the software and licensing and related expenses over four years at an estimated cost of 471 thousand dollars it's our intention to continue to leverage mesd to provide um resolution services for ongoing annual support and maintenance of the existing over the new solution and we do not believe that this would represent any increase of the district general fund that we also want to note that this this proposal is not represented in the adopted budget uh for 2012-13 but if this amendment and resolution are passed then we would of course work with the finance office to ensure that that is included in amendment one as part of the fall balancing exercise so um are there any questions relative to the financials i'm sure there are so let's get started because we only allocated about 20 minutes for this and we were used about half the time so let's just get those questions out there my first question is that this is a first of all it sounds fabulous it sounds like a we have to do something and b the staff has done a tremendous amount of work in partnership with folks across the state which is wonderful my concern in terms of process for the board is that the first we've heard about all of this was four days ago um and i don't know if the reason for that is because with these negotiations going on we didn't want to be more public but i don't even know why privately we couldn't have been um told a little bit more about this especially if it is entailing borrowing which basically it is um so i don't know if i specifically need a response to that tonight but i want to call it out as a concern but this is a this is a really big wonderful project it's 1.3 million dollars and um i i would have liked to have had some sort of board workshop or something on it and i think this is one i would just take note of as because it's been a major project that's been working with a whole lot of people across district i mean across multiple districts and stakeholders and we should have kept you more abreast as we were going on and i'll just take that as a this would be something you would have liked to have had information about as we were moving through because it's been a deep amount of work over over a good period of time so and i don't know if there's more explanation to it than just to say you would have liked more information about it and we could have been providing it all the way along so there isn't like a reason why not it's just that it's been multiple districts and really where we're making a decision with that's rested largely with the i.t people and relying on the expertise of the people who know our system across multiple districts to try and find something that works for all of us and esds so it's been a multiple jurisdiction project and it would have been informational kinds of updates for you guys that we could have been doing so i'm just going to say duly noted unless you want to add anything to that i think that summarizes it wonderfully yeah i mean even the leadership our leadership level we've been touching it at a fairly high level also and have just recently gone down to the depth of what you're hearing tonight so like truly we've been um the expertise um of this has been really in the folks who are both both teaching and learning who've been deeply in it in terms of how it impacts teaching and learning and rit folks who are deeply in it in terms of that but it's been more how do we coordinate all of this with to make it work for multiple jurisdictions and end up with a good product so thank you i yes i just wanted to add that i i had a question i had reservations um when i first saw this about adding additional borrowing capacity um to the district and um after a conversation with um deputy finance officer wind this afternoon about how it's being financed in the sense of working with mesd so that it doesn't increase general fund obligations i'm going forward i think is is a really smart way to do it so i just wanted to acknowledge that and appreciate it because i think as the public hears oh more debt more debt we got a this is something we need to be able to track our students and have their information so that we can get the funding from the state i appreciate how it was structured so that again that as as debt um as that comes off our books this this will um not increase our general fund correct so i have questions that are not
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related to the finances they're more related to the actual system so i don't know if you want to deal with the finance questions first and then i could ask the others or if anybody else's finance questions um sure so maybe we could just have a brief summary of the the financial issues because the report isn't 100 clear to me about about how this is going to happen so there's there's um the idea that is presented here is that there's going to be savings so that the money that's borrowed will be paid for out of savings so could we just have a little explanation of that sure so the um we we have some level of expectation that the annual operating costs may be less but we're not relying on the savings to repay this we are going to have to repay the 471 thousand dollars to mesd but the timing of that we our first payment is not until july 1 2014 and as director belial acknowledges we have um a number of different debt instruments on the books at the moment that we're paying off each year and that that debt is structured in such a way that the amount of general fund dollars that we use each year does stays the same um by the time we get to 2014 we have some existing debt that will have paid off so without increasing the that that repayment capacity is then available to repay this debt okay there's a possibility that we'll save some money but i and that would be great and we'll be happy to report on that if it materializes but in the interest of transparency i want to be clear i you know at this point we're underwriting this on the basis of the fact that we're going to use some general fund dollars to pay this debt back in 2014 2015 2016. okay and that's and that's consistent with some other borrowing that's going to be retired and so absolutely take that same place in the in the general fund yeah in 2013 and 2014 will will the uh custodian debt will have paid off and we have some uh the initial i.t borrowing is structured to step up but there's the difference between those two still leaves us room to repay this comfortably all right thank you that's helpful the other thing i was wondering about is just in terms of the budgeting issue it says you had eight hundred thousand dollars left over from the ed box project that was suspended as we were i guess trying to figure out where we were going forward so that we could invest in something for the long term um and that money is now available but it's not currently budgeted so how does that no much spending that money next year is budgeted but now it will be spent on this rather than on what it might otherwise you know finishing up ed box type things because we are borrowing 471 000 and and essentially paying mesd that money from a cash flow point of view it's a wash but from a budgeting point of view we have to increase revenues and expenditures by that 471 thousand dollars and we didn't do that at the time we adopted the budget okay so it's that additional in and out that will have to be part of the budget amendment right so then we have so we have two things in here one is the resolution that authorizes a borrowing and another is the contract for the amount of the purchase yes and those things don't exactly match but maybe they match in this chart so we're borrowing part of it is that yes so the the resolution is to authorize because any time we borrow money from anywhere you have to the board has to authorize it so the form the transaction with mesd which they're going to finance for us with the resolution is to authorize the district to enter into that that financing arrangement with the mesd the contract approval is for the um the contract with edupoint that the district will enter into directly but we're not actually is that contract for 681 000 but we're not actually paying that because there's some discounts and some resolution dollars so yes so why are we authorizing a contract for more than we're actually paying glasses where is the contract organization it's in the um business agenda page five we've got the the contract for 681 thousand dollars page five of the business agenda right and then that that authorizes us to go up to that amount for this purpose it's our expectation that the purchase discount and the mesd
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resolution will net out of that but the contract is that large it's just that we're not going to actually have to produce our own cash to fund the whole contract but the contract is the 681 which is the number on the chart you can see where it says year one subtotal entry point contract cost that's the 681 right so the contract is for that amount it's just the amount that we have to pay is less than that right so there's a there's a discount and then there's the 126 000 mesd resolution dollars those are dollars that we could pay for whatever we wanted to within some categories whatever we're allowed to use those for but we can we're choosing to use anything that mesd offers us so we're using those dollars in this way so those are kind of our dollars that go through mesd correct okay um and then we pay for the bulk of this with um the financing the remainder of it yeah okay i just want to understand so go through all the steps and understand how it all worked yeah there's there's multiple pieces and different pieces to each of the multiple pieces yep okay good thank you so you mentioned the ed box maybe i could just piggyback i just wanted to clarify what the status of ed boxes we had the survey i wasn't and i maybe just missed it but where we are with that and i know it's sort of a separate issue but it's we're using some of the money that was dedicated for that i don't know if we're gonna or you wanna yeah i can just give you a quick update um we're looking at this project as being a continuation of the ed box so the ed box is going to be continuing we've rolled out the grade book to our high schools and our middle schools and that's where we stopped and said once we learned about this new system coming on board it's like does it make sense to continue to roll this out to our k-8s and k-5s does it make sense to expand with a curriculum planner like we had planned when maybe we're going to be moving to a new system so we stopped and that's where we were able to realize the 800 000 dollar savings but the current grade book is implemented at high schools and middle schools across the district now what we would be looking for with this system because it has an integrated grade book is that this will replace that grade book if all works out as planned and we will have a gradebook one common gradebook platform at no additional cost that would be available to um all grade levels and so teachers are going to have to relearn who already learned how to do the ad boxes yes but it's very similar it's very similar there's not not a lot of differences what we learned in looking at the system is that this product does things that our current grade book does not that teachers have been asking for so that was kind of what clinched it was like oh it does this and it does this and it does this and teachers have been asking for it and it's available all at one price this product also has a special education system also at the same price and we're currently paying northwest regional esd approximately 11 thousand dollars a year for their product we may look at turning around and using this module as well that hasn't been decided because we have a new special ed director we have to work all this out with sure so do you have a sense yet in terms of how you would roll out the new grade book or do you kind of have to wait and see how the so yeah that's a really good question because we have a lot of teachers to train um and we were hoping that we could kind of break them into chunks and maybe roll out mid-year with with a group and this vendor is discouraging uh highly from doing that so we'll have a lot of training to do we would probably do train the trainer in may and get one or two people at every school trained and then they would go back and train the teachers in their building in august and get everybody ramped up and ready to go for september of 13. your question was about the gradebook or about the student information system the gradebook yes so the the timelines that we're outlining here tonight are specifically about the student information system based on what we learn from this rollout we can start working well continue working with the office of teaching and learning to determine the best timeline for rolling out the gradebook uh subsequent to the student information system yeah i mean i definitely get that we have to get the core system in place but i just want don't want to lose that momentum we have the ed box which is so fabulous that that and that's our hope is that this is going to be a springboard for that product is aptly named synergy because there may be synergies that we can recognize so that kind of rolls into the questions that i had so i could uh continue so i wanted to make sure that the essentially 1.3 million dollars that you're asking us to approve today includes funds for extensive teacher
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professional development that's correct and does it include any funds to teach our parents how to use this or is have we even thought about that we have communication money built into the budget to um provide communication to parents we don't think it's going to take training based on our experience with the current gradebook so it's a pretty it should be a pretty user friendly yeah user-friendly intuitive easy to use but there is significant communication to our parents and students one thing that we um are leveraging quite heavily is beaverton is moving ahead of us in this implementation i was actually really pleased to see that yeah so we have um different employees from rit department who are working kind of hand in glove with them on their implementation specifically in the training area so that we can learn all we need to learn about the system so that when we go to implement it we have a you know as good a feeling as they do about it and understand how to answer some of those questions okay so my big question is probably more for the superintendent or for melissa which has to do with the ed box survey and in general the results were pretty fabulous it seems and you know we got lots of great information in terms of how parents are using this they love having access to teacher email addresses they love having access to grades some assignments and due dates i love the question where it said do you feel the information the viewers improve communication between and you know 70 said parents and and student 53 said parent teacher 54 said student teacher so all that was really positive the concern i had was in questions nine and ten question nine are the reasons you are not using the ed box so these were parents responding and 54 said it wasn't up to date and additional comments one of them was keep it up to date and that was 31 so my question is um whether you could talk to us about that piece because we're making a significant investment and obviously we want teachers and parents to be using it so can can you talk to us about why some parents are looking at us not being up to date because not not all of the accounts are up to date necessarily um what does the accounts mean each of the teacher accounts so um shifting from a paper pencil gradebook or a pen uh paper grade book to an electronic grade book is a jump for many of our teachers um in multiple ways one of which is as a communication tool with families another of which is just the technology itself and whether or not they find it comfortable for them to use so what we have found is that many teachers are still choosing to use their own paper pencil copy of the of their grade book and then they transfer their grades onto the electronic system at different times during the year so as long as that is a practice that we're that we're seeing happen um then we get into conversations around contract language around uh uh progress report and grading so it's we have been in conversation with pat around the grade book and it is just definitely a leap to have parents and students be able to look at how kids are doing at any given time in any class um i would say the fact that we got this feedback from parents is um is helpful for us to have as far as as whether it's a valuable tool for them right now and i think it would be equally interesting to um to hear from teachers how many are keeping two systems right now and how many are keeping one and part of that is just trusting an electronic system it's hard to say okay i'm going to put all of my students information into an electronic system that may disappear on me at any moment though that hopefully isn't their experience you do um i do understand that concern so part of it also is just the the course of time the fact that we'll have had this full year under our belts and people i i hope feel more comfortable can i just chime in and say is one of the parents using it of a non-communicative eighth grader this past year it has been huge to instantly be able to see if she misses an assignment if something went south and i would just have a concrete thing to refer to and and so to have that go away um it's going to be hard to not have that next year and i i get that there's a new system coming but i just wanted words of encouragement from the trenches for parents and i i get the challenges for let me see a little bit and let me make sure that you're correctly understanding we're maintaining at the schools who currently have access so our middle
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schools and our high schools will continue to have the same access okay even if you see we're just not expanding into k-8s okay is we're limping along and we're continuing us for another year okay i'm sorry i'm just not making that i was so excited about the no that's my fault i was so excited about the new system coming i was thinking about it okay so that's that's great although i feel for the parents it didn't expand to yet right and such a huge where we struggled kind of going back and forth was should we bring k-8s onto the system knowing that we're going to shift them a year after being on the system and we thought it would be a wiser use of our resources to just wait um for this year and then and then um provide the pd district-wide so just to continue in terms of the parent feedback we're getting i just want to make sure that when we're making this investment we have a hopefully a commitment from the teachers association or from individual teachers that we're going to be using the system you know across the board and it strikes me that i mean i'm i'm a dinosaur when it comes to technology um and it i mean i'm just finally on facebook i'm really thrilled but uh it's taken a while um and i and i get it and i i get that there's a reluctance sometimes to make the leap but at the same time with this kind of investment and when we know that it has the kind of powerful positive impact for parents in terms of helping teachers and helping students um i guess i'm i'm still wanting some assurance that we will get there um and that we will have 100 buy-in as we go from our teachers to participate in this and when since you're in the audience and it was a reference to you i don't know if you'd like to come up to make your comments that'd be great and just stopping at the bit yeah oh great i didn't want it i noticed i noticed that so um anyway and i just want to remind us that you know we're over uh time on this one so and we even haven't introduced resolution yet so i just wanted to make sure that we keep that in mind um no i just think there's a couple things that need that some background that you do need to have is that number one when you look at this you have to think of how many parents were surveyed and which parents answered so what we find is that there are some schools where you got to remember like you i'm looking forward to my kids um being able to access their information online my my son is starting middle school i'm going to be one that looks at that but at many of our schools knowing that this is a communication tool there are many parents and families that don't have easy access to computers and so they don't use it and so when the teachers spend the time putting all of the information in that system and some of them find it just beneficial anyway to to track their grades some of them who are reluctant are not because they're digging in their heels it's more so that then they get the calls of why haven't i heard about my son or daughter and they said well i put everything online it's been there we gave you all the information on how to access it but if they don't have the tools at home to access it then they don't use that so technology is a beautiful thing but in this case it's it's there has to be more dialogue about what are the communication tools with particular families to make sure that they're getting all the information that they need about their son or daughter and and that's just one of the tools so i think it's important to know that does that make sense because we've been trying to work work on this we've had a number of schools that have went out and and purchased their own uh online grade that makes sense for them and then we've been told that they have to do the ed box one not the micro grade that they'd been doing and then to hear it's changing again people will go with the flow to a certain degree um maybe not in the beginning but we'll get there so i i think just to kind of keep in mind rather than we need everybody to do this it's what is the goal and it's about communicating with families and um and the and the kids to make sure that everybody knows what's happening thank you yeah yeah i have a comment just about the parent survey i feel like we also need to survey students about ed box because i personally love ed box i hate that my parents can have access to my grades and it's not because like i'm a bad student or anything i just it adds extra stress to my life and i think within
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like my school especially i go to lincoln it's very college preparatory students are constantly stressed out and i think ed box almost allows like you look at this survey and like the amount of uh parents that check it more than once a week like students are being controlled by their parents to a point and i think that's something we definitely need to look at when like handing out the sign in things and like it's honestly important to me just because i see students incredibly stressed out over grades i i think on that note is what we what we find is that when you have um teachers grade in all different ways so you have some that as they get finished grading papers they're going to plug grades in and then you'll see that they don't they'll see that she doesn't have her assignment in but it she does it just hasn't been graded yet or maybe you don't um release it there's a way that you can hold that line and wait until you've turned in you know graded all the papers and then show it um then parents might think well why aren't why don't i see anything though they are slowly plugging away at grading especially when you're an english teacher with you know a number of uh papers to grade and reading and all of those things before we start arguing um it's not i just wanted to give more insight no no no no i mean i and i'm and i'm with you and i thank you for for the clarification but the board will now consider resolution four six two eight resolution out the rice and financing arrangement with multnomah county education service district do i have a motion in a second so director atkins moose and director um knowles right i mean it doesn't matter i mean i mean you can we can i can say both the director atkins and director billy moves and directing no seconds okay so is there anybody signed up on uh citizen comment for for this um so clearly there is still discussion on on the board but i just want to remind you that uh uh and and i i recognize that since there was no information provided before um it makes it more challenging for us to not getting to all the details that that this opportunity provides us in terms of looking at the system itself looking at the stuff but right now i think in in part just want to make sure that that we concentrate in regards to the the financing of the resolution and that authorization of that but if there are some additional quick comments or questions uh please do well i i wanted to thank gwen for coming up and and giving the explanation she did because what it tells me is that the teachers are understanding the value of the system and that we just have to do a lot more communication around it which is great um and i think it's an area that we can really um learn a lot from beaverton as they go next year and see what kind of usage there is from their teachers and how they're addressing it i mean i think we can learn a lot from that so thank you the only brief comment i would just make is that the issues that have been raised in no way to me indicate that we don't need as a sister-wide system and a grade book that every teacher uses we can work on the pieces of how do we communicate with all parents and make sure there's actual access to information from teachers and we can do our best to deal with the parents and i swear i'm not coming in and attacking my child with that information there's only so far you can go with how parents choose to use the information they have but anyway but i'm just the value of having every single teacher have up to date information is is huge and then we can do additional work beyond that to address those other issues if there are any other questions or comments that you would like to send us please do as you're thinking about this with this accelerated timeline we would be happy to address anything that you would like us to absolutely again thank you all for for the great work and the presentation uh thank you gwen for i think racing you know one important aspect of this is that not to rely uh you know on on this is the only medium for communication in regards to the greater performance of students um you know because otherwise we we should change ourselves and probably leave out a number of parents that are not as methodical or motivated i should say as some of the other parents that that i think responded to the survey so the board will now vote on resolution for six to eight all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes i'll post patient decay by saying no resolution four six two eight is approved by voters seven to zero with student representative garcia voting yes thank you
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so much one quick question while they're still here you just made me think sure um we have lots and lots of uh parents who don't have english as their first language will this system accommodate them that was one of the major features um that we liked about it it does provide um information in multiple languages where isis currently does not great and we are going to be implementing it with our equity goals in mind and understanding that there are many challenges in different drivers across the district so we'll make sure we address those great thank you we are scheduled around this time to do a quick break but i wanted to consult with you all given that there are some people that came to testify more than likely on this next item whether we can kind of take it on hopefully they won't be as long so um so let's let's continue on thank you thank you very much so this is the second reading of the equity in public contracting policy on june 25th the board conducted the first reading of the equity uh in public purchasing contract and policy after uh 21 days of being open for public comment and receiving none directly to the board office i should clarify the board is ready to move on the proposed policy i believe staff is available for questions on on this but before staff moves on because i i just want to make sure that we move on this resolution because otherwise we'll be here all night we will not consider resolution four six to nine adoption report on public schools equity in public contracting purchasing it i mean equity in public purchasing and contracting policy uh 8.50.095 dash p do i have a motion in a second direct moves and director no seconds uh the other the motion to adopt resolution 469. so is there any citizen comment on this yes we have five signed up five let's take the cities and come in first and then we'll get back to the to the staff if we have questions okay so our first two speakers melvin odin orr and gail castillo knowing that that probably most of the people are be coming to testify tonight have come to stuff high before i'm not gonna get into the whole thing except to remind you the time um that you have three minutes uh within the first uh two minutes you know the green light will come on yellow light will come up when you have one minute left and that when three minutes are up the red light will come on um you know we're going to be dealing with this policy so more than likely we'll be responding to some of the comments that you have anyway tonight but within the context of our own discussion so thank you for coming thank you good afternoon everyone my name is melvin odenor and i am counsel for the national association of minority contractors and i we're here on behalf of the organization i wanted to um speak in support of the resolution um namak oregon the national association minority contractor is an organization that focuses on um advancing the interests of minority contractors and working to eliminate the barriers that they face in in working on public projects as well as private projects what we know from history is that in situations where the jurisdictions do nothing to actively encourage the utilization of minority contractors they don't get used in any substantial numbers and so for for this body to take this bold step and actually implement a policy that that works towards equity is a step in the right direction and we encourage that and we support that and we will be keeping an eye on how you guys are doing and looking forward to you reporting to the the public and in our organizations on how things are going um just a few just a few very specific issues i think that as the policy is being implemented um that's that's a good first step but the but the bigger thing is going to be how you go about implementing it um and and these are a few things that i would submit for you um it's going to be very important for for the school district to look at what are the barriers that minority contractors are facing and then actively work to eliminate those some examples would be
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unnecessarily high insurance limits uh uh retainage in situations where retain should is not necessary or in a situation where the work is done at the time the work is com is actually complete therefore retainage is not necessary so an analysis like that is what's going to help to eliminate those barriers additionally um and i think i've said this to the to the staff and i'll say it to you this is not easy this is not easy um the easy way is to say there's walmart walmart has everything that we need let's go there the hard thing is to say how can we work hard to ensure that the local economy benefits from our expenditures and that's what this body needs to do thank you good evening this is my second time testifying on this policy my name is gail castillo i'm the president of the hispanic metropolitan chamber i too am testifying in support of this policy i do have a couple of points that i hope i can do in my a lot of time uh i will say that and we've had this conversation with your staff that portland public needs to be very planful and very focused because i agree that the implementation of this policy is key to your success i would also urge you to based on your policy to focus on communities of color and women they are the most underutilized i would also point out to you that given your bond that you hope uh to have that this is a big opportunity for not only portland public but it's an opportunity for communities of color uh to have an economic opportunity with you hopefully we won't lose that opportunity by the by missteps or and i'll talk about some of those potential missteps the aspirational goals that have been identified at 18 percent are doable in fact they're very modest uh i will point out to you that pdc uh portland development commission which is our economic development arm of the city and multnomah county have accomplished double that over 30 percent so again your goals are very modest the other thing i would say is to communicate very clearly with the primes your staff will and to hold them accountable and to make it very clear what your goals are and that you expect them not only to achieve the goals but to exceed them at the level of pdc and multnomah county and i would hope that if you and we've discussed this with the staff again if you receive mediocre lukewarm or unacceptable proposals that won't get you where you need to go i hope that you have the guts to say you need to go back to the working board and try again we reject these proposals as being unresponsive so with that i would say we are willing to work with your staff to help you accomplish what i think you're trying to accomplish but it's going to have to be an environment of being clear again and your focus and being clear with prime contractors who have the capacity and have the capability and have demonstrated in the past that they can accomplish this thank you very much thank you we have kevin jeans gail and james posey good evening my name is kevin jeans gale and i'm the director of the portland workforce alliance we're a non-profit that works very closely with the school district and jeannie yorkovic to provide career-related learning experiences for students and i wanted to testify tonight in support of the policy particularly around the career learning equity piece that is in the policy a quick story a few years ago we started a program called the youth apprenticeship training program with the bureau of labor and industries and we worked with benson students and staff and private sector employers and the bureau of labor and industry to start an apprenticeship where students could work in a safe environment in a factory alongside of skilled electricians millwrights and welders to learn a craft earn a salary
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and hopefully get a better idea what they wanted to do after they graduated from high school so i'm walking through the halls of benson one afternoon and i run into andrew who is a participant in this program and he's about to graduate and he says you know i just wanted to thank the people that put this program together it was terrific and i said oh that's great i'm on my way to a meeting i'm hustling on and he says no no no he says it changed my life and i said say more about that and i said well he said number one he says i learned i was good with my hands number two he says i never saw myself going to college and somebody at the plant graduated from osu and they mentored me and now i've saved fourteen thousand dollars and i'm going to enroll in osu in the fall number three he says the program kept me off drugs he says some of my friends kept asking me if i wanted to smoke he said well as part of this employment i had to take regular drug tests so i had an out i had an excuse so flash forward three months later i'm walking through benson and there's a major electrical contractor who is basically rewiring the uh the fire alarms and an idea pops into my head i called tony um my good friend i said can we set up a meeting with this contractor to see if we can get some benson kids involved in the company long story short the answer was no no we it was a soft sell we asked them all kinds of different options just didn't work out so my point is is that thank you for this policy thank you for this policy because it's a good use of public dollars not only to get a service and return and a product but also to get another benefit which is to essentially have the opportunity for students to see career opportunities to develop relationships with caring adults and help students see the relevancy of their education you know i don't want to miscommunicate by that one story our experience and jeanne and i've been doing this for seven years is that overwhelmingly overwhelmingly employers want to diversify their workforce and they want to connect with students so we expect that there's lots of partners out there that want to make these connections and again this policy is help is going to help one last comment i wanted to thank this board in particular for hanging on to the career coordinators and the superintendent in a very tough budget climate because as a result this work is growing and it will continue to grow so again thank you for that piece the career coordinators and for this policy because it's going to be good for our young people it's going to be good for employers and it's also going to be good for our economy so thank you good evening my name is justice rajee that's r-a-j-e-e and i have a short statement on behalf of a coalition of black men considering the plight of african-american children in american society and economy in general and their achievement in health in the public schools in particular there is much blame that could be assigned an excuse excuses provided we the coalition of black men propose collaborating with all stakeholders in a campaign to elevate and accelerate the achievement of secure and prosperous life for children with the greatest need we believe that equity is the only way to achieve this kind of society and we believe that your race equity policy is the best way to define and build strategies to achieve that objective we join you in that enterprise so on behalf of the coalition we wanted to give you our support that we're behind you in this effort as the children and our youth that are in our schools they see who works there they see who serves them and are supporting them and when they know that folks from their community are being supported by the same school system that is intended to support them it gives them the confidence that they will get the aid that they should and they can trust the people there to take care of them it's very important thank you thank you so last we had james posey i thought mr jose has sent a substitute i'm sorry i thought mr posey has sent a substitute there no thank you very much uh uh board i appreciate the opportunity to come and share with you uh the few thoughts that i have um i just want to say that um i'm a member of um both of these groups the um coalition black man i'm a former president and uh former president of both of these organizations i'm trying to semi-retire from much of those activities but i just wanted to come and say to you
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that uh we're very very pleased with the fact that you all have adopted a policy that pretends to be a real anchor in this community in terms of uh equity and how we approach uh working with our community both on the contracting side and you know with the professional services and one of the unique aspects of the program is the uh modeling kids in terms of the training program if you've looked at the policy i'm sure you understand that that's a fairly unique aspect of what you all are attempting to do in-house with young people to get them trained on jobs etc etc but the thing that i want to just stress with you is um is whether or not this policy is institutionalized and we won't rely long term on the um the good intentions and the the ability of your current staff and with carol being a superintendent as you look as we look down the road that this policy would actually reflect an institutionalized approach to this over the long haul as opposed to what this good body is trying to do today and that's very important because we've seen these policies come and go and we have different personalities but at the end of the day it's so who implements these policies and whether or not the commitment on part of the uh of the uh um the board is going to be uh really reflect the long term and so i'm evaluating this policy on on those basis uh essentially then i want to say essentially uh you know today people think that these policies are essentially uh something that they're they're uh reflected to do i just want to tell you i didn't think i was going to make it to this meeting today because in seattle there are brothers and sisters up on the viaduct in seattle right now protesting uh the city of portland and their work on that project and i left there thinking um you know that that uh coming back to here i would get an opportunity to kind of share with you all a little bit about what we're trying to do and i'm not going to spend a lot of time because i know my time is up but i wanted you all to kind of do it the law's not being enforced and they're just winking and blinking and hoping that african americans don't say anything but we are going to say something that's why we're here today we want justice and inclusion the people here as well as people coming behind us we know if we don't take the stand now people come by that's why we're here i left there about uh two hours ago and uh you get up go home you look get on your tv go or you want to go to the internet you can go to king5.com and you'll see these folk on the street fighting for equity today 2012. and i'm thinking that we don't need to have that necessarily here in portland thank you very much thank you i believe that's everyone on citizencoming so the staff can come up if they want at this point in case there is some questions from the board members i know that some were posed can you state your name just for the record just to we know who is sitting before us yes uh i'm elaine holt and i am the director of purchasing and contracting lee fleming senior analyst questions comments i had some questions first of all this is really exciting and definitely very supportive i had a couple of questions one is we just had someone who testified who said that multnomah county and metro are already have a policy like this in place and that they are hitting more of a kind of 30 percent of contractors who are minority and women and yet our aspirational goal is 18 and maybe that's just because we're just getting started and we'll review it annually um but my question is uh should i if it's a truly an aspirational goal um
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should we be shooting higher and and maybe the other question is do we know where we're at right now in terms of minority and women contractors and maybe that would help me realize that this is an aspirational goal so it's just kind of a general question if you could talk to us about how we got to that number um 30 is being hit by several of the organizations around town public agencies around town in looking at how they achieved that they did that mainly through alternative contracting which is something that we're looking to do we did that on the boiler burner conversion project we went out for a cmgc construction manager general contractor and in that case we issued an rfp and there are some constraints around going out for rfp we've had a lot of conversation with the folks in fam and the folks in osm about how to approach this and how we will go out and seek bids and we're in agreement that we should both on bond efforts and otherwise do a mix mixed approach and therefore we didn't want to aim outrageously high to begin with we wanted a target that was solid respectable and achievable and with the aspiration that we would move that target up as it became doable so we felt that this was a good starting point and in talking to our external stakeholders while they felt that that was a modest goal the feedback we got generally was that they felt that it was a good number to start with for pps the other thing that we wanted to keep in mind is that we're the first k-12 organization coming out with one of these policies in oregon and the only k-12 organization that we could find that currently has a policy of this type so knowing that we're a little bit different in the contracting that we do we wanted to keep that in mind as well so those were our reasons for aiming at that percentage some other questions yeah i have i have mixed feelings about the response because it feels like it's a doable and respectable goal and yet we're calling it an aspirational goal and so again it doesn't look to me like that figure is actually in the policy it's more in the administrative director so i guess i would ask that somehow there'll be a note in the record that we want to be looking at that more as you know what is our aspirational goal rather than our doable respectable goal that if if that could somehow be noted does that make sense can i jump in here because i'm not sure um about that um because my concern would be is the way that you get to a higher goal is through alternative contracting methods which are not based on price but on other other reasons i'm not looking at this as a way that we go about contracting that's less competitive i see this as a way to open up opportunities for people to contract with the district and make our processes more user-friendly and reach out to different kinds of businesses but i don't want to pay a lot more to do that um and so i i would be concerned about how much we use alternative contracting where we're not looking where price is part of the picture um in order to achieve other goals which are difficult for us to afford so i would just caution that we need to be competitive bidding is important to this district because we have to stretch our dollars as far as we can so i guess the question that comes out out of that is whether in fact the alternative contracting you know produces a higher price or you know that has been the case or not at this point so um there's not a whole lot of research that's been done but going back to the earlier comment about the percentages being in the eight the administrative directive rather than in the policy that's very intentional so what we are going to continue to do you heard testimony from some of the external partners that we've been working with to date and we're going to work with them very closely over the next few months in developing the administrative directive and making sure that it is what we want for portland public schools and is the best best fit for us
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and is is uh aspirational um and not just well this is what we think we can do and you know that is is truly um something that we that represents us well and is supported by the community and it's laid out very clearly in the policy that there will be the um report at least once a year and the superintendent will also provide the board with an updated administrative directive annually which is unusual right so i guess that gets to the piece of we're going to be seeing review of that number and other things over time so that after this first year we could very well see an increase depending on how things go and we'll have that opportunity and that it's not just so often there's a policy the administrative directive and then it just sort of can sit on the shelf but it's here the actual administrative directive itself has to be updated and the opportunity to reset the target right right on an annual basis right right so it makes sense to me just in terms of the pioneering aspect of this just as the first year but it gave me comfort that there was this locked into the policy this annual review not just to hear the data but how are we going are we going to look at the ad itself and this is um this is a challenge for us given our starting place correct in terms of what our current data would reflect for us yeah that's correct i don't want to which was part of your question i don't want to speak offhand but i will tell you that in the research that we've done to date and the data that we've been able to pull from our contracting over the past few years the percentage is far far lower than that okay that's really that's really what you want to know this is aspirational for us and we have the commitment to come back and review it annually and get what does this really mean for us and then but and do what are both challenging but also achievable goals for us that we just keep i think pushing ourselves i think this is a contrary to many policies that do go sit on the shelf this one i the level of engagement just around creating it has been such that i think it'll be a very active policy that we're working to figure out how we operationalize and i think where my question came from is i read 18 there wasn't any background explaining where that came from is that high is that low is that yeah and so when i heard the testimony i you know that was part of it but the fact that we're way below that is uh helpful information to know as well so on the aspirational goal question could i also ask if we have an aspirational goal around our career learning opportunities for students as part of this so are we expecting to greatly increase the number of our students who have the opportunity to job shadow to work with some of our contractors do we have any kind of aspirational goal around that piece because i know that in terms of career technical education opportunities it's something that we've been you know struggling for a long time to figure out so i want to kind of see if this is going to help us in that area are there any aspirational goals around that at this point so that's a great question what we found is that we're really not following a lot of models here we're the first policy of this kind that we found that really brings in the career learning component so that's why in the version of the ad that you're seeing right now you're not seeing any goals because we really feel like this is early days and we need to figure this out it's a critical part of the policy it's something that we've got some excellent feedback from members of organizations such as awami that who told us as with the testimony you saw tonight that they felt that it was really really important component but again we there's not a lot of paths for us to follow here that we found so could i ask at least one thing then could we is there any way for us to do like a baseline so we know where we're starting at least and that way we can measure going forward yeah okay and to speak to the earlier question about alternative contracting it's also important to note that any time when we do that we're required to bring that to you so it will be brought as a resolution to you before we go forward with any alternative contracting methodology over a hundred thousand dollars i think this is more of a comment not a question but uh i'm completely in support of this uh this new policy and i'm absolutely appalled that we can't find any other k-12s who have joined i mean it's i think it's a reflection of our commitment within this district but it also seems to be a lack of commitment on the part of other districts around the country to have similar policies but um i think the the important thing is um for all of us and the staff to understand and and to really listen to is sort of the the heed the warning of
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those who testified and and that this is actually in fact more about the apollo less about the policy and more about the implementation of this work and and i would absolutely welcome the opportunity as this is being implemented for staff to come back and report back to the board of directors so we understand exactly what is happening and and uh and how this is being implemented i think especially uh considering the impact that this might have on uh future bond work and other work within the uh within the district i also really like the idea i think this district is you know probably safe to say over the history of the district has invested billions of dollars in in companies that have used that resource to build their infrastructure and i love the idea of of focusing and some resources towards helping to build minority and women-owned businesses and and uh build their infrastructure so they can be good uh good stewards of of our work too so so no i just have a comment go ahead i have some questions that i sent that actually earlier so i just wanted to to get get into those i don't know if um i know director wine was involved in in trying to gather some information um and they deal with with some somewhat what was stated i think on on some of the testimony and one is um you know whether or not pps will will cancel or re-let you know basically re-bid uh uh if uh if a bidder or proposer makes no significant equity commitments so can you respond to that certainly we always have the option to cancel a request for proposal or invitation to bid at any point and we can cancel that after we receive and open the responses in looking at this we received this comment earlier from the stakeholders as well we would have some i don't want to get really into the weeds here but we do have some options for canceling and then reissuing pretty quickly to get new responses back so that definitely is an option for us and i and again i mean i raise it because i mean he has been raised with me also with with folks in the community in regards to you know what what is the commitment i mean if if it states that it's an equity policy um and and in that sense everything being equal and and you have a majority you know bitter um from the majority community white and you have somebody from from the minority communities or women women on business uh what uncle historically disadvantaged uh business everything being equal does this policy tend will lean in favor of that historically disadvantaged business if they come in at the same say equal bids relatively equal um does this policy do that and i think part of that is the implementation but i'm going to hand it david had a cop david wind had a comment and i believe that he's prepared to answer that question as well so i'm going to hand over the mic to him i think what i'm going to say is going to touch on that even though it wasn't i didn't know you're going to answer that ask that question i just wanted to add something in terms of implementation so one of the things we recognize is this is a this policy is taking the equity policy and applying it to one specific area of our business which is purchasing and contracting and that requires a culture change in the organization and how we do business and whilst the purchasing and contracting team that elaine leads and the reports up through me to neil and ultimately to the superintendent is the team that monitors that work it's individual managers who make purchasing decisions who have to behave differently to make this work having said that in order to make sure that this works it's not just about decisions we make after we've put a bid out and we get proposals in it's also about outreach in the community to make sure that people know what work we're doing that as you heard from other folks that we've looked at our requirements so if so we don't have uh unreasonable barriers for people doing business with us so we don't have a once we'll have to look for example a one-size-fits-all insurance requirement and so on and so forth one of the things we know is in order to make this work we've got to be proactive and we have to be focused on that so one of the things that we have done is to identify a staff member who is going to have implementation of this policy as a you know a focus of the work that they do so that we can do that
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outreach i'm happy to publicly announce that lee fleming who's sitting to my right is the one who's going to be doing that he's part of the purchasing and contracting team and so we're going to invest in that up front work to make sure that as work comes available that people know about it and and we've worked with them to help them be able to compete effectively i think the answer to the question that director gonzalez just asked again depends on what kind of bid it is if it's a if it's purely um a low bid contract then it's going to be whoever comes up with the best price but to the extent that it's a more complex piece of work which is when we look at alternative contracting there will be a number of factors that we take into account and price is one of them but it's not the only one because we want to make sure that whoever competes for the business has the capacity to deliver on that and so their ability to perform on similar work their experience of performing work like that is one of the things that we wait and we score and um as would be their ability to meet a program that would hit this policy would be one of the things that we would score as well so um you know it's all part of what would be scored and waited as we looked to award and pick who we will get a contract with so they're also the issue if you have them the main contractor and then they would who they subcontract with having a piece of it so that a winning bidder might be a majority owned firm but that they would have subcontractors minority women owned and that that would also be an accomplishment of this absolutely and part of what we look at in that situation is what's their track record and what plan do they have and how you know just saying we'll do it is not enough we look for some demonstrated basis to for us to believe that that's actually going to happen and then then monitor that that can be part of reaching the goal in that sense right yeah yeah right i guess my question deals more with with the with whether or not this policy basically provides that general framework to be able to then you know provide a competitive advantage for for those contractors who have been historically disadvantaged to the extent that the bid is set up well that's one of the things that is scored then yes it would do that okay the other question i think that was asked um at least you know and the note that i sent you was uh whether we're adding also uh workforce diversity goals and standards to professional services uh contracting so in the in the draft administrative directive that you have um and we should be really clear that that that is a an early stage draft on that administration it's not a final draft it's a still very much a work in progress and as elaine said earlier um the section um well she talked about the learning equity piece there are three specific areas of work one of which is consulting which is the architects etc one of which is public improvements and then the third area where we don't at this point have a targeted aspirational goal is because that's a that's a new area for for setting targets and we're not we have work to do to figure out how to to do it in that area which is why the the giraffe ad is includes the idea of a a task force to figure that out because the organizations that have these kind of policies on ones where they're they're heavily into the consulting services and the public improvements but the personal you know most folks don't have as concrete a plan and program for personal services so it's another area where we don't have an easy model to copy we're going to have to figure that out for ourselves and so again that's one of the areas where lee's going to be leading the work for us in working with people to figure out how we do it in that particular area so it's entirely possible that we will have but it's not we haven't finished that part yet okay the the other you know question comment that i had was was had to do with you know minority women owns emerging small business and and whether the emerging small business given that not necessarily all of them are are a minority or woman owned but in fact my sense was that the great majority of them are are owned by white men um whether in regards to an equity policy that
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we would focus it more in terms of minority and women on uh given that uh and i mean so whether that was in somewhat you know placing a contradiction on their uh look at that equity so um we took uh advice of outside counsel as we were drafting this policy because this is a potentially sensitive topic and because portland public schools has not done a disparity study we have to have a policy that is race and gender neutral so it is a policy that talks about minority owned women owned and emerging small businesses because that was the advice of council that we need to do it that way the inspiration for this policy as is very explicit and the introduction to the policy was the racial education equity policy and our interest in meeting those meeting the needs of traditionally underserved businesses but we got clear advice as to how we needed to work the policy and that wording is reflected in what you see before you today and i understand you know that you know councils you know go both ways on this type of things my my understanding also is that multnomah county for example when the sellwood project it removed the esb from from that it was only minority uh and women owned uh as well as some other projects around the city i mean and city has a disparity uh right the city of portland has done a disparity study so that a normal normal county hasn't done one i think that is perhaps true although i don't know that for a fact so but but again i mean again it's just but the sellwood bridge project is a specific project and depending on how they contracted for that that may be that they if they've done alternative alternative contracting for that they that may give them flexibility on one particular contract this is an overarching policy for all of the work that we're proposing to do as a district and it you know i'm i'm certainly not um i can't speak to the law on this with any greater confidence than i already have done tonight but i think there may be a difference between what you can do on one individual contract and what you do in a in a policy that covers all of your activities would it be fair to say however that portland public schools will be tracking specifically um how we're doing in terms of women contracts minority contracts and emerging small business contracts i'm seeing nods yes yes okay so that might be helpful as we go forward yeah and even and getting reports back then right and even more specific than that so we will also be tracking subsets of those of those works that'll help i don't know what's involved with the study i don't know if that involves extra funding or if that's just something where you track and compare the two but are we investigating that we have looked at a disparity study we've talked to other agencies who've conducted disparity studies and we've also observed what they've gone through there's been several organizations that have done disparity studies recently that includes odot and the city of portland and not that long ago to the port of portland there will definitely be an expense it requires contracting with an outside agency and the city of portland has been going through their effort for several years so it would mean at minimum several years of a consultant contract that's pretty significant and even then what we're seeing so far come out of those organizations it's not giving them an enormous amount of additional flexibility any other questions can you mention one thing kevin james gail was mentioning his appreciation that we kept a half-time career coordinator in our high schools and it occurs to me that as we're passing this resolution and trying to look for opportunities for students to participate with contractors that we need to make sure that we have the internal infrastructure to be a participant and so as we look to future budgets i think we need to be paying attention to that i don't want us to be the stumbling block if we have contractors who are willing and wanting to work with our kids
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no question just a quick comment given where this policy started gosh a couple months ago and first time it came to the board and where it is today i'm just happy to say that i'm really pleased with where it is and i look forward to supporting it i'm particularly supportive of the minority and women-owned business like director gonzalez and then also the piece about training for students because i also think that cte is a very important piece for us and particularly now i think this has been mentioned also but particularly now that we have this opportunity for the bond hopefully should be knocking on wood on that one so we have the bond and there will hopefully be more opportunities for our students and not only that it's also pulling in those partners like kevin was talking about because we have this opportunity to show off the talents of our students we'll be able to to draw more partners into the district so very happy to be supportive of this policy it's a great opportunity to leverage i think too yep in the interest of students and the community so the board will now vote on resolution for six to nine all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all the polls please indicate by saying no resolution four six two nine is approved by a photo seven to zero with student representative garcia voting yes okay now do you want to take a break or you want to finish the agenda we got uh just for leadership business agenda okay let's do it keep going all right um so we we're dealing with some sections of the or the business agenda so i like to pull probably he said two resolutions uh from the business agenda and take posts on it separately leadership roles are bordered up on twice annually the state warrior regards a board of education to have a chair and a vice chair so that is now the resolution so that's how the resolution reads this time do i have a nomination for chair well i'd like to say that i think that chair gonzales has done a fabulous job over the last year i've really enjoyed being a co-chair with him and i would like to nominate him to continue in that role so there was there a motion then well not good resolution uh 4630 election board chair person with director gonzalez nominated for this position so i director knowles moves and director reagan seconds the adoption of resolution 4630 is there any board discussion thank you martinez you've done an awesome job and i'm really happy to have you continue in leadership so thank you so much yeah i think it's it's been great to have your leadership here and i appreciate how not only you keep things moving but um allow everybody's voice to be heard and encourage that um and i really appreciate actually being able to greet more of our families and language other than english so i'm excited to have you continue in leadership the board will now vote on zero resolution 4600 three zero i'm sorry all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll post please indicate by saying no resolution four six three zero is approved by a vote of six to zero uh with myself not voting on this resolution and student representative voting yes yes um so we now move on to nominations for buys chair do we have nominations for rideshare um i would like to not nominate then director bill iowa then i'll suck at that so so anyway so chair moves that um so when i consider resolution 4631 election award vice chairperson director bill lyle nominated for this position um i i moved and and director morton seconds uh the adoption of resolution 4631 is there any more discussion well i just want to say thank you very much to greg for agreeing to be nominated for this and to take my place because it's been a wonderful experience for me and i'm happily hopefully turning this over to you and good luck i mean that in a positive way and thank you and for all your hard work
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and your leadership thank you thanks greg for stepping up yeah i'd like to add thanks to pam for uh for the leadership she's shown both as the chair this last year and and as the the co-chair um not presiding over the meetings but filling in for martinez in his absence um this has been uh this last year has been a really fantastic example of leadership for me as a new board member and i know for greg as well um and i want to you know i wanted uh i saw this as an option for greg i think uh several several months ago because of the way you've tackled uh the work within within this district and on this board and i'm so excited to have have your experience in this leadership role so thank you so much for for stepping up and i mean given that there's going to be a positive vote in your favor we'll see thank you the board we're now boarding resolution 4631 uh please indicate all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all applause please indicate by saying no uh the resolution 4631 is approved by a vote of 6 to 0 with direct bilal also not voting in this resolution and student representative garcia boding yes i want to thank this opportunity to thank director bilaya for stepping into this role i appreciate it i think over the past year in particular his kenai for detail his uh continuous questions i think in regards to the the preparations for that for the meetings and and uh i think the prompting of of staff to make sure that we we have uh materials ahead of time and and i think that's uh very very commendable um can i just can i just say something i just wanted to again think as director morton i'm director knowles and director gonzalez um your leadership has been great this past year um and i i hope that um by director knowles you're stepping down from leadership that you don't take that as a time that you're off um because i think that your perspective and your leadership i think i i know that i really value and i think our colleagues do um it's just been really great and really focused with a keen eye on what's going to impact student achievement so i value that and i hope that you'll continue to to lead thank you actually i was getting to that um no i truly appreciate it i think you know the courtyard knowles in regards to being part of this uh it's um i was hesitant to let her go and and not that i didn't want directly delilah by the way uh is just that i think when you work with a person for a while and and you get used to the jokes um or the humor i should say um and the in the dynamics of that work i think that it makes it easier in regards to continuity but i certainly appreciate it i think her her taking on i think responsibilities that i was not for various reasons where work or or um liking she took on so i i thank her for for for that work not only for this past year for the for the for the time before um that she served so thank you thank you martin it's been a pleasure serving with you too so um we have um remaining items on the agenda the board now will consider remaining is an agenda on the business agenda but i would like to first highlight a couple of the resolutions resolution 4632 regarding re-zoning board districts uh following each uh the sanyo u.s census all local governments are required to apply new demographic data to existing electoral boundaries attempting to equalize populations among electoral regions for portland public schools this requires us to reassume boar zones to have nearly equal populations in each zone pps4 members run district wide but must reside in one of the seven defined electoral zones staff contracted with population research center prc at this portland state university psu to prepare two options for the board to consider the prc at psu has prepared most most analysis and recommendations for all metro area local governments in a report prepared by the prc in a study session on june 18 the board was presented with two options the poor prefer the first option which ensures nearly equal populations among boar zones while attempting to minimize char
02h 10m 00s
changes to existence boards on boundaries um so i don't know if you have any folks have any comment in regards to that i i was actually i'm not sure that i was even at that meeting but um i don't i know i saw the materials before no comments at this point okay all right so secondly after a very difficult decision the board had to make in april 23rd in closing the harry tubman young women's leadership academy program nine families file complaints resolution four six two three um we'll accept the investigators report the boarding superintendent would like to acknowledge again that closing programs is very difficult for students families and staff and praise the young women's leadership academy for their leadership and passion the board also directed staff to provide young women leadership academy students with transitional supports as they move into new schools i don't know if there's any additional comments on this item before we vote so with that uh the board will now consider uh the remaining items on the business agenda having already voted in resolution four six two seven and four six three three four six three three four four six that three yeah four six or seven i think is the contract four six two seven four six through four okay two four six three one okay miss houston are there any changes to the business agenda do i have a motion a second to adopt a business agenda director atkins moves and direct reliable seconds the adoption of the business agenda uh miss houston is there any citizen comment uh is there any board discussion on the citizen on the business agenda the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed speech indicate by saying no the business agenda is approved by a voter seven to zero would soon represent garcia voting yes um i take it there's no remaining citizen comment so we're next meeting of the of the board will be a business uh meeting held on august 6th at noon here at the board auditorium this meeting is adjourned thank he you done early

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2012-2013, https://www.pps.net/Page/2225 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:54.937864Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2012-07-16 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education - Regular Meeting - July 16, 2012

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