2012-08-20 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2012-08-20
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education, 08/20/2012 Regular Board Meeting

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sun 12 Scott water I like to attend the world welcome to everyone present to our television viewers all items that we voted on the siblings have been posted as required by state law this meeting has been televised live then will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times I can safely say that we as board members as are our families in our district and students are all very happy to once again be in partnership with the city of Portland and trimet in offering a free education pass on trimet for all high school students and designated education options department programs important public schools we have our partners present tonight and I would like to invite major of sam adams and TriMet general manager Neil McFarlane to the testimony table to say a few words welcome first of all I would just like to say thank you for partnerships we've had a long run in partnership with the city of Portland and supporting public schools and we're very happy to continue that this year I would not be I don't want to be disingenuous to say that there aren't some hard decisions associated with this as you very well know trimet is a regional agency we have a regional constituency and there's this sort of suspicion out there about Portland and Portland Public Schools but one of the things that I think it would be very helpful if you helped as school board members and as school professionals to begin to tell the story about the benefits of this program that it builds transit ridership for the future that it provides multiple benefits it doesn't just get kids to school it gets our students around the region to their jobs to other locations and it's an integral part of your educational program you've had no greater advocate than that then frankly my son's 5th grade teacher who I won't pass on her her name because she's a very very fluent lobbyist but I do want to note that if we could all work together to describe the benefits of this program regionally i think i'd be very hopeful but in all of the educational forums that you talk about because you have a very strong transit system you're able to take advantage of this program and we can do it with environmental benefits and greater benefits to the students so that i'm very pleased to be here in support of this overall program and we're very pleased to be recommending your support of this as well well mr. chair and members of the board and and to mr. director I too am very pleased to be here and I want to thank director Farland for McFarland for his work and along with your leadership in bringing this forward this is a not as well understood among average portlanders how important this is to academia academic achievement in our city both the ability to allow students to go to different campuses for a variety of various instructions getting the strength from where it is around the city important public schools but also before and after school programs both on campus but also before and after school work career experience education experience as well it it's a i think a key part of support for the work that you're doing and succeeding at in terms of improving the high school graduation rate and academic achievement across the board so again i think director mcfarland and thank all of you i'm very glad to be part of this collaboration and one last thing i also hope that you'll have a unanimous vote for the bond measure the facility's bond measure i think what you have before you is incredibly forward-thinking very exciting a smart investment it's what we need so I'm glad to be here with director MacFarlane to LOD our collaboration on the trimet youth passes and also to encourage you to vote for the bond measure again thank you both for your leadership and thank you trimet and and the city of portland for your willingness and you for your work you know with with our district in making this important service possible none of my colleagues want to see any more just thank you I was just going to say that it you know there's that old saying that
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it takes a village and I think this is the perfect example of our village coming together to support our kids and hugely appreciative thank you thank you thank you thank you we will now consider resolution 4639 authorizing an intergovernmental agreement with climate and city of Poland to continue supporting and approving fairless public transportations to an Pass Program 40 high school and education option students important public schools programs for the period of September for 12 jun 20 28 2013 do I have a motion and second similar second director sergeant moves and director knows seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4639 miss yu-san is there any citizen comment on Resolution 463 9 mm is there any board discussion on the resolution the board will now bowden Resolution 463 night 4639 I'm sorry all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all the post piece indicate by saying no resolution 4639 is approved by a board of 720 which doin represent the Garcia boating yes thank you so we now move on to hear about a memorandum an understanding with Concordia and superintendent Smith would introduce this item and I'll ask Bob Alexander our Director of Facilities to come on up and and describe the memo of understanding and Gary withers from Concordia University and I will just say so there was much conversation with the board previous Lee about both our programmatic partnership with Concordia and fabien pre-k 8 and now our our capital program memo of understanding which will be introduced to you tonight but the board directed us to go forward and develop this memo and Bob and Gary take it away thank you I am Bob Alexander Director of Planning and asset management and it is my pleasure to introduce Gary withers who's the executive vice president of Concordia as you know Concordia and Portland Public Schools who had a long-standing relationship which has been mutually beneficial a few highlights include that fabien students have had benefit of tutoring in the classroom and on the athletic field from Concordia students were able to dedicate their community service and furtherance of the education and provide hands-on learning experience through Concordia Student Service Corps particularly the teacher Corps and the athletic programs concordia student volunteers have also worked in the sun program the smart reading program in areas related to art curriculum health and safety we've also jointly utilized facilities Concordia has used our sports fields and exchange for maintenance and upkeep during construction of their own athletic facilities Concordia has also completed a new library which has been open to fabien students and parents and community members providing a unique access to quality educational materials for our students in furtherance of this cooperative effort and recognizing that there's a great deal of potential for further synergy we were directed by the board to enter into a memorandum of understanding for the joint development of a new fabien pre k-8 school as part of the district proposed capital building program the fabien school site at 3039 rosa parks way is about 7.8 acres adjacent and concordia university's 13 acre campus as shown on the attached that you have in your books fabien is a title one school with nearly eighty percent of our fabien students qualifying for free or reduced lunch a new fabien school could provide wraparound services including a health clinic Family Resource Center early childhood education opportunities and support of students and their families fostering greater student success potential for this collaborative effort is the creation of a modern model modern learning environment that is the center of the community the district adopted a long-range facility plan that identifies the development of partnerships as a guiding principle including the pursuit of partnerships with private entities that leverage public resources to maximize efficiency provide economies of scale and drive innovation the mou scope will include the following first master planning and programming of the fabien site in future buildings second a partnership development capital and operation for joint use of a fully modernized fabien with attendant wraparound services third identification and outline of any agreements permitting the use of facilities by each other's institutions and finally an initial development agreement that will be executed prior to commencement of schematic design for the fabien site including an outline of subsequent
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disposition and development agreement of ETA terms for the completion of capital projects identified in phase one of the Fabien master plan so the timing of this mou would come before the board's consideration in September upon adoption the mou concordia in the district will begin the scope of work identified in the mou as soon as possible after a voter approval of the district capital budgeting program master planning is anticipated to be a 12-month effort capital partnership development would be completed within three to five years I would now like to have Gary withers say a few words about the partnership began to know you thank you Bob and thank you ladies and gentlemen's a pleasure to be here today was a very typical day started the day with a meeting with the president of United Way teeth collagen and Keith threat our Ken Thrasher who is civic leader known to all of you and among the topics we talked about fabien of course we talked about the need for wraparound services at opportunities like Fabien and Keith and kind of Ken kind of looked me in the eye and they said well what's really going to be the bottom line there and I thought for a minute what's the bottom line from a Concordia students perspective and the bottom line for us would be wouldn't it be wonderful of every Concordia student every Concordia student had an opportunity to serve as a mentor working with a student from floppy and that's one of our goals and then about midday had another meeting and we're talking about another opportunity with fabien a programmatic opportunity September seventh and then in October we're going to do a number of events around a little bit of spot joint fundraising for mosquito nets for young people in Africa and children from fabien are going to be able to come over and participate as spectators on September 7th watching our number-two ranked women's soccer team play against a much lesser rank team from California and then in October we're going to do a little bit of kids will have a chance to come out on the field and shoot some goals and earn a few bucks to raise money for mosquito nets and then of course at the end of the day on campus we're getting a report a report that is talking about the public perception of Concordia University and I didn't put this question in here but somebody put a question in there and the question was so if the Fabien Concordia partnership with tours but tours beyond programming even into the Capital arena will that help Concordia University deliver on its promise to be a really key premier community partner seventy-five percent of the people surveyed said absolutely with the highest marks and that's what our partnership is about Denny Stegman who's behind me here is our chief financial officer was thinking about this earlier today and he had a response that he wanted me to share as well it's the same response that the Dean the president nine we all share and that is because we prepare so many teachers we have over a thousand students in our teacher preparation program probably close to 1,500 our goal is to be able to be able to exercise this programmatic in capital partnership in a way where we're truly preparing teachers who are the best prepared to be able to help young people realize their full potential to become one of the premier colleges of education in the entire country and having the proximity that this partnership opportunity presents from a capital standpoint is singular and unique in fact a little bit of research we found maybe one other similar sort of partnership in the entire country and we think it bodes extraordinarily well not only for the two to three thousand Concordia students but to and in particular the seven to eight hundred fabien students will be a new facility so we're thrilled about the opportunity we obviously talk about it all the time and fabien is always on our agenda at Concordia University thank you very much for your time and your support of this thank you both comments questions I mean I'd be I'd be happy to come and I just want to thank you and Concordia again as I was looking through the attachments and the material on this particular partnership and MOU I love the fact that what we are talking about is instructional space for student teaching we're talking about space to provide wraparound services for District students and parents and we're talking about space for Concordia College of Education including faculty offices conference rooms classrooms and a joint partnership that has concordia contributing financially to this project also as well as all of the unbelievable
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community support that you've been providing all the way along so it's a it's an amazing partnership and I think it's one of the reasons that we were really interested in having fabien as part of this very first bond package is that it gives us an opportunity to really demonstrate to our community what we're talking about what we talked about partnerships and I can't thank you enough for your engagement for the last year year and a half with us throughout the process it's it's a it's so exciting to think about what can be so thank you you're very welcome thank you both again and now for the moment we all been waiting for at least a tremendous historical moment at least four for our school district and that is the referral Bible measure and superintendent Smith will introduce this next item and I'll ask CJ Sylvester and Jim Owens CJ is our chief operating officer and Jim Owens it directs our office of school modernization to come up and formally present this and as co-chair Gonzalez has inferred this is the culmination of a lot a long process that has involved a lot of people to be at the moment we are at right now starting with listening sessions that began last May and ran through into the fall where we listened to many many pro and public school stakeholders then going into our long-range facilities Advisory Committee who actually brought forward a long-range facilities plan that's a ten-year vision of where we're going with our facilities for our district then to a bond development committee and then much conversation amongst this group about and back and forth with the public about what a package might look look like and when was the right time to bring it to tonight or I turn it over to the two of you to bring us the final chapter I think I will shorten my comments based on the timeline that you've just run us through this evening staff is seeking the board authorization to place a school capital construction bond measure on the november six ballot we've collectively been working towards this evenings action since may 2011 as superintendent smith indicated following the failure of ballot measure 26 dash 121 in may of 2011 the board and the superintendent went out an in-depth for six months and did a series of listening sessions heard what the community had to say both in favor of what had been done in what had not been done correctly subsequent to that we went into a long-range facility planning process this long range facility plan committee was 36 members strong and themes emerged through identification of goals and guiding principles one of those was the capital bonds are absolutely required in order for us to be able to move forward and do the kinds of renovations to our schools that are necessary in order to provide an adequate educational environment people are interested in having a bold vision particularly for the first phase and they want to use strategic use of the money so that most of any bond moving forward is going towards major renovation or full modernization or replacement and then some money is going towards highest and most urgent facility needs they're interested in us building robust program capacities at each site and pursuing partnerships much like the Concordia one that was just under conversation here this evening everyone agreed that schools should be safe healthy and accessible to all subsequent to the long range facilities planning committee and their work effort which was adopted by the board there was a 22-member bond development committee they considered a variety of criteria which gives you a variety of different packages to consider for any bond proposal that material was then taken out for a series of public input sessions in May and from those public input sessions we learned that there was strong support oops for the november two thousand twelve ballot that seismic issues and a focus on high schools were relevant that there was concern over the cost of the prior bond measure and it needed to be an issue for us as we moved forward and there was an again an interest in the educational vision the board preferred school construction bond proposal that's before you this evening in ballot measure and explanatory statement language responds to the issue of price sensitivity with an estimated tax rate of one dollar in ten cents per one thousand dollars in assessed value this
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provides a median assessed tax rate estimated at 165 dollars and it provides us with an eight year 482 dollar 482 million dollar capital construction bond it also highlights the vision of high schools first the two primary criteria that you had us use were high seismic risk and the need for major access upgrades secondary criteria after the application of those two were high enrollment which netted us the high schools of grant and Franklin and high poverty which gave us the high schools of Roosevelt and Franklin so the three high schools grant Franklin and Roosevelt are all included in this first one partnership was another high priority and as you've just heard the partnership with Concordia University in the district regarding the fabien pre-k eight site is a demonstration of what can be accomplished when a community comes together starting at the high schools was a natural extension of the work that the board had previously done regarding high school redesign the preferred school construction bond has a balance between schools identified for full modernization while still ensuring that focused urgent facility needs are accomplished in particular that's high priority roof replacements seismic strengthening and accessibility upgrades and these physical facility improvements provide a geographic balance across the district of work that's being accomplished so the summary on this of the 482 million-dollar bond proposal is that five million will be dedicated to educational facility improvements to improve grades six through eight science classrooms that sixty nine point five million is dedicated to seismic strengthening replacing and seismically bracing roofs a doing additional roof work and improving accessibility to educational programs that 278 million will be spent on full modernizations of grant franklin and roosevelt high schools and replacement of fabien that 45 million dollars will go towards debt repayment will be acquiring Rosa Parks k-8 and there'll be a little bit of discussion about that later tonight and then the actual acquisition will take place in late october or early november we've set aside money under program costs for required reserves materials and labor cost escalation and all of those kinds of additional things that are necessary in order to complete the bond program effectively for that total bond program of 482 million and when we have SAT and had these conversations with the long-range facilities planning committee with the bond development committee and internally we've talked about what a robust program this is how much work this is going to be and what the 30-year effort is going to look like so we pulled a couple of photos about how people a hundred years ago we're accomplishing what what we're talking about now and find grading of sites even now is considered to be a bit of an art form but if you look at how they were having to do it you know a hundred years ago with the equivalent of plowshares and this accomplished for us eventually the Franklin High School we know today and this is Franklin High School under construction the gymnasium over on the right hand side so this was being accomplished in 1915 and 1960 with the tools and materials that were available at time and the amount of effort that it took to raze that building and so what we're undertaking today quite frankly looks pretty easy in comparison because we have different tools we have different methods we have different materials and so it's just to give us a sense of what our forefathers were accomplished on our behalf and what we're undertaking now on behalf of the students of our future thank you both are there any quick questions I know we heard this presentation before many times I don't want to get into into rehashing all questions that we already have so rather go into introducing the resolution so if we don't have any the ball will now consider resolution for 640 calling a measure election to submit to the electors of the district the question of authorizing 482 million of general obligation bonds and providing for related matters do I have a motion in a second director Regan moves in director no seconds the motion to adopt resolution for 640 miss usin is there any citizen comment to resolution for 640 yes we have six signed up the first to Taylor marrow and Frank Holleman
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and I again how y'all doing I'm good evening thanks for listening tonight um so first I'd like to say I'm a little bit concerned because I the email a couple of email to superintendent annihilate meld my board members and haven't heard back from them so if you need to contact me my email is t a ma rrow at hotmail com next I believe that most of you remember my position concerning the proposed measure as I said before I am NOT opposed to an increase in my taxes I am NOT a cheap person what I am opposed to is increased inequity that this bond measure what we create I recently returned from a visit with my family back in Princeton New Jersey and it only reinforced my concerns for my children's education Princeton Regional schools which is why I graduated which was the number one high school in the state top five in the nation spends 17 thousand dollars per student each year my two nieces will get one of the best public education Xin the nation one of my best friends growing up in high school a kid from my Boy Scout Troop he is a teacher at Pennington prep school in Princeton New Jersey one of the most elite prep schools in the nation this year his son turned goes to sixth grade he's turning 11 my daughter will be entering sixth grade he gets to go to pennington prep my daughter gets to be stuck in a public school system that ranks at the very bottom of the nation each year my niece has received new up-to-date textbooks they have state-of-the-art classroom stayed here at science labs state-of-the-art facilities why my kids get to deal with second-rate facilities second-rate science rooms second-rate classrooms and my kids will be stuck doing less and getting less and what their kid with their with their cousins will however um so yes Portland does this is what I went out there I told in Portland has great parks right we have great bike roads right but what we lack is schools we lack a good public school district that will drive this this state and more importantly this city forward your proposed bond measure does nothing to increase student success does nothing to increase X access does nothing to increase quality what this measure will do is fix the relatively affluent neighbor and the good performing schools at PBS and leave my children's future at Madison High School lagging behind also once you decide to fix these priority schools my property of I would be less than the property value of the school that you're proposing matter from relatively affluent neighborhoods you know my daughter went to Alameda I know what these neighborhoods are like are you're going to fix these schools the next schools are going to fix are gonna be Benson Lincoln and Cleveland and then Madison You're Expecting in eight years is going to be voted for by people where I had the high schools fix can you tell me how will my 11 year old how will my six-year-old benefit from me paying taxes to subsidize people who are relatively affluent have good property values and stable property ballots explain to me this and I might consider it but so far no one has been able to say how my children will directly benefit by the time my eleven-year-old sees anything I bond measure comes up thank you thank you very much all right thank you for this time if you can state your name name for the record please and spell your last name Frank Holleman and that is spelled hol ma n my address is 23 27 northeast 33rd portland 972 12 I have worn many hats in this community however i am representing tonight all those octogenarians who recall when the community was put its money where its mouth was and supported public schools i am also representing here retired seniors who have been utterly unhappy with the lack of investment over the past few decades in taking care of our public buildings I recall when we had one of the best school districts in this country our budgets always made sense and included maintaining these buildings and right now we have a huge backlog of deferred maintenance so we have a golden opportunity here for reinvestment in our kids education by caring for the community assets we all use people with school-age kids and people without school aged kids use these buildings from the Portland Public School website I read that over 4,000 non-school related events are held in these community buildings every year so they are heavily used and need to be cared for we need to show our kids that they really matter we need to commit to sending them to safe and enlivening school buildings to learn grow and lead
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we need a city that is not just a place to bike golf hike eat and recycle our stuff but a city that produces students who are thriving in their learning environment we need to provide a great learning environment that produces graduates for which businesses will compete refer this bond it is the first step to a brighter future for us all thank you thank you next we have Mike Rosen and Scott Bailey you still know the rules right except that's why didn't repeat him tonight by the way I figure I seen him before I seen you before seeing other people there's no need to remind you right I'm going to my name is Scott Bailey thank you board members superintendent legal counsel and our newest board member welcome thanks for listening to me tonight I'm going to keep it short and sweet these are trying times it's hard to stay positive sometimes but this bond is a real positive step forward that the community can take it's something we can build on it's the first step 30 years of work that's the whole or in it's the first step forward to do good things for kids it's shameful to me that my neighborhood high school has buildings has a court of the classrooms aren't accessible this bond will fix that and the same kind of thing is true at Franklin and it Roosevelt and there are other schools that need that as well I've been in those quotes science labs for middle grade kids that are just a regular classroom with a sink those aren't really science labs this bond will fix that I worry and a lot of people worry about the big earthquake that's out there this bond will be a first step in addressing that with more that we will need to do in the future I could go on but I'll just leave it there and say thank you this is a good first step to take it's something we can build on positively to build on with the school district Thanks thank you and lastly we have Herman green and Ethan Jewett all right my name is Herman green last name spelled gr EE and e my dress is 85 15 North German Portland 972 and 7 and I came out here this night just really to tell you guys thank you for the passing of this measure in advance what is going to do for Roosevelt High School is ensure that it's around for a while Roosevelt High School is an amazing school and an amazing community it's got a lot of history and the passion of this mod this bond measure is going to ensure that it continues to provide a safe place where our kids can be educated where kids can grow up in a diverse culture with everyone around you and feel like this is mines I want to say thank you for showing the community that you're not just talking about you care about the community but you're showing them that you care by invested in what's dear to them the high school is a central location where all the community from from st. John's really just comes together and they walk and they talk and they get caught up on what's going on and by you passing this bond you ensured that for the next generation from my daughter who's going to roosevelt high school now and from my youngest daughter who's 10 years old who will be going to high school roosevelt high school when she gets older you ensure that she'll have that same history the same passion that same love that same place that she can call her own and you tell the the st. John's community and the rest of Portland that we're not just talking about we care we're showing you that we care with our dollars because these are hard times right now and we can all find reasons as to why we shouldn't do something and we're you know the money is needed more here and the money is needed more there and by you taking this to say you know all that's going on but we care about these schools no one school is greater than the other but we basing it on the needs of the school and the needs of the community and we're
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going to invest here and this is a first step I thank you for that my name is Ethan Jewett I'm a woodland resident and in the fabien district so the two things that i like to say are one that i'm extremely excited about the partnership with Concordia and the resultant inclusion of vivillon on the the bond measure i'm also a neighborhood emergency team leader with the city of Portland's a program and the neighborhood emergency team program and I have been a volunteer for about a decade so as a student of the Szechuan earthquake we're a huge slice of school-age children were were tragically killed in their subduction zone earthquake in buildings that were seismically unsound and then watching in Japan as almost no students were actually killed in the actual earthquake because of their superior seismic construction I'm extremely excited to see the work begin to reinforce and improve and replace buildings that are that are dangerous to our children obviously it's great to sort of be on the short list and I hope that you will all take that that job very very seriously because it's not a question of if it could not be at her lifetimes but seeing the pictures of Franklin in 1916 remind me that you know we did not know that there were going to be these huge earthquakes that these buildings were not constructed to withstand them and and we can't let our current building inventory sit around for another another century and roll the dice every day so that's all I have to say thank you all is that thank you so we're not going to turn to a brief discussion of the board you know of course you know I I gotta I gotta say this i think you know we can't necessarily address you know every concern that that that we have heard I mean and there are some that have been expressed by folks in the past there's also I think things that have been expressed in regards to the hopes that we all have and people in the community have I think as mentioned by mr. Sylvester you know that there is a history a work that has been done people came together over 100 years ago to try to build this the schools and in essence it was a leap of faith for future generations my own experience I think within the district and haven't been involved in organizing work with the district for the past 24 years or 25 now is a parent and now is a grandparent many of the other things that I worked on in in in hoping for change within the district were not necessarily resulted in the immediate benefits for my children as I think many parents you know that that continued to organize trying to improve the educational system have not seen those results it doesn't mean that you know we don't encourage people to continue to get involved to try to get the direct benefit for students but you know in putting forth this this bond for the for the public we are also conscious of the fact that the majority of the people here in Portland do not have children in Portland Public Schools so it is i think that that partnership that we are asking for all of us to build and to commit to building a better future for all our students not the ones that are present the only ones that are currently attending our schools but for future generations to come so I'm very I think hopeful in this process and the results of that in regards to what it is I think a signal to a an investment for future generation and a partnership I think for all the individuals i think that are they're part of the electrode and and other people that are not necessarily voting on this measure but that we encourage to support our students at all levels so i'm not sure you know if other my colleagues want to say a few words and in regards to this yes i'll just say a couple things that what I what I've appreciated through this process I mean immediately after my election of the board I was in a lot of listening sessions with folks trying to figure out what the feedback was from the last bond and well it was not it was really
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disappointing for me personally to have the last Bond not get past it really provided us an opportunity to come back to our community and say what what did we miss and really what is our vision and so what I appreciate about this bond even as I heard testimony this evening I talked about making sure that we're trying to invest in in high-poverty schools as you heard under siege a Sylvester talk about that was one of our priorities to look at and so we have schools like fabien and roosevelt in there we've talked about I've heard a lot about people saying our our middle school science curriculum you promised when you move 2k8 or whatever there are varying versions of that that's why I say whatever and so we heard then so we're investing in access to those quality programs with this we're doing seismic people are very concerned and I know there's some divisions some people say you know it's not a good investment when you look in return of investment but our return on investment is safe kids kids that are going to be able to come home with their kids if if that earthquake ever hits and that helps me sleep at night because my first job I feel like as as a member of this community is to keep your kids safe when you send them to us the number of schools it's going to be over 40 or 50 different schools like at that seismic upgrade they get those new roofs the science labs it's it's a well constructed bond in the sense that we were able to include the high schools as this visionary as we realize that they're going to have this big impact on student achievement while also doing a lot of major work at the other schools without spreading it so thin that it feels disingenuous or that it's just a little bit to give everybody something for whether it's for politics or for whatever it is we set our criteria and we moved to it and it was criteria based on that year of input from our community so I'm hopeful as Martine just mentioned I hope our community feels that that we've come back and that this is in partnership and I'm looking forward to November so maybe I'll just piggyback on that and just agree with everything that's been said just to highlight that just the piece about the size of the package that was mentioned before but just to to highlight that again that last time we went the the bond package we put forth to the voters was two dollars per thousand of assessed value we had that very heartbreaking narrow very narrow loss and so we really one of the key pieces we heard and all that feedback was that it was too big too much for a variety of reasons the economy obviously and and also our property tax bills in particular here in Portland so I just want to reflect that the the package is significantly lower as CJ pointed out we came up with a dollar 10 per thousand as assessed value we were really trying to balance this huge backlog of need the fact that every child deserves this in Portland and needs it and we could go into just about every school in the city and make a really good case at this school needs to be rebuilt but balancing that huge need with the fact that we do have limited resources it is still a tough economy its hard for folks to to dig that deep so we tried to find a balance we came up with the dollar 10 per thousand of assessed value really is a first step again as we're all saying for that long range plan where we will be able to do the full renovation or rebuild of every single school in the city for future generations and I really you know I do hope that we're thinking whether we have kids in school and on and I really appreciate everyone who came and testified tonight this really is about the city as a whole and our economy just on one level and really what kind of place we're going to be to attract families and how we're going to survive as a city if we don't have vibrance safe schools for our kids so I'm hoping that folks are thinking beyond their immediate their immediate neighborhood their immediate family and really thinking in terms of themselves as citizens of this of the city and being pulling in together for what Portland needs to be and what we can be so that's my hope and I'm really excited by this package being one that's a good compromise and really carefully crafted and I'm excited to really work with the community and teachers and the students and figuring out how those new spaces for teaching on their near going to benefit us all let me talk a little bit more about some of the other things that this bond will do for the city you know it will help build our local economy in many many ways you know great schools alone cannot make a city great but all great schools are all great cities have great schools and in Portland we are particularly fortunate because
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eighty-two percent of our students for our citizens our children attend Portland Public Schools and so our schools serve a very large portion of our citizenry the timing is particularly great on this because our economy is turning and we look forward to hoping that it will provide more jobs for our community in our city you know Portland is known for many many things we're known for climate recreational activities sustainability innovation coffee beer all those kinds of things but what's most important for us is that we're known for strong schools and businesses come and locate in Portland because of all of the things that we have but one thing that will keep a company from coming to Portland is if we did not have strong school so it's very very important that we continue to keep our school strong and and this bond will help us do that tonight was also mentioned in firm about property values it's true or property values around with when our schools are improved our property values do increase its not a warm and fuzzy thing to talk about but it's a fact and it's important to the city that we continue to have rising property values in our city and finally from a business perspective another business perspective strong schools help provide a strong workforce for our city and we need that both for our city and to again attract other businesses to Portland because we have that strong workforce that's been built by our very strong schools so I am very excited about the referral of this bond and look forward to working very hard for it over the next several months to hope to keep to make sure that it passes and I hope that all of you will join us in that effort yeah as the student in Portland Public Schools I know that this is something that we can't keep putting off that like not only are we planning for the future with like seismic protection from earthquakes and future things like that daily at schools the school environment is not a place where you want to be like it is so chaotic hallways are so crowded classrooms are with like 35 40 kids in like a small science lab where you only have two sinks that are working this is something that we need to deal with now we can't have our students be getting behind just because we don't have the correct equipment we don't have a nice learning environment students don't want to come to school so this is something that I'm totally in support of that students see it every day and I encourage everyone to go look at all of our schools because they are really in need of help jump in here and follow up on some of what people are saying because we do know we have a big backlog of improvements we need to make to our schools and so this is just the start of a 30 year program that we hope that voters will support us over a long period of time in this investment in our schools and one of the things I'm pleased about in this resolution is the superintendent will develop the Charter for our citizen oversight committee so we'll have a group of an independent group that will look at the spending that happens in this bond to ensure that it the dollars are wisely spent that they're spent on what we're saying we have committed to our community that we won't spend the money on and so I'm excited about that and I'm looking forward to I'm hoping that we'll have it some more discussion about that perhaps in a work session coming up about what that that charter will be exactly and the makeup of that committee I think it's important to taxpayers and voters that they know that we'll have an independent citizens oversight on this bond I really I appreciate the comments of my colleagues and I would say I agree with everything folks have said tonight I also appreciate the comments of the citizens who have testified this evening and in prior meetings for a while now I one tonight i think is is worth repeating and that was mr. holmen's comment about the use of our space by community organizations and other outside events i think his number was around 4,500 4,000 4,500 events non-school related events in our facilities we are truly it's a fantastic statistic and number i think because we are the most widely used public buildings in the city and i think whether you know whether we like to deny it or not our schools our community centers and and they're built not only to educate but this the students that are there on a daily basis but also to to be available for our community and I think a bond like this really says that we're taking the
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responsibility to make sure that that those facilities are both safe and I think much more importantly accessible for our community so I'm in support of this bond I wanted to make a comment that hasn't been brought up which is about the campaign itself being different but I first wanted to address there was a Ethan Jewett I haven't met you before but it was interesting when you were talking about that neighborhood emergency training that you've done through the city of Portland because when I moved to Oregon 19 years ago we had just lived through the san francisco earthquake and one of the very first things I did was I signed up for the city's neighborhood emergency training and so I went through that as well and one of the things that was the most shocking about is that they spent an enormous amount of time on triage who do you say if we don't you save because of the destruction that could actually happen so one of the things that gives me great comfort in this and and I know we've already talked about a little bit is the seismic improvements because hopefully over time over this 30-year process we can assure parents that if if and when the big earthquake hits hopefully our children and our teachers or staff will be able to safely exit out of the buildings that's certainly the goal so I appreciate you bringing that up I hadn't thought about the fact that I'd done that way back when one of the things that I wanted to talk about just a little bit was the campaign itself because one of the things I think that we've all noticed feels really different this time is I think people were really parents in particular but a lot of people in the community were really shocked that we lost the last time and literally if like 300 people had switched their votes we would have been there but I think that maybe we got too comfortable with the idea that you know of course we're always going to support education and we did we passed the levy it was amazing and we came really close but we've had such incredible community engagement since the day after the bond and what I'm really excited about is the fact that we have a really different feeling for the campaign itself the campaign staff that we're using this time is completely different than staff that we've used in the past and I think they understand really well that this package that we have was created by our community for our community and that they are committed to running a grassroots campaign to ensure that it is passed by our community so it it just has a good feel to it I mean everywhere you go you're you're hearing a buzz which is exciting I think in some ways the last campaign took a more technical approach to how do you pass a bond you know where are the where are the votes what precinct should we be focused in and I think this time we're all taking the approach of what is it that this bond is going to do for all of our children and in fact we just had a meeting many of us attended a meeting this week with the communities that represented as the communities of color and they were reminding us that you know nearly fifty percent of our children are our children of color minority children and if this is a an opportunity for all of us to engage together to support Portland's kids I'm also excited that I believe that more than anything else this campaign is going to reflect Portland Public Schools values and I think that's really important I think we lost sight of that a little bit during the last campaign and I think that we know that as we recreate these buildings we are going to provide some amazing new opportunities for great teaching and learning to happen right now when you talk to teachers when you talk to staff people you often hear that our buildings hinder teaching and learning and I think what we are going to do is to start a process over the next 30 years where our buildings will facilitate teaching and learning and that's exactly what we want in our building so we're going to have safe environments that facilitate great teaching and learning so really excited about it so I'm a yes anymore a very simple thank you to people who have been part of this conversation over the last year and number of months just because people have gone in very deeply and gotten their arms around complexity of issues and understanding of this the inner workings of our buildings and also just come forward with what their
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questions are in their critiques and the all with leaning in and saying how do we make this successful and how does this community get our arms around what it is we need to do to create the buildings we want for our students for the future and people have showed up in all sorts of ways and it's been people from all around Portland and you're hearing a lot of the conversation about ownership and feeling like this really reflects the values of Portland and it really feels like it does I can't tell you just how many people have engaged in all sorts of ways and in a way that makes it feel just really strong going forward at this moment so thank you to everybody who's figured out how to show up and get your voice in this be it an idea or a question or expertise that you've offered it's just mattered in terms of coming up with something that I think we can be really proud of as a district 10 as a city so thank you ok so the border now Bodom resolution for 640 hold in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all the post piece indicate by saying no resolution for 64 series approved by a board of 720 which soon representative Garcia boating yes thank you not that this measure has been referred to the ballot I wanted to share with the public some key dates for the November election I also wanted to make an additional statement you know we are all calling on all Parliament's to for lenders to come together to invest in our schools to help us rebuild our schools and and in the words of director knows and no the meeting is to we do this I think particularly for those that are those of us that are older to dream to invest on the younger generations so that they can become more productive members of society because in the end we are all will all benefit from that happening so wanted to you know again kind of restate that that I think that has been articulated before because in the end we know we need to build better communities so a couple of things I want to mention in regards to the elections themselves in regards to November the boat be in November sixth of course the balance being available the elections office starting September 24th voter registration deadline you know everybody is we are urging everybody to register the boat if you're not already registered you have to do that by October sixteenth balance will be mailed to all of us that are registered to vote on October 19th and as director Reagan mentioned there is a campaign committee that that is working our board liaisons for that for that work is director sergeant director knows and director Regan and I'm asking director Regan to share some of those kind of campaign dates that are coming up well one date in particular for people to be aware of us this thursday there's actually going to be an open house at the new campaign office which is at 1725 northeast sandy 1785 northeast sandy I can't pay managers back there just freaked out 1785 northeast sandy and we're going to be doing a more formal and bigger campaign kickoff in September but for folks who are wanting to get engaged early wanting to see our campaign office we really encourage you to come the office opening is actually going to be the whole agenda has been set by students we're going to have some student music and I think it would be just great fun so that will be from 5 30 to 7 30 so that would be the first one and I think as we go along with our board meetings throughout the fall we can be announcing others as we go so thank you and there's a our portland our schools has a facebook page and a website and you can get lots and lots of information there as we go as well again election day november six thanks everyone that is involved thanks everybody that they're brought us to this point particular staff the bounties and all of you that that are out there were really waiting to participate in a great campaign so we move on now to the superintendent's report super daniel Smith yes and I think there's a slide that's coming up here that's showing it
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ok so our milestones framework with which you are all familiar it's what we've been using to measure student success as they move through our system over the last I think four years at this point where we're really we've set targets for ourselves for five-point game for students overall and then a five-point narrowing of the achievement gap and I'm showing this T right now because we are going to be engaged in the next month and a half at trying to align our Portland Public Schools milestones with the measures that are being outlined by cradle to career so our partnership across all of Multnomah County which is now working that has some variation on a theme relationship to what our milestones are but with some differences that will require us to do some aligning and then the the other one is our state achievement compacts which we are we'll begin our process of setting setting targets for success each year in our compact with the state and all of these are just a little bit of a variation on a theme and with a little bit of difference enough that we need to align them so on October 15 that that work session will be having the conversation about that alignment and then in october 29th at our board meeting but including both our updated data for this year so our updated it's particularly 10th grade and then the results of our appeal on our graduation rate from last year which went up significantly from the one that we set our original milestone target or achievement compact target on we'll be voting on our achievement compact targets october 29th and then resetting our own milestone targets for the year so just letting you know that that's coming the other thing is our state assessment cut scores have also changed particular on the third grade milestone so what we will require it's now meets or exceeds as an hour milestone has been exceeds the new meets is the equivalent of our old exceed so it will now be meets or exceeds so we've got some of those kind of adjustments to make so telling you that is in our future and then the bulk of what I wanted to talk to you about is really the supports that have been going on this summer to both prepare kids to get ready to enter school and also to do the shoring up at key transition points as they're getting ready to start the school year so we have had and all of this conversation is in the context of our strategic framework we have a new graphic for you because the one it's about the same words but a new graphic because people thought the old one was tough to read so I'm running a new graphic by you and then I'll move along to our early kindergarten transition program which was 475 incoming kindergarten students at woodmere in harrison park and these kids all had the opportunity to practice kindergarten for three weeks with their kindergarten teachers and their parents or caregivers had the opportunity to participate in twice a week meetings to learn how to support their kids long-term education and to connect with school so here you've got some of our art students from the early kindergarten transition program and students the curriculum revolved around three three books as well as math concepts so that's what parents and students were engaged in so they're practicing kindergarten we also had a leap into ninth grade summer program that was at five of our high school campuses for four weeks in July we had nearly 300 students who participated who are getting ready to attend Benson Franklin Jefferson Madison or Roosevelt and they had both morning classes focused on writing skills as well as learning critical learn to study skills and transition skills preparing themselves to enter school and also to get familiar with their own campuses before they're actually entering as students which has been hugely successful for incoming ninth graders feeling like they've got lay of the land and know how it works before they actually enter in the ninth grade most of these students will earn point five elective credit for their work in the summer program and we also had partners partnerships with step up and sei to do some social emotional scale building and goal-setting and things like that to prepare themselves for for ninth grade at Roosevelt for their leap into ninth grade program Joan Lunden from the American milestones program it did a PBS documentary on Rose vote and film students using iPads to do research on city officials they interviewed Police Chief Mike Reiss who's a Roosevelt graduate via teleconference on a mondo pad which you see in these it's a giant iPad there you go where they're interviewing chief Reese and that I pet that giant iPad was donated by portland-based and focus for Roosevelt which and everybody says so do
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you have a mondo bed yeah when it Roosevelt so it's like became really exciting really quickly a Mount Hood cable Regulatory Commission grant paid for the iPads which all students are going to be using this fall at Roosevelt we started last year with teachers having the iPads and this fall all of our students will have them and that milestones documentary will air this fall on PBS so we'll keep you posted of when that actually goes on air we also had a gear up summer program with 175 incoming 7th and 8th graders they were meeting out it the marshal campus and the and actually had high school mentors from their feet or high school working with them they were awesome we got to visit with some of those students and their mentors and they were having a great time and really getting excited about school they did a writing that worked with the Oregon writing project with Linda Christensen working with both the teachers and the students and looked at judge that matter with a social justice theme and just a lot of energy going on at that campus which was which was great and then finally we had migrant families who got to expand their knowledge through a summer school program for more than a hundred elementary school-aged migrant students and their families with partners from Oregon State University and Portland Community College and West Sylvan middle school students who did from the spanish immersion program who continued a years long tradition of working in that summer program so if that was also really exciting and in addition to those we did our Benson summer scholars and did priority for students who were not meeting the 10th grade milestone and we'll give you numbers on that one soon as we have them so that that program ends up hitting capacity every year so we have huge demand for Summer Scholars oh here we go oh and you know what they're doing close them again whoo-hoo they were closing the gap that is what they were doing we always do the raise the bar and close the gap that's what the kids were doing for you now another piece of great news for us was you hear every year about our-our Portland PTA clothes closet this year Sharon Mei Chang who has been the person who has been the boy that just heart and soul of the clothes closet and every year was honored in Washington DC as one of 12 Champions of Change from across the country and so like and we'll give you a little more coverage of that that honoring of her but we are really excited that she was called out for her work with the club PTA clothes closet and every year there we go on it as the champion of change so yeah it was just really exciting and she's done such great work and that is all volunteer and each year actually serves more and more students as they become aware of it they're able to shop a couple times a year and it's a fabulous program so and contributions from lots of companies in the community nike Columbia Sportswear Ross adidas old navy and it's wonderful back-to-school clothes opportunity for our kids so Yahoo Sharon our boiler burner conversion project was a big piece of facilities work that went on the summer and this one you all have heard about but I will just tell you a little bit of an update which is we're converting boilers at 47 sites 88 boilers and converting from fuel oil to natural gas and when these are completed the savings in fuel costs will be nearly 2 million dollars a year so it's a huge it's a huge project with huge outcomes and huge impact on our operating budget we've had the work is started at 33 schools or 66 boilers we've had six chimneys that have been lowered so far and chimney lowering 48 more schools will start this week the first school scheduled to be completed is da Vinci which will be done at the end of September and then all 33 schools are scheduled to be heated by natural gas by mid-october so we are really excited about that big difference a lot of conversation about those boilers our great fields projects also had a lot of progress over the summer we are nearly complete with the track replacement at Roosevelt High School nearly complete with the track replacement at Franklin High School the track replay replacement is just getting underway at Madison and is also getting underway at the Marshall campus where we have a nine lane competitive track that will be used and is used and will continue to be used heavily for citywide competition so and all of those have had great community partnership and a lot of our partners involved in making these happen and being ready for the start of the school year and finally the last two things I want to make you aware of we are doing again for the second year in a row a big
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effort to reconnect students who have not yet showed up for school reconnect them to Portland Public Schools and we're asking the community and our partners that if you know a student who isn't in school and wants to come back we have a number one number to call and be that student can call or you can call and we can do outreach but the number is 950 3916 3956 or email reconnect at PBS net we had this was a hugely successful successful effort last year where we reached out to students who did not show up to school yet we had a large number who came back to school a large number that we understood actually had transferred and we didn't know it yet and if we will do we do phone calling and if we aren't getting being successful phone calling we're doing home visits and we have a team of people who are dedicated to doing this so again we look forward to doing a big reconnect effort and then the last is that project community care which every year we have large numbers of people in the community who show up to help us get ready to welcome kids back to school we both yard and building projects we've got it'll be nine to noon this next Saturday August 25th it will be happening at schools across the city to log on to our website to see which schools you do not need to pre-register you can just show up and we welcome everybody who wants to come it's really fun so I will say come and it matters a lot for kids to show up and have their school feel like it's ready for them when they show up for school so join us for community care day that's it appreciated that you highlighted the early kindergarten transition program I had an occasion to visit it last year and it was amazing it was such a great way to welcome students who had not had preschool experience it was everything that I think schools should be doing so they bring them back three weeks they have parents there two days of the week and they have educational assistants who speak multiple languages to help students just learn the routine and get used back to that or get used to a school setting and what I was amazed at the time and I don't I'm sure they've tracked that again this year but they had tracked that up from their kindergarten ear to the first grade year the second grade year and the students just kept improving and they outperformed their peers and it was it'll be interesting to see how that goes it was just an amazing program and I what's interesting is I understand that the districts across the county now have adopted a similar model to us and it's a great example where Portland Public School innovates and try something new because they know what's best for kids and then to have that early adoption across I just it's a great program thank you for doing that kind of a call out because I'll say like for any of our students the same thing at ninth grade where you have the opportunity before you're actually starting with everybody there to go figure out your campus and become familiar and have it be like you're an expert before you actually start and are in the mix has made a huge difference for students being successful once there you know they just know how it works you know how you know how things go so it matters so thank you for your report I'd like to take a moment you know during this time to I think we said we're going to do this again in terms of embarrassed one of our colleagues actually it's actually to thank hun director and holes for serving with me as a lad during last year's called chair and again I think you know as I stated I think that how how much of a pleasure it was in regards to serving with her and being able to to coordinate I think and be able to to work collaboratively you know very well in regards to you know the work that we needed to do as part of that as part of the leadership so again wanted to thank you for that and I believe we have like a small token of appreciation for you so and yeah you can enjoyed my two years in leadership it was a real pleasure working with each and every one of you and of course you can't lead if there aren't people who are there to support you and all my colleagues on the board or dedicated to our students and i found it a real pleasure to work with each of you so thank you very much for everything and good luck to you guys beautiful flowers again thanks it's
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again it's a small token of appreciation given that it's all and it's a reminder to the public that is all volunteer work so and actually I'm going to add some tenants superintendent thanks also just thank you for your leadership and when you're in the board leadership roles you also end up getting phone calls from me on like problem solving all sorts of things that are something I need all deaths of day and night so but I will just say thank you so much for your leadership and for being a partner in working through the kinds of issues that we work through so it was great I know I'm sure you do alright so let's moving moving on we have just went testimony is there anybody signed out for some testimony thank you is there anybody else named efforts to a citizen comment right I mean not great you know if this was expected to be a long board meeting that's why i'm saying is great that we were able to shorten the time not that we don't want to hear from the public but we're thankful that that they came earlier and provided testimony on the bandsaw so we're now move on to board priorities for the 2012 13 and just to I guess remind ourselves you know for the past few months the board has met in several retreats to determine priorities and goals for their 2012-13 school year our priorities this year are being bored champions bored champions a bulb patients that support suing success poor lease on equity the board provides sound fiscal oversight on district budget and assets the board demonstrates leadership and authentically engaging the community and the board increases its effectiveness each priority has been assigned a series of goals the board's priorities are informed by the district's milestone strategic work and achieving compacts which remain the district adopted goals and focus the boars priorities would provide a framework to guide the boars work this year and the board will revise those priorities on a yearly basis I don't know if if any why college wants to add anything you're just interested the introduction no so i'll just mention i I'm really excited that we have this document that we have set these goals i think that when it allows us to remain focused it allows us to communicate with the public exactly what our work is going to be for the next year and i don't know i have a been around long enough but I believe this is one of if not the only time that the board has put something together that says here is our work for the next year and I think what that does is again it sets a tone of accountability to our public which then I think sends a signal from us to staff that you set goals at the beginning of every year and then you measure their effectiveness and that's I think I don't know if I call a cultural transformation but it fits into that that that is what we are expecting of ourselves and that's what we would expect from the institution so I'm just I'm really excited about this we didn't take time wordsmithing it getting the right words perfect and everything we're going to do but it definitely sets out our big work for the year so the board will now move will now consider resolution 4641 adopting the port in public school board of education priorities and goals for 2012 13 do I have a motion in a second so direct Morton moves and director Adkins seconds get the motion to adopt resolution for 4641 misuse of their citizen and comment on this edition of all comments for discussion I do just want to say quickly I think this is the this is really the meat of our board work we we get to see the community in this setting often but but this is I think for us where the rubber meets the road it's the stuff that that holds us accountable to the work that we know we need to do and that we know that voters wanted us to do when they've elected us for these positions so I'm excited about this I know you know we can pat ourselves on the back but not past tonight if this is something that's new for the board because i think it's it's a matter of how we implement this it's a matter of how we actually move forward the work and that's what I think that's what I'm excited about the most so yeah I totally agree and I'm really excited to see this up and um it's it's it's been a hard it's been we've tried over the past years to have this happen in a district where you're in the middle of doing all the work to pause and try to organize and align everything as has been challenging so I'm really thankful thank you to the leadership recent and current to that got this to this point and I just wanted to clarify that there is a longer document that is going to be publicly available and we pass this resolution correct so this is okay because there's a considerable lot of
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meat underneath just these headlines of what their priorities are and so I just encourage folks to take a look at that and hold us accountable for that and it'll be something that we can refer to obviously as we go on because it's really a working document that's its guiding on what the content of our meetings and work sessions is going to be so I'm really excited about it and just encourage us to get the word out with where it's going to live I assume somewhere on the board website so look forward to to making it real any other comments before we what the board one out bottom resolution for six will for one all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all applause please indicate by saying no resolution for 64 what is a pro by a board of 720 we still represent the voting YES okay yes director Belial stated i think this I great great work that was captured I want to thank my colleagues for other efforts and engagement on all those retreats and meetings that we did to to come to some elective agreement in regards to what we put forth and again as director and said there is a more extensive document that would beta male available to the public to get an idea in regards to where are more detailed thinking so we now move on to art audit topics for the next year like to invite our auditor mr. did I skip know right mr. Richard Tracy to testimony table 22 dr. Olivia about this topic good evening I I don't have a lot to say other than the fact this is the resolution before you I'm sure you've read it you've talked about the topics that we have presented to you we had a number of topics you had a retreat you talked them through and the ones that you have selected one called school improvement plans and one related to improving graduation rates and I've started the first audit on school improvement plans were underway and planning that audit now and hopefully we'll be able to start the next on it in probably three months or so so that's that's the only thing I really have to say at this point thank you any questions I mean we discussed this topic and an a8 or no the meeting at the retreat and so you're right i mean i think that it was extensive discussion tool I just want to highlight maybe for the public is just exciting we've had a number of audits of and operational in nature and those are really important to to helping you know improve efficiencies and how we do business but these are obviously clearly focused directly on student achievement and improvement of school so just very excited to have you see the results so the program will now vote on resolution for 642 all in favor please indicate by saying yes although postpay indicate by saying no resolution 4642 is approved by a vote of 70 we still represent to Garcia voting yes thank you thank you we looks like there is a need to take a five-minute break and again I mean five minutes and we'll be right back right it's now back in session welcome back next on our agenda is the Portland Federation of school professionals at this time the war we hear presentation from the Portland Federation of school professionals PFS p like to remind fellow board members at the contract between PPS and PF SPE allows the Union time to present on a board agenda this presentation this evening is not a hearing the board will be voting on a
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resolution later on and the evening in our business agenda due to confidential personnel matters the board will not discuss this matter in an open session like to invite the Linda Regan PFS be present to the testimony table thank you again welcome thank you my name is Michelle batten be a tten good evening superintendent Smith and school board my name is Michelle baton and i am the field representative for the portland federation of school professionals the union representing classified employees of Portland Public Schools president Regan and I are here tonight to ask that you not adopt resolution number 4643 for the following reasons we are not here to challenge the evaluation in question but to state that discipline cannot be issued in an evaluation please refer to the redacted document you were given by PPS which is a copy in it is a copy of page two of the evaluation in question the evaluating administrator described in detail and event that occurred on December 16 2011 during a first period study hall our employee was never disciplined by any of his supervisors we are grieving that discipline was inserted into the evaluation thereby depriving our employee of his rights under our contract a supervisor cannot real able discipline in such a manner that deprives an employee of their due process rights when an employee is disciplined it must be for just cause they have the right to grieve the discipline they have the right to union representation and very important to this grievance at the end of two years the discipline may be removed from the employees personnel file an evaluation however is a permanent record that can never be removed using the evaluation process as a punitive tool is demoralizing this valuable employee is a nine-year veteran of the Persian Gulf War he served our country on three continents he was an exemplary soldier and is an exemplary employee who has received multiple commendable ratings in his past and current evaluations this is not a man who creates issues or defies Authority today he stated to me I fought for my country overseas I never thought I'd have to fight for my job and my dignity at Portland Public Schools he cannot be here tonight as he is home with his children all of whom are PPS students while his wife attends school since 1992 this employee has been a volunteer with the Portland Police Department youth gang outreach program he is often called upon to assist police in their gang enforcement his knowledge his background and his training are a valuable asset in his day-to-day life guiding PPS students PFS p has tried to resolve this grievance at the lowest level possible before advancing to a formal grievance we suggested that if the supervisor truly believe this incident needed to be addressed it would be more appropriate to issue a disciplinary action thereby preserving the performance of appraisal process as a tool to assess an individual's job performance and productivity all offers for resolution were rebuked and we now find ourselves presenting this grievance to the school board p FSB has been accused of filing a frivolous grievance and circumventing the contract but I would use these same words to describe an evaluator who manipulates the evaluation process in order to insert discipline and or reprimand we have grave concerns that this may be a precedent-setting event that if evaluators know they can insert discipline into an evaluation via this method and that it cannot be grieved all employees will be deprived of their Just Cause rights PF SP is not willing to let this happen to employees in our bargaining unit especially to one who is so clearly dedicated to the students of this district and community and good evening Carol and school board members I'm Belinda Regan I'm the president of the Portland of school professionals after being advised last week that once again 60 of our hard-working classified employees have lost their jobs this year due to school district budget cuts I was particularly disturbed to learn recently that the district chose to ask the law firm of Miller Nash to assist with this
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grievance which in our minds is an incredible waste of precious district resources while our former employees wait in line for meager unemployment benefits the Federation feels that this grievance could have been and should have been resolved even prior to the filing of the grievance on april eleventh but certainly before reaching the level of tonight's hearing in closing I would like to remind members of the board the PF SP has made every effort over the last many years to work in close partnership with Portland Public Schools I personally feel that this alliance has thrived and slowly flourished because of efforts made on both sides of our relationship but now as we face you tonight with this request not to adopt resolution 4643 which rose out of the anger of a mid-level administrator towards a well-respected dedicated classified employee I believe we may be at a turning point in this burgeoning relationship we can continue to work together to strengthen the bond between our classified employees and you as the employer or we can slowly destroy the connections that we have all worked so tirelessly to create by losing sight of the importance of any one employee's self-worth I truly believe that our employees have made more sacrifices for the betterment of this district than any other employee group please don't allow this to become another sacrifice thank you for your presentation thank you because we're running a little bit ahead of time here we're going to end staff it's not a present for this next item we're going to move on to the Rosa Parks real estate transaction superintendent Smith I will ask Bob Alexander who's the director of planning an asset management for the district and see gcj Sylvester our chief operating officer to come on up and and brief us on the Rosa Parks transaction good evening and thank you the item before you this evening is informational in nature and Bob Alexander will describe to you exactly where we are in this process what documents are currently down the state for review and when this will be coming back to the board for the actual acquisition of Rosa Parks cool thank you again I'm not Alexander director of planning an asset management I'm here to update you on the progress of the Rosa Parks school the so-called new Columbia youth center condominium the Rosa Parks school was built in 2005 in cooperation with the housing authority of Portland the new Columbia campus corporation that was called in for C HAP now home forward PPS and the boys and girls club leveraged financing using new markets tax credits to build school we also are cooperatively using a parks gymnasium as well so the city was and is involved but not directly in this particular transaction to purchase the site as part of the two thousand five transaction PPS entered into a 30-year lease option which after seven years required that PPS purchase its share of the property outright for continue to lease at a significantly increased cost at the choice excuse me at the choice of the landlord the landlord has chosen to exercise their right to require us to purchase the facility a purchase of the property which would also maintain the co-operative cost sharing agreement with the Boys and Girls Club for common areas would be the most cost effective result a commercial condominium agreement in companion association bylaws have been developed with participation of all the parties however PPS and the Boys and Girls Club are not parties to these agreements they are developed by the owner of the property and submitted to the state for approval process will take 45 to 60 days and in the transaction can take place in late October early November this would involve the actual purchase of the school and common buildings and the facilities and grounds once the documents are approved by the state the owner can then sell the various units detailed in the agreements to potential owners and provide the condominium declaration and bylaws for the operation of the condominium this is accomplished by the owner executing and recording or filing with the appropriate governmental authorities the following the declaration submitting the new Columbia youth center condominium to
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condominium ownership second the articles of organization third the bylaws for the Association and finally a three-dimensional plat of the condominium prepared by a surveyor which specific which is specific sorry which that identifies with specificity the boundaries of the various units and the common elements within the condominium so quickly within the condominium structure there's two basic components there's basically the units of ownership unit owner holds fee title to its unit and the unit owner has the exclusive right to use that unit in new Columbia condominium there are three units one will be owned by the Boys and Girls Club two will be owned by PBS and is referred to as the ancillary school unit that's the shared unit that has both the cafeteria in the library portion area and third will be the part owned by PPS and is referred to in the condominium documents as the primary school unit in addition to the units there's some common elements those primary general common elements at new Columbia consist of land sidewalks driveways handicapped space utilities and systems the condominium documents go into some detail on maintenance utilities control of the Association use limitations I think in honor of the time tonight I won't go into detail on that but those will all be covered in the association documents I did want to point out that there's an outdoor play area which will appertain or connect to the Boys and Girls Club side and they will have control over that particular unit we would be sharing in the use of that particular facility at the point if the boys and girls club were ever to sell their unit that would revert back to PPS for its ownership and use in the future again so this would be coming before you late october early november for approval and we'll be going down to the state fairly shortly for that approval process be happy to answer any questions relative to this look forward to you know then the information in the future I guess I don't have a question I just want to appreciate mention it's a complex real estate deal I mean all of a sudden if I were general public the district is now into owning condominiums and it's really just the way that the real estate structure has to happen that it's the closest thing possible but I just really appreciate staffs work on making sure that both the district has protected you mentioned that if the boys and girls club would ever sell their unit for example we have right of first refusal at a set rate so I just appreciate all the thought that went into to make sure our risk is minimized at the same time making it happen because i think our public looks for these creative uses not realizing the technical nature in order to make it happen so it's it's exciting and thank you thank you that we did discuss this at some length in executive session so we have had an opportunity to have all our questions answered and have a thorough discussion about this so we don't really need to do that tonight we appreciate the explanation for the public and it'll come back before us when we have to take legal action but we did have the opportunity to have quite an extensive discussion a few weeks ago so we're now going to go back to an item that that we just pass which is an update on the enrollment balancing and I believe staff is now present yes I'll call Judy Brennan director of enrollment transfer and actually Judy Brennan and Harriet Adair are the two people who are leading this process the lens oppo and myself have been present at all of the sessions so far as we asked for lenso to join duty because Harriet was not here today and this is part of our bigger enrollment balancing process that we did a deep amount of study last at the beginning of last school year looking at where we had under enrollment and over crowding and looking at how we get sustainable sizes in our schools that sustain program and we have two clusters we're targeting this year the Jefferson cluster and the Cleveland cluster so we're bringing you up to date on where how those processes are moving Judy and Lewenza thank you and I apologize for keeping you waiting congratulations for being moving so quickly that it caught
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me halfway through dinner but at least I've had dinner right so we've spent a fair amount of time this summer sort of planning the plan we as superintendent Smith said we expect a lot of enrollment balancing work coming through a community process community processes and hopefully before you buy winter so to make sure that we've we're managing that well we've been very fortunate to have a group of community members a large group of around 30 who represent each school in the Jefferson cluster Cade school as well as Jefferson High School as well as a number of individuals from community partners who have given up part of their summer to come and spend weeknight evenings with us we'll be meeting again tomorrow night at Jefferson High School and welcome to come by the purpose of those discussions has been to sort of lay out all the complexities what we face and get their advice on how to move forward with a process that's respectful its productive and it's it recognizes you know the history that we've had with the community and all the you know shared hopes and fears that are going forward so that's the primary update I guess for you is to say that we're continuing that planning this group will be wrapping up their work soon and we would expect that in about a month's time we could come back to you with something that's more detailed by that time we'll also have a sense of where we sit across the district with new enrollment issues that may have popped up or older ones that we've been watching to see where they are so we have a more robust i would say update in that period of time the only other thing that I would say is that director Morton has been at each of the meeting so far he and the board liaisons for this I'm have been active and involved and I would imagine they might have some comments that they wanted to share it as well everything I would just add that D the planning process in the committee has been one of the most robust processes I've seen in a long time it really is giving the entire district opportunity to have a rich discussion about how to move this forward I think as we do this and move forward will find it will have the more comprehensive discussion within the the Jefferson cluster and it should yield us the kind of outcomes that were after so it's been very enlightening very rich very interactive as you would imagine so it's been a very good process to this point yeah I think thank you i I've had an opportunity to sit in on the last two meetings and director Adkins is going to be sitting in on the meeting tomorrow evening but a couple of comments I think as you said this is sort of the plan to plan and I think it's incredibly important to to get engagement right in this cluster one of the comments that community member had made I think this last meeting was that Portland Public Schools knows how to engage the community sometimes we just don't and and in fact followed it up by saying knows how to do it well and I think we can point to specific examples where that's happened so this is our opportunity and our effort to do it right I am absolutely one hundred percent certain that the staff and that of course the board who are participating are eager to get this right now I know the community members are right there with that to come up with some solutions for the cluster that makes sense for the students in the community that we serve so I'm really I'm really eager and excited about what we're doing right now and also to sort of get to the work of that's going to happen in the next month or so during the fall so thank you and for those of you in the in the audience to who have participated thank you very much for your participation thank you both so we'll now move on to the business agenda the world will now consider remaining items on the business agenda having already bought it on resolutions 4639 through 464 to miss yu-san is there in ch are there any changes to the business genda do I have a motion as in a second to adopt the business agenda director Adkins moves is there a second second and direct from Morton seconds what was that correct that I get the wrong person with her okay is there any citizen comment on the business Jen
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don't know is there any discussion on the on the business agenda the board will not bow down the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no the business genders are brought by a board of 720 with soon representative guys here boarding yes okay so we have another opportunity for citizen comment has anybody signed up thank you so looks like we're done so you just wanted to mention that the next meeting of the board is a study session on sep tember 10th at 6pm this meeting is a turn

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)

2012-08-20 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education, 08/20/2012 Regular Board Meeting

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