2012-10-08 PPS School Board Study Session

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2012-10-08
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Event 1: PPS Board of Education, 10/08/12 Study Session

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2012 is Scout to order uh welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers this meeting is being televised live then we'll replay throughout the next two weeks uh please check the Board website for replay times uh at this time um want to get started with uh public comment uh Miss Houston is there anybody signed up for citizen comments yes we have one person Scott Overton good evening I'm Scott Overton oov v r t o n and um I um just hello and thank you all for um entertaining me tonight um I wanted to speak to you about the high school redesign and some things that have come uh that you're going to be hearing about the high school later tonight so that's why I wanted to bring this up so as a person who has highly invested in the high school redesign process I wanted to highlight some points from those discussions in light of the report you will be receiving later I am pleased to see the beginning of equalizing of student populations in our high schools and some amazing gains in terms of access to a full program and quality of offerings in our programs at Roosevelt and Jefferson I also love to see the vibrancy of the actual students in these programs of special concern to me is the um apparent disregard of the Distributing of resources across the schools for students in need of acad mic priority the high school program has taken a big overall hit from um the idea that we had in the beginning of this all for a robust full day filled with Challenge and Support classes to one now that fulfills kind of a minimum expectation of meeting the required classes for graduation this is not any fault of yours I understand it's the reality of life um we hope that every academic priority student would get at least one if not two periods of extra support in the plan but there's really no FTE given to support that so a school needs to take from the general FD to provide support at the expense of the rest of the school when the numbers are small it may seem insignificant but I've been told that at Grant for example there are over 500 academic priority students enrolled which does make the choice between support or regular classes a real one for the administration at Grant um just to highlight the um fact um the with 500 academic priority students giving them each one extra period is equal to about a 3 FTE so it's it's a significant chunk into the work of the school you'll hear that students are taking as many classes as they did when the seven period schedule and in some cases even more but time in front of our skilled teachers is actually less with someone having a 6.7 out of seven periods being taught is about 95% of the day and for that to be equal in an 8 period day you would need to have 7.6 of8 eight periods just so that realize that um time is different than classes um and only two freshman groups in two of the high schools actually are up to that 7.6 out of eight um so I ask you to remember our vision and not to make the high schools take the brunt of the cuts especially if you're asking for improved graduation success in these same academic priority students it really does matter in significant ways and with real lives and AES have a tendency to hide this sort of disaggregated data so just wanted to remind you of our vision of the high school redesign thank you thank you only one person so we're going to move on to um an update um on the merage build um or the rebuilding of of Mary Bill uh so superintendent Smith ask Jim Owens to come on up and give us the update and this is really uh just giving us a progress report on the insurance rebuild at Marysville that um sustained the fire Jim great thank you superintendent Smith and good evening School Board I'm Jim Owens from the office of school modernization and I'm joined tonight by Michelle platter office of school modernization project manager for the marville insurance rebuild project in your ward packets is a informational report that summarizes the status of the project it's a short summary and hopefully it provides an update on where we are uh in construction phase currently we're pleased to report that we're on schedule to complete the planned improvements and we'll be ready to accommodate students and staff the first week of January following the devastating fire in 2009 staff and Community developed a plan to fully rebuild
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Marysville integrating insurance proceeds with the proposed May 2011 Capital Construction Bond after the failure of the bond measure we examine Alternatives including relocation to Kellogg versus returning to Marysville in deciding to return the project scope became limited to an insurance rebuild with some additional District funding to augment for seismic strengthening exterior sighting improvements to Media Center tech labs and painting the educational programs are enhanced in the damage section only new technology lab science lab and expanded Library space unfortunately we were unable to fully modernize the school approximately half of the Interior interior will look basically unchanged from what it was previously before I turn over the presentation to Michelle um for the status update and we do have a short PowerPoint presentation uh to share with you I'd like to pause and say thank you for the incredible leadership she's provided in planning designing and constructing the improvements uh able assisted by Sarah Oaks assistant project manager Sarah is in the audience tonight they've orchestrated a process with Community Building level and other District uh other District staff to maximize the benefits of The Limited dollars that we had to work with and both have worked Tire tirelessly to Ure the highest quality although we're not done yet these ladies Inspire confidence and I know their efforts along with those of the project team will result in an improved school for PPS students and staff Michelle will provide further details to describe how the improvements will enhance the physical uh learning environment when the students return Michelle thanks Jim and thanks everybody for letting us come and make this presentation this evening um one of the things I wanted to say is that part of this process where we um really had a community engagement we also had an internal stakeholders engagement and we had the opportunity to work with the teaching staff the custodial staff the grounds um people and the trade shops within um Portland Public Schools to really look at what we could do with the limited dollars we had and try and make improvements that'll not just last for um the students in a teaching environment but also in ways that will help us with our maintenance and help with things moving on forward um in the school project uh the work status right now is 75% complete um we've gotten to a point in the project where there are no outstanding unresolved issues which is R wonderful we're running for the Finish now and um some of the features that we've really looked at in putting into the school we have been able to put in a wireless system throughout the school so even in spaces where we weren't necessarily able to upgrade the data cables and things like that at least we have wireless so that we can get um get students to be able to use iPads and things like that and have the communication that we need within our facilities as we've talked about before we have a fire alarm system and fire sprinkler system that's going in throughout the school which um is a wonderful Improvement to the facility um we were actually able through fund 405 to do some measure of seismic improvements even to the unburned portion of the school and so that's been a real benefit to us um and then we've actually done some additional asbestos abatement in the crawl spaces of the facility even in the unburned portion which will help with our custodial staff and our maintenance staff for going under the floors when they're working on different things to be able to go in and not have the worry of asbest in those areas uh when we talk about the teaching and learning when we look at the new science classroom that we're going to have we are putting in new sinks and so um we we have the sinks we have power again we have the wireless and some additional data cables we have a teaching station that is going to be um provided so that the teacher actually has a workstation and can show the students how experiments are being done and then they'll be able to use the facility there to uh to you know perform the experiments rather than just sitting at desks and learning from books um within the media center we've really tried to Target the three ways that students gather information one is through lecture so we have things set up for presentations and lecture type um a lecture type environment within the media center we obviously have the books and then we also have a small um area where there are computers um I believe we have 10 computer stations in this area so that you can actually get online data and do your research there within
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the development or within the um media center so we're trying to tap into all the different ways that students can access information in our M multimedia Center um the technology lab is also going to be able to accommodate over 30 students and everything is hardwired in that area for our testing and uh again we think this is a real advantage over what we had before which was not nearly enough technology in in the spaces to get a full Testing Lab and a full teaching lab so so those are the primar the primary areas of improvement within the school um we were not able to expand the gymnasium but the gym that's going in is a new gym We'll have a new floor and um and hopefully it'll serve the students well and with that yeah oops can we get to the beginning see uh Terry that's not the beginning there we go thank you for for for for the end and that's the end as you can see we're not done yet that PowerPoint presentation was courtesy of Sarah Oaks who did a nice job collecting photos that go back uh almost uh three years next month actually to characterize the devastating fire and then the work that's U that's taken place since I think it's a great example and illustration of what we'll see in other schools as we go about modernizing them we certainly learned quite a bit and much of what we did learn I know we would apply to other other projects um that uh we would we would take on so at this time i' like to take any questions or comments from the board anybody want to go I'll go um I think uh that fire is just a reminder of how horrific that day was for all of us and yet also how joyous it was in that our school staff uh responded so appropriately and our emergency Personnel responded so appropriately and getting all of our
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children out of the school safely that day um and it was also a testament to uh Portland Public Schools within about a week and to our community really that within about a week we had all of those children back in another school and uh with teaching and learning happening again um and this is just so exciting to see this construction happening um on time on budget um as many will recall in our bond in 19 in 2011 we tried to include Marysville so that if we were going to be redoing half the school wouldn't it make some sense to take the opportunity to include the fire money the from the insurance and we build the whole school but um that didn't happen and so now we're you know doing the next best thing that we could um but I'm just so thrilled to know that our Marysville kids are going to be back um in January and back home and uh as it turns out to a much nicer facility so it's uh I appreciate all of the good work that the staff has done and all of the community support we've had throughout this entire uh adventure and the patience of the Marysville staff and the Marysville families um because it has been a huge hardship um it's just so exciting that we're gonna have them back soon though so it's pretty neat I guess I just um you mention in our report it mentioned that it's on budget but I just wanted to verify that it's not only on time but it's on budget is that correct corre okay that's great um and the second thing is is I just I just want to Echo um I know how how excited the folks at marville are to be home um and as you pointed out it's been three years and I know that there were lots of reasons one of being the bond um but I just I look forward to celebrating with the community to to be back home and I really appreciate the efforts that you guys have put in to engage both the community and the teachers um it's it's a really important step um to doing that and I just it's great thank you than you okay you're welcome for theob really to watch the whole process um evolved by photos so thank you for capturing all that okay thank you thank youing on to the next which isic of update on that um I think we have heard you know and I think some some testimony before from from people in the community they have benefited from the use of the buildings and I think that you know the praise that was also given in regards to the use of this building um knowing also that I was just just this weekend you know close to my house uh George at George school I mean there was a health you know kind of affair uh that was happening through the Mexican counsel and and and benefiting the Latino Community uh but also you know a um a cup you know Soccer Cup tournament uh for health uh also took place there so I know that were a number of things that were happening so I mean this is just one example those things happening so I'm glad that that you're here to talk about that and actually I'm right over Tony but um there's been a lot of question about just how widespread the um Civic use of our buildings are and we have a whole process in Portland Public Schools that is how um both partner agencies and uh community members access our buildings in the time when they're not being used by students so um Tony's going to give a report kind of looking at the broad scope of what that use is Tony Magano thank you good evening board superintendent my name is Tony Magano I'm the interim deputy chief operations officer um as part of the board of education's work plan staff was asked to provide informational reports to the board on a series of topics and tonight I actually have a double feature to the Civic use of buildings and uh Capital project performance um the first is our Civic use of buildings program which offers after schools access to a variety of users stakeholders Partners ranging from for-profit organizations nonprofits our own internal educational programs child heare providers and other public agencies um our CU program aligns nicely with the work that was accomplished through our community-led long range facilities um plan development specifically um one of the goals about optimizing utilization of our schools while taking uh the consideration of our academic programs considering those and in fact many of our Civic use of
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buildings programs after hours um align extend or enhance programs we offer in our buildings um I also wanted to let the board know that we recently transitioned to an online web-based reservation system which brings Integrity to our data transparency and reduces you it gets us away from um filling out paperwork and faxing it more using technology to to become more efficient in the um attached to the information report the board has I want to highlight just a few statistics around the program um that I think um bring light to just how many um users we have in our buildings in fact in FY 1112 nearly 203,000 separate spaces were rented out so gyms classrooms Fields cafeterias um in the report you s see that referred to as bookings that's that's what a booking is um gross revenue of approximately $760,000 that came in um with regard to the fees that we charge to use these spaces um and the estimated attendance of nearly 3 and A5 million users now this is kind of like Disneyland and that we get repeat users so multiple but and this is based off of the requesters estimated number of people that would attend we're not actually headcount but that's what people projected would be in attendance at their users um tonight I also I would like to introduce two of our partners that can highlight um what the Cub program brings to their organizations and the community they serve and tonight we have Warren yimz who is the assistant director at Portland um Parks and Recreation and we have Tony Han who's with Mosaic games and I'd like to turn it over to them and then I'll come back for a Qui questions after they're done welcome and please introduce yourself for the record thanks for having us here uh Warren jenez I'm the assistant director of H Portland parks and Rex Tony Han the president of mosa games well it's a pleasure to be here I guess I'll I'll kick it off um uh Portland parks and recreation was awarded uh currently is currently the national gold medal award uh winner for excellence which is the highest achieving award in the Portland parks at Rex system so it was voted the number one system uh in the nation this past year at least we get to hang on to that title for one more week until a new winner uh comes along that will be announced next week as at a National Conference in Anaheim so we're going to claim every bit of it to the last second that we can take it um but the reason why I point that out is because obviously we don't do that alone um we do that because of very unique Partnerships that we have in place and one of those very unique Partnerships is with with Portland Public Schools it is absolutely critical to Our Success to have those types of unique Partnerships in place and and and it's and it benefits our community more importantly it benefits our kids and our youth um in the community that we love and so I just wanted to point out just a couple areas and a couple numbers that I quite frankly are pretty amazing in terms of the numbers um the areas I just want to talk about real quickly is just around how we use the fields how we use the gyms uh how we use the pools and then talk a little bit about Sun schools um this year in terms of fields and the number of teams um that we had a chance to engage uh 9,000 kids playing soccer 6,000 kids playing Little League Baseball 1,200 playing lacrosse and a thousand playing rugby which is pretty astounding when's the last time we played rugby Matt has it been a while has it been a while okay um and with without these these opportunities to use these fields um we would only be able to capture about 40% of these kids um through our current system so the demand for Fields is incredibly high and without this partnership we wouldn't be able to access um or get those kids active in our community um basketball program gyms really important to our the success of our basketball program um which benefits kids uh 3rd through 12th grade and uh last year we registered over 270 uh teams um and majority of those played in in your gyms which is really
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important to the success of our of those programs um also uh 450 kids participated on uh the Saturday youth volleyball program again happening in your gyms um Portland parks and Rex has access to a lot of different pools indoors and Outdoors but we also use some of your facilities as well at Buckman and Wilson um people get to enjoy open swim time swim times uh water aerobic classes and swim lessons at those pools uh Sun schools again is another unique partnership between Rex and and Portland Public Schools Believe It or Not 2013 will Mark the 35th anniversary of that partnership where Portland parks and and Rex has run Sun schools in Portland uh Public Schools facilities so that partnership has existed for a long time um in the past year over 3,200 Youth and even some adults participated in over a thousand classes in activities um and uh participants receive uh various supports around academic enrichment and recreational opportunities as well as Social Services through that system and I think we're all very familiar with that system you know one of the things that we get asked in our community which is an interesting question is why don't team up with Portland P Portland Public Schools and do stuff together and the reality is is that's happening and we're proud of that partnership and I'm just here just to say thank you I appreciate it thank you um my name is um Tony Ham um again I'm the president of mosac games and what we are is we're a after school program and we were formed with the purpose of challenging young minds with the stimulating mental activities um by keeping the fun in these activities we try to teach kids important lessons that they can learn in life um such as sport sportsmanship teamwork uh problem solving critical thinking concentration and patience and so a lot of these programs we offer through um several activities such as chess um which Portland Public Schools has offered for many years throughout the thing and I've helped with uh chess for success and um their tournaments that they run at several schools we also uh teach Legos and after school programs and computer game making as well one of the problems that we run into frequently is where do we offer these programs if we didn't have use of Portland Public Schools what we would have is to go to local churches or rent out local facilities and because of the ease of kids staying after school and returning to a very local environment it's very easy for kids to get out of school and these activities become an extension of their day instead of an event that they have to go and return to during um at some time later in the day the ability for us to use these schools in a local environment is also very helpful we do a lot of activities with Public School uh private schools um such as Oregon Episcopal School and a lot of arch dases schools a lot of those people actually go back home and then come to some of the programs at Portland Public so they actually use the facility locally um we have been working with c u Civic use of buildings for about six years now and I've really enjoyed my time with them one of the reasons I'm here is I've actually complemented them on the ease of use of the program they have I've dealt with school districts from all over greater Portland um from Wilsonville to Vancouver Gresham to Forest Heights and it's always been a pleasure to deal with um the ladies at Civic use of buildings so I want to thank you for letting us use of your facilities and that would be it have a nice night thank you thank you both questions questions let us off easy any questions I think it's thank you thanks I guess I would I would be a little remiss if I didn't recognize um Patty Christensen and Debbie pois have been working in our Civic use of building up office for quite some time and um they do good customer service with everyone and are appreciated thank you okay you can just
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carry on with your double billing yes can so I just really appreciate this and it's wonderful to see Partners we don't often hear from that we know are in our buildings all the time and it's great to to see them and hear from them um and just thanks for all your good management of this so I guess it just it's more just a sort of a comment I just always that Balan because we hear often from um particularly neighborhood like when you're out in a neighborhood association meetings in the community with wanting it to be easier and I have noticed actually at least in Southwest a hope elsewhere in the city as well more and more neighborhood associations meeting in schools in the library which is fantastic um so that's great to see but just that balance of oh why can't we get free access to the schools and knowing that we're obviously in extremely tight budget times and needing to be accountable to the public for stewardship of the resources and at the same time having one of our main goals um to be greater Community Access and use of our buildings so just recognizing that as kind of a challenge or a you know attention going forward and I don't know if you guys have talked more about that or if that came out out in their long range facility plan discussions at all if just that Phil philosophical kind of balancing act between open access for you know community-based groups versus the need for Portland Public Schools to also be able to charge and and um recoup some of the costs involved well I know it's if I turn behind my desk and I look on my whiteboard there's this big check block that has Civic use of buildings procedures and policies and and rates as something we as a district we need to look at and it's not just there's a variety of internal and external stakeholders that need to be involved in that um it's related to Partnerships and and um and you're right managing taxpayers money so we will be looking at that whole and Equity is deep in it as well so we need to um um we need to put some rigor into the whole program and it also gets back to the the piece that Mr HZ mentioned just the lack of awareness sometimes in the public a that it's available or B that it is happening all the time and constantly so sometimes it can be that the sense that there is this there isn't access when actually there there is and folks are going in the buildings all the time but but again just to emphas I guess particularly for the audience that that really is a key goal for all of us that the buildings particularly as they're being um improved and rebuilt that they'll be like at Rosa Parks our one one of our only new um school buildings you walk in the front door and there's this glass walled Community Access room that's used by parents and um Community groups so this just just a great example of literally the open walls um that you can go in and have a meeting there so any I just wanted to highlight that a little bit I guess I just wanted to follow up on that when we when I was touring um the new facility at Sandy high school that they actually designed the new building with that in mind and so for example the the library had outside access right so for example in our current schools I think of all most schools I go into and if I'm going to go into a meeting which I do lots of right um I have to walk through the main entrance down the hall usually tangang a you know what I mean like I have to Trek through the school right versus allowing the custodian to get their work done right in the rest of the school while we might just be using the library so which is a great security piece too as well as ease of access so yeah that's it's really exciting to see how the buildings can be figure differently to make them more flexible and usable the community that was one thing when I was uh originally as a parent on the design team for Forest Park which was our second newest building that was a huge discussion in terms of the design team so that we could um invite members into the community to use for example the cafeteria or the gymnasium but basically close off the rest of the school so you know you it was safe and secure and the custodian didn't have to worry about that while the other part was for Community use so I think as we go you know all of our new buildings will likely be designed for you know day use by students where it's all open but night use where certain parts are open as appropriate which um makes a ton of sense one of the things I always think about in terms of community use of school is that we used to as community members vote in our school buildings and it's the one part of vote by mail that makes me sad because everything else is great about vote by mail but we no longer have the opportunity for you know pretty much EV every registered voter to be in our buildings you know at least you know often once twice a year whatever it might be um and so I think in the uh presentation today we've been talking a lot about Community use by students um or or kids um but there is still huge Community use by adults and as an example my husband and I were on a dodgeball team a couple of years ago and you know we were in the school buildings all the time know throwing balls at each
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other and you know creating Mayhem and it was great fun um so I guess one of the questions that I would have as we go is um I know that the parks department advertises the you know different programs that happen in our buildings but do we actually publicize do they 80% of folks who don't have kids in school you know that they can use these buildings or or how do we go about that yeah do we Market them do we advertis I know I I brought our our homeowners association and neighborhood association through our elementary school recently and I was like you know and we can rent this out and everybody was like wow really I mean it seems like folks hopefully would know that but you know I don't know it I don't it hasn't been a practice that we're well versed in and it has come to light particularly around our great fields and promoting the empty space on them and how do we do that but it you point out very well it's actually broader than just a field it's about the entire Civic the entire program and it's good for us to have our community in the schools a lot so anyway it's just something for us to think about as we go is how we can kind of publicize a little bit better these are Community buildings and they're there for Community use so even if there is a little fee to cover the custodians just going to highlight um both to to make this possible I know that it seems like the building's there and it should theoretically be free but the challenges and the um the pressure that that puts on both custodians and principles because what winds up happening is when a group shows up and expecting this or that um they're going to run into the decision maker at the building and that will either be the custodian or principal so I just want to highlight that um I think we were far ahead of the curve of trying to figure out how to manage our facilities because I know that other districts came late to it um or are still coming to it so thank you for that and I just want to call out the the principales and the custodians because I know that there are the people on the ground um that wind up having to challenge about I have my dance team oh my goodness I have conferences and trying to manage all that with the help of Civic use so good good so we're going to move to the next item which is uh capital projects update so this report um highlights most of our recent capital projects and is being presented as it relates in to part again um the board's work plan in that the board identified some areas that they wanted to monitor while this particular topic wasn't C called out specifically it does relate to both um the long range facilities plan and the capital asset renewal policy and as you know fam's primary funding source for capital projects has been a $3 million general fund allocation I think it's important though to recognize that we've done fairly well at leveraging other funding sources either through the American Recovery and reinvestment act or the SB Senate Bill 1149 also known as cool schools program we've even made um decisions to take on debt if the payback for a particular project was beneficial for us um so I just wanted to highlight a few of those projects um you beginning with the solar roofs in 2009 started out to roof nine of our buildings and then in partnership with um ger eand um Sustainable Solutions uh we added thin film solar panels to that work um these panels produce about 19% of the um electricity that those buildings use which translates roughly over a 20year period to about a million dollar in energy usage savings or avoided costs um so that's pretty significant in that project alone and as I go through this I think at the end I'll summarize how all of these little projects add up to some pretty significant either avoided costs or savings for the district right now um we have the recover Zone Bond project which is actually still underway it was in 2010 um as part of the American Recovery and reinvestment act we responded to an RFI request for information from the city um where we identified uh several Pro projects that would meet the criteria for the these Energy Efficiency projects um the city selected us and
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awarded that pass that Bond on to us um this memorandum that I provided the board highlights many individual projects that have been completed and several more that are still underway um they should all be completed by December of 2013 uh the annual expected savings once these projects are completed is about $1.25 million um and I'd also like to you know recognize you know some positive steps the board made with regard to that too as it ties to the capital asset renewal policy um the board designated that once we that debt is retired that that one two $1.2 million Debt Service goes into the capital asset renewal fund which then in turn goes toward U maintaining our recent Capital Investments or any new or new modernized or renovated buildings in the future so this is the way that we begin you know to set aside funding to take care of our highly valuable capable assets SB 1149 Senate Bill 1149 is another um funding source we've used to do many projects um and they're specifically designated for Energy Efficiency projects typically water projects do not qu qualify and look at this I have to put on glasses cuz my eyes are getting blurry so um under this program we've completed more than 150 energy projects um with an estimated annual Energy savings of approximately $384,000 a few um other large projects we've done um of course the Marshall transition getting Frank Franklin and uh Madison ready to accept kids from Marshall students from Marshall and also the boy Elliot humble consolidation both of those projects focused on um assisting and providing the robust academic programming that we were trying to do in those schools some of the highlights um the health clinic at Franklin new science labs at both Franklin and Madison Child Care Center at Madison and dozen of other program and classroom upgrades at Boise Elliott upgrading the library and modifying existing classrooms to be able to hold more students in those schools some of the things I'm as I alluded to a little earlier that I'm most proud of with the work that we've done um re revolves around the Energy Efficiency and savings so um between FY 1011 and FY 1112 so the two previous years years our energy use went down by about 65% um since FY 0708 where we baselined our energy usage it's gone down by about 133% so today what that means for us is we've saved or avoided about $5.2 million in utility cost had we not done all the things we're doing our utility budget would be about $5 million more than what it is today so that's a real savings to the general fund um and between fy101 and FY 1112 some more statistics that are called out in the report you have um about 1.8 million kilowatt hours of of electricity which is equivalent to about $185,000 a year um we've used we've less usage around fuel oil about 223,000 gallons less of fuel oil which is another $714,000 a year and about 10.7 million gallons of water water is pretty cheap though $105,000 but when you add all those numbers together that's a million dollars less that we could have spent had we not done this type of work so um I think that's something to be proud of um I would be remiss also if I didn't say that there's other benefits to this work in terms of impact on the environment you think of the carbon footprint and um just energy usage in general um and I would also like to say that some of these savings are attributed to our users as well our building occupants who all of our schools have various programs whether
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it's um their electricity team running around at the end of the day making sure all the computers are shut off or the lights are off um so a lot of Education um using our americore team to go out and educate building users so all of that um adds up and contributes to these numbers so if you have any questions director sorry um thank this is a really great report over the years that I've been on the board I've heard a lot of about a lot of these projects as they were in process and so it's great to see the results that we're saving energy and we're saving money um I wanted to just ask about the boiler burner project that was going on this summer how many of those so were completed and where we are in that in that project our our Target was to have 33 of the 47 schools done by October 15th and we're on target to have that done um right now the we have as as of today 23 schools we had a boiler up and running at TH at those schools tomorrow we have three more coming online but um I also have to thank mother nature for the nice weather we've had cuz yeah we were praying a lot for that and we've gotten it and it's and October 15th was all of our our our deadline and it looks like the weatherman's calling for October 15th to be that cold day that we were expecting so um once we get those 33 schools done we have to we have to take a breath we have to figure out where how we um go after the next group and whether we're bold enough to try to do some over winter break when we have about 14 total days and uh weigh the risk talking with our contractor that we've been working closely with because the last thing we want to do is open up a school and then find out you know when they they come back on after Christmas break we can't get the heat on so so right now we're real optimistic there's a lot I mean it's it's tasking our maintenance Workforce now because as you can imagine you know the maintenance with our boilers has been an issue so we get a vendor we're upgrading things and then we find things that are maintenance responsibility to fix whether it's a control issue or a a water drainage issue or a compressor issue so even our maintenance work for is working you know the weekends to help get this project complete so right well that's great so that's exciting that you'll get to the 33 and then just keep figuring out how to get the rest of them done because that's it's a big savings and it's a big Improvement in terms of not burning all that you know heavy fuel oil that is very polluting in addition to being very expensive so I know it's early days but do you have any sense I one of the one of the additional benefits was last time for the custodians to be Co mixing the ancient um outdated equipment along so is there any sense yet when the schools that are online I guess not cuz it's been two nights and they haven't really been using it yeah so we it' be great to find out like later on in the year even just by a quick written you know update that we can share with folks how that's going and so kind of the feeling how the custodians are feeling about because it we you know those awful when you'd visit and you'd see this these nasty blackened Sy places is where they were trying to and then the time that they were spending trying to keep them alive day in and day out so anyway well and if you've walked in any of our walked into any of our boiler rooms and saw how dirty the the natural you should be able to walk in in the future and they're clean that'll be one sign right there yeah I know that's true in my furnace room in my house when we got rid of our old furnace it was much cleaner yeah um great I I think one of the The Things director Atkin was was mentioning in regards to not only the communication to the external side you know to to the public in regards to what's going on with that project but I I'm wondering in regards to how how much communication have we done internally like say at the at the building itself and say okay here's our progress in regards to this thing and here is our our expected uh deadline for this project to be able to say you know to the teachers to the to the rest of the workers in that in that uh in that building can you so we work very closely with the principal on all these projects that we we do in the building um as a matter of fact that's like the number one thing on our checklist so that the principal is aware of what's the impact on the building when the Project's going to comp be completed um even uh we offer to share an educational
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piece like we did on the solar roof when we did the um kiosk or when we did the windmill up at uh Skyline the vendor came in and they did a a project around the electricity that's generated off that so we're more than willing to do that piece with if the if the school's open to it as well was is that yeah I I guess I'm I'm trying to to to I guess emphasize the the importance of communication not just with one individual in that building um because I think that we all have different ways of communicating you know like I get this report here today um how many people do I reach with that report I mean we have an advantage that is getting to the to the uh cable TV but I don't have cable TV for example so I'm not going to get to see it in regards to this update and I don't work in the buildings uh and or go often enough to be able to you know when a teacher approaches me about this thing or says hey you know um how well together do they have it here in regards to this thing I couldn't tell them exactly because I don't necessarily know the timeline for that particular building MH so it it's it's emphasizing I think the importance of the more communication I think the better is for for everybody um and and to perhaps include that is part of the regular update that you know principles do you know do carry but you know it's different ways people hear it you know some some people like myself are very visual learn by something that is in writing other people kind of hear it other people do some other stuff but anyway it's just again a reminder I think for all of us to make sure that we communicate yeah I'll just Echo that that um if I were sitting in a building and the boiler were out right now and I'm we say that the nice weather has been but it's been pretty chilly in the morning and so my guess is the buildings take some time to to warm up so if I were a teacher who may or may not have made the staff meeting or gotten something from my principal I think as we look forward um and hopefully with the the passage of our bond um as we're doing more construction that oversharing information is probably just really important that um because then people know when there's a deadline or when when to expect it most people can put up with most things if they know that there's going to be an end to it and when that's going to happen so on time and on budget I love it thank you very much thank you thank you Tony for the fun part um I think we've been waiting for uh I think we all have uh been wanting to I think engage a bit more and and find out more in regards to the you know the high school uh schedule update so superintendent Smith if you want to introduce this item I do and I will just say this is again um as Tony was referencing the monitoring um column in the board work plan really outlined what are things that we're going to touch back and see what the progress what's the status of those things that we've set in motion uh and I'll ask suan Higgins our chief academic officer and trip Goodall our director of high schols to come on up and I would also just like to acknowledge that we have um a number of our High School principles in the room tonight so Margaret Calbert from Jefferson Shay James from Franklin Vivian Orland from Grant Carol Campbell from Benson Payton Chapman from Lincoln and I don't know that anybody else came in while I turned around um but who are present for the conversation tonight and this I'm going to draw a distinction we had um an earlier testimony about High School System design that was a process we went through about really getting viably sized high schools and offering Challenge and support in each um in each school and a number of other things that were our vision for what we wanted to accomplish in our high schools we then had a subsequent schedule change at high schools and went to an eight period block that was about a budget reduction so we're doing these in two separate conversations so tonight we're really looking at um a discussion about the schedule change what's the impact of the schedule change you've got data in front of you that takes you through for each high school campus three years and I gave this to you um at the last board meeting just so you had a chance to look at it prior to tonight um but that really takes you through period by period and what kind of um what number of students are accessing what number of periods in the day over the last three years so you've got some comparative data on your seats tonight you had um Communications that went out to families at the um and at the spring prior to the year we just completed uh explaining to
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them the thinking about um why and how we were going to implement this particular schedule change so you have um a letter from our then Chief academic officer Carla Randall uh in May to families you have a family advisory that went out um about the schedule change for high schools that's got a bunch of the underpinnings and the the thinking at the time and then you have a um a Q&A or a question and answer series about questions that people were raising so this is mostly to ground us back in the thinking at the point we set this in motion um and then tonight what we're going to do is walk through what are the impacts how are we thinking about it what are we looking at and um as we go forward so I'll turn it over to suan to start the conversation good evening I um wanted to begin by saying that um the shift to an 8 period day um uh for the student day was as superintendent Smith said um reaction to what wasn't a one-time budget reduction but looking into a continuing future of uh resource depletion and so utilizing a model that's used Statewide and nationally quite widely to um provide access to the Common Core program and maintain uh course offerings wherever possible at the same time that we um sustained significant budget reductions so our goals were to um manage uh our desire for students to have um continued access to courses access to instructional time and um in a full student day where uh where they could and so um one of the documents that you saw tonight was in the spring of 2011 documentation about um the average number of courses students were taking um prior to these decisions and then tonight um we'll trip will discuss more about sort of where we are in terms of an update there so um and uh we'll also be able to so we want to sort of narrate the how we got here a little bit how it's going now and um and then we know you may have some questions as well so um I want to say though from the GetGo um the decision to shift to this8 period day and this particular model was not um uh wasn't driven by a desire um that or a sense that this would improve programming overall so it was from the get-go um a less than ideal um scenario that we were facing and when the decision was made um it was you know mitigate and every possible way um negative in outcomes for students and so and uh I want to commend all the principles both here and not here tonight as well as their teaching staffs for really doing a phenomenal job under complex circumstances to revise um decades old scheduling models to make this work really well for students so my my hat is absolutely off to all of them as instructional leaders and their Devotion to making sure that kids have access to strong core program as well as meeting our other Ambitions around elective office offerings World Language the artarts ETC so with that trip okay I'm part of that club too so I'm going to put my glasses on um I want to thank you for the opportunity tonight to talk a little bit about an update on our high school schedule and I also want to make sure that I don't get the chance publicly to acknowledge the High School principles especially those that are here tonight they they are involved in incredibly challenging complex work I know you know that but again I don't get that opportunity too often to really say that in a public Arena such as this one and so I am incredibly fortunate to work with such an accomplished group of Educators so it's a it's a terrific team to be a part of um you have in front of you some documents as um superintendent Smith indicated earlier one of which is this three-year data report um you also have those three communications that went out to the public one is a question and answer another one is a a family advisory bulletin that detailed the decision to go to an period block day and then lastly there is the letter from our previous CAO Carla Randall just really giving you I think again some background in terms of how we communicated to the public um this decision and internally as well um if you if you take a look at those documents and we'll start start with this one that you have in front of
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you and this one which was the question and answer that was put out in 2011 you you have I think some opportunity to trace kind of the evolution of the 8 period block day as it went out which I think is critically important um the most current document the color document that you have does in fact show the percentages and as Scott alluded to earlier sometimes you get caught up in the percentages and things like that but I think it is important to use it as a a a sort of a moment of comparison the document that you have that's the question and answer one in 2011 actually did chart out by school the percentage of students that were taking at least seven classes this document shows you students that are taking all the way up through eight classes right and you can see that there's obviously some differences there um on average the district went up to 6.6 from what I believe was 6.4 when you look at that and again we're just looking at um percentages if you look at um this document I want to make sure that I point out on the last page it does indicate that early release late arrival study hall teaching assistant positions are not included in this data so this is students taking classes right the the next um piece of information that I provided for you last week is this chart that gives you the current sort of preliminary look at what we're doing in our high schools with regard to our schedules if you take a look across the top The Columns are the number of AP IB classes with their average size the number of dual enrollment dual credit classes that we currently are offering in our schools Freshman Academy information number of academic Support classes in average size and then I included um information on our current study hall situations in our in our schools and and I wanted to point out that many of our study halls today are are much more what I would consider a tutorial opportunity where we have peer mentors we have in some cases un University students working with our students um we have a significant help in four of our high schools around um a voluntary public school choice grant that allows us to do some online credit recovery as well as um present time credit completion in those um what we call study halls but again I think they've really evolved into something much more than that um at a future board meeting um I will be coming back and giving you an update on where we are at with the implementation of the high school systems design process um it's it's been an ongoing study obviously since it was implemented last year to determine what we've been able to maintain and preserve out of that original document given the fact that there have been some extraordinary fiscal constraints and so I'll leave you with that can I ask a clarifying question first um on this document where it's the study hall size by period what you're saying is uh for period one and period 8 for each of these days if a child ends up not coming in for the first period because they essentially have a study hall they won't necessarily show up on this list uh on this one this one they will yeah I think you're if you're referring to this one so the so the number of courses a student is taking um this one did not include study hall classes so what it was trying to show you was um so how many classes are kids taking however on this one when we're giving data about study hall loads those those are the study halls that kids are in and when they're in them3 people like when we did this preliminary snapshot period class and so those would be considered our late arrivals there would only be 33 late arrival kids at Cleveland at Cleveland High School so these are not late arrival these students actually in a stud stud H right so if they're a late arrival instead where would they show up they would not show up on the stud ask yeah so what would they show up as I mean if they're a late arrival that means they're not taking a class of periodism right so then so that's you would see them on this document that would show how how many students are taking which
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classes during which periods in each high school so does that make sense so these are showing you two different looks at this they're measuring two different things it would just be a hole in their schedule I mean if they have late arrival early release that just wouldn't be part of their schedule it wouldn't show up on this document here they're not difference between a whole in your schedule and a study hall a study hall is where you're actually in a room under supervision of an adult hopefully working on your schoolwork and you sign up for a study hall you are signed up for the study hall late arrival early release is really you're you're on your own so you're also not including teacher assistance in these numbers either that's not a class these are academic classes correct the study calls or academic classes these are academic classes these are academic classes look on on the on the bottom of this one it tells you what's being excluded from the definition of class for the purposes of this piece of data I I think that what you're getting at and what we don't have is we don't have an easy way to visualize how many kids have that first period free and don't have to be at school for that first period or the last part so for example I often hear from Community feedback is my kid doesn't have to be in till X Y or z um or my kid's done at noon um but those the number of kids that that for whom that is is not clearly identified is that right I can look at percentages or I don't have exact numbers is that right okay that's correct yeah so if you looked at the the Q&A document the four page one um from from 2011 showed by grade how many students had at least seven courses and so you would see that districtwide only 27% of all students had what we at that time call the full schedule or seven period schedule um and so so we have not crossed that okay can I interrupt just real quick but that doesn't necessarily mean it started that that hole in their schedule was at the beginning or the end of the day it could have been in the middle of the day it could have been right right and it could still now be yeah so you do have numbers for kids who are in study halls you don't have numbers that quantify who how many are getting late arrivals or early releases do you want that number we probably have it somewhere I mean we can deduce it but we don't have it as a number right I would like that number yeah definitely it would be helpful to understand when our kids are in classes or not and and along with that I mean I think definition regards to I mean later rival or or release is is is more of whether it's a choice or actually there is no option you know what I mean because there is a a difference in regards to if we're going to look at putting value on that part I mean I'm not sure what how that will be useful so I'm trying to get to it that way at least for me trying to understand that part right I guess one of my questions would be um if a kid doesn't have obviously we know that on average students are signed up for six and a half classes so but they because but if they don't have a class they don't necessarily have a study hall so they're not just automatically assigned to a study hall correct so they're either so they ask to be in a study hall is it certain grade levels you must be in a study hall I mean is there any kind of any any kind of structure around this decision of whether they're in a study hall maybe if there's only 30 kids in there they might be studying if there's 147 kids in there that's probably pretty tough um environment and um might there might be some ways to stru that but that's be be pretty difficult how does it happen that a kid is either in a study hall or not so it's school by school um counselors and students determining um what the students needs are whether they need additional tutorial what course offerings are available given a student so the for instance whatever World Language a student is in um determines when they can have flexibility for their other core course and so um so that may be a driver in
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terms of what lands where and their schedule they um their skills overall so whether or not they need access to um a specific skill building course um whether or not they um or whether they have are on track or ahead of their graduation requirements in terms of credits and determines both where there's flexibility around later arrival early release and some of the choices about where their course schedule sits so so it's very individual um and uh so counselors parents and students navigate this together and I think it's important to know too if you don't have the the Staffing to be able to provide other courses for students you have to have students to have an opportunity to go somewhere and so I think that's is isue here as well so if it's the middle of the day so if it's the middle of the day and I have third period and there isn't anything that I can take what's my can I just say well I don't can I I just don't want to be here that at that time I'm I'm going to go home during that period or do I have that's school to school but I think what the principes did extraordinarily well this year was to try and create schedules where our 9th 10th and 11th graders had classes is scheduled in such a way as they had either an early release or a late arrival and not that middle of the day issue um I mean I would defer to some of the principles here but I think that's primarily what we did you didn't notice that was I see one nod I thought I saw more than one inquisitive looks from others so I'm so I'm I could take a TA or I could you could you could be a TA which a number of kids have done that my kids were Tas yeah yeah okay okay so basically though what you're saying is the principles and the counselors have worked to have kids either come to school late or leave early so they don't have those holes in the middle of the day correct so how they're using that time we have no idea because they're not in school exactly and that's I mean I I guess I would say that's a a family's Choice as well to make that decision unless they're in a study hall and then they're on campus and they're on campus so I have a I have a question the and this is I guess more of a clarifying but it looks like on average we're seeing students uh we're seeing the the number of real real classes uh on this the colored sheet actually go up yes for each each High School each campus looks like every single one it it's gone up that's correct that's correct so the average has gone up from 6.4 classes per student to 6.62 right so there's a small increase in the average and then um uh some schools the increase has been larger others um you know closer to what it has been but in no cases has it gone backwards from last year from um 1011 to 1112 which is the year that we trying to take a look at right and 1112 to 1213 this year so so so again it's an improbable feat that our high school administrators and their staffs have actually put together a plan on a a much more complex model to schedule with fewer adults in all of the buildings to have more class opportunities for kids so this is I see this as a real yeah uh very very impressive uh win on the parts of our kids and community at a time when this would not have been our ideal model so right I mean in at least a couple cases the average has gone up one one whole class almost so it's pretty significant yeah but isn't it true that taking six periods now in a six of eight model compared to taking six classes before and a six of seven is actually less instructional time yes and what are we doing about that well we're we're we're looking at other districts right now to see whether or not there's any strategies that they're using to try and addre address the loss of class time um we certainly haven't cut days we haven't we've done as well as we can given this schedule and the constraints that we have right now with regard to why we went to the six or the E Period block schedule rather so um I
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don't I think tiger and twon we talked with them last week comparable schedule that we have um Beaverton has something that they're doing with an advisory that we're going to look at to see whether or not there's a way that you can pick up some additional minutes that way but um yeah I think beyond that though there has been professional development in our high schools around how to really leverage the most out of class periods um one of the Ben benefits of this schedule is it reduces the amount of passing time in a given day so reduces the number of opportunities where kids might wander off or engage in something that is not productive and so um so while the instructional minutes has declined um in course by course overall the schedule still meets the state's minimum requirements and so so as compromises go I'm I'm confident that um we will continue to see um skill growth for our students and positive gains over time so and I mean all of this in a time when we you know also have added the the state has added the additional expectations around essential skills Etc so there's no question that it's a very complex task for high schools to pull off so have aot question I do too okay um so you mentioned that these study halls are more like tutorials um as far as the experience I'm hearing from parents and families maybe it's not in the schools that I'm hearing from so where is that happening and um what's the model and is there a way that we can extend that across the district so that we have because if you had kids in study hall actually doing all of their homework and getting help with their work at least it would be more valuable time time and a structured study hall can really be helpful to students who need the help so H how is that happening and how can we make it happen yeah I mentioned earlier that um we had some we had a voluntary public school choice Grant in our district that provided some additional funding for Madison Jefferson Franklin and Benson to initially we were looking at a Learning Center that would be in the afternoon but the group of teachers that we hired to to put this together really began to see the need to do it during the day using the study hall as the model and I mean they've done some extraordinary work putting this together um along with our online learning program they've really combined their resources and So currently we have in those four buildings A variation of some something around this but Benson comes to mind and Franklin comes to mind immediately um I know Carol could probably speak to what's happening at Benson want me to I'd love you to yeah because I mean I I I know there that's a program that is certainly um doing some great work around it we'd be happy to hear about that okay you got okay well I don't want to paint the picture that we've solved the problem but um we compressed our schedule so that um our um most of our classes fall in periods 3 through 7 or 3 through 6 so that 1 2 7 and 8 um are periods where we're putting freshman sophomore classes to give them a full day of school and those that don't have a full day of school then have late arrival or early release and our study halls are 2 through six and or 3 through 6 I'm sorry we actually had added 1 7 too we changed the name to tutorial so students the perception would be that it's for um it's for work um not for just hanging out which last year we made the newspaper because our study you might remember the article Benson the picture was of 200 students in our cafeteria but the um the text of the article was an interview with a principal in I think uh Park Rose or something but yeah it's kind of embarrassing but anyway so we've reduced the numbers I think our biggest one now is 60 but we created a space that has two computer labs and a work area so our online Learners are in there as well um with um teachers who have expectations for checking in with students seeing what they're working on every day asking them if they have something to do checking in with the online Learners so we're calling the space The Learning Center and that came out of that Grant so we have we also have a person who's there part of of the day to to help us manage that space um who's not really responsible for the
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students but helping us come up with ideas to provide opportunities for students to work together um we're thinking about uh getting some tutors we've got some peer tutors our own Juniors and seniors who are capable of tutoring in there but we'd like to get some PSU students and that was also um part of the grant was to look at that so what's not working is that we still have a lot of kids who have later or early release but they don't have open periods in the middle of the day which was a problem for us last year so I think and that was we did that strategically to avoid that because we had seniors who were you know where Benson is going over to Lloyd Center coming back and um not having a class that was problematic for us so it's not ideal it's not what we want to do but I think um it making the tutorial more of an expectation for studying getting your homework workk done learning um has made it better than it was last year and they're much smaller um we also have a volunteer that is trying to run a study hall at the end of our day for our athletes so we've opened up the cafeteria for a drop in if you have a sport or a club after school you can drop in there and um have a place to work and then our library is open all periods for drop-ins as well which can create some problems in the library but yeah that good that was wonderful thank you so one of the one of the things that we hear often from the community is comments like you know these study halls are monitored by security guards and I think what they're referring to is study halls being monitored by campus monitors um do you have any sense of what percentage of our study halls are monitored by campus monitors because I have a follow-up question I don't know what the percentage is so we haven't studied that and an anecdotally we know that there are definitely some schools where that's the staff person available and um I don't think it's anyone's dream scenario um and yet if if principales had more teachers they would be holding classes instead of study hall time so I mean that's just one of the realities that we face so well my my follow-up question is clearly campus mon monitors had a purpose yes before they were study hall monitors correct and who is doing that work now most of the schools have two campus monitors and so you know I think there's somebody doing the work they may not I mean they may not have two that are patrolling the grounds if you will m but I'm comfortable with what the principls have told me with regard to how they're utilizing their staff right now I think if they to a person would say they would hope that they could have that restored to its fullest but given where we're at right now it it's not possible they're trying to maximize their Staffing in the classroom campus monitors and principes use radios they're there are rotations that happen if a campus monitor needs to be deployed to a particular situation and an administrator or counselor can back them up um you know for coverage in the study hall so so they all have mechanisms in place but is it our most desirable model no so no one's here lobbying that it is yeah we're not lobbying to stay at this resource I say that like real clearly this is making the best of a really scarce resource situation and if in fact we were still funded at the level we were when we went to the eight period block schedule and we hadn't reduced staff we would have seen a great increase in programming for kids that would be we'd be really excited about so I'm just going to say this is really how are we mitigating a huge budget hole Yeah I was just going to say something to that effect as I feel like here you are trying to defend something that um almost nobody wants to have happen um and none of our principles want to have happen and I think the question then comes as we look at our budgets as we look at our facilities you know I know that we'll get to high school redesign but I I know that I get questions about it's a new world which means it's continued to reduce since high school redesign are we right sized and what does that look like and I know that we don't necessarily have facilities to do any more reduction to get people in them but um I think that question will come out of this but I I acknowledge that you're making I mean again you guys are here saying No it's it's okay when none of us think this is and I think really like I feel like we're paying tribute to the people who have worked to make something work that has been extremely
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challenging to make it work and really U maintain program for kids in in a scarce resource environment maintain a school year maintain program offering maintain the ability to offer Challenge and support on every campus and it's been an act of extreme um when we say we've become masters of improv I'm going to say our principles have become the ultimate masters of improvisation and trying to figure out okay here we do we throw you one more um challenge activity every year and say how do we not take how do we have kids still experience you know a quality program in our schools so I part of what this does do though is we're heading in we are just at the beginning of District Staffing team for the coming budget cycle and we've got the same group of principles and um central office folks really actually depth of some people who've been on that for four years and really have their heads around what do our formulas mean um and so much of the um you know what's worked what hasn't out of the this year feeds that conversation about what are the formulas we're setting up for the coming year so and the hope is you know people are projecting a pretty steady um resource picture to the one we've currently got or you know um we're not looking at having a lot of new resource come in so we're probably still working in how do we make the best use of scarce resources um and we'll continue to do the how do we do the best by kids with the resource we've got to work with yes sorry just one question that jumped out at me there's um as I look at the numbers on the the sheet um one school seems to have much larger um study halls than than some other can I'm sure that there's a reason for that and I'd like to hear that sh here sh you happens to be one of the buildings where we have that Grant also so that's been a big help so we actually chose not to let our freshmen um and the majority of our sophomores have early release or late arrival and so instead we the they automatically are scheduled into a study hall unless parents opt out I could probably count on both hands the amount of parents that have opted out of the study hall option as freshmen and those are also coincidentally our largest classes um we we also chose to schedule kids in study hall knowing that we were going to um Implement our online online learning that will be happening in the in the study halls and so we're in the process of doing that um with the grant that uh trip has referred to and in addition we were waiting for the go-ahead um to use pure mentors without that being counted against uh teacher case loads so once we got the okay for p peer mentors um we've now you know um secured the kids that are going to be doing P mentors and they'll be coming out of a study hall so we'll see those numbers start to go down as well and they'll be used for the online thanks so I had a feeling that there was a value behind it about we're just as a community we're not going to do this we're going to thank you right thank you yeah um I have a couple one is um I understand there's a there's a lot of um problem solving going on in the buildings uh it was interesting last spring talking to seniors about their experience under the new schedule because they had been in a in a different environment and they had some pretty significant feedback of about things that worked and things that didn't and I I wonder about our high schools or as a system as a whole um taking advantage of that um intelligence um you know the little anecdotal things was how hard it was for athletes if they missed a class on a regular basis because they had games and if if they missed you know one day that's like missing two days in previous years it made it really hard for them to keep up in that class and sometimes they would end up dropping it um some of the students talked about how hard it was to have math every other day um so some of those things are are we really looking at the best way academically to work with this schedule so that it meets kids' needs um and how you know how are we doing that that uh I I understand that maybe at Grant they have a little
01h 30m 00s
different model where they have a an 8 period day on Monday so maybe that's an experiment I'm just wondering is that a we're trying something different and seeing how it works there or what two schools are doing that Lincoln and Grant uhhuh and the the rationale behind it's where they it's the option to take a look at um one of your days having the chance to see all of the students on your case load so it's a traditional in some ways um schedule like we've seen in the past so you're going to see all of your students on Monday to set the rest of the week up so then you'll go AB a rather than have an a a a schedule it's a it's a schedule that I it's you know what every Wednesday which classes you have every you know every day of the week as opposed to The Rolling um block that most of this a schedule that I I actually taught under in a district that I worked in at one time and we did it for that purpose to be able to see our students at least all in one day well that was one of the things that the seniors told me was it maybe if they could see their all their teachers on Friday so they knew what they were supposed to do going into the weekend so Monday would be another way to you know kind of get your week lined up abut um that that help that could help students so um I'm I'm interested and hearing about how that that turns out and and maybe that's a model to expand across the district so and Friday C right yes Monday yeah I think most schools that I know do it on Monday it sets the week up for the students okay so one of the other things that I would I thought we might hear about tonight um and I would like to hear about in the future would be our academic results for our AP students and our IB students because they have a certain curriculum they've got to get covered and now they have a shorter instructional time are are as many students taking the exams are how are they doing on the exams what are the strategies around students succeeding academically so that they're ready for college given that we don't have as much instructional time under this model so I'd like to hear about um those kinds of results and and that is part of our plan for reporting in the larger high school system design um implementation so that is on scheduled in November so um so looking at sort of like what are all the data points that can tell us how our our balance of support and challenge is going um and you know again when all the elements of the high school system design were put into place um they they weren't factored initially around uh the 8 period day and the the changes that that brought about so now schools are implementing both simultaneously and added to that we've had an additional arbitration decision that further constrains flexibility for scheduling teachers so so we have the multiplied effect here and so we look forward though to sharing with you about each of the components of high school system design and the and the um and what the data looks like after one year of implementation and how that looks as we are launching into the second year of implementation so so definitely plan to do that yeah really I mean one of the earliest pieces of data we have is that that our SAT scores did go up um uh for you know the graduating class of 2012 and um by you know 13 points in Reading 12 points in writing 10 points in math so there was a a notable gain there not all our students take the SAT but likely a comparable group to the year before took the SAT so roughly the same percentage around 45% of our high schoolers took the SAT and so so the fact that we saw year- on-year gains in one year so again there are also limitations to what the SAT does and does not measure so I wouldn't stake uh uh everything on that but but it's one of the early indicators that we do have it we have shared ly so yep can I ask a clarifying question in terms of um the arbitrator's decision my recollection and tell me if this is right before I ask my question my recollection is in terms of those students who are allowed to take eight periods a day that that's our special ed students and our students who are academic priority students so have we or do we have the opportunity to go back to the uh arbitrator to talk to them about
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uh English language Learners who might need more time instructional time or um students maybe who are a credit or two behind and can't graduate on time I mean we're trying to get our graduation rate up and could they take another so how do we do that or have we tried already or yeah I I think that's uh it's not just a conversation with an arbitrator but it's really a conversation with p and coming to some kind of an agreement around those students that would be able to go into an eighth period um during the day and so I know Brock and I have been involved in that conversation um and that that'll continue that's going to be a contractual change that would need to happen or not necessarily doesn't doesn't have to be it just the way the arbitrator um ruled we can always go back and and meet with Pat and come to some kind of an agreement so okay that's certainly an option on the table right now okay that's good to hear so it wasn't contractual language that put those limitations in place so it wouldn't take a contractual change um but it would take um an agreement to navigate around the arbitrator's decision in terms of an agreement with the um Teachers Association so so they're they're sort of apples and oranges a little bit okay one the questions I don't have a question I just I just want to acknowledge that you know that some of the three documents that we got this evening um I just want to call out just as much so that we can kind of own um places where where parents might be frustrated with us that on the um Family advisory the the first um bolded statement is students have the opportunity to take eight classes all students will have an opportunity to take eight classes within courses that are available at each School school so I just want to own that we're not we're not meeting that that we communicated clearly with parents so their their frustration and disappointment um is understandable rightly so thank you I'd also like to appreciate just all the incredibly hard work has gone into making um this I have a lot of questions around High School System design so I'm looking forward to that discussion but just in terms of this six of eight piece and just the incredible challenges that our principles and and all of you have been dealing with so um appreciate it and we'll just keep working through this time as best we can thank you so one of the one of the things between this conversation and the conversation on high school redesign is I'm hoping that at some point we can together have a pretty deep discussion about how we're Staffing high school is going forward because you know clearly the high schools took a much more significant hit than others and if it's working fine great um but if we're continuing to see some issues I I just want to make sure that we are able to have a really deep discussion about this in a budget context also as we go prior to any decisions being made on the budget and that's part of what I'm referencing about District Staffing team that is the conversation that's taking place there with principles is taking a look at impact of Staffing models and Staffing ratio was heading into the next budget cycle yeah I know the High School principles appreciate that um careful look at how we're Staffing our high schools right now we're the exit point of the system there's a lot of scrutiny on our high schools um and rightly so and um so I I appreciate that and just to piggy back on that while we have so many of you sitting in our audience that you know we we use terms like our our principles are figuring out this puzzle or this mystery and I just think of the and amount of effort and energy that you go in just to get kids the number of classes the number of days it is not it is not easy and so I just want to thank our principles and our community and our kids for working together to try to make a best of which is obviously not our ideal situation um and I thank you all for being here I think you should all go home and go to sleep although I know that you're going to go home and do more more work but thank you I just had um a question on academic support part and wondering if this is this has everything in it and I and the thing that jumped out at me was avid's only called out at Wilson and there's another one Cleveland no it's not called out at Madison and so I I would just ask that you guys go through and and make sure that you're getting all the academic Support classes in here so that we can see uh where we're differentiating those resources so that it's real clear to us and to the public what we're doing there yes
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so and I had some other questions around IB and and AP and those kinds of things but they're I they can be for something else just that will be part of the high school system design was refen exactly you're getting some deep detail on on IB AP dual credit right M and I'd also like to thank the principes you guys are doing a great job thank you again thank you okay thank you and we look forward to our discussion November and think the high school res sign I think you know we all 19th November 19th uh and you know again thank to principles I think you know people already stated certainly appreciate the creativity that has that has taken place in regards to trying to meet the demands of the students and and and their needs um and again thank you again for for being here and we're done unless there are some announcements from my colleagues me okay so this meeting um will be adjourned momentarily at the next meeting of the board will be held on October 15th at 6 p.m. here in the board Auditorium um this meeting is


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