2013-02-04 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2013-02-04
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education, 2/04/13 Study Session

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good evening this meeting of the board of education for february 4 2013 is called the 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 is being televised and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks if you're interested in watching that please check the board website for replay times just a note director sergeant is absent and director regan will be joining us shortly at this time we're going to allow 20 minutes for public comment and before i check with miss houston as to whether or not um we have public comment i'll as she calls the people forward i'll start reading the um our expectations for public comment miss houston do we have any public comment yes we have five our first two speakers joshua cohen and eric ridgeway great if they could come up and have a seat so our instructions are that our responsibility as a board lies in actively listening and reflecting on the thoughts and opinions of others the board will not respond to any comments or questions at this time but we will follow up on various issues that are raised guidelines for public input emphasizes respect and consideration when referring to board members staff and other presenters you'll have a total of three minutes to share your comments please begin by stating your name and spelling your last name for the record during the first two minutes of your testimony a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will appear and when your time is up the red light will go on and a buzzer will sound it's not too loud of a buzzer it's just a little buzzer and we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments at that time i will probably ask you to wrap up if you could just finish up your comment or two if you continue to go along we sincerely appreciate your input and we thank you for your cooperation my name is joshua cohen spelled c-o-h-e-n i live in the arbor lodge neighborhood and i'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening in support of my son who's a second grader at chief joseph as well as my daughter who starts kindergarten in 2014 and for the staff and families at chief joseph who worked so hard to make a great learning environment there my own education is in architecture and engineering and if you've seen any of the data stories on the bucket brigade blog you'll understand that i am a details guy i like to understand this cause of a problem and devise logical solutions and i've spent the past two months learning about the problems in our jefferson cluster schools and talking with stakeholders about solutions that could lead to better educational outcomes for our kids now looking at where we stand tonight i feel to use a polite word frustrated the proposal you're going to hear tonight to consolidate students into king and ockley green seems totally driven by a desire to move bodies into particular buildings and there i don't feel there was ever an honest discussion about what kind of configuration would offer the best educational outcomes for jefferson clutter cluster students particularly in the middle grades we did have some general comments in support of the k-8 model but never a detailed examination of how it was working in these schools with these students so while i'm disappointed by the superintendent's proposal i am also an optimist and i would like to offer two suggestions to start us down a good path number one is to give us some certainty this proposal leaves chief joe's closure date unspecified and while that may be politically convenient think about the message that that sends it to say we intend to close chief joe as soon as your new k-8 program gets small enough it's not exactly a ringing endorsement that would attract families who are making enrollment and transfer decisions next month a better move will be to guarantee that chief joseph will remain open at least through spring 2014 and propose a great configuration now so that people will know what to expect for example a k4 and 5 8 split would minimize disruption for current students while eliminating the need for portables at chief joe and second i'd like to ask that you give us some respect we may not be the people who sign your checks but we are your customers and if you keep the future of our schools hidden behind layers of bureaucracy and vaguely worded letters and weak leadership we will vote with our feet and find other education options on the other hand if you're willing to open the doors and let us participate in solving the difficult problems facing our neighborhood schools we will show up in droves and achieve results that had not previously seemed possible the enrollment balancing staff is going to move on to jefferson
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to the roosevelt cluster next year and we are still going to be here trying to sort things out so please let's work together on this thank you my name is eric ridgeway r-i-d-g-w-a-y uh ladies and gentlemen of the school board thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you this evening um judy brennan stated that pps has received mixed signals regarding the preference for k-5 or k8 in this cluster and carol's recommendation is that we should wait before making any real change i believe neither of these are true over the last five years in our cluster enrollment between the fifth and sixth grade the following year drops by an average of 20 percent these jefferson cluster students and families are saying something about where things need to change in our schools in this cluster the k5 segment has a capture rate of 57 percent but for grade 6 to 8 this capture rate drops to 38 not one school but an entire cluster with a 38 capture rate the neighborhoods in this cluster are saying that things need to change in our schools in your own survey despite a resistance to change and a majority of schools in a k-8 configuration 57 percent of respondents supported the middle school model we are saying what we want to change in our schools if any single school in pps had a capture rate of 38 percent or lost 20 percent of its population at the same point each year the board would be rightfully demanding action yet here we sit with this problem across the entire cluster and the recommendation is that essentially no action should be taken that we should do nothing well year after year our sixth to eighth grade students suffer due to underenrollment this is simply not equitable or acceptable to the board i urge you vote down the currently submitted proposal the one that says you see a systematic problem in grades 6-8 but don't care enough about the jefferson cluster to act instead explore ways to improve a proposed middle school option while incorporating the themes that you've heard from the community leave our neighborhood schools open and keep the equity lens in full focus use ockley green for older chief show students during this transition but rather than being the first step to the down the road to nowhere closing a successful school and locking us into an educational model that few of our buildings can support you could put us on the path to provide something better for all of our children no one believes a middle school is a silver bullet for all of our problems but it does provide the necessary density as a framework for success when paired with future adjustments to the inequitable transfer policy it could provide a strong sustainable diverse education this cluster for years to come the board knew going into this process that hard choices had to be made sooner rather than later you were correct in those assumptions carol you've mostly heard our request for not closing neighborhood programs keeping equity in mind and the need to review the transfer policy and we thank you for listening but now we ask one more thing from the board stand up to your responsibility and make those hard choices that we desperately need vote down this recommendation and provide us with a plan that provides a middle school for the children and the neighborhoods in the jefferson cluster the best chance for success at both now and into the future thank you next we have greg barrell and julie davis julie davis ah good evening again my name is uh greg burrell b-u-r-r-i-l-l and the last time i spoke my gratitude was for you because i understand how hard your job is today i want to highlight my gratitude for the way the david douglas school district works with the teachers union i taught with their co-president bob gray and he told me how their board relies on him to solicit input from teachers and consult with them in their decisions he has a seat at board meetings and is part of the decision process now the last time i was here though i made the bold claim that teachers and parents have the most important jobs on our planet so i want you to reflect on this claim because as our leaders i believe you also have an important job and that job is to help turn the conversation in american politics from how little we can pay in taxes to what it really takes to provide the world-class services that the most powerful nation in the history of the planet deserves i believe that when i want to talk about
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education reform because i've been reading the history of over 100 years of education reform and almost never has education reform been led by teachers the people that that learn how to teach students the people that do the amazing things there are you know nowadays where um we're being led by a business model and you know back in the 80s business leaders learned that if you want great products you let the people on the factory floor run the machines right i think it's time we learned that the people in the classrooms need to run education reform i will be talking to you one more time before i present a full written documentation of my ideas but i hope to see you all out with me on lobby day and out standing with the teachers union standing with parents standing uh with the general public in hopes that we can have the kind of schools that we deserve thank you thank you our last speaker is rita moore thank you um my name is rita moore m-o-r-e and i'm speaking tonight on behalf of our portland our schools we're asking the board to reject any school closures and any permanent changes in any cluster until we get a a more comprehensive approach to the enrollment balancing process and this position is based on two concerns first is a flawed approach that's been taken to enrollment balancing and secondly is a what appears to be a flawed process we share sackett's perspective that a systemic approach to enrollment balancing is essential clusters cannot be seen in isolation nor can individual schools as we've seen before a change anywhere in the system will inevitably have some follow-on effect effect elsewhere therefore trying to balance enrollments in a specific set of schools in isolation seems both inefficient and ineffective pps documents state that fully one third of all schools in the district have enrollment issues either under or over capacity if that's the case a piecemeal approach to balancing enrollment seems self-defeating in addition it's clear that school enrollments are not static and are influenced by a complex range of issues both external and internal unraveling that complexity and developing strategies that will ensure appropriate and sustainable enrollments in every school is undeniably challenging and time-consuming and it's very high stakes for children and communities even the hint of closure can have a devastating impact on enrollments for many many years all the more reason to take a careful systemic approach so that we can get it right as right as possible the first time which brings up the second issue process based on consistent feedback we've heard from participants opus is concerned that the jefferson cluster enrollment balancing process is irretrievably compromised by a lack of clarity on the purpose structure and implementation of public engagement process the proposals don't have the support of the community it's not meant as a criticism of the enrollment balancing team public process is always really difficult by definition it's time consuming it's messy and it's complicated we keep doing it because we know in our bones that collaborative decision making done well produces more creative satisfying and durable solutions but we have to do it well demonstrated its commitment in principle to engaging with families and communities in fact the central theme of the bond campaign was deepening the relationship between schools and the broader community but the quality of that process remains highly problematic pps has already done some of the foundational work necessary to do this well the 2010 public engagement framework that spells out five possible levels of engagement is a great starting point but the framework alone is insufficient to ensure that any particular process will be productive so there are lessons to be learned made can you wrap it up okay maybe the most important lesson is that to do anything beyond level two engagement you've got to give up some level of control it's going to be really hard but if you want to do public engagement it's essential so
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thank you we're gonna move on um so for the past month as you've all heard the board has received some information attended listening sessions and discuss jefferson enrollment balancing options tonight we will receive the superintendent's recommendation and i'd like to remind my colleagues that we will not discuss the recommendation tonight however we will receive a process timeline update and have a chance to ask any clarifying questions the board will hold a public hearing on jefferson enrollment balancing on saturday february 9th from 10 am to noon in the jefferson high school auditorium and we will also devote the first 45 minutes of the board's february 11th study session to public comment on the topic superintendent smith can you please talk us through your recommendation um yes i will and um i was debating whether or not to do a powerpoint where i'm really walking you through very specific piece of elements of this or whether i'm just going to talk to you and i'm electing to just talk to you you've got two documents that actually have this laid out and as you know we've been engaged in a process where we had community involved in helping us design what the process would be listening sessions that have been cluster-wide as well as individual school specific i think in any given listening session you could come away with a feeling of okay there was consensus that this group is really believing k-8s are what they want to reinforce in this cluster for x number of reasons you'd go to another meeting and you'd end up with a sense of middle school as the right direction for these reasons um i myself have like really entertained the full spectrum of what's the right move to make in this cluster the theme that ran through everybody's conversation was the instability over over decades essentially in the jefferson cluster being the overarching theme and how do we bring stability to this cluster the the recommendation you have in front of you basically responds to things we heard during the listening session and requests to step back take a look at some of our systemic policies one being our enrollment and transfer policy that was developed in a very different time period to address really different concerns that the district had um and then since that time had no child left behind on laid on top of it and had a particularly devastating effect on the jefferson cluster and has not been reviewed in light of our new equity policy and so i am recommending one of the things that we do is step back and do a look at our enrollment and transfer policy and specifically to ask the superintendent's advisory committee on enrollment and transfer to be the ones that take a deep look at that policy and be part of recommending changes to us secondly and you've heard this theme throughout is for us to look at our boundary changes district-wide and we have we're three years into an enrollment balancing process that we basically did have done cluster by cluster with the idea that we are creating enrollment stability to positively impact teaching and learning and how we staff our buildings and that we have enough students to really offer strong programs in every one of our schools but it has been cluster by cluster and in every one of those we've hit up against a moment where you start to consider the uh contiguous boundaries of the next cluster and the and but you've not done a process with the with the families in the continuous areas what it's led us to is really understanding back up do it take a moment where we do it for the district as a whole because we may come up with very different solutions than we do when we're looking within a contained currently defined cluster so second recommendation step back and do the district-wide look at boundaries and then what that does is do a different set of what would be the recommendations of the the actions we take within the jefferson cluster at this moment in time which are in the areas where we have the most acute under enrollment that me that need some kind of a some kind of an action in order to um to stabilize so the two specific actions that i am looking at um are recommending to you one is we've got k-8s throughout the cluster chief joseph is our only k-5 it's now facing over-enrollment issues we have ugly green that has a k-5 magnet and 6-8 that is both magnet students and chief joseph sixth or eighth graders my recommendation to you is to do a single k-8 in the um but that combines the chief joseph and
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ockley-green communities and i am leaving that as the recommendation that i'm putting in front of you right now with discussions still in front of us that engage those two communities in the specifics specifically grade configuration of what remains on the chief joe campus what goes to the ackley green campus in the near term but with the idea that they would over time be merging onto the single ockley green campus i'm also leaving open to involving the community in the decision about leadership decision about naming of the school but the concept is again that we would have a single strong k-8 it does the recommendation does not displace any of the current transfer students into chief joseph so it leaves us able to serve all the students who are currently being served at chief joseph it also closes the magnet portion the k5 magnet portion of ockley green but does not display students who are currently enrolled in the magnet so they would have a choice of either continuing to attend the the new neighborhood k-8 opting to transfer to king's arts program or return to their neighborhood school so all three of those choices would be open for those students and i purposefully um and am saying you know we're allowing the circumstance for that neighborhood catchment area to create its own k-8 um and leaving open the room for how what does that look like in the as we transition to a single building um but would imply that we then are committing to something that remains stable over time so not that it stays um undefined just that i want the voices of that community to be part of of defining it so that's the first that's the first one the second one is we have king that has a small neighborhood catchment area so even if every student in that neighborhood catchment attended king it just it remained small and we given that we're recommending stepping back and doing the district-wide boundary change i wouldn't recommend doing temporary boundary changes what we do have is the opportunity to co-locate um and i would probably define a i would define a three to five year period of co-location that allows two small programs to grow so the king neighborhood program and the access program which is currently located on the co-located on the saban campus and it's essentially one that i would be looking to those two communities to to identify what's the opportunity of co-location that allows them both to grow in this time period the other features of this are really looking to the requests we heard from every single school community about just please support us figuring out how we strengthen our our neighborhood school put a priority on neighborhood school numbers of our of our schools have identified what our core academic themes that drive them we have an immersion program we have an arts program we have ib programs we have a school that's identified they would like to have an environmental focus as a way of strengthening them we have a three to phd program in partnership with concordia and concordia has said they were willing their indicated their willingness to expand their partnership to other schools in the cluster so i think the other area i would be calling out as part of this is how do we as a district partner with each of those schools to strengthen their core academic program and really focus on understanding both why um families are transferring out of the cluster and how do we draw families back in and really say how do we strengthen these neighborhood schools we've got a really a strong desire for strong neighborhood schools in this cluster and so i think this is about stability and helping to build them you've also got called out in the report um or the the proposal uh identified costs for doing this transition um the moving the staff at king access ockley green and chief joseph approximately four hundred thousand dollars which we're looking at our construction excise tax revenues as a way to cover that we anticipate reviewing technology and nutrition services supports within the schools and potential upgrades looking at about two hundred thousand dollars transportation costs appear to be neutral and the two larger processes that i've identified so the looking at district-wide boundary processes i'm anticipating that would be us working with some an external firm who actually does those kind of analytics about district mapping and um so i would anticipate a cost that i don't know what that would be at this point um and probably also an assault a cost associated with supporting um the work
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that our engagement that our student advisory committee on enrollment and transfer would would um require to do their work so that is the essence of the proposal it's really about reinforcing stability um and stepping back and and looking at this with a district-wide frame and not taking more uh wholesale change actions um until we've done the district-wide frame the thing this does not preclude is the eventual creation of a middle school in this cluster but it's it's something that we would need to actually be drawing in the actual capture rate of the cluster in order to have the demand to sustain um an additional offering in the cluster so that door is not closed it's it's just a leaning into the configuration we currently have and working to strengthen it as opposed to doing a wholesale change at this moment in time that's it clarifying questions i can walk you through what's in special ed so in terms of special ed maintaining special edit at woodlawn which it maintains the programs that are currently in place at woodland more stability it does more stability it's stability for the communities i'm going to say like this is the biggest thing we heard from people was um the cry for stability in the program and the relationships that are currently exist within their current programs being a really strong factor in student achievement and so please lean in maintain those relationships i'd say the other thing that is an overlay in all of this is the kind of budget scenario we're looking for looking at which we you know again at the current moment with the governor's budget it's a 17 million dollar hole i anticipate a lot of work going on in this legislative session that will um hopefully not be that large of a gap by the time we're actually building our budget but it's not going to be a big infusion of resource beyond what we already have that helps you know that makes it the experience feel different in our school so can i just do one more on process so at this point like i now it's now out of my court as the listener and over to you but just for people to know that february 9th from 10 am to noon there's a public hearing at jefferson high school and you need to sign up in advance to testify february 11th at 6 p.m there's public testimony at the board meeting that will be here at besc and then february 25th at 6 pm the school board is scheduled to vote on the recommendation and written feedback can be directed either to myself at carol smith pbs.net or the school board and or the school board at school board all one word at pbs.net so and i'll say that we've had a tremendous amount of public input that has been considered and wrestled with and really i think you hear a lot of that reflected in the proposal that i just put in front of you tonight but we're still in process so the feedback the board gets um matters so what kind of lack of process questions so we're asking clarifying questions tonight is additional so we have kind of detail follow-up what does this mean how this work type of questions how what's going to be the venue both for us to understand that better from staff and for the public to also get that same information so february 11th will be a work session where there will be some time devoted to this um and then so if we provide our list of questions or whatever in advance of that so staff has time to yes or i don't know if we want to try to have staff collate everything that so that they don't hear the same type of question five different ways yeah so maybe we could work with you all to sort of set a deadline for when we need to have a question get that in just so there's time to make sure there's the fullest answer as possible and then the public can also see the same same information might be helpful um are we gonna set up any sort of long-term plans beyond that so like in the future so the what i'm proposing is part of the long-term plan and then the two things that i'm describing to you the district-wide um boundary pros look at boundary process is um would occur first and then secondly the looking at enrollment transfer policies i mean are both part of district-wide long-term
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plan and will we be engaging the community in that any sort of committees besides sackett so sackett i will both look to to recommend a process but also to do so they've been engaged for three years and looking deeply at our enrollment to transfer both policy and processes so i would ask them to take the lead and actually what some the substance of change recommendations would be but i will also ask them to recommend engagement process so that will be full excuse me folded into whatever resolution we end up with here that it'll both lay out immediate action but also long term yes correct and um so a couple i guess i'm looking for more clarity on you mentioned that the door had not closed on the middle school possibility and i think we need there's going to need to be some clarity about how what what could that look like or how would that work um if we're at the same time you know moving to kind of stabilize and and recommit to a commit to a k-8 in this combined model and i think the immediate what's in front of us is looking to stabilize the k-8 look at how do we gain and regain enrollment in neighborhood schools it's on this proposal it's it's committing to build the k-8s and strengthen them as neighborhood schools and strengthen the enrollment that we have in them um and the reason that i say that doesn't close the door on the middle school we don't have the enrollment in the jefferson cluster right now to add another program and not have the effect of destabilizing the k-8 so you can't do both and the and you need a critical mass if our if one of our values is don't close neighborhood schools then you need a critical mass that both can stay healthy as k-5s and feed a middle school in order to do that um and i think partly we're at the front end of rebuilding enrollment in these schools that that's where our effort needs to go at this moment okay so i guess it would be i'll just try to map out in my list of questions kind of what i'm trying to get at to understand how that might work like if we can try to even just walk through some hypotheticals of okay if we did this then and i would assume that part of our sort of mapping out here the here's kind of the the the charge or the main issues that that um long-term planning needs to take on whether it's through one steering committee or multiple or a task force or whatever it might be that this would be one of them in other words so that it's you know potentially still on the table that is not we need to keep all these issues at the forefront and for discussion um i guess another another question is looking for more clarity and detail around access at king you know the concern we've heard that there wouldn't might not be really enough room and would special ed classrooms get moved out those kinds of details so more specifically yeah around what and i really and so the statement in the just in general i think you know so the statement on page three ensure that all schools in the jefferson cluster are staffed to offer the full core program so more i think one thing i've been looking throughout this for more detail on is and show us what you know a what is currently offered and b what could be offered specifically in terms of core and also enrichments or electives or specials or whatever you want to call them um and what a you know what a sample schedule might look like so you can get a sense of what would be different or better combining access by combining i mean we've showed that chart kind of for boise elliot humboldt combined but i think as folks need more detail i need more detail on what the combined program would actually offer other than just it will be better and stronger and i think this one we have some example because um access has been co-located at saban for a number of years and they've figured out some of where were the co-location opportunities and where places they operate separately and we're together it would be a whole separate conversation i think for these two school communities that is um still in front of us so i mean i don't i don't know if this but i just i think sometimes i get the sense that staff sometimes shy away from that because one we don't know what our budget is so if we put up this is what you'll gain based on now people will come back and say you promised us this the second piece is to me it somewhat usurps what the community and our principal leadership would offer um unless we can incorporate them into that conversation but i think this is part of the intent of where we're doing here's the here's the the broad stroke and we're asking the school communities to engage and identify where the opportunities and that is part of what we identified in the proposal is asking those two school communities to help us identify so where are the potential
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opportunities you see from co-location and it does i mean any co-location offers both opportunities and challenge so none of these end up being like um straightforward yeah they they're like how are we how are we making it work and where are the opportunities in something that lets both of those programs grow in a shared location so very clarifying questions i think in terms of the king access discussion i wanted to understand that saban would still be stable if access moves out so i wanted to we'll bring you data on that but yes okay and then i also wanted clarification on whether we would be looking potentially to be including the i think it's called the king neighborhood center in the discussion um of merging those two programs and that's been raised as a question that we're investigating okay and are we going to have some more specificity on what in terms of the next steps um with any merger of programs like what would be the next steps in terms of the process for working with the community on leadership and great configuration and how it all i mean is that going to be laid out pretty quick because there's so many questions about it right now and i know we're just moving into this but so um we probably won't do that until that a decision is made that it's happening so i mean that's part of where we're in and i actually met with both the chief joe and um oxley staffs today to have this conversation about both where are we leaving room for them to be part of the shaping and um and and what's the voice they should be having in the period of time we're in to be making what their desires known to you um but we would engage them in the in some of those decisions like the grade configuration um discussion about is it k four and five eight because chief joe can't house it's too large to hold its current five grades so there's not a a a no action um possibility here we have to do something for chief joe because they're too large you just as their current size yeah so but could they retain like a k4 and uh and a 5 8 there's been some you know conversation about whether or not they would want to keep going on the two campuses as opposed to get all the way over to one now would be the moment to be voicing those those opinions yeah and i think just more um more information now not this minute but during this process please hold your comments so we can have a conversation it's going to help us to get to a better answer if we can have a conversation we we see here we see your signs we've we've heard this is our time to discuss it please thank you so i think another thing that would be helpful would be so i guess okay so at this like i said the study session we just i just need staff to walk us through more of these details okay so i'll i'll be working on my list um i think if there's anything else i needed to oh yeah sure go right ahead so have we had any discussion with the current families that are at oakley green about whether the three choices that you laid out carol have we had any discussion with the family no it's just been a short period of time but maybe a discussion with them to find out where they think they may end up so that we could have a better idea about how many students can we can move to oakley green wait so ask me that again so there's a certain number of students right now at auckland green do we know how many of those students will want to stay there how many will want to move to king they're currently going to go back right no i mean this proposal just came out on friday right so what i'm saying is i think that that would be good for us to survey them to find out in advance what it will look like as far as ugly green students staying there so we'll know how much room we have there correct to move chief joe yes we have so and that's two so we also have like 150 meg uh students who transfer into chief joe and the k through five who are in the magnet program at ockley both of whom we're working to be able to offer this as a stable option but who have multiple choices available to them director martin sure so i think i have some questions around the uh the cost of a move the cost of the shift versus um what we were talking about before in terms of portables for chief joseph um i think the uh i'm really like i think personally interested in that moment when it sounded like folks were leaning towards k-8 versus middle
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school um because i i still i was listening pretty intently and still heard a a fairly balanced perspective on that and in fact i heard probably at the last uh community forum a pretty overwhelming support for a middle option um so i'm interested in the the i guess just the justification of okay that that decision um i also and i can't help but think you know we also obviously have to look at a longer term impact the the structure the building at chief joe and the investment that's been made the the in that building itself the the community that has supported that building itself across the street at the at the park you have harper's playground that is a sort of the point is there's been some some investment in that particular area so i'm i'm really concerned about uh the second piece of this recommendation and you know as soon as things grow all everyone shifts over there when that happens i'm also concerned about awkwardly green because i mean from my understanding there's a there's a cafeteria that's about half the size as the cafeteria chief joe so there's going to be some additional cost there too so those things it and to me i think it and i know this isn't the uh the opportunity to necessarily share opinions but um but i guess what i'm looking for is what's going to help me feel like this is this is a move that uh actually gets to our the issues that we're facing within the jefferson cluster or is it going to exacerbate those issues and uh and i don't know the answer to that and i'm really hesitant to move forward on something that i don't really i'm not really sure about and i i guess i want to say to folks clapping um thank you but uh i know i know each of my colleagues and carol and the staff are thinking these same things um i i'm thankful for the opportunity to be able to verbalize them but um but these are not easy issues for any of us and uh and in fact they're very very challenging and i hope i hope we can understand that and respect that um so i'm i think the uh obviously i mentioned is still is still a question uh in my head but i guess what i'm what i'm really interested in is how can we in this process make a decision that is offers the least impact until we have a clear framework as to make our decisions made from in that clear framework obviously includes our equity policy obviously includes our uh enrollment and transfer policy uh and i'm not sure i think probably three of the four or how many total are there recommendations in this hit that uh but i still have real real reservations particularly with with the first recommendation which you've chosen other clarifying questions okay director gonzalez i mean i don't have a clarifying question in regards to the proposal because i think that's kind of uh at the table and i think superintendent smith already stated you know now it's on our court um and so i think it gets back to you know as i listen to director morton's question in regards to what what's going to make you feel comfortable only you know that of course so i think that that we need to get to that point in regards to what will make us feel comfortable to move forward on any with any giving thing that is at the table um and i hope that we get to that point in regards to begin to articulate that amongst ourselves to be able to then engage because part of the the as i listen to some of the comments some of the things they that they were stated many of them continue to seek more information and i'm not sure that that we're going to be able to get more information beyond what is already at the table at least not not from staff uh and i mean that's
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that's just my assessment of that that it will be sufficient and i think uh director knowles also asked for like perhaps more information regards to the the the folks in regards to the parents their potential will be impacted and and we do have a hearing schedule so hopefully some of those folks will show up but to so i'm curious in regards to what again what will make us feel comfortable with with moving forward one way or another or do we have based on whatever we believe enough information are ready to either you know approve this proposal or not and i think that's a question i think that we need to be asking ourselves more along those lines rather than asking for more information because i think you know there's a lot of information and i think that we all have various perspectives so i just want to check ourselves because you know we've been through this process before and and and and of course you know folks you know we all seek more information in a in in an area that that is uncomfortable in particular so i just want to make sure that we we at some point we close the door for information you know my question wasn't my information i'd be happy to get after a decision was made it was more of a matter of if we make this decision to move this direction we need to find out from the parents who's staying and who's not i don't need that information to make this decision so but thank you again i mean i don't know i'm just trying to repair it in regards to what what exactly i mean particularly given that that in some ways uh director bill and i are tasked with trying to provide you with some information in between meetings um so i just want to have some clarity in regards to what what are we asking for because we can continue to send staff to search more more staff but i think they they gave it their best shot and they put something at the table and now we got to figure out whether we we accept that or we come up with something better or different well i mean i think fair enough but i mean i totally agree that we have to at a certain point stop asking for more information but there's also the balance of feeling like we know enough and have enough confidence in the planning that it's going to be a solid plan that will be implemented well so there's a balance there and we do have a study session scheduled so that's i guess that's why i was suggesting rather than us coming to that study session each with our concerns that we try to i mean yes narrow it down but i mean i think the way you frame it is absolutely right what do we need to know in order to be comfortable supporting this so that's that's helpful framing and that's that's what i'll take to my to my concerns but and again i i wasn't trying to get you too comfortable to support this i was trying to make you comfortable to make a decision okay let's be clear you know about that in regards to what i was saying right okay tough decisions any other clarifying questions i'm just going to say that the way i the way i uh ended my comments uh two weeks ago we were talking about this is whether we're comfortable doing nothing and i'm not comfortable doing nothing so you know we have to figure out a path forward and some community or communities are going to be impacted but we don't have an option of subsidizing small schools especially as we face another you know 17 to 27 million dollar cut next year our highest priority is to make sure that we have enough children in the building that we can provide a robust program so it isn't that we want to impact one community or the other we want to make sure that ultimately our kids there's enough children in the building that we can provide a good education for them so but i think in response to that it's not doing nothing if we set up some long-term plans onto how we're going to get more enrollment in these schools and if we want robust programs in every school it's not only the jefferson cluster that has schools that have too small of amount of students to have these programs so i don't know why we need to close the school in this district and i think from from my standpoint this probably is less about a budget based decision and more because you know frankly i think it's it's probably going to be a blip in what needs to happen when 17 million when we have to find 17 million dollars um but it needs to be a decision driven by
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what we're actually offering within our well right right okay i think i was just going to move on if you have uh we can continue the discussion okay great so again a reminder that we have a listening session this saturday from 10 to noon at the jefferson high auditorium um and then also on that february 11th work session we'll have 45 minutes devoted to public testimony so we hope to hear from our community so moving on to our next agenda item graduation rates on january 31st the state released its annual graduation rate data and staff is here to share this information with us and superintendent smith if you could introduce the item and actually i'll ask suanne higgins our chief academic officer and trip goodall to come on up our director of high schools to come on up thank you just a reminder of the folks that are exiting um it gets kind of loud back in the vestibule um i know it feels like you're away from us but you're not so if you could quietly exit that would be appreciated thank you good evening i'm sue ann higgins chief academic officer it's a pleasure to give you some updates from our 2012 graduation cohort and joining me is tripp goodall director of our high schools as well as a number of our high school administrators are present tonight and additionally many many of our jefferson cluster administrators are here tonight as well so we just want to acknowledge and thank all of them for their time and participation here this evening i know that the board received a packet of both the data grids as they are downloaded from the state as well as some bar graphs to help pull out some of the data so we will go through some highlights of the data so to begin with the four-year cohort graduation rate in portland public schools increased by one percentage point in 2012 over 2011. so our growth was very flat in the aggregate this was however the third year in a row that the rate increased and a total of 63 of students graduated in four years and of those who started in community comprehensive or focused high schools 78 graduated in four years and it's important to note that so as we look at our data and try to pull out learnings from it it's important to sort of look at where do we see which kinds of behavior and one of the things that we know from a variety of studies is that students who start high school in pps end stronger and are much more likely to graduate on time than students who arrive later to our system and so that's causing us to put additional resources around students who arrive late including identifying them for academic priority status even if they're not having other complicating factors at the time they arrive such as low performance so so triple talk us through some of our achievement data as well as our work on our milestone to close our racial achievement gap or opportunity gap thank you anne um thank you suanne um if we look at the achievement gap there's a lot of work to still be done to accomplish our goal of every student regardless of race or class being successful in our schools and so when we look at the first point there our achievement gap grew in terms of our native american population of students it's at 39 points it's up 16 percentage points from the previous cohort so we have to do a much better job of determining how best to serve our students who are native american our grant high school close the achievement gap in graduation rates among both white black and hispanic students franklin jefferson roosevelt and wilson
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high schools all posted graduation rates for black students equal to or better than those for white students it's not on our slide here but lincoln also has a 96 percent graduation rate for the hispanic population at lincoln the next slide is our bar graph which gives you an opportunity to look at data over time and so for the most part you can see again a trend that's moving upward as suanne said earlier it's flat at this moment in terms of overall our graduation rate only going up by a percentage point but you can see it's illustrative of the fact that across most across most of our schools right now we're seeing um a trend that that's encouraging as i pointed out in the earlier slide our our data on native american in one year is something of concern and it's unacceptable and so we're going to have to take a good strong look at what we're doing to serve those students better if we look at highlights from this cohort our madison graduation rate increased eight percentage points to 71 a 15 point increase in the last two years um franklin posted a seven percentage point increase both madison and franklin's graduation rates include former marshall campus students wilson saw a 7 percentage point increase and then jefferson and roosevelt both posted four percentage point increases for roosevelt that would be close to about 16 percentage points again over the last two years and i'm going to ask both charlene williams and patrick allen principals at roosevelt and madison to come up here i will tell a quick anecdote when the information first went out um patrick called me and it in this work sometimes there are those moments where you hear the pride and i heard this last year from a number of principals but i hadn't had that opportunity with patreon when she saw that madison's graduation rate had gone beyond 70 percent it was really incredible to hear that voice and the pride that she has and the staff and the students at that school and so i just wanted to again acknowledge that it was uh it was rewarding for me to hear how committed that voice really is so patrick cowan and charlene williams all right so actually i did ask tripp if it was real and if i could tell people because i could it took it took a moment for it to sink in madison has been through a great deal of transition in the last few years we're in the fourth year of being a community comprehensive after transitioning from three small schools which was no small transition as well as welcoming the marshall staff and marshall students onto the campus and the graduation rate was a concern for everybody at the school and it still is it still is not where we want it to be but the um actually almost 16 percent increase in two years has been really significant for us we have seen some increases within some of our subgroups such as our latino students at 80 percent uh english language learners i think about 75 percent so we've seen some really great increases but we are also concerned about our students who are not making the increases that we're wanting yet and so it's a focus for us we have been working collaboratively to engage students in classes been working really hard to design and implement effective interventions ahead of the game instead of at the you know the later stages of a student's career when it's too late we've been offering students multiple pathways to demonstrate their proficiency one thing that the school improvement grant we have has allowed us to do is bring students in on saturdays provide them with summer opportunities and engage them in a variety of ways so they're able to meet that mark we have used our grant to provide students with with opportunities and support that we couldn't have we have staff members that are catching students and supporting families we are engaging partners we are continuing to use extended hours for for teachers to really look critically at our programming and our curriculum and instruction to
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ensure that we're doing best by students every single day we are committed to increasing achievement for each and every student at madison and the money i have to say though it is not everything it does make a difference so i would really like to express how important it is that our schools are funded and our schools are supported because once this grant goes away we will still have the commitment and we will still have the fire and the drive but we will not be able to offer as many opportunities as we can right now and i'd like to echo patron sentiments around the the funding piece as trip alluded to earlier roosevelt has experienced a 16 point increase in its graduation rate over the last two years the first group with the gain last year was actually under the gear up grant as well as overlapping with some support from the school improvement grant and so we had a cohort of graduates who had had support from middle school all the way through high school helping them think about college think about life beyond graduation and give them extra opportunities and skills and then with the school improvement grant i've been able to hire an additional counselor who is finally catching up with the enrollment which is great because when the enrollment increases then you actually have the staff the staffing to support the number of counselors you need but we're talking about populations definitely coming with different levels of need so having the additional resources for our school is what's helping us make the difference along with some amazing talented teachers who are doing all they can in order to help students meet essential skills for graduation instructional coaches who are working with teachers to model and support and get additional resources to them culturally specific resource specialists who are able to relate to kids and work with their families to ensure that they are engaging with the school and that need that their needs are being met as well and i brought our latest newsletter for the roosevelt cluster because i know the work we do at the high school doesn't start at high school but these are the principals that are in the roosevelt cluster who are also fighting this and and definitely own a part of the increase in the graduation rate that we have on the road in the roosevelt cluster so i just want to just continue to number one thank you for supporting roosevelt and madison with getting the grant like sig and whatever additional resources that will continue to allow us to target interventions so that we can continue to see the rise in support for our students and it applies to franklin too by the way um if you couldn't believe those results and you know other people are also not believing them particularly since you had uh martial students and and so um not because they were you know a challenge in regards to those students but whether they we actually i think there's always a question whether whether our data is is actually accurate in capturing those things um and and it was noted i think on one of those slides that it actually takes into account the marshall students that that transfer there yeah and it's based on that four-year cohort in regards to when they started rather than you know um we're not counting the students and didn't show up at that school i actually couldn't answer that question so somebody suanne or tripp might be able to help answer that but i from what i understand it includes the cohort but i um whether or not students who never showed up but madison are included in that number i couldn't answer you they can't be okay great thank you and are you back for questions or discussion or do you have a little bit more presentation two quick other points um i would say um you should be pretty disappointed in us if we were very happy with our aggregate graduation rate and what i would add however is that given the amount of changes in implementing the high school system design that included the closure of marshall high school that included the state increasing its requirements to include the
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essential skill of reading including other transitions in the system i am pleased to see that we still had progress on the overall rate and that we have in our system of high schools right now evidence of all of the practices that we need to actually have a hundred percent graduation rate and closure of the gap in a really accelerated way so we see closure of achievement gaps in a number of our schools we see um that while we are intentional about serving students of color better white students are not falling behind so we see that both are true that we can raise achievement for all and uh accelerate learning for the students that we've historically underserved so um and i would just um add that the high school action team is about to be commissioned so one of the recommendations coming out of the high school system design report is that we would launch an action team which i will be coordinating and so the first step for that team will be to continue the recommendation to continue implementation of the high school system design recommendations also to determine if all the metrics in the original report many of which we've already met need to be reset or reconsidered as well as looking at improving rigor fairness and responsiveness around school culture and grading practices and finally improving the coordination across the high school system to ensure that if students are not succeeding in school that we're having them in the best fit next step opportunity that we're retaining a higher number of students in our in our gen ed schools than we have that those kids are staying on track in terms of skills which is the number one reason students leave or depart or need an alternative at some point in their high school career and finally the action team will be comprised of 20 folks that will include high school and middle school principals teachers higher ed partners community employers and others nominated by partner organizations and there will be 20 folks sought that way as well as five at-large members who will apply and that action team charter is live right now on our website as is the application so um we look very much forward and had a lot of really positive interest from across the community around engaging in that work over the course of the next um 18 months so yes questions just a follow-up to this last slide do you know when the group will be meeting i had a couple people say hey i might be interested but it's hard for me to commit without knowing what the schedule is right it's it's probably a catch 22 because we probably aren't setting a time until we figure out who's on it and what their schedules are but right what we do believe is the frequency the frequency of the larger group will be roughly once a month we know we have not yet set um a date for the first meeting or what the regular cycle of meetings will be um in the charter it explains both the commitment is generally a once a month meeting we i believe will be commissioning some subcommittees to do some other work and recommendations and so it's likely that we will in that work um there may be additional meetings or we may waive some of the large group meetings and that the committee is commissioned through june of 2014 so it would be the balance of this school year as well as all of next school year with the possibility that the superintendent could recommend extending that beyond that if as the as the work moves forward so questions comments well i could start i was looking at the cohort graduation rate by gender yes and it looks like in every single one of our high schools except for wilson wilson that was identical but in every other one of the high schools girls outperformed boys and in fact district wide there's a nine point gap in the performance of girls versus boys and oftentimes we talk about you know race and poverty and i guess i'm curious if there's any folks who are focused on gender yes um
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so we as a as a group both the leaders at the building level the teachers themselves as well as district staff do look at gender we know that the picture of girls outperforming boys in school is a mirror image of the fact that boys in our school system also have a disproportionate amount of exclusionary discipline so these are two faces of the same challenge that we face around disciplining and um redirecting students in ways that re-engage them and connect them with the school rather than removing them or pushing them out of the system so so this is one of the places where that is generated and one of the so the same reason that we are looking at our racial disproportionality in our discipline data is why we are also looking at determining what strategies to change in order to eliminate a gender bias in our discipline data do we have any sense that wilson is doing anything different than other schools i mean in some of our schools we have a 20-point gap i mean has anybody tried to figure that out whether they have programs for some reason that are more engaging to boys or i don't think we have actually looked at that but okay yeah i would yeah encourage us to please and i am really grateful that we have this gender now showing up i mean it's gender data showing up in our reports so thank you for that too yes i would like to also just add one thing about um the data for our native american students as you saw is very very deeply concerning and when we um so the federal guidelines drive how the racial identification is interpreted at the state level so we actually know that native american students are counted in other groups as well this is true of other racial subgroups so if a family marks more than one racial subgroup their data automatically falls into multiracial and so when we actually look at the graduation data for our native american students by their affiliation with our title vii indian ed program we see a considerably brighter picture over the last three years at least a 15 percentage point improvement over these rates as published so we know that data slices always tell a certain story and so this is one that we're trying to unpack and determine why we see such a big gap between those those the data that you see here and when we look at native american students aggregated through a different lens with affiliation in our title vii program so um so i would just add that we are trying to understand uh that differential and understand also what are the supports that students are receiving through our title vii indian ed support and is that one of the things that's closing that achievement gap for those students so those culturally specific services both there and in the larger community so given the information they use provided i mean i mean that would make that would make it flat one year to another to the other if that 44 of the previous year was also took into account that uh multi-racial right and and did it would you repeat the question i apologize you said that that there will be if we took into account you know that they were counted somewhere else yes uh in terms of the multiracial category and you said a 15 uh point difference yes that would bring us to 44 yes uh which is same as last year and they will make it flat but there was only if uh they were also using the same approach uh for last year they were so um so last year there was nearly a 15 percentage point difference over the 44 percent and so so each year running you see a different graduation rate when you compare those identified in our state system as native american alaskan native and those students identified in our title vii rosters so um so you're saying it's been fairly consistent so that has been consistent right and the data that we see here the two bars are comparing apples and apples yes they are and then
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you're saying that if we looked at the orange you just offered which is if you just look at title seven affiliation it's oranges to oranges to orange right yeah and that and that fifteen percent so it's a stronger rate right every every year there as well a stronger rate but nonetheless we had a drop significantly yes absolutely so this might be a nice lead into my comments and uh we'll probably you'll probably be hearing more of my comments uh later on this topic and you know i one of the things that resonated with me when the cleveland cluster came in one of the principals talked about the students that are hidden within the data and breaking some of that down and i think i think that was really appropriate it resonated with me because i think the native students are hidden within our data and and frankly i think the uh one of the unfortunate things is that our native students are hidden within our classrooms too which is a an incredibly isolating experience for these students um and you know whether or not it is uh lack of resources or lack of interest the um the fact of the matter is that i from my experience is that our native american students are not finding themselves and and what we're offering there isn't something that resonates with them that draws them to our schools and uh if i were to use some of the language coming from our state this calls for targeted investment it calls for uh an investment in a community that if we don't figure out this we're not going to figure out the rest and obviously i have a lot of passion about this particular community but but it's one that i see on on the cusp of thriving every single day educationally thriving every single day and but with lack of access lack of resources lack of services lack of culturally specific responses to the needs to that community and that's what i would i would ask us to look at as well as we're unpacking some of this data we look at what are some of the things that we can do to help invest in this community because our destinies really are tied and if we're not if we're not making those making those movements in this community we're not going to reach our goals as a district absolutely first of all i'm very pleased to see that this is the third year in a row that we have gone up although as we all say we have a long way to go still so yeah but it's nice to see we're on the right track and congratulations again to uh madison and roosevelt and these other schools who went up my question though has to do with um are accountable alternatives yes where the graduation rates 21 and that's even going down for leap can you talk a little bit about those and what are we doing to turn those around or turn that around or yes um so i would add two things one is um so because students in our alternative schools such as alliance and our other community based schools are necessarily to qualify to be a part of those programs are credit deficient have experienced other interruptions in their schooling and so we don't believe that the four-year graduation rate is the best way to measure them the students entering those programs are on average 17 and a half years old and have seven credits so the idea that those students would then graduate on time is quite optimistic additionally the majority of those students started school in one of the other schools cohorts and so what you're seeing is the graduation rate of those students who did not start ninth grade in one of our other programs we know that there is a protective factor for students who start high school in one of our schools within our system they're likelier to graduate in a four-year cohort so the rates that you see here don't show you the number of kids for instance who graduated from alliance last year but were attributed to franklin to marshall to roosevelt to one of the other schools so if they if they began their ninth grade year there the way the state cohort graduation rate works those students are attributed to the high school that they started in not the one they
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finished in so there's so we're continuing to dig down and understand more so what is the graduation um cohort for each of these schools look like as well um so so that's in in terms of like so how do we need to complicate our thinking about what the data shows and doesn't show so a lot of graduates have been disappeared out of their data and populated into the school where they started um so that's part of the partnership piece yeah i just asked you so i can get it clear in my head so for alliance it says they had 137 students in their cohort none of those students started in any portland public school high school is that right is that what you're saying no i'm saying that um probably most of them started in another pps school okay and but the kids who were completing their fourth year of high school so in other words who were in that four-year cohort um how many of them graduated and were not attributable to another accountable school or another comprehensive school is the rate you see of a meager 21 so using 137 again so though some of those students started in another one of our schools many of them you're saying yes and are attributed to those schools so the only ones we have left to make up this 21 percent are is a smaller that doesn't make any sense the way that's figured it's a smaller group well so this is a challenge of the cohort rate is that um so they're either in the cohort at the beginning and at the end or they're not to me why would you put them in the cohort i know we don't do it but why would we put it in the cohort at the beginning if they're going to be attributed outside in the end why wouldn't they just stay with those schools so what the the state wants to do with its cohort rate i believe is hold our whole system accountable so what about these kids and are you graduating all of these kids so it goes back to when we used to look at our graduation rate and said how many kids who started senior year finished senior year and so our rate was much higher and now that we look at who are all the kids who joined us in freshman year and then who are all of the kids who join us after and they all become a cohort based on the year they started freshman year and if they wherever they started freshman year if they started freshman year in an accountable school they're attributing back excuse me back to that school if they did not then they're attributed to the to district programs or to so i think one of the questions then and maybe this gets to your point director knows is that yes if i just if i'm looking at this grid right now i'm looking at the class of 2011 or 2011 12 and i'm looking at the cohort yes and there are numbers for benson cleveland franklin yes is there and then there's numbers for alliance leap and trillium yes now some of those kids in alliance sleep in trillium may have started one of our comprehensives but does that mean the state's double counting them originally like if i just go down this couldn't i figure out all the number of kids that are or are some of them double counted down here and up here so ostensibly they are not double counted okay so 21 would be of that pure number of 110 because any number that's being assigned back to a cohort is already attributed what you mean by double counted um you can't you can't say that you have a cohort right 37 and then you say they're going to be counted somewhere else either you have the cohort or you don't right right okay there's a missing piece yeah figure that out in regards to what's the actual number of that cohort on leap and then we can say what what are the actual yes numbers of it and if right other grad other folks graduate i think that we also want to know that in regards to you know they contribute to graduating x number of students on this given year that were not attributed to this cohort right that said of the students who are in their fourth year of high school um in those programs with very low performance we so that's that that number is accurate so the students who um it's it's a bull fan i'm sorry it just is a really complex we spend a great deal of time um interpreting these data and um so but it shouldn't be this we'll we'll get the answer for you because it should be this there's somebody know somebody there to come up and help sort this out teal thank you teal is our graduation rate expert come on
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welcome thank you this is teal jackson from our data policy and analysis department and she is our graduation rate guru i just got dragged down the steps so i'm not really prepared for this so the question is about um so when we look at alliance and other schools with a particularly low rate leap being another can you talk about so is that really all the kids who graduated from those schools or all the kids that are accounted for those schools how does that relate to the cohort that we can see so the rule on cohorts generally is the school that last touch the student owns the student so for instance the student might go to cleveland for three years and then transfer to alliance that student's outcome will be attributed to alliance whether it's a graduation a five-year graduation dropout or anything in between the exception to that is our community-based alternative program such as pcc youth progress open meadow mount scott these are not considered accountable schools and so a school a student that would transfer from one of our regular high schools or alliance to open meadow or mount scott is still going to be attributed back to the original school but wait a minute betsy hammond wrote an article saying that they were not attributed to those schools was that incorrect she didn't actually say that but she allowed that implication to be drawn okay yeah thank you and it was incorrect and it was incorrect so that sounds a little bit different what's that that sounds a little bit different you're right no this was the three-part series that was written on alternative programs right so another or the number this summer so they actually yeah they don't they're not attributed back to their schools i'm sorry i was going to say for clarity if we go back to the question about the numbers in the alliance that would be so this the students the number for alliance represents the number of students who basically were last enrolled in alliance and whatever outcome they had and typically alliance is not the first school of enrollment for most students they are referred there from other schools and generally i believe they have to have some they're behind on credit or maybe they've had attendance history or they've had discipline history and so alliance is almost always i think going to have a low four-year graduation rate because they're starting with kids who are already behind the same is not true for leap and trillium although i believe that leaps charter also specifies that they particularly want to help students who are disadvantaged or have some kind of history so again their graduation rate is going to reflect that trillium i think is the real kind of standout in this group because many of as you know there probably know there are k-12 many of their high school students in fact have been with them since elementary school middle school they've been in this school throughout their career and their graduation rate is not very high do we have five years thank you we have five-year rates too yeah okay i'd love to see those you have you have five-year rates for the cohort that was last year's graduation rate you now have their five-year rate right next to the four-year rate you see like it's i don't have it colorless and actually if you look at the leap and i'm not looking at it now but i was just looking at it it was the leap and alliance ones where it's a significant it's a significant gain between the four year and the five five years so five years significantly higher seven percent right yeah which is consistent with suanne's um comments about students who end up there generally will take longer to actually complete we've been those sorry that i'm still having trouble so this those three schools alliance would have been trillium are not ones that the where the numbers where students are counted back at the comprehensive so correct those are countable schools okay so the 170 cohort and the 55 those are kids who they may have been somewhere else earlier but they ended up at alliance and this is what their this is the total group of kids it is whether they spent the first year somewhere else or not yes okay so i should also say that their last enrollment with pps wasn't necessarily
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alliance if they moved from alliance to one of the community alternatives they're still accounted to alliance because the community alternatives are not considered accountable okay okay but again and then the non-accountable ones the community programs what you were saying is that those those students who graduated that who had started from that program but had started elsewhere are accounted in the other schools that's graduation rate okay that's correct so so uh i stand corrected so for instance um the rate that you would see open meadow or mount scott's graduates would include students who also graduated who were also counted in the cohorts of other schools where they started ninth grade so on the far right of this slide there's a bar that says district and those are students who have never had an enrollment in one of our accountable schools they've not been to one of the comprehensives they've not been to alliance they've not been to leap or trillium and these are students who for instance have been through high school at open meadow or mount scott or who came in and went to pcc or some of our other programs of that nature and for this year only that also includes some students who were last seen at marshall and they put them in with the district group just so they wouldn't have to create a graduation rate for marshall that wasn't meaningful so this so i'm sorry you're saying so that came up in the question around madison and franklin earlier she's saying that under the district category includes all former men no only ones who did not re-enroll in another accountable school okay so students that gets to your question about i think right i mean they were medicine because they showed up at madison so madison is the last school that touched them so they're part of their right but if they didn't show up at madison then they're in this district right right correct okay and um i think the the district rate you see here is actually the aggregate district what teal is talking about is district-wide programs which include students in the cbo's in the dart schools in pioneer and other programs so and it's a significantly lower so it's like that it says district program cbo's dart and pioneer it's that bottom total and it's only lists 500 students there right meaning that's not the entire total group who is in our in those programs those are the ones that didn't already touch one of didn't start in one of our public schools right i will say too like this is part of when we do our sense making about who goes to our alternative schools where we end up saying they both end up being a safety net of schools where as a as their home high school you can identify this student needs this and refer them and that's one group of kids and then another group of kids are kids that are getting pulled in who have left school and are being pulled back in and it's a outreach and a reattachment to school and it's two really different groups of kids so i mean anyway so just that like i think you really see the multiple kinds of service that our alternative programs are providing so spanish and all these issues are going to be part of this high school task force and absolutely yeah okay yes any last questions before we move on tripp it looked like you were going to look into a question about gender would you also look into mlc's graduation rate for boys because it's uh like 30 points lower than girls it's kind of shocking so i'd be curious to understand what's happening there too okay great thank you thank you very much yeah um so now at this time we're going to move on to um our capital bond overview we're going to be focusing on going to be focusing for this brief presentation for procurement this is the second of five overviews that we will receive within the next few months between now and march on the capital bond um superintendent smith can you please introduce this item um so jim owens and elaine holt will provide then i just realized elaine got married and i just totally blanked her married name so as elaine holt who i know is elaine holt um we'll we'll do the next installment on our capital bond program great well thank you sir devin smith and good evening i know it's a late hour and so we'll be quick getting through our presentation tonight
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uh this is the second series in prison presentation uh package that includes uh various components of the bond program overview last monday night we had an opportunity to present the project team framework and some of the concept of operations tonight we're going to going to be addressing procurement which is an extremely vital component very little of this spawn work can be accomplished without effective and proper use of our procurement tools and so i'm really pleased that elaine bakerholt i guess we'll characterize it is here tonight with us because i think it also highlights the close uh partnership that we've developed really over the last last several years to put district systems in place and to be ready to execute the very ambitious program so elaine and i will be going through the presentation and we'll highlight the different aspects of procurement and we're going to try to highlight your role as a school board as contract review authority because you play a very key role in terms of how we execute the contracts so starting with our first slide let's see momentary technical yeah okay um it seems that we don't have the powerpoint to be able to put up on the screen but in your board packages you have a copy of what we're going to present and it leads off with a memorandum that highlights this topic so we'll try to go through this and try to articulate the the main material starting with kermit topics absolutely thank you so tonight we're going to provide a high overview of several topics pertaining to your role in our purchasing and contracting as jim mentioned and i also want to emphasize our blended team we've just got a fantastic team with osm and fam purchasing and contracting risk and finance we're all working very closely together very well together and there's a lot of experience in the in the team overall one of the overarching goals of public contracting law is to maximize full and open competition and you've got basically two primary roles one has to do with approving our contracts and competition is a piece of that and the other role is to approve exceptions to competition so where we either limit competition or we choose to go directly to one vendor so those those are in a nutshell the two main pieces of your role tonight we're also going to touch briefly on our equity and public purchasing and contracting policy this you pass back in july and we'll talk a little bit about the efforts that we're making there so moving on to the second slide which is local contract review board if you've got page numbers it's page four so as the governing body of portland public schools oregon statute specifies that you are the district's local contract review board and the local contract review board or lcrb has several duties so the first one at nearly every board meeting you review and approve are contracts in the form of the consent agenda and maximizing fair and open competition is at the crux of all purchasing public purchasing in particular the goal of our purchasing activities is to obtain the best overall value to the district meaning not just to get the lowest price but buying the goods and services that best meet our needs we do this by testing the market and seeking competition and this serves a dual purpose it allows companies fair and equal access to our business opportunities as well as getting us the best deal some contracting and purchasing method
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decisions are delegated to the super superintendent specifically contracts less than 150 000 and some of those exceptions to competition and finally it's important to note there's a specific audit protocol that we follow for capital bond work jim so the next slide is on pbs contracting rules and really the principal takeaways here are that we're operating under under state purchasing rules they're specifically referred to as ors 279 a b and c and collectively they represent all of the purchasing policy and authority that comes to us from the state level in executing bond work we're primarily operating in an area that we don't typically operate as a school district that being in 279 c which is entitled public improvements and public improvements are those that involve major construction or should say construction reconstruction and major alteration and we actually have operating definitions for those terms and relative to the thresholds and the like and in the 279c in the public improvement category we actually have two subcategories one that involves selection of our architects engineers land surveyors and related service providers and then secondly our contractors are builders that are actually involved in in doing the work so together we go through a process to select firms and to be able to execute contracts and then manage the work at the bottom of the slide describes what we like to think of as the three phases of a contract we have the pre-award phase that involves developing the statement of work the technical specifications and then it moves into the award phase where we develop a solicitation and then post award the management of the work the enforcement of the contract provisions and relative to the teaming that we have with district purchasing and contracting group and office of school modernization we we work collaboratively across all three phases as we as we move through the work okay so the next slide equity in public purchasing and contracting this refers to the policy um that was passed early in or actually mid 2012. um we're pleased that we're continuing to hone our internal processes but we're planning to employ our this policy as early as possible in the bond work we already have two outreach events scheduled in february the first will reach architects and the second is directed at contractors particularly general contractors and other construction contractors and osm and purchasing along with some other departments are working in concert on those efforts the next slide that's titled acquisition methods is a quick summary of uh the differences between how we select consultants and how we select the builders division 48 as it's described in our purchasing rules uh involves selection of our architects engineers land surveyors and related service providers and the key takeaway here is that these are typically selected on a qualification based selection protocol typically that means price isn't included when it is it's not a major factor when we recently the state legislature changed the protocol for selection of architects and engineers when the estimated fee exceeded a hundred thousand dollars where we actually couldn't invite price as a weighted factor when we were considering the selection criteria so this is a new area for us one that i think will actually work quite well because architects and engineers are more of a practice that involves a creative process and flow and so we're really looking for the firm that has the the best qualifications if you will to do the work district staff are trained and experienced to develop criteria that are used and then we work collaboratively with purchasing and contracting on that the other area is we call division 49 which is the public improvement construction and here we have two primary means to to execute the work one is the traditional method which is the tried and true design bid and build and then the other is called alternative procurement alternative procurement is involves a a special approach that entails exemption that elaine mentioned earlier and so we have two here one that is called the two-step process that's where we actually can present to you as the school board
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a set of findings that would describe the reasons for using something other than the traditional method the presumption under state law is that our contracts for public improvements are done using traditional so when we use an alternative staff prepares findings recommendations we'll present to you as the contract review authority and then a short public hearing is held to validate you recently went through this i guess about a year and a half ago for the boiler burner fuel conversion project which was actually a cmgc project cmgc is the other one that most people think of for alternative procurement which is short for construction manager general contractor and cmgc is particularly suitable on large complex schedule tight schedule type work and currently we're contemplating use of both of these alternative tools on some of the bond projects so as we continue to work and develop plans we'll be uh we'll be presenting that information to you okay so our final slide as we move forward with the bond work it's likely that businesses may contact you at some point we recommend you refer these bidders contractors and consultants to staff and i'm your best contact for that um and just once again to summarize jim and myself and the staff are working daily to maintain maintain positive and fruitful relationships with the businesses that are interested in working with the district we hold meetings we hold one-on-one meetings with contractors we hold group meetings as i mentioned we're coming out with a couple of outreach events large outreach events and we also attend all sorts of meetings weekly practically with contractors all around town so we're working really hard to maintain strengthen engage those businesses at this time i'd like to invite any questions that you may have thank you so i have uh two questions uh one is under um equity and public purchasing and contracting there's a bullet that talks about student career learning promote student engagement and bond work learn career paths and design and construction industries so my first questions are around that and what we're doing in terms of our you know current processes and in particular as we're looking to do initial work this summer and then whatever the work is that we're going to be doing next year um do you have a sense yet of how we're going to be engaging students well this is timely we had a meeting at four o'clock this afternoon on this topic the first thing that we're doing is working closely with the pathways program so tripp goodall and jeanne yerkovich's lead that up and of course the career coordinators are intrinsic to that so we're focusing on programs that we already have in place first we are looking at the resources that we have the bond resources and the other resources to see if there's anything that we can do to expand that so that was what we were discussing this afternoon but we're really building on what's already out there that includes things like internships job shadowing site visits speaking engagements specialized projects that a school and a business might work in coordination to develop jim i also heard direct reagan asked about the work for this summer as we approach the bid phase of the of the summer 2013 improvements we have four traditional um what we call itbs invitation to bid construction packages that we plan to incorporate language that will engage them with our students so as elaine mentioned we'll he'll be providing an opportunity to to speak to students to provide tours of the construction job site to get into the contractor offices to provide students with some perspective on the on the construction industry similarly our architect engineer firm bbl architects provides a similar opportunity on the consulting side and then lastly our our pmcm our program manager slash construction manager hearing international that's supporting the district is also going to be providing robust opportunities for students to participate in the work that they're doing starting as early as this summer that's good
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i'd love to hear more about that as we go and get more information that's really exciting so the other thing i wanted to ask which isn't necessarily specific to contracting some of it could be is as we look at our rebuilds in particular we know um with the fabian rebuild that we're going to be bringing in a partner fabian um and i'm assuming as we're looking at our three high school projects we would be doing some sort of outreach partners as well um i know for example when we talked about lincoln once upon a time there was a zillion folks in the community thinking about what are the partnerships and what makes sense so i'm curious to know who would be doing kind of partnership outreach as we go um to kind of figure out who who we can pull in to maybe make our dollars go farther or provide newer unique different kind of opportunities for students and likewise i'm curious in terms of any partnership opportunities for the work that we're doing this summer and jim i had mentioned to you specifically you know do we have any opportunity to potentially bring some partners in to do solar panels on the roofs you know some something like that so um i'm not sure if it's if it's you all or if there's another group that would be looking at partnership opportunities but i just want to make sure it's kind of front and center all the time because i think we have an opportunity to really show our community that portland public schools is is a good partner and looking for opportunities that's a great uh great comment relative to the partnership development included on our blended team is work that bob alexander is doing with facilities in asset management and so we are working collaboratively together in the case you mentioned fabian with concordia university not only relative to the explicit mou that we have in place but also in terms of greater collaboration with them as we move further into the master planning phase into into design and then into construction so i think that's probably the best example relative to how we're really going to capitalize uh notwithstanding that there is a range of capital funding investment contributions that concordia would be would be making which of course will influence the the program of the of the fabian replacement project itself there are a number of other opportunities certainly with the state i think alameda elementary is a good example of a partnership with the state's office of emergency management and the state rehabilitation grant program which was a significant contribution to the million and a half dollars to uh to support the sizing strengthening of the school um there are other examples of other groups that are that are out there and so we're going to continue to to look for opportunities and to see how we can leverage uh energy trust another one that we talked about you mentioned the solar the state department of energy hodo for the sp 1149 work is another place that we can leverage this to really maximize the you know the bond funds so can i just begin that i appreciate you bringing it up because i also think that there might be non-traditional partners not not ascending funding source or something like that and i think there's such momentum about being excited about this bond and about our people kind of rebuilding our schools as an infrastructure as kind of setting another state that we do believe in public education i just hope that we can find ways to engage a wide wide swath of partners outside of even contracting or funding sources and i guess i would call on us as board members to try to find ways to open up and engage those partners as well not to run sideways or get ahead or behind staff but to to open up those opportunities because i think there are people that could contribute but they don't even know the opportunity exists or you know if it's if it's somehow not a million and a half or 15 million dollars like concordia somehow they deselect they're like oh i can't contribute but this community does such a great job of investing and recycling and reusing and finding creative innovative ways to build on our assets and we are a lucky community i would love to find us a way to incorporate that great great comment that's very timely as well our next presentation to you on on the program is engagement and so we'll we'll highlight that i think it's also important to connect the community and how they'll be engaged in our our ed visioning and head spec process because community input is a partnership of sorts as well and particularly regarding the wraparound services i think there's going to be a lot of very dynamic input from the community on that good other questions comments
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dr morton great good thank you both congratulations elaine so we are moving on to um common core state standards so as as we've moved through milestones and state achievement complex one question that's come up is common core state standards and a desire on our part to understand a little bit more about what our common core state standards what are we doing to meet those how does it affect our students we hear various things in the community sometimes we hear that this is a dumbing down of standards and it's awful and it's the end of public education and other people think it's the greatest thing in the entire world because it finally lets us level a playing field and brings us up to a standard of what to expect from public education so tonight we have staff with us and superintendent if you could introduce this item and this was by board request to get more background and deeper information on common core so suanne higgins our chief academic officer and kimberly mateer who is the director of instruction curriculum and assessment will will give us actually what i think is going to be a really informative session on common hello and i would just say that i um that our executive director of teaching and learning melissa goff was planning to do the presentation was unable to be here due to illness tonight so to begin with the common core standards we believe is another strategy to move us towards our equity goals and so we want to work through that with you this evening each of the leaders uh in our central office team this year was asked in the fall by carol to come up with what makes you optimistic about pps and what frames your work and um so melissa framed hers around the leaders in her department and their shared urgency around our racial educational equity work as they lead our departments and dr mature is one of those leaders so right now we know that our results are inequitable in so far as some students clearly have access to an advantage from the way our instruction happens where our assessment happens and so in reckoning with that we believe that the common core standards work um helps move us to shifts that will alter those results for us long term so dr matthew so oregon has adopted the common core state standards and we are one of 47 states that have adopted the standards in both english language arts and mathematics it is a state-led effort it's not a federal mandate and so one of the things that that we are working on is really focusing on effective implementation and making sure that all of our students are going to be college and career ready um and so we're really excited about this adoption and glad that oregon is taking part so what i'm going to kind of just walk you through for this next part is the work that we're doing around introducing the standards in mathematics to our teachers and staff across the system we started with this work last year in 2011-12 with kindergarten through second grade and this year we are working with our fourth and fifth grade and um and then in parts of our fourth grade we're just doing we're focusing on the fractions domain and we'll continue with that work next year for the rest of the areas that we'll be implementing so if you look at the timeline also we started our eighth grade cohort last year even though it's not kind of in that regular progression with the green there in that first column because we know that our eighth graders are going to be the first cohort of students to take the common core state assessment so that's why we started them a year early and then the rest of our grades will be introduced to the common core state standards in 2013-14 with full implementation by 2014-15 there are six um instructional shifts that we're really focusing on with our teachers and introducing those to our staff once a month we have java likes where they get to learn about these shifts we're particularly interested in and highlighting the application shift in that providing increased
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opportunity for students to engage in application of skill and concepts of what they're being able to do and what they are learning so that they can apply those skills in a real world kind of relevant situation through different tasks that teachers introduce to them and showing up teachers where they show up in the curriculum so with regard to budget implications one of the things that we want to bring forward to you is how we are looking at what does it mean for us to make the shift to common core standards as well as the smarter balanced assessment and so we know that because of the dramatic shift to habits of mind work that our common core work will require of us in order to really accelerate all students towards being college and future ready we know that it will require extensive professional development and so we anticipate general fund costs to support this and we're working on this in our budget proposal process right now around the professional development facilitation and production of support materials for our staff to connect the common core standards work with our current curricula to be roughly five hundred thousand dollars and the second area that we're um adopting in terms of the common core state standards is in the english language arts and then also in literacy across content areas so our social studies and science and other subjects which would be focusing on reading writing listening and speaking skills across content areas so with the introduction of the common core state standards in this area we just started that work this year so we're a year behind our math introduction and then we'll continue to roll out as you can see in the chart with full implementation again by 2014-15 we did um this right here is reflecting our k5 um implementation but our six eight followed that same implementation as k2 and then we have um invited our high schools to participate in the um the workshops that we've created for our 6-8 teachers so that they can have that information as well again we have six instructional shifts that we're focusing on in this area and i will just highlight a couple of them for you for example in number four we're really focusing on um getting students to have increased opportunities for responding to texts and having text-based answers so really looking for evidence in the text and citing that whereas before we talked a lot about self to text where we were getting students to kind of tap into their personal experiences and relating to characters in the text but we want to increase the level of complexity and rigor by having them really have increased opportunities around citing evidence in response to what they're reading the other piece is again around number six where we're really focusing on building the literacy skills across the content areas increasing the opportunities for students to engage in those reading behaviors with increasingly complex texts so that you know we're actually teaching those skills beyond third grade because we know the text is getting more complex and so we still want to provide that guided support for students so in terms of english language arts as well as english language development next year is the statewide adoption year so as you know we go through a cycle every seven years of adoption for curriculum materials and so for next year we will be connecting that adoption to the work we're doing and with the common core standards so one of the implications for common core standards is that at the high school level focuses considerably more on non-fiction reading and writing than you would typically find right now in the book rooms in our high school so that's one of the kinds of shifts that will then show up as we analyze what materials we want to adopt so as always the english language arts adoption is a really significant investment on the part of the district additionally now we know that we've got to also have digital digitally adapted resources as well because the work that we are doing now and resources that need to last at least
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seven years and maybe longer will need to be available in a variety of formats so all of that will be part of how we anticipate what could be as much as a five million dollar investment in this adoption so it's a really big big impact and statewide of course districts are reckoning with how to accomplish that simultaneous with the reduction in education funds from the state so this will be a complex one and will be part of what you'll be seeing from us in the budget proposal process so also though we are looking at how to leverage this investment so we know that some of what we need to do for common core work is to connect it to work that we're doing with in other technology assisted areas um we're also working with the council of great city schools with other districts to see how they're doing it and implementing this in a more sustainable cost effective way as well as working with ode so um so there's a lot of work ahead of us on this one and um but we wanted to try to demonstrate to you sort of what does it mean to do this so they're disconnected insofar as this just happens to be the year of the english language arts and english language development adoption year and it's the time in which we are moving towards our common core state standards implementation so so that's where you see us sort of talking about them at the same time additionally the kind of technical supports that we need now and going into the future continue to change and be complex we're working closely with our it department and looking at what kinds of technical supports will teachers need to do and use these tools as well as the assessment tools that we're about to share with you so this the the technical maintenance pieces we believe will require budgeting around 400 000 for next year so suen i don't mean to interrupt but um some of the numbers that are up on these slides are slightly different than the information we got in our presentation so i'm just okay i'm curious which i'm assuming this was created after this and so these are maybe more not yet accurate numbers yes they are so the ones you're presenting here are more accurate they are so i apologize for the um the difference in versions can you also talk to us about you just mentioned a 5 million investment especially in non-fiction and given that we're looking at a 17 million cut in our budget next year um if we are not if we don't have the capacity to do this amount of investment or any investment at all what does that do in terms of introducing common core it's a really great question um and for clarification i'm not suggesting that we would spend five million dollars on non-fiction texts what i mean is that we would be so in this in adoption we would be looking at all of our language arts and language english language development materials and doing an adoption on the state's schedule then so so what does it mean for us to not invest this much it's complex what we often find and certainly this isn't the first time tough times have come around for school districts when when adoptions get rolled forward or only partially implemented it tends to compromise school districts long term in terms of their ability to have the right resources available and so it's i mean so this is a really tough time to do this and also a really really tough and bad time not to make this investment because we want to be aligned for the common core standards can really do you want to address this further yes um the common core state standards are only measuring the knowledge and skills that we want students to have and it doesn't take into account how to deliver the standards instructionally and so um the piece that especially with our equity work is to be really thinking about how can we be responsive to students who are vulnerable to not meeting um the standards or to grow in the in the way that we need them to grow on time and you know so we have to accelerate our learning because we know our students of color in particular are um underperforming at this time um so the the english language development and the strategies and the
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resources would only help to support accelerate the learning and growth of our students of color so that would be a way that it could hurt the common core implementation in terms of being more effective having the right resources and materials to help teachers be more responsive to their students of color so how much money are we looking at five million dollars it depends which part yeah yeah on this one in london this one piece what we're talking about is five million dollars now i'm just reminded the last time that we were able to finally do a catch-up on curriculum is because two local levies ago we included that in it and that's what finally allowed us to replace 30 year old texts but we don't have that in our current local levy the priority was teaching positions so i just want us to be realistic about what we can and can't do um you know and i assume that every other district um that's attempting to accomplish this is looking at the same challenge so yes another thing for us to talk to our state legislators about yet another disconnect between you know higher and higher accountability and more and more mandates without right being willing to invest we just heard from high schools principles the direct impact positive impact on having this additional resources and this would be a similar thing um absolutely so just a little bit about the assessment side of this work because we we are um or we have adopted a new set of standards and there is increased rigor or cognitive rigor around that so that we can make sure that students are college and career ready we've had to also design a new assessment system so that we are accurately measuring how students are responding to instruction so the smarter balanced assessment has been designed by this consortium of states in the western region and it is a summative assessment which means that it's a assessment that happens after the learning has occurred and what it's really measuring is the effectiveness of instruction and and how students are responding to the activities um that the teachers have designed for them to engage in the part that is a little different than from our current oaks assessment or state assessment is that um well it first i'll talk about what's similar and that is that it is a computer adaptive test it is measuring still the knowledge and skills that students have but because everything can't be measured on a computer they're have added a component that apprises a performance task and a performance task is really more of a real world kind of relevant situation that they ask students to think about and the students will then use a variety of what they've learned over the course of years so not just one year of time but they could you know apply what they learned even in second grade or third grade and then apply all of the different concepts that they learned about to this one task so it's really getting out the thinking and how they're approaching a situation or a problem so that they can have more of a real world kind of relevant experience so so um in terms of the technology implications there are technology standards that have also been adopted um we do want our students to be ready for 21st century and we know that we live in a very um technology driven society and so um it is important for us to make sure that we're building those skills in for for students and having that experience with the smarter balance there's also a technology piece in there and that the students will have to create visual models and things like that so it's a little bit more sophisticated than what we're seeing on the oaks on the technology side of things so it's really we just want to ensure that our students are getting a well-rounded comprehensive educational experience and technology is an integral part of that work one of the other pieces of the smarter balance that is also a challenge is that it it's the cost to us from the state is about double per student what the oaks assessment is so it's more complex to administer because it has students doing some independent tasks and
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um so that will also have budgetary implications for us over time at this time we have i believe only two schools piloting it so we're at a stage where we're you know given that we're two years out from full implementation where we are learning to use the tools and adapt them make certain that we have the technological upgrades in our planning and budgeting processes so that we are ready to start when this takes hold yes has anyone else piloted it before we've piloted it um so the pilot is happening at the same time across multiple districts and states so we've had opportunities to sample some of the items and take a look at individual items but not in a more comprehensive way such as some of the pilot schools are doing at this time and they were pre-selected so it's not we didn't have any involvement in that piece have they gotten any feedback at this point not yet so and again one difference that kimberly described is that the smarter balance is administered at the end of the school year so one of the kind of unusual things about the oaks test is that you're you start testing mid-year and then if kids don't make you test them again and rather than actually assessing so what happened over the course of the school year from the end of last year to the end of this year so so it intentionally targets the last 12 weeks of school for all students to really capture so what have the gains over this year been so we hope that it should give us a better portrait of what the year's instruction shows in terms of additional skills students have so if students don't pass those tests is it tied to graduation so um the smarter balance will replace the oaks test so yes it will replace so if they take it in the last 12 weeks of school they have time to retake it if they've failed so it's not given annually it's given on the same um to the same grade bands that the oaks test currently is so for high schoolers that's the junior year yes so so do you have any more with your presentation or is that okay so i just want to open it up to colleagues for any additional questions when you said smarter balanced assessment costs two times more than oaks so first of all this is what the whole state's moving toward yes what all of 47 states are moving towards and do we know what that means for our district in terms of i don't have the dollar figure we don't have it at this time we're talking hundreds of thousands are we talking millions are we talking about not millions okay that's good but if we know what oak's cost is correct do we know what else right so so uh the variables i don't know so we know that oaks costs around 13.50 per student we believe smarter balance will be in the range of 26 dollars per student is the most recent figure i heard and um i don't know the n of how many students we test in um third fifth eighth and eleventh grades right now so um but it's several thousand students so it's 13.50 for each time during the year or total for the whole year's worth of maybe multiple times taking the oaks test that's a good question i think it is just the one time i don't think it's the multiple times so yeah i mean one thing that sort of appeals to me about the what sounds like improvement with the smarter balance one is that we aren't doing this constant throughout the year pressure on teachers to be spending so much time doing that potentially although that a question i had was just around do you know i mean this isn't maybe a federal mandate but it's a state mandate and do you have so you're complying with it and um doing your best to comply with it which i appreciate but um so this is a question not really at you but at you know the powers that be that are bringing this to us um i mean do you have a sense of how much teacher involvement there is in developing the either the standards or the smarter balanced assessment yes um there was quite a bit of involvement so with the consortium it uh included stakeholders from all levels really even policy makers teachers were definitely involved from the very beginning all the way through the process and then the governors association there was also a national council of um chiefs state officers so really at every single level all of the stakeholders have been represented throughout the entire process for the standards as well as for the assessment yes the standards actually have been um
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developed by educators leading educators across the country have students been represented um i don't know how much student involvement there was in designing and developing the standards however uh during the revision getting feedback there were multiple um or involvement from communities so just as you see pps goes through a particular process and getting stakeholder feedback and that kind of thing there's been feedback from a variety of different community groups i believe parents have had some feedback and that kind of thing so this is based on a set of international standards it's very research based it's not that it just came out of nowhere this has been going on for a couple of decades in terms of really thinking about how we can increase the level of rigor for students so that they can be successful once they exit the school system and have a viable way to you know to live and to work so how's this gonna yeah how's this going to affect our esl students and our language immersion students actually i think this is a prime opportunity to accelerate the growth of our students who have been underperforming traditionally and that they will actually have increased opportunities to to meet the cognitive rigor demands that are being asked for by our our workforce and for our colleges because these standards are directly aligned to help students meet those entry-level skills that are needed and it also gives them more of a guidance it has focused the work of teachers so that it's not so broad so we often have teachers are trying to cover a lot of topics and so the amount of topics that are being covered has been reduced because there's a more focused and coherent way that the standards have been developed so that it can really allow the teachers to go at a deeper level with students so and they have deeper learning am i correct in that they looked at the skills necessary for college and career readiness and then they basically back mapped what would be an age-appropriate skill not necessarily even content but what skills are needed to access whatever content students come across is that correct absolutely but with the content then they focused it and reduced the number of topics that students needed to know any other questions i mean based on the presentation one of the the things that i i think you highlighted was the whole emphasis on literacy instruction in all content area for a number of years at least this district and you know service have been put forth i mean there were some a number of challenges for teachers one of them was of course classroom management uh the other one was uh literacy instruction in the content area right and their lack of preparation in that area or at least some gaps that they identify themselves it seems to me that there is potential to address that um i guess ongoing challenge you know in in the district and and to then impact the overall achievement of students if we actually do that investment in this way absolutely you're right on target and that's another question i think in your um on the longer materials that we had you had a slide around the limitations of the common core in terms of equity so could you talk about that a little bit and i mean my note on this side was i mean so what you state is that and i think it's about in the longer packet it's one two two four six seven slide in um that the common core state standards do not explicitly foster development of student cultural and linguistic backgrounds deep exposure and understanding multicultural perspectives articulate culturally responsive strategies so my question was so therefore pbs will what so actually um it really aligns itself well with the work that we're doing with our equity work across the district and so um it's just integrating those two pieces together and so we it you know we talk about our instructional strategies with our teachers and um and really it's about what do you know about your students what are the what are the assets that they're bringing to the classroom so taking what you know in terms of their strengths and the areas that you want to grow them so their strengths culturally academically socially so looking at the whole child and then taking that and infusing that into how are you going to design a lesson
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that that the students can be highly engaged and motivated by and i think with this focus on being you know real world and relevant looking at multiple perspectives is a way to kind of get at that so it's mirroring the two pieces and i think it also bears saying it's not a curriculum so it's a framework it's not standardization it's a set of standards and so it remains incumbent upon us and our instructors throughout the district to make certain that that really mining the rich cultural heritage of all our students is a connection in the curriculum in every class and every content area so um so we called that out and then we felt like we needed to shorten the presentation so sorry that you have two different versions but you're always being pressured so we call it out though to say that there's that so this is not magic either what it does is allow us to i believe have a more adaptive or focused for large-scale change characteristic as opposed to as another set of standard standardization from the state that says you know read this do this jump this way etc so this is asks for more complex to be tasks to be accomplished by teachers and by their students and for us to really be preparing kids for the 21st century in a way that standards have not really gotten us to yet so the the common core themselves are not inherently designed or talking around the same equity goals so what you're saying is that it can help foster that but it's going to be incumbent on us to make sure that we keep that's that we add to that and make sure that it's integrated with it so that's that part isn't being mandated or standardized or supported in any way by the state so i'm just calling that and i appreciate you guys calling that out because we have to make sure that we're doing both of those so i do also just want to point out though that even though it's not called out specifically in the standards and the documents um in which the common core is introduced it talks about rigor relevance and relationships and really promotes the idea of districts infusing what they know about their kids in terms of their assets and being really responsive culturally as you're thinking about lesson design and instructional delivery and linguistically i saw that yes and linguists thanks do you have another question yeah so i feel like if you're gonna have this common curriculum and even if teachers can kind of switch it up a little bit you still end it all in a standardized test which still kind of implies that there is a specific sort of information that you're supposed to obtain from taking that course and as we all know those highly correlate to income and are racially biased and i feel like as a whole this is a pretty inequitable solution and it's still a standardized system and i don't know why we're not working on just community control of our schools so um i i just want to respond by saying the test the summative tests in any kind of test or assessment is really just to um for us to have it's a check and balance what is it that our students need and helping us to identify that so we can meet their needs it's not um it's not meant for any other reason then to make sure we are it's we are tasked to make sure that our kids receive um what they need so that they can be college and career ready if they're not college and career ready then they won't be able to have gainful employment and to be able to live um you know an independent and you know to be able to to participate and be fully able to take care of themselves we know that the unemployment rate is extremely high we have a shortage on jobs and we are now in a globally competitive environment and so we need to make sure that our students have the skills and the knowledge to be able to get job to be able to take care of themselves so it's it's our it's our responsibility that's what we're tasked with just like a doctor's is required to um you know check and see what are the symptoms what are the needs of their patient and then how can they help their patient get better so i'm going to ask to my right if there are any other questions but i just as a quick response i don't i heard it it's not a curriculum it's a set of tasks and skills that people should have how a teacher in a classroom access that is totally within their right and their freedom to figure out how to do that but i i don't think i would be surprised if and generally in public we think our
02h 30m 00s
community would think that by the time you get to the end of high school you shouldn't be able to do certain tasks or have certain skills so i guess i don't view this as removing local control in fact what i heard you say is that there's still a lot of control in fact there's a focusing we're not expecting you to do a wide array but there are some core skills that you need to have by the time you leave our system to be college and career ready um and how a teacher gets to that we're going to make sure that the skills are there but the content right whether it's you memorize the pledge of allegiance or whatever that that's going i feel like going away and it's saying now how do you make sense of the pledge of allegiance as a document and how do you how do you put it in context and how do you as an 8th grader or a 10th grader even access the language in it so i guess i just i'd be cautioned i'd caution us again to use what i would say kind of sound bites out there in the community and that's what i think the value is in learning a little bit more and it's not that this is that be all end-all like this is the right way to assess every student um but again i think it's just an understanding of what it is that's right so i would also say that it's it's i think what you were trying to point out is it's our test of ourselves are we meeting the needs of our students absolutely and that's just as important as are our students passing the test it's are we if they're not why aren't they and what do we need to do differently and that's that's where i see the important piece of this so i believe that these assessments do what what our best teachers do which is um really look at how are kids progressing through a set of skills that really make them able to have habits of mind that allow them to navigate in a in a complex society so so i think that there's opportunity here and we are engaging our teachers in developing so how do we align with these standards then on what we believe in about what we've done and what we believe we've not done well how do we realign that so that these standards pull us forward so direct report so uh thank you very much for the presentation on it it's interesting to look at look at this and get our heads around a little bit i think the um you know i work at an organization that serves one of our um most underserved populations and in fact we're pretty assessment heavy uh many of the the students that we work with uh are case managed uh with youth advocates folks that that work with them all along sort of the academic curriculum and and spectrum um but what uh the key to it is how you use that information and i remember when ben cannon and whitney grubbs came to uh maybe a year ago or two years ago and talked to us about much of this i i had similar comments that t really is how do you do it and i'll say that the assessment that my organization uses is actually the the map assessment which is being boycotted at garfield high school right now um but it's used in seattle's but it's used really as a per student map literally design that designs what the interventions need to be how you address those specific things with that student it's very student-centric very student-specific um that i think the challenge is is that that's the best used for use for it um whether or not you know another evaluation process is is best for other uses i don't know but um but i found uh when used in that manner it actually gives you a lot of really concrete information about that particular student and uh and actually a path to to bring that student up to benchmark and beyond benchmark so my experience with one of our most underserved populations is that in fact these can be really helpful tools but we use it in the way in which it was intended you're absolutely right and i'm gonna i i'm sorry just want to make this last comment because i think it's really important that um assessments are just to give us feedback on how we can better meet the needs of our students and it's also the more that you can work in partnership with students and family so that you're looking at the information together it is a very powerful thing a way to really you know to be transformative for students unlike when coaches are working with their um basketball team or soccer team they're constantly giving feedback they're uh when they have a scrimmage and they given you know they're looking and that's kind of an assessment they're
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looking to see how are their um how are the students or the folks on the team um how are they playing how are they using their skills in a in a setting where the variables are changing and how are they learning about their teammates in terms of their strengths and weaknesses what are the what how are they evaluating and analyzing the situation and so the coach then after observing gives students their students or teammates feedback and then they go and practice those skills so the intervention is then the coach would then work on some discrete skills maybe like dribbling or passing the ball or something like that so assessment and feedback is a is a part of our everyday life it doesn't just happen in the school it happens in the real world all the time in work settings and so it's just something that uh you know we want students to feel empowered by and it's not something that they should feel um is something bad or negative and by the way those students that are going through that assessment are graduating at about 20 points higher than our district average okay we have we have about five more minutes director reagan i think you had a question i had two things one is uh we got this one sheet that talked about the summary of uh core components of the smarter balanced program and i guess what i appreciated is that talked about the summative assessment at the end of the year but it also had a whole section on interim assessments along the way which i think gets to what you were talking about so that's right that was good um i guess one of the things i wanted to follow up on i think it was director atkins who asked about whether we had had much teacher input it wasn't you had much teacher input and and i think the response we got was more about uh teacher input on the national level and in the rest and i guess as we're looking at rolling this out i guess i was looking for what the engagement's been at the district level oh i see in particular and with pit and yes and we have representation again we have a ccss advisory council or committee and that has um principal stakeholders teachers stakeholders and then i've also been working with parents since i've been involved and so we there's a parent component as well we're going to be also establishing parent academies so that parents are actively engaged in this conversation as we continue to move forward with our implementation we've had a lot of good feedback um anytime you're rolling out something new you've always you know got to tweak and refine and so we've had a lot of good feedback in terms of the implementation and things that we can do to better support at every level of the what are the two skills that you're following this project oh roosevelt's one of them because he talked about it last week i am so sorry i don't i i had it i can't recall what the second one is either i apologize okay great thank you both now the board will consider our business agenda miss houston are there any changes to our business agenda no thank you do i have a motion to adopt thank you director gonzalez moves to adopt the business agenda do i have a second second director atkins seconds the business agenda director gonzalez moves and director atkins seconds the adoption ms houston is there any citizen comment no citizen comment is there any board discussion about the business agenda not today all right um the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no the business agenda is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative garcia voting yes just a reminder that the board will hold a public hearing on superintendent's jefferson enrollment balancing recommendation on saturday february 9th from 10 a.m to noon in the jefferson high school auditorium we will also be devoting the first 45 minutes of our february 11th work session to public comment on the recommendation the next study session of our board will be held on february 11th at 2013 at 6 pm

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)

2013-02-04 PPS School Board Study Session

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education, 2/04/13 Study Session

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