2012-09-24 PPS School Board Regular Meeting
| District | Portland Public Schools |
|---|---|
| Date | 2012-09-24 |
| Time | missing |
| Venue | missing |
| Meeting Type | regular |
| Directors Present | missing |
Documents / Media
Notices/Agendas
Materials
09-24-12 Final Packet (ba4f4dc414bb02d0).pdf Meeting Materials
Minutes
Transcripts
Event 1: PPS Board of Education, 09/24/2012 Regular Meeting
00h 00m 00s
this meaning of the board of education
for september 24 2012 scout to order
welcome to everyone present
and to our television viewers
all items that will be voted on have
been posted as required by state law
this meeting has been televised live and
will be replayed throughout the next two
weeks
please check the website for replay
times
director atkins and director knowles are
absent this evening
again welcome everyone we're going to
start off
with partnership recognition
so tonight we begin our our quarterly
recognition of community partners our
partners are vital to the work of we do
here in portland public schools and
they're very much appreciated and
without being called you know you see
that um folks already coming through
mr lenzo poe chief equity officer and
and dunya minou uh
ses senior program manager um are here
to share with us
uh
about this important word try to be very
responsive
jerry gonzalez board member
superintendent smith lolenzo po chief
equity officer and partnership director
for portland public schools
uh tonight again we are taking the
opportunity to recognize
our partners who give
of their time resources and
human capital to help assist portland
public schools
as you are aware we have a variety of
partners who give tremendous amount of
value to the district and this is one
one of the opportunities we have to
recognize
those partners who give quite a bit to
our district it is
really amazing at how much people really
appreciate the opportunity to come
before you and be recognized again it's
also a pleasure to witness the numbers
of individuals and institutions that
eagerly step forward to assist portland
public and give up the time and
resources to align with the mission of
ensuring that all our children receive a
quality education tonight i want to
recognize one of our governmental
partners while this partner this
governmental partnership provides a
number of partnerships across the
district tonight we do want to highlight
one specific aspect of the partnership
from the governmental body and that is
our sun partnership
which for a number of years have
provided necessary wrap around services
to help our most struggling students
improve their academic outcomes and to
assist their families in supporting the
schools and their students academic
growth
with that i'd like to introduce dunya
manu who is our educational and
community partnership
senior manager who will introduce our
recipients for tonight thank you thank
you good evening
it's really exciting to be able to come
before you tonight and talk about
something that i've had the pleasure of
working with for over the last 10 years
and being able to witness the growth of
the sun service system to where now
there are 67 sun community schools
across multnomah county 36 of which are
in portland public schools
this has been possible because of the
long-standing committed relationship
between the county the city our sister
school districts portland public schools
as well as our non-profit
sun lead agencies
and what makes this partnership so
successful is the shared vision that we
all hold for student success
aligns to the district priority action
areas by supporting cultural
transformation through the focus on
equity and accountability
as well as providing individual student
supports rigorous and relevant programs
and collaborating with communities and
with families
last year of the over 11 000 students
served by sun in pbs
79 were on free and reduced lunch and 70
were students of color
so it's with that um great pleasure that
i'd like to introduce joanne fuller and
bill scott co-chairs
of the sun coordinating council and then
kali ladd also a member of the sun
coordinating council we'll talk a little
bit more in detail about the sun
partnership so thank you
you can play musical chairs
good evening uh
i'm bill scott this feels very familiar
to me i
was thinking when i walk over here i
realized that i finished my service on
the board just over 25 years ago
00h 05m 00s
i can't seem to
you know give it up in terms of
hanging around and being involved and
it has really been a great pleasure for
the last few years to be
a part of the sun service system
coordinating council and to co-chair it
with
with joanne
on that
council which represents all the major
players in the sun system i really
represent the fact that it isn't just a
governmental uh council that i'm there
to represent the business community and
and the community at large
the
i guess i'd say the
the biggest thing we'd want to say
tonight is really thank you for your
tremendous uh support of the system the
portland public schools is probably our
uh you know besides
the county the biggest and most uh
active and engaged partner in the
in the partnership and
that you really have treated the sun
partnership as part of your strategy for
achieving all your goals as a district
and particularly want to acknowledge the
superintendent and staff and the
cooperative efforts that we get at every
level in addition to your willingness to
find resources to keep
not only sustained but expand the
community school
delivery system uh when you're having to
cut a lot of other things and uh
i think that that's that same kind of
recognition has occurred among all the
partners and we're very very grateful
for it
we want to talk briefly about i'm going
to talk a little bit about how the
system supports our shared priorities
and joanne will talk a little bit about
kind of what the system is today and
kali about
where we're headed
sun is a collaboration of both
government agencies and
a lot of private organizations we're in
the process of greatly expanding our for
instance our systemic partnership with
the faith community and and kind of
other other kinds of outreach like that
all of us recognize that we can't
accomplish our missions by ourselves and
that educational success is important to
every organization
uh but that
that the mission that you have to for
academic achievement is also
you know very much aligned with the
mission the county has around social
supports and anti-poverty and the city
around recreation community education
etc etc uh so that that what we the
council tries to do is is make it easy
for all of you to
fulfill your missions
through the system
the goal of the
partnership is really the success of all
the students and really measure that in
terms of academic outcomes
and from the very beginning it's been
treated as as an equity focus and that
that's the
the closing the achievement gap uh
reaching the right students that need
the support the most has been the
highest priority of the system
the
uh what we've tried to do is is is build
a system that makes it possible at each
site for the principal and staff there
to work with the sun coordinator to
achieve
what they need to do in their
improvement plan at that at that school
and the specific results that they that
they need to have and to engage the
community and families in doing that and
we want you to think of sun as your
partners in engaging community and
family around kind of all the issues
that children have
and finally to make sure that there are
wraparound supports in place for
every student that needs them and we're
obviously aren't there yet but we're on
our way
the
next slide is about the collective
impact of sun
uh
we mentioned a couple things
this is dunya gave you some statistic
for portland
the
little dots with the lines is what the
district averages are for students on
free and reduced lunch students of color
english language learners and by
district i mean all six of our districts
and then what sun is serving as you can
see is greatly in excess of that so we
are reaching the target population
uh in the next slide i think you can see
that our
the
achievement levels that
uh the students who participate in the
system and we measure basically students
that have
you know a continuous participation for
a certain period of time
in general on every measure tend to be
exceeding what the expectations that
have been set by the districts in the
state so that that even though it's a
very
00h 10m 00s
highly uh you know it's we are reaching
the at-risk populations that we the the
students that are that are part of it
are succeeding we have a lot of other
great statistics that we haven't got
time to
give you tonight but essentially the uh
all the evidence that that's coming out
and we've done some work with the the
high school populations is showing that
uh
we're having a big impact on graduation
rates and uh
credit retrieval for for high school
students as well as the kind of gradual
academic achievement for
the kids in the younger grades so i'm
turning it over to joann
so
joanne fuller i'm the chief operating
officer from multnomah county and on
behalf of montgomery county and the
whole council i really want to thank you
for the deep partnership that we have
with portland public schools
we
you see here the all of the system
collaborative partners
this is a joint decision-making
partnership so lolenzo poe very ably
represents portland public on the sun
coordinating council and is a founding
member of the council and we
we think of the county as the managing
partner of a partnership where all of
the partners are making joint decisions
to try to address as bill said the
mission of all of the partners together
on that council
and on the next slide
you see just a little a bit of
information about the current status of
our system as you heard from dunya
we're in 67 sun schools
this system has both
sun school sites and then
regional centers and culturally specific
agencies that all wrap services around
the schools so that we're able to
meet the needs of families who are in
poverty and who need developmental and
other opportunities that can't be met at
a sun school delivery site but can be
met if they're connected to a one
another one of our regional or
culturally specific
partners
um
we served
81 000 people both adults and children
last year in that system both the
regional partners the culturally
specific agencies and the sun sites um
and then
we aligned and leveraged about 44
million dollars in this system so the
system is hugely dependent on the
in-kind and
and monetary contributions of everyone
in the partnership to make it work we
could not make it work alone with the
money that the city the county and the
school districts put in we need
everybody's the leveraging all of our
resources to make it happen
you have packets
at your
seats that give you more information if
you want to look at them and you have
our lovely sun yellow
water bottles we hope are you take away
his lovely parting gifts
and i'm going to turn it over to kelly
to talk to you a little bit about where
we're headed next
hi um chair gonzalez and board of
members and directors my name is kelly
thornlead i'm here on behalf of the
mayor's office and behalf of the city of
portland um
i wanna i brought a
great reading for you um the portland
plan um and i'm holding this up because
sun was an integral part of the portland
plan the vision we have for youth in
this community our goal for thriving
youth is that we want to ensure that
youth ages 0 to 25 of all cultures and
ethnicities and abilities and economic
backgrounds have the necessary support
and opportunities to thrive both as
individuals and as contributors to
healthy community and prosperous
sustainable economy i think the sun
system is one of the few systems that we
have that is helping us reach that goal
and that vision
and that is why it's integral and is
integrated into all of the portland plan
but we have a vision beyond that around
sponsorship we have what we think is
ambitious but we feel is attainable and
that is that we have sun schools sun
sponsors at every school throughout the
districts and not just portland public
but all all districts that we have in
the county
bill has been working a lot on the
effort to make every school a sun school
and i'm going to give him a couple
minutes just to say a few words about
that okay
just
to wrap up by just
the
i mentioned earlier that that you and
the other districts and the county and
city have stepped up to
save schools that had grants expiring or
were in trouble in terms of the
children's levy and
and the city budget and your budgets
and uh and also to expand schools
kind of hope that's happened over the
last three years and we now realize that
the political will seems to be there to
keep this thing moving and expanding
so we've we've formed a group we did a
00h 15m 00s
while ago but now we're going to feel
like we're moving into a new phase to
really detail
how would the system have to change if
it were universal what what would it
need to be
that's different from the way it is one
of the things we realize is that the
funding
is kind of a terrible patchwork and
you're finding some of your sites a
hundred percent and you know some of
them are funded by the children's levy
or the park bureau is running some of
the programs et cetera
which we're kind of working out kind of
trying to work up a funding model that
would say how much of what goes on there
is really academic and should be easy
for the school districts to justify how
much is recreation and community
education how much is social service and
so on and trying to form a model that
would make it a more uniform system and
make it easier for each of our
sponsoring partners to to
defend the investment that they're
making in sun any place they needed to
and to show that it was rationalized
likewise in terms of who's providing
what part of the service some of that is
history as well as opposed to something
that's been thought through from the
beginning so we're really kind of
working from the ground up to try to say
all right
if we were inventing this system today
now that we know what we know and have
all this experience kind of one of the
tweaks that we need to do there is a
the the we the
the providers are operating on
seven-year contracts that are providing
these things those contracts expire
three years from now less than three
years from now
so we will be working toward
an rfp and a new cycle and thinking that
over the next five or ten years we'll
keep moving toward a hundred percent of
our schools having sun sites and
going through the detailed changes that
we would need to make and be in a
position to talk to
you and the others about what additional
what are the choices that would have to
be made about additional investments
what are sources of funds that haven't
been tapped for this and so on so that's
just something for you to know is going
on
and so bill's an active part of the
cradle to career work that's focused on
this and the cradle to career work is
about getting youth from cradle to
career to be successful
there is a
community schools collaborative that's
focused on supporting youth
this is a key part of the collaborative
and we see the sun community schools is
a key piece to
implement collective impact a lot of
people are talking about collective
impact but sun has been doing collective
impacts since its genesis so
we're excited about that
i would say the other thing that is
happening
we're trying to see the issues that are
arising in our schools and son is really
trying to be strategic and addressing
them some of those issues include
chronic absenteeism hunger and
disproportionate discipline and so in
the coming year sun is really grappling
with how it as a system can begin to
address the issues that our young people
are facing in those areas
thank you thank you thank you don't go
away
any questions comments or before we
we have a plaque that we want to present
to you and but
before we do that uh
if there's any
i would just say thank you this is one
of our most tremendous partnerships i
think and when we talk about collective
impact sun is the example i think you
can just feel us getting stronger and
stronger and i keep saying that our
effort to have our sun school
coordinators and our principals really
see themselves as as a like this but
that's gotten stronger and stronger
every year and the more of that gets
tighter
the closer our out-of-school efforts are
to making sure we're ensuring success in
the classroom so just thank you for a
really deep partnership and getting our
systems like really functioning like
this it's been very powerful
so this is a plaque and thank you to
come forward i just wanted to
say that you know it's presented to some
systems in recognition appreciation
recontributions to students you know
their families and
staff of portland public schools so
if you can come forward you know we'll
do the we all can take
00h 20m 00s
okay thank you
so we're going to move on to uh with our
agenda and we have the superintendent's
report so
it's brendan smith good deal
um and it was really fun to honor our
sun partners as the beginning of our of
our school year and actually much of the
superintendence report is going to focus
on collective impact of what it took for
us how many hands were part of launching
a our school year this year
so we had
project community care this was our
seventh year of doing it and we had a
record number of volunteers out helping
to prepare our buildings and grounds for
students to come back
7138 volunteers
at 78 of our schools and most of them
gathered on saturday august 25th to help
welcome our students back
so our statistics volunteers gathered up
589 thousand pounds of debris and 223
300 pounds of trash and the dollar value
of the labor is estimated at 1.2 million
which is fabulous part of it is just the
energy of people out preparing the
grounds for to welcome students back
it's really great
we had comcast donating a tv commercial
nike making t-shirts clear channel and
air one running a public service
announcement season of service giving
marketing assistance starbucks doing
marketing and sending out volunteers
purdy donating paint brushes coast wide
laboratory delivering supplies to
schools and pacific coast fruit donating
fruit for volunteers and i'm going to
read out all these partners because part
of what ends up being so impactful is
how many people step up to get ready for
our kids to come back to school and it
is awesome so
the
folks that really mobilized volunteers
for us imago day ac portland south lake
church mormon church agape church
concordia
university of portland lewis and clark
the daisy scouts
portland general electric amqua bank
church of the nazarene mission church
portland christian church mosaic church
kenton neighborhood association the
central bible church eastside christian
church north northwest regional
laboratory
and you see a big turnout of the faith
communities to support this day in
particular and they've really been
organizing across faith communities in
order to build the turnout year on year
and it's been really fabulous so just
our heartfelt thanks to everyone who
showed up for this day it was really it
was awesome and we're going to show you
a little video of the volunteers who
showed up
basically we wanted to come and provide
service to the community we have as you
can see i have kids in school and so i i
really support uh helping out the
schools and
just wanted to serve you know whenever
there's hard work to be done um you know
many hands make light work and so the
more people here the faster it goes and
i just thought you know i've graduated
and i haven't really done anything for
grant in these past few months even
though grant did a lot for me for four
years so i thought i would just you know
come for a couple hours because it's a
couple hours on a saturday morning and
do something that's good for grant
i do a lot of volunteer work in the
community because i think it's really
important to give something back
i've always
been blessed and i think it's important
to help out and beautify our community
when i heard that they were gonna come
here to the school and
just make this school look nicer i'm
like hey this is perfect this is what i
like to do
so
um that's why i came in i actually got a
phone call um i heard that we were doing
volunteer work here at grant high school
so i thought i'd just drive by and lend
a helping hand
oh well obviously education for our
children is important so it's all for
the future of our children so
anything we could do to help
so yay thank you to all of our
volunteers
so i mentioned season of service as one
of the organizations that helped
organize
our faith communities this is the luis
palau organization and they have been
instrumental both in starting this
entire
community care day
but also building it amongst the faith
communities and really making it be
something that people want to become a
part of so a special thanks to them for
helping us build this
another really great effort to have our
students be able to return to school
with the supplies they need is
schoolhouse supplies and we are really
fortunate as a community to have this
00h 25m 00s
organization because they would make it
really
easy for people to become a part of us
get our kids the tools they need to go
back to school this is a schoolhouse
supplies 10th anniversary they do a
major effort both in a supply drive but
also
engaging companies in
in
loading backpacks so we had 550
volunteers from partner companies who
teamed up to pack thousands of backpacks
by hand and distribute them to 26
partner schools during the first week of
school
14 000 students from portland received
the new backpacks filled with school
supplies uh thanks to the 28 portland
businesses and i'm going to say the
businesses get really competitive
about like how fast they pack how many
backpacks they do and it's really fun to
go when they're distributing the
backpacks because kids as you see are so
excited to have a backpack of their own
uh and what color they're looking ahead
to see what color is in line by the time
they get to the front of the line it's
really awesome so
just a huge thank you to schoolhouse
supplies and to all the companies who
participated in this
and also to
we have major kgw on point toyota and
the university of phoenix also
champion a huge supply drive that's part
of what fuels this whole thing so
thank you to all of our partners who
were part of the backpack effort and the
school supply effort it means something
for our kids to go to school and have
the tools they need to do the job
they're going to school to do so
and it means something to teachers
teachers all get to go shop at
schoolhouse supplies a couple times a
year load up their carts with all the
supplies they need and we know a lot of
our teachers actually purchase supplies
out of their own pockets so it is a huge
thing to get to go and get the supplies
they need for their classroom so thank
you to all of our partners for being
part of that
voice elliott and humboldt um
actually and we have a principal molly
chun who's here today they
this was their first year as a combined
school community and i'm just going to
say it is tremendous energy i visited
with their staff today i visited the
school during the first week and molly
toured me around
as did one of their pta
leaders
i can't tell you what great energy there
is in a school that is now combining two
school communities to become one the
teachers today were so energized about
what they're learning from each other
they had a back-to-school parent night
that had eight a thousand people
show up lined up around the block to
come in for their back-to-school parent
night they have teacher of t-shirts with
their combined logos that show um
that show oh they're just like awesome
they're just awesome
uh
symbolism of the two communities coming
together and kids that are totally
energized so and you and the amount of
what is there for those kids because
they combine the two smaller communities
and now have more to offer um is just
really moving so molly thank you for
your leadership you have an incredible
staff they were just all so positive
today it was just really energizing to
to see and hear from all of them and
we're going to show you a little footage
of their back to school
oops wrong one voter registration we
need voice eliot
look at you
we fit can you believe it all of this
fit
i'm gonna take a minute
and look at this amazing sight of
beautiful brilliant children give
yourselves a face
we had an assembly today with all of
boys silly and humble students um all
together in the room for the first time
with our new t-shirts and we were a
little nervous we would all fit but we
did
and so it was awesome this was the first
time
that
we have gathered as a boise elliott
humboldt community so it was the first
time almost what 560 kids were gathered
with our brand new t-shirts
in the cafeteria and today we were um
given backpacks by chase idva and
schoolhouse supplies every adult
in this room who had their hands up
believes in you
believes that you can achieve and you
will achieve as students at boys elliot
humble
you are here and we are so proud of you
every single child in this room from
four years to 14 years old everyone's
just welcoming and parents are excited
and kids are excited kids are a little
nervous i think
but they're getting used to it
i like all the new kids and all the
teachers they're very nice
i like it
00h 30m 00s
also it's like much bigger a much better
playground it was very exciting there
was just tremendous energy
the kids are very excited to be here the
staff has worked so hard and very
excited
it was just finally we all got together
a day we've all been waiting for for a
long time and it was tremendous it was
just tremendous it's nice and bigger a
lot bigger than humble
and
more teachers
it feels great it feels right it feels
like the right place for kids to be
feels right like the right place for me
to be for help
it's a good positive
i'm really excited about it there is no
stopping us there is nothing we cannot
do at this point we've had tremendous
support from the district
tremendous support from our families and
community a great staff there there is
no stopping us
and i'm just going to say even watching
molly watch this like you get that this
is just totally from her heart um and
there is something like this the
leadership of mali and willie poinsett
who is the the two principals of the two
schools that merged they poured their
heart into making this a successful
merger and having these two communities
come together and molly it just shows
and your entire staff that just gave a
tribute to you today in recognizing that
and saying how positively you've led
this whole transition so just on behalf
of all of us thank you so much
okay so another huge volunteer effort
that we had this year second year in a
row for this one was our reconnect
reconnection campaign and this is one
led by jocelyne begaye who is sitting
right here and sue ann higgins
and what this is is
we take a get the list of every student
who has not returned to portland public
schools in the fall that we had on our
list in the spring that we anticipated
should be back with us and entering
school in the fall
it starts with all of their high schools
who give them calls and do their own
reach out effort to try and reconnect
those kids to school so we started with
274 students who had not come back
and by the time we had our outreach
weekend we had
like 155 students still who remain to be
contacted
we had 119 of those 174 who were
reconnected through the beginning
efforts to reach out to them and then we
had a weekend
where 60 volunteers were trained and
went out from each high school campus
and went door to door to welcome
students back to portland public schools
so they got a personal contact if people
weren't home they got something hung on
their door saying we were looking for
them and looking for them to come back
to portland public schools
it's it's a very powerful campaign we
had a number of students who came back
to us this way last year or we learned
that they transferred uh and gone you
know landed successfully someplace else
um we we knew where those kids were so
this is i think making true on the every
student by name
we are inviting you back we are inviting
you to finish we are helping to figure
out what is the weight what's the
support you need in order to finish
so here is a little clip from our
outreach campaign the reconnection
campaign
from last weekend a couple weeks ago
for the second year in a row we're doing
a reconnection campaign for students who
have not shown up on the first day of
school they will receive a phone call
from our pps staff
and this year we're doing this in
partnership uh with the with the police
bureau with our school resource officers
and with volunteers from the community
who will accompany our staff on home
visits if they continue to have absences
so we're really working to make sure
that every student finds their way to
school this year and gets the support
they need to stay in school so what so
what number are we down to we're down to
155 from thursday and we started at what
number we started at 274 on 9 11. and
then downtown
so we're down to 155 between all nine
schools it's good to see everybody
obviously we know that this is an
important campaign and some important
work that we're doing just connecting
with kids and families that are
disconnected and not engaged and so this
work is precious it's a beautiful day to
knock on doors we have great weather i'm
excited the energy's good jeffrey and i
we had great success and uh it's just
really good you know for families to
know that pps we really do care and we
want to make sure that students continue
to move forward especially those that
have been disconnected or disengaged we
care about you
so all the addresses are there and if
you can just record all the information
00h 35m 00s
let's do it
we went to talk to a parent and um
clearly it was uncomfortable for them
and so we um but we did get the other
parents number and she invited us to
call him and discuss the kid with them
so i i think at least we can make a
connection
to go to an alternative school i don't
think that they have the resources to
understand who to call
so i think they're going to be able to
make that connection i think any promise
i think this was a good visit
i really do
we just finished eight visits and
very positive i feel very positive about
what we did
good she felt positive about what we did
that was kind of like a halfway through
that was good though it's been an
incredible campaign though joslin thank
you
it was real it was really energizing i
will say and i was very impressed with
last year it was our staff primarily who
went out and this year we had volunteers
but many of the volunteers were staff
from other departments so uh it was
really a great mobilizing effort to make
sure every one of our kids feels welcome
back into our schools so
another
great thing that's a new thing this year
for us is our teacher and principal
mentor program so this this year we have
120 first year and second year teachers
and 12 new principals who are
being mentored by seasoned teachers or
principals who take a year off from
their usual roles in order to coach
colleagues this is a big deal
so here we have
a teacher and a teacher mentor
this is paid for through an oregon
department of education grant and part
as part of the grant we'll also do a
detailed analysis of the impact of the
grant
but i will say that mentoring support
has had good national kinds of
track record in terms of really having
teachers get a solid start in the
teaching profession and looking to
retain teachers
so we're looking forward to seeing the
impact for us
and portland tribune did a great article
on our first year teacher akeem ballard
from lane middle school so
check that out if you have not already
it was really nice coverage
our high school schedule we've had a lot
of just interest in understanding what
the impact of the change to our six of
eight high school schedule was
and i'm going to give you preliminary
data because we don't have all of the i
mean as of now we don't have all the ads
and drops and you know the sorting out
that happens at the beginning of a
school year but what you have in front
of you
is three years of data for each campus
that lets you know what number of
classes students have
are are taking at each campus in the 9th
10th 11th and 12th grades so you end up
getting to see overtime so the first
year you're looking at
is 10 11 which we still had a seven
period day
um and 11 12 which was the first year of
our six of eight schedule and then 12 13
which is this year so it lets you see
what the trends are in terms of numbers
of classes students are taking
part of the
going to the six of eight schedule was a
budget reduction strategy to maintain
program for students while we were
making significant budget reductions and
what you see generally speaking on this
the trends are
either equivalent or growing numbers of
courses that are available to kids but
the trade the the downside is that it
was a decrease in instructional time so
one of the challenges as we're entering
this next budget cycle
is where do we go with that and where we
go in the future so some of this will be
data that the district staffing team is
looking at and and using to figure out
what are they what recommendations do
they make
for our staffing formulas as we head
into the next budget cycle but i'm
giving you this today
to tee up your ability to look at it
because on october 8th we're going to
come back and do more in-depth
discussion
with the office of high schools and our
chief academic officer about high school
schedules for this year so but it gives
you a preliminary look at what the
impact has been
the other just broad stroke is we do
still have across all of our
high school campuses
both challenge and support courses
offered what they will be looking at
more in detail is what are the numbers
of those courses that we've got so i um
ib ap
dual credit opportunities how has that
been impacted in terms of what offerings
we have for kids so we're going to bring
you some more data on that
um and also what kinds of support
courses we're offering on each campus so
on the eighth at that work session
that's some of what will be coming back
our preliminary enrollment numbers at
the high school level
we are up by 762 students at the high
school level for this same time last
00h 40m 00s
year so september 15th that the count um
we're tr we're up uh and you know for
the last four years we've been
increasing at the lower grades but we're
this is a new thing to be increasing at
the high school at the high school level
so
those are our preliminary what are we
seeing at the high school level
and then the one piece of
data that i thought i would share right
now because it was just released today
was our news around sat scores so in the
state just released the sat scores today
and students across oregon are showing
improvement
the good news for pps was our
our
scores relative to ourselves last year
our reading scores were up by 13 points
our math scores were up by 12 points our
writing scores were up by 11 points from
our own data last year and that's data
that's been relatively flat over many
years so this is a good yeah it's a
significant bump and our pps district
average was 32 points higher than the
state in reading 27 points higher than
the state in math and 42 points higher
than the state in writing so
yahoo so that's a good that's a good
thing
so nice nice beginning
news for to start off the school year
the other high school news and this one
i
i will just say that high school
students have launched their voter
registration drive and actually do you
want to say something about the voter
registration drive anything just that
you're launching it sure
yeah so
i know students around the district have
been working on a voter registration
drive we have it going at lincoln and
grant and i think a few other schools
but i know lincoln and grant are some of
the biggest right now
and it's been going great we're in a
competition through the bus project
trying to win a trophy and besides that
it's been great to get students involved
yeah
and here we have our slideshow of the
voteris registration drive pajama day
and the goal is to register 2 000
students and adults by the october 17th
deadline so
so yahoo yeah thank you for doing that
listen
and then my final update
um we
we had a bit of attention this last week
on a job candidate
whose
references proved to be inaccurate and
then after learning about the inaccuracy
we both to ourselves and to our state
licensing agency we retracted the job
offer
and i will just give a context of we
hire a lot of people every year and this
was one of those that and we hire a lot
of excellent employees what this failure
to catch this candidate
um who did not represent herself
accurately
has led us back to look at our own
processes and procedures which we have
now engaged in and so we are in a pr
engaged in the process of looking
at other local districts and what kind
of background screening they do
we're looking at council great city
schools to other large urban districts
and what kind of background screening
they do we're looking we're talking
closely with our state licensing agency
who
had also granted this candidate a
license in the same time we had offered
a
job
but looking at what are what are the
screening mechanisms that they use and
are the ones that we could adopt so and
i've got a partnership of both our
security services and someone in our
human resources department that's
leading the effort to look at how we
tighten our practices and our checks and
balances so that if in fact we have
inaccurate representation and a job
application how we would spot that so
we're in motion on that and i will keep
you posted
so that's my my last thing
and my last is just we've had really
good energy starting the school year so
i felt like i really wanted to take some
time for you to feel it because we've
been out i went out and visited 17
schools in the first week of school it's
the best and people come back just so
ready to be you know like fresh energy
what are they going to accomplish
teachers are students are parents are
everybody's just energized and it's so
wonderful to be out there so
i wanted to share some of that with you
visually and let you feel a little bit
of that so it's been great thank you
and we are a little bit behind schedule
but
hopefully we'll pick up some
some time and the process so we have not
a next uh student testimony miss usa is
there anybody signed up for student
testimony
thank you
um
we have citizen comment uh this time we
have about 20 minutes for citizen
comment and do we have anybody signed up
no
thank you
um
so next we have a memorandum of
understanding uh with concordia
university
uh
and superintendent smith is going to
introduce this item
and actually i'm going to invite bob
alexander to come on up
00h 45m 00s
and introduce and you've heard much
about this partnership and the
development of the memo of understanding
over a successive
number of board meetings we are really
excited about this partnership
and we're officially and ceremoniously
actually at the moment of bringing this
for a decision
thank you for the record my name is bob
alexander i'm director of planning and
asset management
we have a number of folks with us
tonight to
help us talk about this relationship
and this mlu that we have before us i
just wanted to say a few words primarily
for the benefit of the audience to
understand
some of the key components of the mou
the basic components of the mlu is
establishes master planning and
programming of the fabian site
and future buildings
the partnership development
also is one of those key components with
capital and operations
talking about joint use of a fully
modernized fabian
with the attendant wrap around services
it also identifies and outlines
agreements permitting the joint use of
each other's facilities that is
fabian and concordia university
financially
the contributions to
each in this partnership
concordia would be somewhere between
seven and a half and 15 million dollars
pps approximately 25 to 27 million
as part of this
memorandum
the idea here was to really look at
operations and funding
of a number of wrap-around services that
i mentioned but those would include
a pre-k center
a health clinic
the concordia's education department and
improved science labs
there is going to be
a master planning process of course
starting out with this
assuming
the bond is successful in november
that the mou contemplates then
a joint planning process for
the community including
student and teachers
as well as
a number of citizens as well as
folks from concordia and the fabian
school
next following the one-year master
planning process there'd be capital
partnership development
approximately 36 to 48 months
and
then the construction would begin
24 to 48 months
after the master planning is complete so
contemplate about 53 months
total for
from the start of the process to
completion so um
in a very quick summary that sort of the
outline of the mlu that you have before
you i know the board has had a chance to
see this in august and
also this time
um i'd like to go ahead and introduce
lashawn lee the principal of fabian
and gary weather is the executive vice
president of concordia to come forward
following them we will have a fabian
student and katie quick a concordia
university teacher corps student
and following that a fabian teacher mary
harbour and timothy kelsey a fabian
parent
and then finally chuck schlimpert the
president of concordia university with a
board member chris dunaville who's an
entrepreneur as well
so with that i would like to turn this
over to
michonne and gary
hello everyone i have the best neighbor
in the world here
so president obama recently said this
about education
if you're walking down the right path
and you're willing to keep walking
eventually you will make progress
and this is why our vibrant partnership
with concordia is so productive
the students and faculty have taken
opportunity to create the right path
and they are determined to make sure
that no child parent or community is
left behind that's a part of our joint
mission the relationship that we have
forged over the past five years has
afforded us the golden opportunity to
achieve something that is within our
grasp as a world-class model of a true
deep lifelong partnership the mou
each day concordia faculty volunteers
tutors student teachers walk there 102
steps to our building and provide much
needed services to our children as well
as to our teachers
00h 50m 00s
the assistance concordia students
provide run the gamut from teaching
recess games duck duck school style 4
euros to a
full-fledged soccer team to paying staff
restrooms to tutoring and teaching
students
regardless of the task
regardless of the problem or regardless
of the cost concordia university does
what president obama said about walk-in
you will make progress
i am here as a witness and that's the
proudest principle in pps besides molly
chun
to tell you that we are making progress
arm and arm as we walk this educational
path together
bob has done a great job of laying out
the elements of the memorandum of
understanding and what i'd like to do is
just provide a little context
in the late 1980s the concordia
neighborhood the home of fabian school
and concordia university was pretty
close to ground zero when it came to
gang activity and in fact on nice
evenings when i would drive home just a
block or two away from the campus you
would see young mothers holding the
hands of their preschool kids
and then you drive a few more blocks get
close to alberta park
and you would see gang affiliated youth
doing a very effective job of being
intimidated and i would spend the rest
of the ride home
wondering about the in between the in
between between preschool and late
middle school and high school
what happens or what didn't happen now
today
you won't you'd have to look pretty
pretty hard to find gang activity it's
there you won't find it as readily
apparent as it was
but there are some other signs that are
particularly alarming and lashon has
shared them with us and in particular
it's the academic performance of the
middle school and in fact when you take
a look at the academic performance of
the eighth graders the most recent tests
uh for 11 and 12 uh you find that
reading is at 58
meets or exceed
meets or exceeds goal uh
let's see math is at 52 percent and
science is at 42
those are not acceptable
numbers
now the exciting thing about our
partnership that we call three to phd
and lashon is the one who coined this
term age three
to phd
is that we get to start with a blank
sheet of paper and write a new chapter
in the saga in the story of inner city
schools
and we've done some work we've started
working on our feasibility study which
is referenced in the mou and that's our
effort to determine exactly how much
money we can raise locally and
nationally philanthropically to support
this endeavor and during our most recent
discussions we talked about the impact
of third grade reading levels
and a couple members of our group were
unfamiliar that some states use them to
forecast prison beds in fact our our
chief development officer kevin matheny
who was here with us tonight basically
said
that's an abomination how can we be the
neighbor of this school and not stand up
and do something not come forward
and all of us at concordia agree with
that we have to do something
and this is what is so exciting
so exciting as we write this next
chapter is that we have an opportunity
to use the most effective architecture
a stellar collaboration between a
principal of a grade school
outstanding leadership on the board and
on the staff of portland public schools
and a university that loves to do things
differently and have an impact in the
community and together what we get to do
is well we get to stem the tide
of that achievement gap and that decline
in achievement through programs like
stem science technology engineering and
mathematics with new labs we get to
create something where
young new and maybe slightly uh
slightly even fearful or apprehensive
families feel invited in even before
they have their first child so they feel
that fabian concordia is their hub it is
their place and we get to be part of a
program that prepares the most teachers
in the state in a way where they are
going to be
student centered culturally competent
and have the highest level of
expectations
now there's a program that we put
together with united way it's called
launch pad and focuses on middle schools
and lashon and i with some evaluators
from united way were at her campus
recently were walking down the hallway
just the two of us and there was a
wonderful little girl she was
maybe a third or a fourth grader she had
a pink dress on she ran up and said
hello to lashon in a way that i know it
caused her heart to melt and i didn't
let on but it melted my heart as well
and i realized why lashawn always has a
smile on her face even given all of the
the challenges as well as the
00h 55m 00s
opportunities at the school
and it dawned on me in preparing these
remarks that
she's the in between
she's that third or fourth grader who is
in between we have to do this for her
we have to do this for the little girl
with the huge smile who was riding her
bicycle right in front of my car as i
was leaving the campus today was
probably a second grader
and
we have to do it because we're already
on the path
let me tell you some good scores and
there are lots of good scores at fabian
but fourth grade reading levels have
improved by five full percentage points
and by the way
the concordia teacher corps has been
doing one-on-one tutoring literacy
tutoring with a grant from a swiss
foundation
with the third grade so we're seeing
these results already and we know we are
just at the beginning of an
extraordinarily unique opportunity and
on behalf of all of us at concordia uh
it's an up it's a honor and a privilege
to work with lashon and each one of you
on what we think will be a nationally
significant collaboration thank you
thank you
now we have a short video for you
at concordia university teacher
education is the cornerstone of our
academic purpose
we nurture the potential in our students
so they can do the same in their
classrooms
strong bonds between concordia
university and fabian school support
student success
fabian is a special place the most
special place on earth the teachers are
dynamic they're hard-working people
they're so invested and in tune with the
students and the children are
great they're creative they have
sparkles in their eyes and they love to
learn
the facilities is described as poor but
our children are not poor in spirit
they're not poor in motivation and
they're not poor in creativity
i have over 200 of concordia student
teachers
practicum students and tutors in this
building within a given school year
we get to come over here to fabian and
get to experience actually implementing
real lesson plans so we get this in
class experience with real kids so that
we know what kind of teachers we want to
be concordia is just really great at
finding leaders that might not know that
they're leaders and they give you this
opportunity to come out and lead people
any successes we have derives from the
success and the heart and the commitment
of our students our students come to us
wanting to serve
and it's our students that build our
reputation what they're teaching is not
just about theory but it's also a
balance of the practical application we
have real life stories and experiences
to share with our students
we are on one campus we feel like we're
one school this is deeper than a
partnership it started out as a
partnership we are family now we have
one mission in mind and that's to serve
our children as well as our community if
you get to experience life and bring it
in to other people that's amazing
concordia's teachers are the ones who
care
i i don't think there's anything more
critical
than for elementary school children
adolescent youth high school youth
to to have a teacher who is so committed
to them
and their welfare that they can actually
feel that in the classroom
go for it
hi i'm sydney kelly and i'm a eighth
grader at fabian
concordia has been such a help to not
only fabian but to me as well their
01h 00m 00s
students take time out of their busy
schedules to come over and help out with
things like the sun program fitness
testing and giving our teachers a hand
in the classrooms as for some of my
personal experiences last year when i
was in seventh grade a student teacher
from concordia was assigned to my math
class he helped me understand problems
in another way he was also there to
answer questions when the teacher was
busy with another student he helped give
attention to our class of 36.
in my language arts class last year we
had another student teacher from
concordia she was there for my
classmates and i when our class was
going through some changes with our
teacher
she was patient with all 36 of us and
understood what we were going through
she taught us what we needed to know and
made sure we understood it
concordia students volunteered to come
over in the afternoons and provide a
safe after school environment with
activities through sun school
the tutors helped with things like
organization re-explaining concepts
and teaching us study skills
concordia has been and always will be
very important to fabian
even though we don't always see them
they are continuously trying to make our
school a better place
they work throughout our building inside
and out
having college students around makes me
understand that one day i can be in
college fulfilling my dream i'm so glad
to be a part of this partnership
imagining fabian without concordia would
be like eating a peanut butter sandwich
without the jelly
follow that up
okay
hi my name is katie quick i'm a
sophomore at concordia university
and i was asked to speak
on behalf of the concordia teacher core
tutors
some background information about myself
i grew up in a really small town in
northern california
and when i was looking at colleges
concordia stand up stood out to me for
two reasons one that that i could
graduate in four years opposed to five
in california schools and the other
being the fact that concordia gets their
students in their classroom
their first year opposed to
their junior and senior year
and that's made possible only by
concordia teacher corps and their
partnership with fabian
at the beginning of my freshman year
last which was last year
i was partnered with a first grade
teacher at fabian
and at first i was a little nervous
because i didn't know the school i
didn't know the area but she kind of
took me under her wing and
i really
had a great experience and when i came
back from my summer vacation the first
thing i did was i emailed her and i said
jamie when is the next time i can come
and volunteer and she said how about the
first day of school
and so i walked into her classroom and
she had the same students she had last
year this year as second graders and i
walked in and i was so excited to get
back and i walked in the door and
everybody's like miss katie and this
katie and so excited to see me and that
made me feel good because i was excited
and i was excited that they were excited
and i want to share with you one of my
experiences tutoring
a struggling reader one-on-one
so i took a reading coach class offered
through concordia last spring
and they paired us with struggling
readers and i was prepared with a first
grader
and the first day that we were
together she looked at me and she said
miss katie i don't like reading it makes
me feel stupid and i just gave her a hug
and i told her we're going to change
that
and by the end of the seven weeks that i
had tutored with her not only had her
outlook on school changed from a
negative one to a positive one but she
had improved
tremendously and so that's just
something i wanted to share with you and
i wanted to let you know that like my
experience isn't a unique experience and
the fact that when i talked to my
fellow tutors they all had similar
experiences tutoring one-on-one and
tutoring in a classroom
and i actually asked some of my friends
who are tutors how their tutoring
experience had changed or affect them
and i have some quotes that i'd like to
read to you robin said it has solidified
the fact that i want to be a teacher and
help me realize what grade i want to
teach
lindsay said it was a great opportunity
to learn from other teachers and a great
opportunity to work with kids without
having the pressure of having the
students all to myself
rebecca said it makes me excited for my
future job and it makes me feel like i'm
making an impact in these students lives
so that's just some of the things i
wanted to share with you tonight that
our partnership with fabian through
concordia teacher core
is an extremely positive partnership
and that i know that i have been making
um an impact in changing the lives of
the students
but they have also made a tremendous
impact in my life as well so just want
to share
01h 05m 00s
i'm gonna be lonely
good evening
i'm mary harbault and i have been a
teacher at fabian school for about 15
years
in a world where everyone especially
educators has been asked to do more with
less
concordia university has stepped in to
fill that gap at fabian school
as a concordia graduate adjunct mentor
of student teachers and receiver of
tutors i have seen firsthand how
concordia and fabian have built an
indelible partnership where students
from pre-k to graduate level receive the
very best education and care
they provide additional space resources
and manpower
this year i have a third grade student
from another district that is at a pre-k
level
concordia is providing through various
course requirements
one-on-one tutoring and mentoring to
help meet this student's very specific
needs
fabian school would be lost without our
concordia university partnership thank
you
and we're almost at the end of the
uh testimony people right
okay
i gotta give my two minutes here
good evening i'm chuck schlemford it's
been my privilege to serve as president
of concordia for 30 years now
um three things very quickly one is
everything you've just heard is
absolutely true
and we could regale you with you know
four hours of stories
secondly
one of the reasons i believe in programs
like
cradle to career which i serve on the
council
is becau is that i think this problems
we we have in communities and schools
today cannot be solved by schools alone
they we have to bring to bear on those
situations the entire community and we
take that role seriously at concordia
that's a part of our commitment to
helping our community become a great
place and finally if
we do this the right way this will be a
national model
that everybody will look to
that that will say
really they really did that
that's what's going to happen here thank
you for your support
i was supposed to speak before you by
the way but that's okay
i wanted my two minutes
does that give me five
um hi my name is chris donoville and i'm
on the council of trustees at concordia
and the partner
a relatively new partner at the
university
and i had prepared some comments
and uh thought that i would put all
those away and maybe try to talk to you
from the heart in terms of why i'm here
and why i'm involved with concordia
and
everything that this man said by the way
is absolutely true
i've only been on board since
last october
but since i've been there i've seen some
amazing things happen at this university
and in the community
and
to get involved
i remember how i got involved actually
is kind of by accident because i had
never been to concordia i live on the
other side of town
and i've been hearing about it for years
and years because i have a neighbor
who
my daughter goes to school with her kids
and she is involved she's on the
development committee and she's been
saying you've got to go check this thing
out and i've been involved with sei on
the board of self-enhancement inc and
habitat for humanity and running offices
for a wall street firm that sort of
thing
and i said okay one day i'm going to do
this and i read an editorial that an
op-ed piece that was written by gary
withers
and it spoke about
education it talked about
william temple house
and
not nothing to do with concordia but i
identified with every point that this
man had to say and i called him up cold
and i'm a former stock broker so i have
no problem calling people cold
and i uh said i got to meet you i have
to talk to you and he invited me to
concordia
when i set foot on that university
and saw the library and saw amazing
things happening
something happened inside of me it was a
spirit
and i can't explain it
but i knew i had to be involved with it
and i did exactly that by the end of my
tour i looked at gary and i said how can
i help what can i do
now
to put into perspective what i was
saying and why i identified with the
school
i'm a native new yorker
born in harlem usa
grew up on the lower east side of new
york if you know anything about that
neighborhood it's
when i grew up it was pretty rough and
tough
01h 10m 00s
the demographic you might say is very
similar to the demographic at fabian in
fact
my parents
one parent of my father
grew up in the segregated south in the
30s
the oldest of five his dad died when he
was nine years old
my dad worked his way through college
selling newspapers and peanuts
and then not only worked his way through
college but helped each of his four
siblings also uh go on and attend higher
education by the way he ended up going
to morgan state graduating number one in
his class and then going on to law
school
and had an amazing career became a u.s
attorney
and
really proud of him my number one role
model
my mother
again born in harlem usa and growing up
on lower side
came to this country as an immigrant
from the west indies first generation
i don't know if you knew that
and she
uh too came here for education
similar to a lot of the folks
at fabian
and
my mom
always said and so did my dad that you
know you can achieve anything that you
want chris in life
you just have to work hard and we got to
give you a good education and that's and
that's what they that's what they work
for so growing up on the lower east side
i was privileged my parents were from a
different mold
but still i was in this neighborhood
this environment where all the kids
around me the kids that i played with
after school
were into all kinds of other things that
i wasn't allowed to get involved with
because my parents were there to grab me
by the neck and sometimes pull me up to
do my homework
um
and so i had the opportunity
at a very young age
i went to private school and uh
and
somehow
at age 12 i got involved with the stock
market
through a program at school
and by the time i was 14 i was so turned
on to the stock market i had my first
job on wall street
as a runner on the explore of the soccer
change before computers
and then uh went through call went
through
and
ended up going to georgetown and after
georgetown went back and got my masters
at nyu
and traveled around the country
managing offices for smith barney
the interesting thing is that my mother
still lives on the lower east side i
still go back to visit her often
and many of the people that i grew up
with on the lower east side
didn't achieve what i achieved they
didn't have the opportunity that i had
many of them in fact friends of mine
are dead
several
are incarcerated
many of these people i would say were 75
percent african-american hispanic
latinos
and
at the end of the day
i sat back and had to evaluate well how
come me you know
i was lucky i had an opportunity i got
an education i had good parents
uh great parents actually
and for me
the whole concordia
fabian university i'm going to call it
fabian university to coin another word
that lashon came up with
opportunity
it's not just about opportunity i mean
this is something that we have 400 plus
kids
and if you understand anything about
wall street we certainly learned
leverage at a very young age uh in the
in our industry
we can touch 400 kids that can then go
out and hopefully
get exposed get excited about something
whether it be wall street or the stock
market or education because they're
exposed to concordia
and they can become contributing
citizens
and they can change their course
and we can help them do that
and i see that not as an opportunity
but as my parents told me being as
fortunate i was that was my
responsibility to go back and reach my
hand down and grab the next person that
wasn't as lucky as i was to have grown
up so i have a 12 year old daughter
she's at oes now
and she didn't get to experience all the
fun things i did you know with the drug
deals and all the other fun exciting
things
so she's really lucky and so i'm doing
the best that i can for her
but i still feel responsible over and
above that for all these kids these 400
plus kids that we can leverage and give
them all an opportunity and i think
that's and i think that's really our
responsibility so i would hope
that uh
you think about that uh in addition to
all the
beautiful buildings that we want to put
up and and all the other stuff but it's
really not about that it's not about
concordia it's not about the council of
trustees it's about those kids and the
opportunities that we want to provide
for them thank you
thank you
and i'm thankful that that you all spoke
from your heart by the way
um
01h 15m 00s
i think that
you know the testimony that we hear
today i think it's is uh
it was one very eloquent i think too uh
very inspiring um
and not that
i was trying to
limit that part is just that i think
that we want to be able to also move the
agenda
um we will now consider resolution four
six five zero authorizing the
superintendent to enter into a
memorandum of understanding with
concordia university or master planning
and replacement of avian k-8 school
uh do i have a motion a second
so moved
director morton moves and direct
director sergeant seconds uh the motion
to adopt
resolution four six five zero
is there a citizen comment on this yes
um thank you for giving me that
opportunity to speak my name is tom
since i'm the president of the northeast
united soccer club in northeast portland
we serve 1200 kids uh without staff
and
i'm in a funny place here because uh
i've was on recently on faculty at
concordia i love the place i went to
that to work at that place for many of
the reasons that you've heard it today i
spent a lot of time talking to lashon
lee
uh and i love fabian school
i love portland public schools that's
why i moved to portland
so this is just a sort of a
in this big picture this big project
which i bring full appreciation for what
is being
the idea here it's going to be a great
opportunity for kids
but i'm doing my due diligence as a
member of the local soccer club
basically you know that kids need after
school spaces
and kids to places to play northeast
united soccer club
provides a lot of that for kids and we
want to continue to do that
one of the things that we've done was uh
as you know keeping healthy helps
education
it's my been my core work for uh ever
since i was a student teacher in battle
creek michigan
um i am now a nurse um
but basically
we have a common mission pps
university and northeastern club that is
to give kids opportunities
and we i want to just make sure as we
kind of go forward that their the
opportunities stay in all kinds not just
in academics but after school activities
and places to play
as you may know there's a very shortage
of fields and field spaces in
in
northeast portland i've been direct
communication with bob alexander around
this issue it's been great having him
talk about the possibilities here
um but one of the things that was
mentioned in the mou is the uh play
space at uh
and the athletic field at as a part of
this project so i just wanted to kind of
highlight um without really that much
caution because i know the conversation
will go forward and it's a long term
process that play space uh
be
reserved primarily to start with on pps
grounds for kids
and uh it's kind of an important thing
we have a lot of adult players out there
now
taking up a lot of spaces you know and
uh it's it's hard to uh i'm just doing
my part i serve kids and i think giving
kids that opportunity is important thing
so as we look forward is how this plan
is developed i'm asking that to be a
consideration and we certainly
want to be a partner in the
discussions and i don't want to take up
much more of your time i did put some
written testimony but it was poorly
written and poorly edited by me and
so uh i think i delivered the main
message which is uh i love the project i
want to just keep the idea of play space
as a part of that so thank you so much
thank you
so is there any board discussion
i was just going to say that as i have
been out talking to ptas about the
upcoming bond when i mentioned this
particular partnership
you can see people in the room get
excited about it i think they see that
the mutual benefits both for our
students and for concordia students they
see it as a strategic relationship and
as a real example of what we can do
going forward if we're smart
in bringing community partners along
so that's been actually really fun i
always look forward to that part of my
talk and
as chuck mentioned i i do believe that
this is going to be a national model um
so i'm really excited about it
01h 20m 00s
i guess i just want to also say that um
thank you actually to to principal
lashon lee
because my guess is that there had to be
an openness and a reaching out to
faculty
before it ever makes its way up either
organization's food chain so
thank you to you and
your staff and reaching out to the
faculty of concordia to make this happen
because it'll be a national model not
because it's cool and not because we
have brand new buildings um
but because it's breaking down those
silos of what's best in education and
truly bringing to bear the resources of
the community
and so i just thank you thank you both
concordia and lashon
for for understanding and having that
vision because i'm sure that there are
very long days
and very tiring weeks to make that
happen on top of all the other
expectations we're doing so thank you
for leading for example by example
and thank you concordia for being
willing to
recognize your role and responsibility
and taking that seriously
i have a quick comment um
i hold
the opinion that the challenges that we
have
within our community
the solutions to those challenges can be
found
actually within the community itself
and
this is one of those to me it's a
no-brainer it's one of those organic
relationships that now we have an
opportunity as a school district and as
a board to say yeah this makes sense
this is a solution that's not only
innovative but it's also something that
that makes a lot of sense to our
community this is going to serve the
students at fabian so well their
families and the families of the
concordia neighborhood i couldn't be
more excited to
to say yes to this mou
i'll just say thank you great
presentation and i really appreciate all
of your efforts
yeah no i think this will be an awesome
program going forward and
similar to what matt's saying it's great
to see that with limited resources we're
still finding ways to improve education
for students in our district
and actually then just since everybody
is i'm going to say thank you to this
has been a fabulous partnership on every
level and just the passion and the
values alignment that it just makes me
really excited about what's possible
going forward and yes thank you
personally to every single person who's
been a part of this
and made it thrive i feel like we're
going to do great learning together
as two institutions in this partnership
so thank you
yes again
thank everyone they came and testified
that it was again
a great presentation i think
my colleagues have already stated are
are heartfelt thanks you know for this
for this partnership um also the the
benefits i think that have been outlined
by folks
you know when i first uh
i guess one of the first times that we
had a formal presentation since i've
been on the board here uh was some time
back
i stated that you know my
expectation or hope
i guess for the rest of the schools of
education locally
is to follow that example that concordia
has set
not that we don't have already
participation from the schools of
education locally because there are some
in terms of you know when they do their
student teaching
but i think to start earlier i think
it was outlined by by
by the student
here uh it's important if we are going
to change
the
the outcomes in the long run and the
buy-in i think in terms of the teachers
from the onset make sure that
that
i went to school
i graduated from also in education
and and i remember when i went to the
school of education
at uh what is now texas a m with corpus
christi um
a lot of my my
fellow students
um were going in for the wrong reasons
in some ways
uh one because it was going to be steady
job and two
because you know they felt that it was a
pushover degree by the way
and
i think that
we do a disservice if we continue along
that path
it's best i think for for students
uh of education to be exposed early on
and see whether that's actually
their calling
because i think it is it is a calling uh
i am uh grateful i think uh for your
approach
i see as a university uh on this matter
i hope other local colleges look at that
because i think that
we are going to develop more culture
competent and more effective teachers in
the long run
um so
the board will now vote on resolution
four six five zero
unless there's some
uh the bora now bottom resolution four
six five zero all in all in favor please
01h 25m 00s
indicate by saying yes yes yes all
opposed please indicate by saying no
resolution four six five zero is
approved by a vote of
five to zero with stu and representative
garcia voting yes
congratulations thank you
so we now move on to
assessing accountability committee uh
member appointment and charter uh and
superintendent smith i think you're
gonna introduce this item with uh i am
and i'm gonna ask
jim owens who's the director of capital
operations to come up and present this
this is a follow-up to
the charter for the
the
bond citizens oversight committee that
was presented to the board and discussed
at the september 10th meeting and then
tonight we actually bring to you the
proposed membership and i'll ask jim to
walk us through this great thank you
superintendent smith good evening
my name is jim owens from the office of
school modernization
during the board study session on
september
staff presented a draft charter for the
proposed capital construction bond
citizen accountability committee
for board review and discussion
several board members provided feedback
relative to that draft
and we've been able to incorporate those
edits that have been made relative to
the document
tonight we'll be asking you to
approve an authorizing resolution to
put the
committee in place
and also to be able to approve the
proposed membership that is included in
your board packages
i do want to point out there is an error
that i apologize for in your board
packets i think you got the corrected
version but an older version had been
circulated earlier and so this one
reflects the comments that were made
previously
and
they're
specific relative to
the committee meetings being
being publicly noticed
when they meet on a regular basis it
also includes provisions for
superintendent to call meetings of the
committee and then some comments about
the committee being able to
look at facilities that are included in
the capital construction the proposed
capital construction bond measure
the authorized resolution requests
adoption of the charter to establish the
committee and its charge
it also includes a proposed membership
of seven individuals
that
fully meet or exceed the criteria in the
charter
these are a mix of individuals with a
good reputation in the community for
fairness and transparency
in addition the majority come with a
combination of experience in building
design
construction construction financing and
auditing
in your board package attachment b
you'll find a summary of each of these
members biographies
and i think
you'll agree that these are very
impressive
individuals who have a wealth of
experience
and
they've been identified in terms of
initial
terms and for the charter we were
looking at two three and four year
periods and so those are actually noted
in in the packet that you have
the proposed chairman for the committee
is kevin spellman
i think in looking at these individuals
and the role the charge that is included
in the charter that these this broad
base of experience they bring will serve
the interests of the school board and
the district extremely well
three of the proposed members of the
group of seven are actually here tonight
and i'd like to ask if they could raise
their hands and just identify themselves
uh kevin spellman who i mentioned is the
chair proposed chair louis fontenot and
john mullis and gentlemen thank you for
coming this evening and
and being able to be here for this
presentation
at this time i'd like to answer any
questions that you may have
are there any questions at this point
okay
so now consider resolution 4651 a
resolution of multnomah county school
district number one j
multnomah county oregon
county for creating a portland public
school capital construction bond citizen
accountability committee do i have a
motion in a second
tell me
director sergeant moves
and director
elio seconds
miss houston is there any citizen coming
this resolution yes we have one mike
rosen
01h 30m 00s
i have two handouts one is a red line of
the current charter with suggested
changes and the other is a
just a quick summary of the key points
that i wanted to make tonight
so identify yourself for the record just
i know you've been here before so that
was about thank you hi
i'm mike rosen and i'm currently the
legislative chair for the cleveland high
school pta i have a sophomore that
attends cleveland and i have two boys
that graduated from cleveland
and i'm currently working very hard to
pass the portland public schools
construction bond and i want to start
out by thanking um the board and the
administration for their leadership
on the bond up to this point
um particularly the revision to the
charter that provides for the citizen
accountability committee to report to
you the school board
versus the district superintendent but
there's still an important change that's
needed the citizen accountability
committee representation in its current
structure is not representative of the
community and key bond supporters and it
has a narrow focus on expenditures
the vision of the long range facilities
plan extends far beyond fiscal
accountability though that's important
it talks about sustainability and
deconstruction rebuilding and repair it
talks about integral student involvement
and planning and implementation
and creating and implementing a 30-year
program of rebuilding community
ownership and trust in our schools
is trust an issue at every bond
presentation i'm asked why we should
trust the district with a half a billion
dollars for rebuilding schools and i
consistently answer
that this is a new way of doing business
as a community it's a community-wide
effort and there will be a citizens
accountability committee that is
representative of our diverse community
interests
the long-range
facility plan
defined guiding principles to be
followed in all planning and decision
making
and these were developing partnerships
embracing sustainability
demonstrating fiscal responsibility and
practicing inclusivity and my concern is
that the current committee makeup is a
traditional business
based approach it's seven high-level
business representatives that i believe
are disconnected from the community who
supports works for and will benefit from
this 30-year effort
i would suggest
seven steps to amend the charter that
would address these concerns first
require the committee to advise the
board on building deconstruction
standards and practices as well as state
of the art techniques in sustainable
building construction and design
expand the current size of the committee
to include representatives from these
categories neighborhood associations
teachers principals students
deconstruction and materials reuse trade
sustainable building design and
construction trade communities of color
and parents the committee chair should
be appointed by the committee all
committee meetings should allow for
public testimony
the the committee should select the bond
program auditor and in addition to
quarterly audits all materials of
relevance to the oversight work of the
committee should be provided to the
committee and the committee should
determine the frequency of the meetings
and just in closing i would say that
the salem kaiser
school district is
well
within the process of implementing a
school construction bond for the very
same
issues we're dealing with reconstruction
deconstruction building new buildings
they have a citizen accountability
committee of 15.
this is it and they represent all of the
community not just the building trades
and it's working very effectively so i
expect that portland public schools can
follow the same path effectively thank
you thank you
okay so at this point uh
we're
opening it up for board discussion
uh mr owens do you have a copy of these
seven points
in front of you
i do not
i'd love for you to maybe address some
of them because i my my understanding is
that some of these we are doing
already
like number four all committee meetings
should allow public testimony
i thought that that is the case correct
01h 35m 00s
the
way the charter is currently written it
incorporates each of the meetings would
be publicly noticed
so the opportunity for public feedback
during the committee meetings is is uh
is incorporated into the document
so mike i don't know if you had the
revised
accountability charity but it says that
committee meetings shall be publicly
noticed and include opportunity for
public comments so
i don't know if there's some others of
these that we could
maybe address right off the bat
for example my sense is the committee
should determine the frequency of their
meetings
i don't imagine that would be an issue
so anyway
if we can
stay within the conversation here on the
board right and the conversation with
the audience i really appreciate it
so i guess i think i've said this before
that um i've been really impressed with
the level of
folks that have been willing to to lend
their expertise to this
to this group it's
it's been i just heard it described as
business as usual but i do not remember
a group with this level of expertise
that's willing to help us with that
i have heard feedback about different
people wanting this group
represented or that group represented
and
we can slice that literally just about
every which way in our community that
whether it's communities color portland
business
business alliance
more parents ptas
and i guess and the other comment i've
heard people say is they wanted to have
more teeth
and i as i investigate what that means
to them
we wind up kind of at a dead end in that
people want they don't want they
understand it's not right for an
advisory committee to be hiring and
firing contractors or stopping work or
something like that so that's clearly
the work of staff
but then when they come back to should
they get to decide what work is done and
where do the citizens or the community
get to
provide input and
i see the elected folks here like if we
appoint a committee it's not
representative by definition we just
picked people
um that we thought could serve or had
the time to serve and so i guess i'm
asking our community to look at the
citizens here seven of us that are
elected with the student representative
to hold us accountable for that
that to me is the ultimate citizen
committee
or citizen oversight and that's our
responsibility so i see this group as
really advising us
is staff doing
the best practice that we would expect
and
are we spending the money in a way that
we promised our community
so it is going to be that special
expertise heavy
because i have every every confidence in
our community that as we rebuild
marysville i've heard feedback about why
are they reporting the steps why are
they doing this and we're able to check
in with staff and get back to folks
about why that is and that's that's how
i would expect it and hope hope our
community engages in this
so
i'm comfortable with this charter and
this makeup very excited about the
makeup
my general sense is that we're going to
have many many opportunities for
community engagement as we go
in terms of our visioning process the ad
spec process
and all of the specific design teams at
the school building level
so i'm fairly comfortable with this
group i also
i suppose feel that we could reserve the
right to add to it if we find in the
future that it isn't
what we thought it was going to be
but um i feel
and so i guess i'd like to have that on
the record that we could do that
but at this point i
you know i actually
i'm excited when i look at the group
that we're putting together because i do
think this particular committee has a
really specific
goal
which is to
ensure that our dollars are spent the
way we said they were going to be spent
and
and and kind of track the dollars as we
go
um
and i i think that this is a committee
that can do that for us i mean the fact
that we have an auditor on the committee
01h 40m 00s
is exciting to me the fact that we have
uh folks who are really familiar with uh
constructing trades and practices
um is exciting to me and again i believe
that we're going to have lots of
opportunity for
community input ultimately
one of the early changes we made to this
committee is to have a report directly
to the board
rather than to the superintendent and so
ultimately i look at it as the citizen
accountability committee will be these
seven people who report to another group
of citizens who are accountable and um
to the public i mean that's our job
so i guess i
in some ways already look at it as we
have you know a group of 14 or 15 folks
who are going to be doing this work back
out to the community but
um
and having said that i would like to say
that i um
totally admire uh mike rosen and the
work that he's done on this committee
and i want us to be
cognizant that if he has this kind of a
concern there's others in the community
who may have this concern as well so i
think that we need to be open to further
suggestions as we go so
thank you
any other comments questions
the war would now vote on russell
excuse me
i'm sorry i was about to lean forward
and just say a little something um i
think just looking at the
the charter here
it's really clear about
this
this committee having a very specific
charge
and it is to
make sure that the district's funds um
provided under this bond are provided in
the way that the bond
outlines which is consistent with the
principles in the long-range facilities
plan there was a lot of
community input in both the long-range
plan and in the development of the bond
and so i feel like this this committee
has a pretty narrow charter there will
be lots of opportunities for further
input
of our community members all of the
people we're talking about here
um
in terms of how these bonds
funds will be spent on specific projects
and how different schools will be
redeveloped
but i think
i think i appreciate the technical
expertise of this committee and want to
have them stay focused
on how these dollars are spent in
alignment with the requirements of the
bond
thank you director sergeant anybody else
that i'm
overlooking no thank you
the board went out bottom resolution
four six five one all inflate all in
favor please indicate by saying yes yeah
all opposed please indicate by saying no
resolution four six five one is approved
by about five to zero which doing
represent the guys you have voting yes
so
moving on uh appointment of achievement
compact advisory committee and
superintendent smith you're going to
introduce the staff
um yes and i'm going to ask um suanne
higgins who is our chief academic
officer and amanda whalen adviser to the
superintendent to come up and walk us
through
the pro our proposed members of our
achievement compact advisory committee
and a little bit more about the origins
of what this group will do
good evening amanda's just pulling the
slides up and um so we'll walk through
the composition of the committee um as
well as
what the
senate bill describes the role of this
compact to be amanda would you like to
start
okay
help
should we do it manually
sorry
so just
briefly going back we wanted to remind
everyone again what the achievement
compacts were so these are
achievement compacts are two-way
partnerships that every k-12 district in
the state is entering into with the
oregon education investment board
that look at targets and the strategies
underneath those targets
01h 45m 00s
so every district is required by statute
to create an achievement compact
advisory committee this advisory
committee is charged with i'm going to
read directly from the statute
developing plans for achieving the
district's outcomes measures of progress
goals and targets expressed in an
achievement compact including methods of
assessing and reporting progress toward
the achievement of goals and targets and
recommending outcomes measures of
progress goals and targets to be
contained in the district's achievement
compact for the next fiscal year
so
this achievement compact committee
advisory committee is required to create
a
set of recommendations that are then
presented to the board as a report prior
to february 1st that will then be
attached to the district's
2013-14 achievement compact and the
achievement compact committee is also
subject to public meeting laws so these
will be publicly noticed there will be
time for public comment as part of it
statute requires currently that the
achievement compact committee is
comprised of
employees from the district
so these are recommended by the
superintendent in collaboration with
union leadership
so
i would just like to point out so
we worked with the pf
sp
the pat and papsa groups to determine
from leadership in those groups
as well as from central office staff a
constellation of folks that we feel give
a broad representation underneath the
miss higgins can you just explain those
were a lot of acronyms can you remind
our audience who those folks are because
yes thank you thank you
so our school employees
labor reunion group our portland
association of teachers group
our
public our portland public schools
administrators group
worked with district staff to determine
how to have a strong foundation for this
committee and so
as a result we have five teachers
represented
on the team we have
one classified staff member
three principals from each of our
grade level
constellations and three central office
staff members and so
and as amanda said by statute the
committee needs to be comprised of
district staff
however we do have
four ex-officio members and so at this
time
these folks would also be advisory but
are not formally named as members
because the statute prohibits that
currently
although i will say this was a topic of
hot discussion at the last oeib meeting
specifically whether parents were to be
represented as part of as ex-officio or
official members so we know this is
going to be a topic of conversation for
that board and for upcoming and we
believed number one we wanted the voices
and number two we wanted to include them
now so that if they become made official
they're not starting behind the eight
ball they have been in the conversations
from the beginning so
so at this time
then we recommend we would include one
student from the superintendent's
student advisory committee or super sac
one member from the coalition of
communities of color one from the pta
and one from the portland business
alliance so that we would again further
um
broaden the representatives
and voices for this
committee and then i just also wanted to
take this time to remind you once again
that we are coming in that was for so
this committee is for the
2013-14 achievement compact but we um in
our in when you all voted on the
achievement compact targets for the
2012-13 achievement compact we
specifically stated that we would be
coming back in october to revise those
targets based on the latest data wanted
to point out that we'll be coming to the
october 15th work session with
recommendations around that and then the
vote would be october 29th
any questions in regards to the
competition
thank you
one other thing i would add is that
we're also looking at a board liaison
being assigned to this committee as well
so that's not it's just that is the role
as board liaison so but you would in the
same way we've got board liaisons for
all major work you would assign abort
liaison to this group
so we'll now consider resolution 4654
appointment of achievement compact
committee do i have a motion in a second
director sergeant
moose and director morton seconds the
adoption
01h 50m 00s
to adopt resolution four six five four
missus citizen comment on this yes
welcome hi
for the record i'm carol wyer i'm
executive director of the oregon pta
um on behalf of the thousands of parents
in pta in pps i want to thank you for
thinking about including parents we are
very active with the oregon education
investment board
and have been working with them on the
achievement compacts and been very
disappointed that parents have not been
included
from our point of view an achievement
compact is something that's between a
parent a student and a teacher
but uh this is a different kind of
achievement compact so um
as carol mentioned they i i think the
oeib will be looking at changing the
statute to include parents so we're very
appreciative that you're you're forward
thinking and doing this and
more voices at the table is inc means
more transparency and and we appreciate
that thank you very much
is there any board discussed from this
resolution
i was just going to say i'm really glad
that carol was here because i uh i mean
what i was most pleased about when i was
reading through this is the fact that we
have these ex-officios i know that uh
for the regular board members this is
going to be a huge extra piece of
responsibility so i think we need to
thank all of these folks
up front for stepping up and being part
of this
but i'm also grateful that the voices of
parents students communities of color
and the business community will be at
the table um at the same time it's
certainly appropriate it's it's uh kind
of the it takes a village it takes all
of us to make sure that our kids are
going to succeed so it makes sense so
good
any order
make sure i look all around now
the board went out bottom resolution
four six five four all in favor please
indicate by saying yes yes
all close please indicate by saying no
resolution four six five four is
approved by a board of five to zero with
student representative garcia voting yes
so
we have a business agenda
the board will now consider remaining
items on his tennis agenda having
already put in resolution four six five
zero four six five one and four six five
four
i would like to highlight resolution
four six five two which will appoint two
new citizens uh dick cherry and tom
fuller
along with student member
haley blashfield to the citizen budget
review committee
the citizen budget repeat committee will
service our independent oversight
committee to ensure tax dollars
are used for purposes approved by local
boarders
when they passed local option levy in
may 2011.
miss houston are there any changes to
the business agenda
do i have a motion a second to adopt the
business agenda
director belial moves uh
second
and director sergeant seconds
the adoption of the business agenda
miss houston is there any citizen coming
to the business agenda no no
is there any board discussion on this
the board will now vote on the business
agenda all in favor please indicate by
saying yes yes all the post piece
indicate by saying no the business
agenda is approved by a board of six
i'll be invited to uh speak as a county
student uh representative already
because she said yes no
but i bought a fight to sarah with
student representative garcia voting
um any more citizen comment tonight
thank you
do we have any announcements by board
members
no
okay this meeting
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)
