2013-03-04 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2013-03-04
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - March 4, 2013

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good evening this meeting of the board of education for March 4th 2013 is called to order welcome to everyone here and to our television viewers all items will be that will be voted on this evening have been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the Board website for replay times you're also able to check the website and uh VII find it via our web archives student representative Garcia is absent this evening as is director Sergeant at this time we allow for 20 minutes of public comment Miss Houston do we have anybody signed up for public comment are Greg burill and Bill D great so if they could come forward as you're coming forward I'm going to read the um instructions for public comment just so everybody's familiar with them 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 emphasize respect and consideration when referring to board members staff and other presenters you 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 there will be a green light that 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 we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments at that time and I will help you remember that if for some reason you're going a little bit long we sincerely appreciate your input and we thank you for your cooperation you were first said Greg okay my name is Greg Burl b r r i l l ah board co-chairs members superintendent ladies and Gent gentlemen again I am a teacher but I address you for the third time as an education stakeholder you recall that the first time I thankk you for your service the last time I shared the idea of having all education stakeholders sitting at the reform table led by teachers and parents those who actually interact with students on a daily basis this is particularly important because almost every successful business leader politician and professional comes from the minority of of all students most students never become financially or professionally successful as you leaders have become yet decisions about schooling for every child are made almost exclusively by those whose personal and family experience with school is abnormal is measured statistically let me take a survey and don't don't let let me intimidate you how many of you have ever been teachers great how many of you have been building administrators how many of you have five or more years experience in either one of those jobs Fant fantastic that that reassures me right because um well PPS caps pupil loads at 180 students if I have 180 students and I spend 10 minutes per student per week grading their work that's 30 hours of the 37 and a half hours I'm paid for in math I can Mark problems right or wrong pretty quickly but how often will I spend my time thinking about why that student's answer is wrong and give personalized feedback on daily homework uh weekly quizzes or large unit tests more and more teachers must give multiple choice tests no feedback no partial credit no practice in writing the answers and many opportunities for failure to accurately assess student strength and weaknesses I am for example trained in writing across the curriculum how often do you think any math teacher requires students at the high school level to explain in paragraphs how they solve a problem and give feedback in written English if I'm an English teacher with that load how will I teach uh uh students to better construct Arguments for their thesis if I'm a history teacher how will I teach that a historian constructs a personal account of History by reading and interpreting Source documents as opposed to assessing students Mastery of memorizing simple facts and regurgitating them uh on a test that I can enter into a grade book in a few seconds my time to address you is almost up but we haven't talked about the 22 and a half hours the teacher spends teaching the time teachers must spend answering parent emails uh contacting disengaged parents contacting counselors about evidence of student issues looking up the longitudinal records of new students attending IEP meetings staff meetings mandatory I you the you can read the rest of the list
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that be great it's a long list thank you very much dear Madam superintendent and board members I want to thank everyone and all the guests tonight I'm here tonight to speak about two things one is an update on planed Parenthood which I discussed in December and the other is religious freedom of employees at Portland Public School plan parented did release new numbers this January and showed that they did Kill 333 964 th000 babies this past uh year and uh again I don't see how that helps in terms of increasing enrollment um in Portland Public Schools I also want to encourage all of you like I did last time that usually when someone has something like this they're seeking some void in their life and our Heavenly Father Again seeks all of us he desires all of us and any any void in our life if we try to fill it with you know drug sex liquor whatever it's it's just not going to happen like a lot of college students do that and it just doesn't work secondly um for about six years um it's G gone on to the seventh year now I teach in the district and once they found out that um I was working for life and Purity uh they were they were pretty upset and there's been uh just this year alone there's been believe it or not 30 some observations of District officials principls Vice principles or planned parented officials in my class and many many of the meetings you know the lawyers attended Jeff fish is one of your lawyers and back in 2008 he wrote this this memo summarizes our discussion today regarding regarding your identification as a Benson or PPS employee or teacher while publicly expressing your religious or political beliefs as with any Portland Public School employee you have the right to express your personal uh political or religious opinion I I don't see that very true after six years here however recent events have raised some concerns about whether statements you make might reasonably be interpreted as implying that the district supports your personal opinion or that you are speaking on behalf of the district or Benson High School well I think unfortunately that the city knows that you folks are are um that you certainly like Planned Parenthood and and and all their services which is unfortunate but I am just wondering why that didn't go both ways because and I have it here um the the one of the recruitment packages that that Portland Public Schools and Planned Parenthood put together it's the Vietnamese one said that that uh bill this was in favor of Planned Parenthood and in in favor of their program at Benson High School and I'm certainly am not and it's it's caused quite a bit of thank consternation on my part to try to retract that thank you all right and I do have a couple things for you folks too Miss houon uh next speakers are Jenny Richardson and Adella Chavez my name is Jenny Richardson and I'm coming here tonight to speak to you as a parent um my daughter is a kindergartener at Chief Joe Elementary and I want to talk to you about um considering um pulling practices from the Portland Public schools that are shaming in discipline and class classroom management um one of the practices that my daughter's classroom um does is uh clip charts which is a chart um that has different categories um the middle category where the kids begin their day says ready to learn and then as their behavior is good they move up and as their behavior is bad they move down and this is publicly displayed in the classroom um and it's very disturbing to me as a parent that um the children's self-esteem is damaged if they are the one of the children that are always at the bottom of the chart so I'm asking you to get in touch with your own personal moral compass as parent as a parent as an educator and think about how you would feel if you're five or six
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and you are entering with great enthusiasm and a desire to please your teacher and please your mom and um you are struggling for some reason you know a lot of the children that are at the bottom are minority kids foster kids children that have challenges at home and um the kids that are at the top are also suffering in that way that they learn values that are not values that that we want to put forward or that I that I believe in which which is to um stigmatize their peers to um to have a sense of inflation um my daughter was bullied at a preschool before we started kindergarten and so I've worked as a mom very hard at um helping her to not revictimized herself and to also not imitate The Bullying practices and I feel that the um the public ranking of our children and a daily basis gives a stigma stigmatizes kids in a way that is adult sanctioned and as much more powerful to the children than if it were them making those judgments on themselves so I believe that that methods like this don't belong in a public school and um I've brought my concerns to the principal to the teacher to Antonio to Sammy Jackson and we've had long disc discussions of them and a couple of things have emerged and one of the things is that um my family has been treated very badly for speaking out about this issue we have been asked to leave the school um and so yeah that this is uh thank you so much thank you appreciate it good evening my name is Adela Chavez and I am a parent of three children at different schools in the district and I am very distressed for two reasons one is that you have plann Parenthood teaching at at my daughter's school and secondly I understand that when a teacher stands up to protect her kids they are persecuted two of my nieces were taught by Mr Bill Diaz at Benson years ago and they really appreciate him a big deal it has come to my attention that he has really been persecuted for years because of his respect for life and Purity and for protecting the students at Benson and other schools this needs to stop teachers like Mr Bill Diaz should be commended for protecting the children and standing up for the kids and for guiding them to the right path we need more teachers like Mr Bas in the district who do more than just teach the curriculum and help children in all areas of their life to give you an example how he helps I want to share you a story three years ago her family um three years ago our community was devastated when Jose Hernandez Ree and four members of his family were killed in a tragic accident nobody from the district came to the funeral but Mr baz what he was the only one from the district volunteered to speak at the memorial service he spoke the following in Spanish and English and I will read you a version today we remember Jose Hernandez re ree very happy energetic young man I always remember him with his smile he shared his beautiful smile with us on Earth he still shares it with us in another way I think on how Mother Teresa told us every time you smile at someone it is an action of love a gift to that person a give a beautiful thing Jose certainly gave us many gifts with his smile in thinking of how fast he left us I think he left us an important message we never know when we are going to be called home to our Heavenly Father we need to live life each day with love and bringing love to everyone by telling everyone we love them with words and smile I support Portland Public Schools with my property taxes I am parent of three children in different school districts and I'm here to represent today A large group of parents who gather on their day off to discuss their concerns about the dritic allow allowing plant Parenthood in our district we are concern concerned all the Harmon effects that cause the sexual spos to our children thank you thank you
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thank you our last two speakers are theres rusing and John Rosado yeah great thank you go ahead hello my name is theres rink and um as a parent of a student in Portland Public Schools and as a former employee of PPS I'm extremely alarmed about having planned parenthood's programs in our schools why does the biggest abortion provider in the nation now have access to our kids in our schools doesn't this seem like a conflict of interest to you abortion is the leading cause of death in Oregon by far it's way above accidents cancer heart disease and respiratory diseases and it's completely preventable an average of 29 oregonians a day are aborted you wonder why student enrollment is down a quarter to a third of the population has been wiped out and you're allowing Planned Parenthood to have their programs and sex ad in our schools you're being complic with planned parenthood's agenda and it's absolutely reprehensible it's so upsetting that you are letting putting planed parent putting Portland's students In Harm's Way Planned Parenthood has a well documented record of financial fraud and showcasing pornographic materials and their use they were caught on videotape aiding A Pimp's underage sex ring by liveaction video is that help helping women and girls is that helping students no it's aiding and abetting sexual predators putting planned parenthood's programs in the schools was a very very poorly thought out decision there's no such thing as sexual Morality In the philosophy of Planned Parenthood which can be summarized by this phrase if it feels good do it just make sure you protect yourself with our products first and by the way their products according to Consumer Reports are the cheapest ones and have a high failure rate this provides Planned Parenthood with even more money from abortions after the birth control they give out fails and it does fail when we are over at Planned Parenthood where they're doing chemical and surgical abortions up to seven days a week there are anywhere between six and 12 girls or young women having abortions there in the short time a stupid hour and a half that we're there and almost all of them tell us that they were on either one or two methods of birth control when they got pregnant how is putting a girl in a position of having an unplanned pregnancy caring about her health how is that caring about people please know they are literally killing people Little People seven days a week with chemical and surgical abortions at Planned Parenthood Bishop Kenneth Steiner from Portland wanted to speak to the school board but he was unable to come thank you however he wanted me to deliver the message that we have a duty to protect our kids from a culture that puts their physical emotional and spiritual health Please wrap up your comments thank you thank you what's our official time like three minutes three minutes wow yellow light goes on at two or when you have one minute left and I started already no she'll hit the start button oh okay all right my name is John Rado um I'd like to say I was a recent graduate of Benson but it's uh been a long time I graduated in 1977 um I graduated with honors I was a Rose Festival driver I drove liono Hollands in the 1977 NBA championship parade um I have several lifelong friends from Benson um I also have several lifelong friends from other schools that I've attended I went to Holy Redeemer grade school in North Portland I have a bachelor's degree from the University of Portland in mechanical engineering I have a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Washington State I've worked with people from all over the world um and enjoyed it and I can say that bill des and I have a lot in common I've known him for at least six years um he's a great guy he's very upstanding moral fellow um in this country you should be allowed to uh voice your opinions and stand up for
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your believes um I'm a practicing Catholic I don't uh in any way feel embarrassed or ashamed about that um certainly the Catholic church has had his share of issues over the last many decades um as we describing with Planned Parenthood so we could try to ratchet up all the wrongs and all the rights but in the end um we should always try to do what's right um and in my particular case um having listen to Bill listen to other people um I feel bill has been unfairly targeted um unfortunately I think he made a couple mistakes with regards to legalities if you will um but they were pretty trite I mean uh many people that are convicted of robberies with guns the first thing they drop is the gun charges um the worst thing I heard about Bill was he picked up a uh a Planned Parenthood poster some damn thing that was left behind you know I don't want to complet completely trivialized that he shouldn't have done it he knew he shouldn't have done it he was the first one to the plate to tell him that he made a mistake he involved the police himself blah blah blah blah so in the end um bill and I are both Catholic practicing Catholics in the Nights of Columbus um regardless of who you may know who's Catholic in the end the Catholic church is about the right to life Billa stood up for that um it's pretty apparent to me that the school uh itself targeted him with uh the Planned Parenthood meeting that they needed to present at the school they have several teachers it's not an accident that they targeted him I'm sure you know you'd have to be a fool to believe otherwise I hope that all of you have come here tonight with an open mind about this decision political correctness is is crap give me 10 seconds 10 seconds um it's not against the law to be in favor of right to life it's not in against the law to be in favor of traditional marriage things of those Nar uh nature there are many people that believe that and the public school has a an agenda and part of it is to push people out there's many forms of diversity and one of them is Faith thank you thank you we are now going to move on to the next item in our agenda classified employee recognition we are pleased to acknowledge our classified employees tonight classified employees recognition week is March 4th through March 9th and I think it's fair to say that we um as a board are very very happy with all the work that our classified employees do um and we know how often it's the day-to-day operations that actually make something run um and we just want to say thank you um and that we value the work that our classified employees do superintendent Smith I believe you have our resolution that you can read for us yes so I just want to join um uh co-chair B in thanking all of our classified employees and I will read to you the content of the resolution number 4735 which is our recognition of classified Employee Appreciation Week parland Public Schools classified employees are essential members of our educational team they are of often our ambassadors to the public as well as caring familiar people in the lives of our students on the front lines and behind the scenes our classified employees create a positive learning environment for our students by assisting them in the classroom preparing and serving meals caring for their physical needs transporting them keeping them safe and aiding their families they keep our administrative and school offices humming attend to our buildings and grounds help us communicate with each other and our community Shepherd supplies and equipment and so much more we are grateful for their support the board of education for Portland Public Schools acknowledges and applauds Portland Public Schools assistive Tech practitioners attendance monitors book clerks bookkeepers bus drivers campus monitors clerks Community agents CNAs custodians educational assistants Food Service assistance instructional lab uh technology assistance Library assistance maintenance workers nutrition services workers orthopedic equipment techs occupational and physical therapists par Educators secretaries security texts sign language interpreters and Transportation Route schedulers for their efforts on behalf of the 47,000 students in our district the classified employees deserve recognition and thanks uh thank you to all of you and please note that the um we're highlighting um classified employees who have been nominated to represent all of their colleagues um who are being featured here here tonight so please join me in just thanking all of our classified employees
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[Applause] great I don't want to preempt the video I want to make sure we get everybody in um but maybe while we're still viewing that we can um consider resolution 4735 the resolution to classif to recognize classified employees appreciation week March 4th through 9th 2013 do I have a motion director rean moves do I have a second director Noel seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4735 Miss hus is there any citizen comment no is there any board discussion no great great thank you yeah I heard just a thank you so the board will now vote on resolution 4735 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no resolution 4735 is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative Garcia and Sergeant abson excuse me and director Sergeant abson give a minute for that video um we're g to now move on to the next item on our agenda which is the Madison cluster update we are always very excited um to have our cluster principles come join us and assistants and vice principles come join us uh for this monthly um presentation these presentations feature a different School cluster each month and allow the board to conduct a deeper dive on Milestone data at the school level we have allocated 1 hour for this item 30 minute presentation 30 minutes for questions from the board as a reminder the Milestones are on the board's work plan this year as a monitoring item and with that I'm going to turn it over to superintendent Smith who can introduce staff um and first I'd like to welcome the Madison cluster principles and thank you for being here tonight and then introduce suanne Higgins our chief academic officer who will introduce the regional administrators and um give us the introduction for the report but we're excited to have all of you here tonight good evening co-chairs uh School Board directors and superintendent Smith it's a pleasure to um share with you the work in the Madison cluster this evening and so I'd like to invite uh my colleagues um regional administrator Carl Logan and trip Goodall uh rather uh Greg wallik excuse me um to share uh the work of this group of leaders and what's going on in their schools so Carl good evening board um excited about tonight so that you have the opportunity to hear the voices of our building leaders in the Madison um cluster so I'm gonna I'd like to um introduce them and as I say say our billing leaders names please stand um so the board can see your rces clearly we have Philipe harti at creative science principal John Walden and assistant principal Sylvia Hassan at Harrison Park principal chrisy lyol at Rigler principal lesie Odell and assistant principal Susan kosmala at Lee principal Sarah leuin and assistant princi principal Joy Williams at Roseway principal Susan foxman and assistant principal Sarah Jones at Vestal and principal vernice gutterz and assistant principal Selena Garo at Scott and again I'm extremely honored to work alongside these um building leaders and I'm looking forward to hearing them share about their um challenges and their victories in their school community um so for the k8s we will have Sarah lein from Roseway speak and Christy lyol at rler speak so I have a prese is it on here me know somebody named Terry set it up there it is nice we got to get back to the beginning don't look yet is always make me a little dizzy okay I won't do it so fast um so when we found out we had the opportunity to present tonight I jumped on it because I wanted to really share some fabulous things that are going on at our school and brag a little bit and it will be my pleasure to tell you about it I'm Christie I'm the principal at
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rler and I'm serving my sixth year there so I've had a long time to get in and really get my feet wet and look at some sustainable changes and improvements for our school so great things that are going on just quickly we call ourselves the rig just for fun you need some levity we're thrilled to be a K5 and want to thank you guys for the work that you helped us do to get back to the right size that we fit in our building and can really focus um not on facilities but on instruction we are a focus School this year we are blessed to have a tremendously excellent staff who work really hard to serve our kids and meet their needs we're focused on developing and implementing sustainable systems and really focus on instruction for the past several years we've been focused on things that are systemic around behavior management and discipline and that's what we're going to talk about tonight so this time at this juncture we've turned to Corner we're really looking at instruction we are in plc's and data teams all the time we have instructional coaches that work with teachers on literacy math and behavior really deepening our practice in instruction we have an awesome dual language program that is growing and serving our kids very well in our K through2 classes we're teaching ELD in the classroom not pull upup anytime you're USCS or will too many jaronis just say with the whole te so professional Learning Community is a PLC they are um grade level teams and really set up with the the pretty set practices that that teams engage in in order to get their work done El is English language development and so rather than pull kids out for ESL we're doing it in the classroom with our classroom teachers and the last thing that I'm going to focus mostly on tonight is our use of restorative justice and I wanted to frame that as a way that we've really changed the game for our children and for our teachers um briefly this is just a look at Who We Are so you can see we're an interesting group we have a lot of just demographically interesting lots of things going on I want to focus tonight on our elimination of the discipline Gap or the predictability by race of what would happen to a child in our discipline system either at school or in the district when we've been able to really tackle that at school so looking in 2008 we received information not just about our data we knew what our data was by numbers what we didn't know had never looked at was a relative rate of exclusionary practices or looking at it as students of color to white students and when we first got that information we were pretty horrified it was really bad so 2008 2009 if you were a Native American you were suspended at a rate of 5 to1 to a white kid 4 to1 for black kids and two to one for Hispanics the very next year we were able to have that or better and reduced that rate from 2 to one.5 to1 for Hispanic and 0.25 to1 for Asian students we were we were pretty panicked thinking we are not handling this very well so took a number of pretty drastic measures and then knew we needed to really change the way we were conducting business in order to make change with the rest so now I don't know why that box is up there in our current year I'm happy to say that as of now we've eliminated the gap you can't predict by race anymore what will happen to a child at our school um 90% of all of our kids never have any disciplin interaction no referrals no Ruffles the data that you're going to look at is comprised of only 46 students 36 of those students are male 16 of them have an IEP and most of those IEPs are fairly extensive and would pretty much lend themselves to a child having difficulty regulating their behavior so at this point referral and incident rates if you're black or a multi-racial child about 16% of those children are are have a referral of some sort and a referral could be anything from Big to small it's something that a teacher felt was significant enough to record as a way that we know we need to to do something uh for Hispanic children 4.5% and white kids 14% of those incidents those that resulted in suspension or exclusionary discipline we've reduced the rates for black and multiracial children to 5.8% for Hispanic 2.8% and for white children 6.4% so you can no longer predict based on race what what kind of discipline or interaction with the discipline system you'd have at our school and my husband pointed out that I gave myself a gold star there which I did
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so how did we get there really two ways we adopted restorative justice as the foundation and the philosophy behind uh how we're administering discipline and how we think about the children that we serve and we really revamped overhauled our whole PBIS classroom management system we took a hard look at who we as adults who are we what do we bring to school and how do we contribute to the success and failures of our children at school and what do we what roadblocks do we put up that don't allow kids to succeed we adopted the use of champs as a schoolwide practice and trained all the teachers we also worked with resolutions Northwest and the Northwest Health Foundation to um apply for a grant which we received for a three-year period of time to work with the restorative justice specialist so he's been working with us since December of 2010 alongside of all this work We R redesigned the job position of a student management specialist and really designed that position to be a coach both for students and for staff to be able to look at why are things happening what what needs to happen how can we look at this differently we engaged in an Relentless examination of data and framed all things disciplined through the lens of race and equity and really look at how we were contributing to the school the prison pipeline what was our place in it how are we supporting it and how are we going to dismantle it and we engaged in a lot of training about restorative practices what is restorative justice what does it look like in the ground in the classroom we did training on using circling techniques as a way to build community and Foster social emotional development both for adults and for students in our school just in case you don't know about restorative justice its basic tenants is a focused on repairing harm so when you look at that through a discipline system you're not focused on punishment or Consequences you're focused on learning and reparation of harm we ask that offenders take responsibility for what they did and make it right with the victim we look we help offenders examine the intent and the impact of their actions and restorative justice involves encounter you have to work with the victim the offender and their community members which for students could be their peers it could be families it could be teachers or other adults in the building so encounter reparation transformation with the ultimate goal of building peace so now we are able to look at ourselves from a really different different lens and feel good about the community that we're building how we're reaching out to students and families we have used restorative justice in combination with our Equity work to offer restorative listening sessions to our families and have parents and teachers get together and talk about what works at our school and what what what do we need to keep working on very collaborative a lot of Open Door practice teachers talking to one another sharing with one another getting involved in instruction and discipline practice staff walk the talk we use mediation amongst ourselves we use it with our kids we sit in a circle when we are in staff meetings so we're asking teachers to do it with kids in class we do it too for our staff meetings and I think with all the changes we're really better able to enjoy each other to enjoy our kids to engage more fully with our families we do home visits there's a lot more reaching out to families and everybody seems happier so finally we recognize that regler presents many unique challenges but we've all chosen very deliberately to work there we know we're making a tremendous difference and restorative justice is help us change the game for our kids I don't have any fancy power nice job um Carl asked me to share with you kind of the transformative work we're doing at Roseway Heights around supporting our students with special ed um Rosary Heights has three three self-contained classrooms focusing on kids with severe Behavior needs and has had those for many years and it became apparent last year was my first year there and it became apparent as we were talking and looking at our data and talking with staff at Madison that we were contributing on sending kids as long as they were remaining in a self-contained setting away from the general curriculum that they the statistics were very poor or very much against them graduating from high school on time with credits and so we started looking at the work we were doing and really thinking we cannot be contributing to this on an ongoing basis every year the longer they were staying in there the least the less likely they would be successful so we met with Madison and we spent a lot of time last spring thinking how could we do things differently and the first day of school this year we had all of our students all 60 of the students who are identified for special education were assigned to a general a classroom they were in general
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Leed all day for the first two weeks of school and it was transformative for some of these students they had not been in a general Ed setting especially those who were fifth sixth or seventh graders had not been in for two three four years they had been in self-contained settings so they were nervous we were nervous the teachers were a little nervous but what made it work was um a commitment from my special ed staff hours of putting in the support work working working closely with our general teachers to show that we were ready to support these kids because they need the support that's why they've been identified and what's happened is now we're into the beginning of March so we're not it doesn't look like it looked on first day of school um we we are kind of trying to find that happy medium some kids what we've realized is it isn't a behavior that is the gap of kids not being successful in the general setting it is their academics and so for these kids who who have been not participating and have access to the rigorous content that they would get in a general classroom they themselves some of them have selected to be to remain more in a self-contained setting what we got after first month of school was kids saying I need to be somewhere else and so we've been trying to modify our schedule so that kids have more of a fluid there coming and going and and what has changed what does definitely look continue to this day is that the rigor and what kids are working on with their special ed teachers when they're not in the General Ed setting is the core content that they would have been they're bringing the work with them out of the classroom to work with their special education teachers and we have some incredible success stories of kids who you would never have guessed last year when I met them the first time they wouldn't talk to a to me or they were insolent they were difficult all those descriptors that you can get for kids who have been identified for special ed with behavior issues some of them as I said have not were not in General Ed settings I it's absolutely amazing for some of these kids you would not know if you went into one of the classrooms and tried to identify who those kids were and I have to share um we have a fifth grader um he was at lunch today and I said come up to tell you something and he he's a black boy who does not initiate conversation with adults last year he spent no time other than PE art or library with fourth graders he has been fully included with his fifth grade class 100% since September 5th whenever we started but I I told him I said I'm going to tell a story tonight to a group of people that called the school board and they are in charge of the whole school and I kind of described what I was going to be telling you and I said at the end I said does that remind you of anybody and he said me and I said yes and I and he was just beaming and he's you know it was it was one of the most powerful conversations that I'd had and he was I told him I'm so proud of you and you are not the same kid that you were last year and so and he was he went away um with a smile on his face and this is kid who's I see him smile with his peers but I do not see him smile with adults and that's that's not the exception we've had several cases like that where kids are just so it's good because they're getting good rigorous content but it's also good because it has changed who they are and how they interact um but you need to know that it is a lot of work and it could only happen because we do have a incredibly committed special education staff we're using all of the pairs that we were staffed with and the teachers are making it work because they're getting we have multiple adults that are coming into the classroom and we're flexible enough to realize that when it doesn't work for some kids that that's okay that they're not ready and that we have to give them time but hopefully if we're able to continue to do this over time we'll have more kids ready to be on track when they leave us and go on to Madison or wherever they go so it's it's pretty exciting stuff than thank you so we have about 12 more minutes for the staff part of the presentation good evening I'm Greg wallik region administrator for high schools and part of my assignment is to support the work at Madison tonight is my pleasure to introduce patri Allen who is in her third year as m medicine
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principal she spoke with you a few weeks ago about the encouraging news regarding medicine's improved U graduation rate tonight she will share with you some of the work at the school sponsored in part by their school Improvement Grant and like Sarah she'll also talk about the emerging alignment of special education thinking in the cluster patri thank you I'm honored to speak with you tonight about Madison High School its staff students community and its Journey Madison has not always had easy time of it almost eight years ago the school divided into three separate communities in an effort to boost faltering student achievement after years of struggle Madison once again became a comprehensive high school and the community had to endure more change and a revolving door of administration the Advent of our federal school Improvement Grant brought renewed Focus resources in Hope of stability our teachers have done phenomenal work that will make an impact on students for years to come they are designing and implementing focused supports to ensure that students are gaining the skills they need to be successful in their courses they're mapping curriculum with the focus on literacy and the demands of the Common Core Curriculum they are working together to study how students are achieving And discussing changes that can be made to improve outcomes teachers are working daily in classrooms with extracurriculars and after school to help all of our students meet our mission to be ready for College and Career the conversations we have as a staff are focused on helping all students succeed at Madison with an eye on Equity at the core our diverse student body is truly amazing they have been participating in leadership opportunities casting metal creating APR portfolios singing drumming participating in athletics competing in poetry slams and putting on plays just to name a handful of things just a couple weeks ago I uh had the pleasure of watching a group of our African students put on an African cultural night that brought in many families and others from the community as yet another example of the things that our kids do as a system we've improved how we wrap around students and provide them with opportunities from our algebra Support classes to our advanced placement calculus we've offered our students summer options support beyond the school day increased family engagement and social emotional supports we've brought in many Community Partners to provide culturally specific support and Leadership opportunities we've looked closely at our special education Service delivery model to keep more students in general education classes and moving away from the days of the modified diploma we've begun a path of increased engagement with our feeder schools we've worked specifically with Roseway Heights as you have just heard and also have begun feeder wide conversations about math and science articulation our movement forward has been inspiring we've increased our reading scores and algebra success rates by more than 10% the last two years have seen a 16% increase in graduation rates to reach 71% which has exceeded the state average and the feeders are a big part of that so you know that's all these guys our Latino and Asian students have exceeded our white in total graduation rates in addition to academic gains we've seen a 5% increase in attendance which we know is vital for Success recently we learned that we're being asked to apply for a school change award given by the national principles Leadership Institute that recognizes schools for their journey to transformation like all schools we we have fa challenges that we're facing not all of our students are graduating ready for college and until we see that day we won't rest the budgets get Tighter and Tighter every year the requirements keep increasing I'll give you an example the essential skills graduation requirement without increased resources schools such as Madison are faced with adding Support classes to help students meet those requirements an intense amount of teacher time time to score work samples and track completion the Advent of the math essential skills will add an intensity to this work that will be extremely challenging Madison has one more year of our grant ahead of us because of the added resources we've been able to provide teachers with extended hours to work on curriculum and interventions targeted professional development and summer curricular work students are able to access extended opportuni in the
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summer and during the year staff such as instructional Specialists a student support specialist a family engagement coordinator and a social services coordinator have made an incredible impact on both students and families while we are Building Systems instructional practices and curriculum that will carry far beyond the grant there are many aspects of our work that are tied directly to Dollars given the ever shrinking budgets we know that there will be a great deal of loss after next year and I worry about the impact we are a strong Community however and our diversity is Central to that strength and who we are we'll continue to strive and provide our students with the opportunities and the education that they deserve thanks if that concludes the staff part um then we have an opportunity to make any comments or questions that we might have have for all of our principles thank you for the presentation I know it's a lot to get going and it's great great to hear all the work that you guys are doing wish we had time to have everybody line up and talk about the work because I've been to a number of your schools in fact have I been to every one of the I've been to every one of these schools um and I as I walk through um and get to talk to hear about the work that you're all doing it's it's just exciting and engaging so questions thought comments I'll mention a couple things I'm really excited I think I I I love the name the rig I do that's that's cool um but I I also loved the comment that you made around uh not being able to predict things by race I think that's a very exciting uh Prospect and I think when we look at the real intentions the real purpose behind our Equity work that's what it is not being able to predict either success or failure benchmarks or not benchmarks by race right now we can a lot and uh but I I'm looking forward to a time when we can't so I also really appreciate your your comments around restorative justice and this is a a reoccurring theme that we've heard uh particular L around discipline in our schools and I'm wondering from the other administrators who else has uh taking on this concept of restorative justice and how you're working with students who are struggling with discipline issues and and how is that worked for your schools or is this one example maybe within this cluster but I'd love to hear what others have experienced we've begun that work at Madison um we had are staff members and students trained in restorative justice and and what that means at the high school level but uh this is really our first year so primarily we've been using it to handle issues between students and mitigate some of those differences that come up but the next step is to really be looking how that um how that connects between staff members and students great thank you I'm G to try and speak to you I have a little bit cough thing going on um so we have I'm trained in restorative justice too so it's something that I'm bringing trying to bring um my viewpoint on it to Roseway Heights hope to be able to work with Madison and have a continuation we have um a person from the restorative justice working with our seventh and eighth graders right now and they are doing some Project work with the students and the hope is that in the spring they'll be presenting the project to which we'll invite you to come and see um and then also they'll be presenting to the staff and to the community and it's something that we want to see grow at Roseway Heights and then continue on as they you know be able to participate in it when they go on up to Madison um so I'm trying to use that approach with our discipline we had a a very wonderful a little event happen um two weeks ago where a student had done some harm to some of her classmates and we were able to do a restorative Circle and it would happened to be with a special a student that has an IP and um it was pretty miraculous to be in the classroom and see how she interacted with her students with her peers and how they interacted with her and the whole problem was solved just amongst the students being in the circle rather than the adults having anything to do with it so that's just one example of what's
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happening at Roseway thank you thank you ask a follow up to that am I assuming like you mentioned Christie about um restorative justice having work with um resolutions Northwest are those people are those folks getting grants to support you in your work so is this a funding issue primarily that that's keeping the other schools I use Sig dollars Sig okay three gr threeyear Grant is that keeping some of the others out of it I'm seeing some nods of yeah and I see a h Miss Fox would you I'm thinking it's on it's always on okay I'm thinking listening to this that it's a very attractive U direction for our school to go so I was taking notes while christe was talking and we'll give that organization a call and see if there's any other grants on the horizon because it we certainly have when when children do things that are um infractions against other kids we certainly understand that punishment is not uh the most effective way to approach things and so we we want to do things that will help guide their practice in the future so I I think we're not going to let funding be a an obstacle to us other thoughts questions question um thank you all for your presentations you're great uh one of the questions that I've uh asked each cluster as they come in is if you as a school principal had an extra $100,000 or so not you personally in your building's budget not for you for your buildings uh but we are in budget season and this is the time when we look at priorities um if you had an extra amount of money um I'd love to hear how you might use that whether it be a person a program or what it might be for me for us at Roseway Heights one of the challenges and I think you kind of alluded to it here is dollar for professional development for our teachers I mean I I feel like Staffing is okay I could always use more to make class sizes smaller and that but where we don't generally have additional flexibility is around deep and meaningful professional development where I could bring in experts where I could pay teachers for their time it's hard to do anything meaningful two hours after school when they're already tired and the the late openings and I appreciate them but they aren't fully a two hours because we got to get done so they can get ready to greet the kids so having that money to pay teachers to have you know time away from the building to really dig deep into their practice would be powerful so that would be exciting anyone else I would say that for me at Scott um we have a new immersion program this year and a new kindergarten team my three immersion teachers went out and did home visits and it made the world of difference to how bonded the families are to Scott and um how enthusiastic they are about attending Scott ideally I would like to have um enough money to pay teachers for their time and their gas for when they go to do home visits it's an hour per child we had 100 children register so that's 100 hours um and I would love to be able to do that for Kinder and first grade so that those first grade parents are still enthusiastic about the program and continuing on with imersion so that we don't um experience any attrition but that that does take funding um and if we're going to want a really solid immersion program paying my immersion teachers to come in maybe a week before everyone else to do some planning around implementation curriculum and whatever else they might think they need to use for I would fully fund our school to appropriately support the number of students that we have who are affected by race and poverty we're funded with an a funding formula that's based on equal rather than Equitable and it is affecting us greatly it's affecting what we can provide to our students and what
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we can provide to our staff and it's it's huge I had to pay for a counselor and had to pay a lot of extra money to get basic supports to our kids and we do not have an assistant principal this year even though I had 24 evaluations to do so it's it's a big need this is really helpful to hear so she took my answer um but in addition I would like to um I would say specifically money with professional development um and Equitable funding um to support our students and families in need um would be specific to peer observations right now we're fortunately that we build that within the systems and the framework in a very teeny tiny um very feeble rate um but the the impact of when teachers can break down those walls and go across the hall not to other not to other buildings or someone else coming in um but actually seeing what your colleagues do with your children the same kids that you know has been really powerful and to do more of that in addition to what my colleagues have said I would I would say um uh support staff we've seen cuts to Title One we're anticipating fting Cuts this year to Title One and uh we've seen the power of really pushing double dip reading instruction at the primary grades and how that has a payoff later down the road for the upper grades where they're not spending as much time teaching reading as teaching you know whatever subject it is um I'm nervous about the loss of full day kindergarten so and I know $100,000 wouldn't cover that for a building the size of Harrison Park but those are the two things i' mentioned thanks for the question I think my colleagues have covered it but uh one of the things that's been most powerful for us at creative science school was uh creating opportunities for teachers to work together to share their practices to support each other so PE observations and having additional time for them to engage in some of the important questions to Grapple with um would probably be high on my list that's awesome good thank you so much um first of all thank you all for being here always love hearing what's happening in schools love to hear about what's happening at Madison and that great success you guys are having um I um in going through the Milestone data that we were provided for each school um Scott kind of jumped out at me here and I am wondering if um because your scores dropped pretty significantly um last year and I'm wondering uh if you've identified why that is I'm sure you probably have and what uh what's in place to help those scores improve this year so at at Scott we do have a school Improvement specialist and one of the um things that is now pretty systemic is that teachers meet in data teams once a week so every single week they get time to sit with our school Improvement specialist and review the data and see um what which kids are making progress which kids are not and what are the interventions that we need to support the children we have a data room so our um School Improvement specialist has all of the data on the wall she's uh put a identifiers on the card so we can see race so we can see which kids are second which Learners which kids are special ed identified and we can um look at the patterns we um we have because of the cuts we have lost our reading specialist so that definitely has an impact right now we have um we have some reading support for middle schoolers and we have one instructional assistant that um helps to support reading instruction uh right now we're also working with the entire staff to work with our middle schoolers so that we can sit down and have conversations with the children of in terms of this is where you were last year this is the uh growth Target that has been set for you these are what your grades look like in the core content areas this is your attendance giving them each giving each child an individual um snapshot of themselves and what they can do to um demonstrate some growth all of our
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middle schoolers also set reading and math goals for the third quarter they had their uh we sat with them in small groups and they had some of their performance in front of them and they set goals and we're going to check in with them at the end of the third quarter to see how they're progressing um our K12 teams are definitely very data driven very data oriented and they're making a lot of um decisions based on what they're looking at their data we do have some areas that we're still working on but that's some of what we're we're working on right now so did you determine what the issue was that caused this drop last year I guess that's the one question I know that in math um it's it's just third grade U Milestone reading third grade Milestone reading there's I I don't know um Le had a similar thing by the way also in terms of reading I dropped so I don't know here yeah not as significant perhaps but it was a drop also in terms of reading I I think what I will say with that with third grade reading is that I had um as a leader of that building significant concerns about instructional practice in those um two rooms and I think that's about all thank you add com just really appreciate all the presentations and information it's so I love these um nights when principles come and share um just really appreciate in addition to the um focus on the discipline improvements that on the special ed inclusionary practices and that you highlighted that so maybe I maybe a question for Carl or some of the other principles who may be doing similar work just in terms of how we're making this more of the culture and the practice in the district as a whole are we sort of piloting it at certain schools because I hearing from Sarah that it's very intensive um transition to make the one that really has huge payoffs for for students so I just wanted to hear a little bit more about systemically where we're going with this because it's very exciting to hear yeah so specifically with the the work that's being done at Roseway and Madison we are looking at some other schools to do the same Mr Logan can I actually have you come the cameras can't reach quite that far up so want our television audience to be able to see who's speaking thank thank you so we are looking to replicate the work that the special Leed work that we're doing at Roseway and Madison at some of our other schools and so we've just started that conversation with the special ed department and the administrators at those schools yeah this I mean it's just something that we need to continue to expand I mean just part of the whole cult Shifting the culture in the district so that everyone is focused on all the students and special ed it's part of that and then and and reducing the exclusionary practices so it's just really exciting to hear specific example of how that works and and and down to the level of an individual child success is really really inspiring and really appreciated so thanks for what you're doing well can I I'm gonna actually follow up on that real quick with a quick question because my understanding is Roseway Heights has quite quite a broad spectrum of the Continuum so don't you have um kindergarten through e8th grade I mean it's that it's the full spectrum at your at your site and I think of another recent example of where it's been working well was at wood which also has this big spectrum and so I just I'm curious if there's anybody that has any information about whether that's a preferred model or a better model or a worse model or thoughts on it whatever you were going to share before I before I got to the end of my question um I don't know I can say that we have a K5 model we have a K2 class and a 35 and ours is a um communication Behavior class and so um our model worked really well with the K2 system because it is the general education and the special education teachers working in in Partnership um where we're looking at each individual student and and um able to use that team effectively um we just last year moved that really successfully into our 35 and again I can't it's not it's not with our special ed folks it's about the culture of the school and building that these are our students um and um how we approach that um is important and so it's everybody working as a team for the success of all students who attend your our school and I can see that at Lee because we say goodbye at fifth grade or after fifth grade um yet we're a K8 um we could really it would be a beautiful thing if we could go all the way up to 8th but um
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I'm not going to say it's a pro or a con but it is about building the culture and having everyone on board working together and being open to hey what's going on and how can I help thank you yeah I mean this is a question I I guess more in terms of for creative science I mean because I the the achievement I think looks well what we're struggling and this is something that that I think have raised before is is the the composition of of creative science in regards to the lack of from my perspective of course not reflective of the school district's uh student population and so I'm I'm wondering what's specific steps are being taken to try to provide this access to the school to a diverse student population it's it's a significant uh issue and an ongoing challenge um just to give you an example last year we had 150 applicants for 50 uh kindergarten slots uh of those 50 slots 27 went automatically to siblings so effectively we had 132 applicants for 133 applicants for uh 23 slots so we're fortunate to have a Head Start program um located on site and we work with the Head Start staff and Head Start families to encourage Head Start families to apply um this year I attended uh three of their um parent meetings intended for families that are transitioning to kindergarten and have communicated to those families that they would not be required to attend one of our information nights but that the meeting that I attended with them would suffice as the as the information night meeting where I explained to them a little bit about our school the uh application process and definitely encourage them to to apply but the reality is that our school is predominantly white and a number of um our families of color uh who uh see our students and see our families who perhaps attend one of the information uh nights um have some concerns of had some hesitations of whether or not this is a a place for them and a and a home for them so I think that this is something that we need to look at I think it's a system systemic issue uh I wonder if the application process currently in place is aligned with our Equity policy which really calls out issues of race um we have a color blind system in place now uh and I'm not sure that the results that we're getting are the results that are that are intended but I think it's a systemic issue that uh we will definitely need support to to fully address now i' would like to say that the um focus option principles have raised this question have met about this and actually um Mr hares Ste actually wrote a um a paper on it on um so it's been it's been a it's been a focus of his and something um that's been on his pulse on how to um make our system more Equitable for for all students um because like like he said I'm not sure I know the intended consequences of our current policies are not aligned with our racial Equity policy so a very simple solution sorry to interrupt go ahead uh would be to uh Reserve uh certain percentage of incoming kindergarten slots for families uh from the Head Start program uh in much the same way that uh colleges universities perhaps have a certain number of slots reserved for students who come from uh a college preparatory program like Upward Bound or College Prep I think that our Focus option schools given their uh Clarity uh given the richness of their curriculum have a real uh function and purpose to serve and closing the achievement Gap uh and I'm not sure that we're doing that currently given that we we are not serving uh those students who tend to struggle in in in in school and and so I think we have a real opportunity that um we're not harnessing fully so I mean my assumption would be that this would be part of the updating of the transfer policy as well right I mean Focus options as part of that because that I mean you articulated it really well this is this is an issue that was I think as where as Judy ROM was talking about it started originally with one purpose and it's evolved and
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now it's not in line with our Equity policy so appreciate that right and and again I mean in particularly as as you mentioned the The Sibling preference I think that that uh it's right also I mean I know that that within the state in regards to shter schools there's certain you know requirements there but in regards to where the district institutes those things which in essence becomes an affirmative action right and the sibling preference plan for for white families uh it's you know it needs to be recognized right and the simply preference in my mind makes absolute sense and that's an accommodation that we're making and I think in the same way we should be making accommodations for in other cases as well can I ask another question about your enrollment in general it looks like you have um 388 kids which is small for a K8 and yet it doesn't sound like uh we opened up more slots for you to have more kids our mid-level program is growing right now we have 60 students in grades six seven and eight and in the next three years uh we will be up to 180 uh this year for the first year we have two sixth grade classrooms next year those students will move into seventh grade sorry we have two fifth grade classrooms next year they'll move into sixth seventh and eighth so we will max out with at two classrooms per grade level great um so we'll be closer to 450 480 great thanks question just the other inspector in terms of size and just you know I think we've expressed at one point or another just concern about the large size and the difficulties that that might bring Andor opportunities because of um funding and other things and you've had a pretty huge jump in the um in scores in the last year too so I was just interested in general thoughts about um is this is the large size how well is that working I mean we're grappling continually with the size issues so assume you're talking to me um we are very large and we're growing and we have huge space issues so um there's there's a tendency to get overwhelmed by this size of it but um I I think we're working with it as long as we can figure out a way to solve our space issues um which I know gret and Holland is is taking a look at and and doing some planning around in terms of the big jump and I wanted to say this when you talked about Scott um that was a great jump on the third grade reading score um and but you have to remember you're comparing two different groups of of students right right and that's really easy to forget um so you're comparing apples and oranges a little bit um also the two years ago that was the first year they raised the raised the U Benchmark level for reading and I think that took some adjustment that being said I think our third grade team is doing some really great things especially around some sheltered instruction with their third graders and with the number of ESL students that we have um that's just crucial and that's something we need to do schoolwide but in terms of the size um we we've got lots of issues around size we have issues around the we the largest ESL uh School in the district larger than any High School in terms of numbers of students enrolled um but it also brings us a lot of support programs one of the issues is coordinating all the different things that are going on in the building so um if we can get enough space for all of the different classrooms and programs that we have you know it's not too overwhelming but it sounds as if I mean ideally you would we're just trying to you know continually grappling with this and it just seems that Harrison Park is kind of an outlier along with Alam in terms of size so it sounds as if in the ideal world that you would maybe not be quite so large right because um currently we have four kindergarten and four first grade and we're probably going to be four four and four with kindergarten first grade and second grade next year and we have very large class sizes at four at fourth and fifth grade as well so we are bursting thank you thank you our time is almost up are there any other comments or questions
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I just one quick question just to to um Harrison Park given the you know what you mentioned in regards to the the large um ESL population whether at at some point I mean I know you're relatively new as a is a is a principle there uh any discussion around the the starting of dual languish imersion programs giving you you have you know a diverse population there so the problem there is we have 43 languages in our building um so what langu what language would we choose you got at least uh I think 16% Latino students there yeah yeah so so um I guess my take is that's that's a possibility but I really feel like what we need to do is just improve our instructional program improve our ESL program for our students and and as a principle just looking at where we are right now taking on that sort of challenge of developing a dual immersion program just seems a little too daunting for us at this point thank you okay no uh so Petra I wanted to ask you a question if I could so first of all I mostly want to um highlight the fact that you had a % increase in graduation rates over the last three years which is just [Music] [Applause] amazing um I know you had a federal school Improvement Grant um so again it's sort of a takeoff on my first question um when you think about what happened at Madison over the last three years can you talk to us about the key strategies or key improvements that helped increase your graduation rate that much um well you know when you first asked that question about if you had $100,000 what would you do with it I was like well I have a million dollars a year for three years so um and that it's been it's been incredible for our community um some of the primary things that I think really make a difference are um and I believe I spoke a little bit to this last time I spoke before you but multiple Pathways and opportunities for kids so uh uh if they don't quite make it in a course in a semester then we offer other chances on Saturdays and in the summer after school in order to meet those learning targets and earn that credit um sometimes kids need more than one opportunity and uh I think that has made a big difference uh the ability for teachers to spend a great deal of time working together on curriculum and instruction is very important the amount of planning that teachers have done over the summer um the workshops that they have gone to in order to improve their practices make a big impact on what happens every single day in every single classroom um the support staff that uh We've brought into the building to help students to help teachers and families um I think about the the social services coordinator all the home visits he does all the connecting students and fam is to support services the um the the networking he does with Community agencies to to help our students uh the instructional Specialists that have really um helped teachers to do a lot of that coordinated work that we're talking about and provide really high quality embedded professional development um the uh student support Specialists that we have that you know tracking everything that's happening with our students in the ninth grade and helping to um organize all those efforts to to catch kids um on the front end instead of you know doing an autopsy on the back end so uh it takes a great deal I mean the our community does have challenges and you know our our students need you know some of our students need a great deal of support and uh you can't do that on the same kind of budget that everybody else has and the same kind of Staffing formula that everybody else has as I know that um the the chances of me having the kind of staff that will support a social services coordinator etc etc etc are probably pretty slim unless things really change in the next year now I'm really happy to hear that it looks like we'll kind of stabilize it you know crossing my fingers uh stabilize for this next year but um you know I do worry about losing those extra supports because it provides people the
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space to to Really build some momentum it's great thank you very much so from your lips to the governor's ears speaking of the governor he's going to join us March 18th great I want to thank all all the staff members that went into to making this presentation and all the work that you guys are doing every single day um we're going to take a a moment to invite all the principes and Regional administrators um up in front of in front of the Das for a photo um so that we all have a chance sorry we didn't warn you I hope you um wore something that's okay I know you probably just came from your buildings but and then um shortly after that or right after that we'll take a five minute recess so [Applause] are all right everyone see me ready here we go [Music] you have three more hours that's he We Ready great we're going to move on to our next order of business the budget 2013 2014 with program overview um beginning tonight and during our next few meetings the board will receive several program overviews before the superintendent presents her proposed 2013 2014 budget tonight we're going to receive information on Dual language immersion Career and Technical education and online learning um we're also going to get an update uh on a legislative newly released budget from the co-chairs but superintendent Smith can you introduce this item um so I'm going to ask before we go into the content areas I'm going to ask our Deputy Chief Financial Officer David Wine to come up and give us an update on um the co-chairs budget which was released today this is not this cair's budget so right no leg the legislate of co-chair I be very clear about who it was who proposed the budget thank you co-chair Gonzalez so um co-chairs board member superintendent Smith I um was thinking about what I was how I was going to frame this tonight and I realized that I have been sitting on one side of this Podium or another for 10 years talking about funding for K12 education in this state and tonight marks the first time in 10 years that I have been able to say publicly that someone in a position of authority in this state is proposing to
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increase the share of the state budget allocated to K12 education and I was starting to wonder if I'd ever get to make that statement so um you know it is uh it's an important thing so the co-chairs of ways and means Senator delin and representative Buckley proposed a budget for the legislature to consider this year that in includes a legislative appropriation of $ 6.55 billion for K12 education and also proposes $200 million in changes to the pur system that would actually a number of changes to the pur system that would reduce costs for K12 school districts by $200 million so their proposal spends like 6.75 billion although technically speaking it's 6.55 in cash in terms of revenue and $200 million in reduced expenditures so that is um a number of you will remember this poster that we have been that's been around the 6.75 billion dollar level is one that that we Statewide have characterized as stability for Portland Public Schools a funding level of 6.75 billion would finally bring some stability to our budget especially in compar to the last four years after many years of reductions in school Staffing levels which have resulted in higher class sizes fewer programs and electives at that at the funding level represented in the cooch's budget we might be able to begin to make modest targeted investments in some schools to support our most undeserved students I want to be clear at $6.75 billion we're not fat rich and happy by any stretch of the imagination but it is a level at which we believe as we move through this budget development process that we might be able to see some as I say targeted investments in ways that are important for our most undeserved students and it really does um it it probably is a a budget where we are not looking at across the board reductions so we're excited about that um there's a long way to go yet because both the 6.55 billion appropriation has to be you know approved by the whole legislature and there's some heavy lifting in terms of the changes to the pur system but I think over the next few weeks as we move through uh budget development we will be able we will be looking to uh and will be able to paint a picture of the difference between 6.75 and 6.55 in terms of what that means for kids in our schools and we we will do that both with you and with our legislators so um that's that's that's where we are with the state budget great unless anyone has questions on that okay good thank you very much for that and our first um content presentation today will be about CER technical education and we have trip Gall our director of high schools and jie yovich the senior manager of career Pathways and Career and Technical education who will um walk us through and we've got about half an hour total for this presentation so presentation and questions and answers from the board thank you superintendent Smith board members co-chairs um tonight we hope to provide you with um a brief update on Career learning and um Career and Technical education at this time I'd like to introduce jeie yurkovich our senior manager in career Pathways in CTE as you know she has been really the champion of this work um for the last seven for the last eight years and um so I'm really I can't say enough about her work and I'll give it to jeie great thank you and I'm I'm excited to talk with you tonight about career learning and Career and Technical Ed and and kind of um differentiate um for you what that means um just to remind you that we do have a career learning framework so we've had this framework in place for a while um awareness for grades 7 through n where they become aware of their learning styles exploration for grades 9 through 12 and that would be for all students um the idea would be that um they would have an opportunity to learn about all aspects of different Industries it's broadly based they would have um applications in the real world um and that we would be looking and targeting High wage high demand career Fields when we move into preparation we're talking about grades 11 and 12 and really that is more like um like a Benson where students are diving deep um they are um working in the same areas High wage high demand but the additional pieces that they would have an
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opportunity to earn either college credit or certification or some kind of credential um this slide is really intended to give you the the sense the difference between what we're talking about in terms of career learning and um CTE so for the career learning piece it's really our system that exploration piece connecting that real world um application to the classroom um we want to make sure that introducing 21st century skills and it really is part of the personalized learning diploma requirements that are required by the state of Oregon for CTE all of those pieces are in place but the one major difference is that our CTE programs are state approved programs of study so they have to go through a process um for the state of Oregon um again in high wage high demand um skill areas they must have advisory committees people from industry that are tied specifically to the those program areas they must have what they call uh at the state technical skill assessments so students are tested um on what they're learning in that particular area and it's a test that needs to be approved by the state of Oregon there must be post-secondary connections and opportunities for students to earn college credit and credentials um this is the work of our career coordinators um last year was the first year we had career coordinators on all of our high school campuses they are for the most part s in all of our buildings um there are a couple places where the principal has um opted to increase that FTE but you can see that there they are kind of the the Lynch pin holding all of these pieces together they are in charge of managing the um diploma require requirements around personalized learning they are responsible for facilitating and developing career learning experiences for our students and the wide range from guest speakers to internships um they are responsible for developing Partnerships in their own Community as well as in the broader Portland area they work with staff teachers and counselors to um Implement and develop the system um they are also part of our district um career coordinators team so we work together to ensure that we have common protocols and procedures across the district and then there's this other piece uh other duties and in many cases um in order for them to have a full-time job some of our career coordinators have picked up other things in their buildings that are um pretty time consuming uh in one one case we have a career coordinator who's um the testing coordinator as as well so there's a lot of things going on uh in our buildings but most importantly they are the primary contact for career learning so when people want to work with our schools uh when they want to partner with our um our schools and offer opportunities for students the career coordinator is where um industry and business partners and community members are are directed some of the highlights from last year um the personalized learning diploma requirements last year the class of 2012 was the first class that was required to have completed and documented one career learning experience and so the career coordinators were responsible for that and our our class of 2012 did meet those requirements um we have increased Partnerships and career learning activities we have more collaboration with our teachers and counselors um most of our schools have um Career Centers in those are becoming the hubs the center for all of this work um many of our schools are offering workshops within the career career um centers so for example at Grant um Walsh Construction is working doing some things around construction and they're doing workshops in the career center after school and we have had increased numbers of students participating in our career learning experiences um so this is for districtwide events it does not include U numbers of things specifically that were generated at the school but you can see that we have increased since 2009 we are increasing the number of students who are participating and the number for this year is only through February of 2013 we still have um ways to go so um my expectation is that we will exceed what we did last year um I want to talk a little bit about our CTE programs of studying and um you can see that we have programs in many of our schools but not all of our schools have the state approved CTE programs in their buildings um at Alliance you can see that we they have four programs of study Benson which is our Flagship CTE school they have um six Cleveland has one in marketing um Franklin has a pretty robust Business program and construction manufacturing and Madison Wilson each have one program as well terms of Perkins funding we um receive federal um Perkins Grant funds
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for our CTE programs of study and you can see over the last 5 years that the funds have um declined considerably so at from a high of uh in 201910 we're we're about $200,000 less last this particular school year and the expectation is that it will be less again next year as well um the other thing about Perkins funding is as we if we add additional um state appr improved programs of study the pot doesn't get any bigger it means that the pieces of the pie get smaller as we distribute it among our schools um Community engagement has been a really important piece of this work and we continue to partner with the Portland workforce alliance and Kevin Jean scale um and enabling us to um participate our students to participate in some pretty phenomenal career day events um Tomorrow there's a career day event at wi and Kennedy um he we've added new career events this year we also are partnering with work systems um for The bisc Connect uh Regional uh employer database system which is a way to connect employers and um students and teachers um for career learning opportunities uh we are part of the Tri County School career Consortium and again we partner with um folks in Washington County clams County East mon Loma County to develop career day events so our students are having opportunities that are being developed by someone U maybe out in Hillsboro and they're opening the the slots up to our kids as well um we've partnered last year with mayor Adams actually for the last two years U on a speakers Bureau with the city um we've done presentations with awami and I think significantly this year the equity and purchasing and Contracting policy um that the board passed is another way that we're engaging business partners in this work um part of the the directives tied to that would be that at a minimum an employer would have to register and offer opportunities in bisc Connect and at a higher um dollar level they would be um required to either participate or um sponsor at the Northwest Youth careers Expo so again broadening the number of opportunities available for our students um our schools are developing Partnerships I think I mentioned earlier and their own communities and then um last year we also had the district Pathways advisory Council there were about 40 members um from industry and postsecondary and um the community who are helping us look at this work so with that I'm going to turn it over to trip you know last year in my first year that was a great opportunity for me to to be introduced to a number of really dedicated people from private sector and higher ed really interested in partnering with um PPS around this whole issue of Career Technical education and career Pathways um we met throughout last year it was there was a great culminating event at uh vesus here in town where the mayor came and a number of people uh principls business people like talking about how can we partner in a stronger way as we move forward the the group made some recommendations that we've listed here about investment and even in times of scarcity a conversation about investment is a good thing so we're looking at at high quality career programming in all of our schools and again when we look at high school system design that was something that that was included infrastructure at both the district and the school levels and then certainly strong Partnerships with local employers post-secondary Partners Community groups and individuals the conversation with PCC around dual enrollment dual credit um this was uh an opportunity again for a really broad spectrum of people to meet on this Council the four things that they really focused on a common vision for improving educational opportunities through this work accountability for results students graduating ready for a variety of post-secondary and career aspirations commitment again to establish and expand quality career learning in our buildings and responsibility for Designing implementing sustaining high quality programs and systems to support them so real systems approach um we included a couple slides here at the about there's a national conversation taking place right now this is from Arie Duncan Secretary of Education really again emphasizing this isn't a time to to really kind of Tinker with it as he says but really transform it and um I know the last two State of the Union addresses President Obama um spent a considerable amount of time talking about Career Technical education as well so there's certainly a national Spotlight and then our own Oregon education investment board has four strategic investment um strategies Oregon early reading initiative developing a
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representative core of professional Educators and then the two that connect with us here connecting students to the world of work and guidance and support for postsecondary aspirations when we look at where we're at today in terms of elective courses um jeie did a great job this year early on we talked about let's take a look at what electives do we currently offer in our schools and when you see how they've been put on this bar graph with regard to the National career clusters um it gives you an idea of where our electives currently are it's a great opportunity right now to examine ways for us to increase electives in pathway areas and then certainly to talk about how do we balance existing FTE that that we have um in our high school system maybe we start looking at semester long courses as opposed to year-long courses so we can provide more opport unities for students um to take electives so finishing up we're looking at some priorities for 2013 and Beyond um currently we have our career coordinators are Point s and and we think that they would be able to do more at at a 1.0 FTE um managing the increased um personal learning requirements that are again graduation requirements improving and increasing the awareness exploration and preparation opportunities in all of our high schools um continue to expand the industry Community Partnerships and then support implementation of the districts equity and purchasing and Contracting policy and attaching that to our career career learning goals so um continuing determine criteria and metrics for measuring success establishing District guidelines for assessing our electives which again we've started taking a look at our Pathways in CTE programming identify and further develop career interest electives and CT and programming across the high school system identify priority programming areas for investment and expansion and develop professional development opportunities for school teams budget implications this is the last slide talks really about again we know that increasing FTE will be um tied to some salary increase we currently have some contracted services that we'll hopefully be able to continue and potentially expand upon um support for facilitating our career related learning experiences for our kids and that means getting Subs in the classroom so teachers can participate in that event um buses to transport kids to those opportunities um and then professional development for our staff it's interesting when we to close when jeie talked about um the difference between Career related opportunities and CT CT is part of Perkins Grant it's pretty formal in terms of of how um those programs operate in our buildings but I think all of us would hope that many of the classes that we currently offered offer in our schools are attached to careers and post-secondary education that's obviously one of our big goals so examining our elective program to expand in that area I think is a a direction that that we certainly would like to to move toward thank you um with that do we have questions of course we have questions who would like to start with questions or comments I have a whole variety of questions thanks to the presentation um so I'll maybe I'll start with one or two and then see if people pick up the others do you have any sense at this point of what our Perkins grant funding will be for next year the state hasn't said but um the expectation would be probably I don't know 8 to 10% less perhaps so less again we don't less again and and there's also talk that it may eventually become a a a uh competitive a competitive Grant which it has not been for forever um and I think my big question would be about the state approved um CTE programs by schools so we have it looks like five schools where we don't have those programs at all uh Grant Jefferson Lenin uh mlc and Roosevelt so is your and I know that that's an objective is to get those programs in each of the schools or at least that's what I understand do you have a sense of what we're looking at for next year so there's been conversation with um Grant um with their magazine and their um partnership with Hollywood Theater so we're we're having that conversation um and at Lincoln um a technology perhaps but we're in those in uh the beginning part of those discussions and becoming a a state approved program of study is a pretty rigorous piece so it it's pretty timec
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consuming um on the part of the teacher to pull all of the documentation together and develop a plan but um you have three years to start you have to submit a beginning plan and then you have three years to fully Implement so as we continue these conversations with the schools we have a little bit of time to fully um put the program of study in place so could I just ask one follow on for for Jefferson is there any reason that we couldn't coordinate with PCC maybe and have them take a CT program through the Middle College Community College program well I believe there's Health o right now they've got a pre- strong program biote doesn't biotech it's not showing up here I know that they partner well with Oregon State Health um Oregon Sciences rather so is it correct to say that they are getting the CTE program they are not getting Perkins dollars right so so I'm sorry on this is the this is just specific to Perkin dollars yes yes these are state approved C these are the state approved CTE programs of study so these programs are are receiving Perkins dollars CT opportunities that are rigorous programs there PCC so and do some of our other high schools have rigorous CTE programs that aren't listed here like in any of those other five schools so um so for examp the grant example of Grant they have this phenomenal um magazine program so it it's a great program it's but it doesn't have the state approved piece and they are not receiving Perkins funding as a result of that right I think that would be a good example of the slide that that we have here so CT is really formal it's set up through the state you're getting per dollars if you look at the pathway career learning opportunities that student have students have in the district um that's where again the grant magazine would be a good example the health AET Jefferson would be a good example not attached to those formal dollars coming from Perkins fed dollars okay but there are also examples like the early childhood education at Franklin and at Wilson where it's gone away and my understanding was that was a budgetary decision right so those were really mean they have had an actual onsite child care that the students were able to yeah um drafting another one at Wilson marketing at Madison so I guess I mean this is sort of the usual and obvious and depressing question I mean for all the talk of investment from Arie Duncan and the president there doesn't appear to be any actual increase in investment is that do you have any sense that there's any movement in Congress or anything toward actually supporting the talk with investment there hasn't been any any real conversation around it yet I um I think they're kind of focused on other things right now so kind of the trickle down piece we know Dr crew has in many of his speeches talked about career related learning CTE and so I think we have an advocate within the state right now regarding this work well they don't talk about investment at all at the state other than in their name yeah um I'm just pointing it out oh yeah no appreciate it do you have um so just in terms of the um interactions with your business partners feedback on how well it's working or suggest I mean I definitely the formal recommendations from the council are great and I'd love to see you know have hear more from them but just in informally in terms of How It's been having a point of contact at the high schools has that been helpful um you know because the sort of the the long-term WRA against the district has been that it's been impossible for businesses to find a way to access and and Prov get opportunities so can you talk a little bit about how you've been able to get feedback from businesses and and make any improvements there or challenges that remain I think our employers are thrilled that we have points of contact in our buildings there is somebody uh there's a go-to person and when we have new opportunities available for students we have a way to disseminate that information because each school has their own system on how they they recruit students and and communicate the information um some of our schools are sending information directly home to parents through zav get those emails a lot yeah so um having someone in the building make has made a big difference in in enabling more students to take advantage of these opportunities and um making it easier for businesses to work with um with the district um our numbers are higher um I think the satisfaction of our business partners is greater I think it's been a win but you're also saying saying that you're coordinating centrally so that there's a team effort and some equity and cohesion around the district in
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terms of how people are doing that and and so if as but if a business had a real districtwide or a multis school opportunity they would go to you is that correct so so many of the career day events come to me and then I disseminate to the school to my coordinators and then they disseminate within their schools um we meet monthly and talk about different opportunities but we also talk about what's working in their schools and what what isn't working um and brainstorm with each other and it's really uh been a a nice team effort because we have some people that are veterans in this work in our group and we also have some that are newer uh to this work and so it's um enabled us to build a stronger team I think I would add that um the transition from one mayor to a new mayor the work that took place over the last five years you know leading into Mary Adams um term of office I mean that this is a critical time in terms of people feeling like we're going to continue the work when we met with uh people at vesus I know Carol had caramell had probably 25 people leave their cards um just to say I want to come over and visit Benson I want to see what's going on um there's a really strong alumni group there um that's very interested in partnering with the district so um it's a it feels like right now that um there are people out there that are wondering what's the move forward um we keep saying why not Portland why can't Portland be a model for what a really strong Urban career oriented education looks like and post-secondary education look like looks like so um there are certainly people out there right now that that are very interested in partnering PCC Southwest is putting together a a stem program and they're very interested in working with us and aligning the work um um Oregon Tech um recently I can't remember a month ago or so um partnered up with Benson it was a terrific little event there so there are people that really do want to partner with Portland Public other questions comments I've um I was uh looking at the report that you sent us and it was exciting to see that since 20078 uh 3,1 students have earned dual credits Portland Community College and the majority of these are CTE related and it looks like in 20112 uh 5,196 dual credits were earned so um in terms of those credits earned do you have a sense of um what high schools those students attended I would love to answer that question for you I've asked for that information from PC from PCC so that I could break it down not only by high school but also by program and um I don't I don't have that information but I will follow up and get that to you okay that' be great anything else I I I guess I have one follow-up question there there was a slide in there that talked about what the advisers were recommending it had a vision it had to um and if I remember correctly there was something about build infrastructure at the school um and then there was also build infrastruct District W infrastructure districtwide and I just I want to make sure my understanding is that because I don't often hear people say they want PPS to build additional Administration or central office support is that my understanding of what they're saying is that you just as a district have capacity of that's a great clarifying question yeah they I think uh if we look at the advisory Council they question the capacity that we have internally to be able to do this work and I think that's where historically there's been some frustration um you know there there are a lot of people out there right now with a lot of ideas that really really want to partner with us um and so it's the followup it's the it's it's making sure that um we're realistic about what it means to be a partner and um so I think they see that as an infrastructure um how do we have the capacity to manage it when you look at the number of high school students for example that if we wanted to put together a a program of um job shadowing or internships things like that you're talking about a significant number of kids that would be involved and how do you manage that we're looking at things like how do we use technology to do that where companies could do videos and then students could sit at the computer and get a sort of a look at
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what it what it means to be inside their company so we're looking at ways to be creative um to solve the capacity issue but you're you're exactly right they they really they question that and I would add that right now we we are having we say students have to have one career learning experience over the course of four years and um our advisory Council and our business partners you know students should have maybe more than one and maybe it should be more than a guest speaker maybe it it you know as we move along the Continuum and in order to do that you know we have to have the infrastructure to make that happen anything else and the Expo is coming up it's on March 19th March 19th Convention Center yeah the convention center it's a great opportunity have you invited mayor HS to that we we have we actually met last um week at Grant um with one of the mayor's advisers um Vivian orland is very interested in trying to see whether or not there's a way to do some in internships with local government and so we had a great conversation Kevin jeene scale was there and so we extended the invitation um Governor kitab will be there and Dr crew are scheduled to be there Carol's there so we thought that might be appropriate for the mayor good thank you absolutely thank you thank you both okay so the next area that we'll be taking a look at is our online learning um and this was actually coming back and revisiting what was a a five tiered plan that um we talked about during our budget preparation um last year um and we have presenting this this particular piece of our um our budget Deep dive Karina wolf who's the director of multiple pathways to graduation and Ed options and Deon beran Hernandez who is the assistant director of learning and credit options so and we're really excited to hear this update great thank you superintendent Smith co-chairs directors we're excited to have this opportunity like um superintendent Smith just said to give you an update from where we've been since we came a year ago where we've been the last year and then also our projections into the future so with that I'm going to turn it over to Dion right well it's a pleasure to meet you guys tonight I think I'm the shortest term person here as opposed to seven years I think it's been less than maybe five months or so so um what I'd like to share with you tonight is a little bit perspective of the context of our our work this year um look at some demographics as well as some successes and some challenges that we're facing and some thoughts about the future um you have this chart in your appendix I think at C so you can actually read it but some context is um The Proposal that was made last year around a tiered plan for online and Blended learning um there are five tiers just uh quickly the first one was Blended learning for credit recovery the second one was Blended learning for special options such as home instruction um the third one was to look at Blended learning or online learning for proficiency based course completion the fourth one was to look at um Blended online learning for a virtual school and then the last one is to look at Blended online learning for supplemental purposes for students who have a full schedule the decision last year was made to really focus on credit recovery and that was um in terms of Blended online learning in terms of uh an equity uh strategy for closing the achievement Gap giving kids one more option and how to ch um to complete their courses so that was connected to two different um District priorities one about individual student supports and then also Equitable access to uh rigorous core um curriculum with the investment that the board made last year we were able to to hire the equivalent of 4.5 teachers and to begin our work around um online curriculum and so we are focusing this year primarily on tier one in terms of providing students with credit credit recovery options as well as some limited Pilots for tier 2 around special programs and tier three in terms of some course completion so before I continue I want to make sure that I answer the question what Blended learning is in terms of what that looks like for Portland Public using a national um approach the Blended learning is really along a Continuum that goes from looking at online learning or online access in a traditional classroom all the way up to Virtual schools where students are online all day and may have access to
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teachers through video conferencing or messaging Etc so as you look at Portland Public we are looking at different um different models along that continum so what does it look like for us this year um we're supporting um we've enrolled over 800 students the first 200 are in our C our uh Community Based organizations they're using content that's called Apex that's not an acronym that's the name of the company and um we're also using Apex in our alternative schools so that's 200 students um approximately right now in our Comprehensive High Schools we're using a different curriculum called Florida virtual and um we're serving six uh seven of our schools and we are also piloting um in primarily smaller groups with ex ception of Portland evening Scholars we have five classes that just began about two weeks ago in terms of Blended learning at Portland evening Scholars so that's about 800 students excuse me um in terms of some data to give you a sense of where we were last year and this year and in three areas one is the um area in terms of what grade levels were uh supporting this year as opposed to last year um we also have the group groups that we're supporting in terms of students with special needs our ESL students and our tag students in comparison last year and this year and the um the last group that we're looking at in terms of our uh demographics is the students that we're working with this year as opposed to last year so as it is a new program is going to have some successes and we have lots of opportunity to grow um and our first of our successes is that we have focused in on tier one that's a credit recovery using a uh the rigorous uh Blended learning and we have an awesome staff they started off new to Blended learning and they've done tremendous work this year in terms of really learning what that looks like and adapting um for our situation um in our comprehensive high schools in particular we have on-site mentors who support the students in terms of the pacing through their courses and then our virtual scholar teachers and that relationship is growing over the course of the year um we also are working with Hillsboro online that um began the work um also this year in terms of a virtual school they're also using uh Florida virtual so we have collaborated them with them not just in terms of the staff and but also from administrators looking at the challenges that we're facing and working through those together together we're working with um Oregon Virtual School District that provides the H houses our courses and OD and then the work with our it department has been phenomenal um we have a lot of work to do here but we're beginning to develop guidelines and processes to help support our um our student intake process and then also looking at when students struggle online what are our interventions and how do we actually support students to make sure that they have meaningful access online um we have data conversations on about every 3 weeks with our uh teachers to find out how our students are doing individually in our online courses and we have some Pilots that I talked to um a little bit before we have we have one Spanish course um over at Roosevelt that we're doing with a blended learning um approach uh we have some students in the middle school we have some that are um doing some additional courses from Advanced course um kids that are taking pre-calculus um that are in eth grade as well as some students that are in our math program at Hosford and providing them some supplemental support um in terms of making sure that they meet the Oaks requirements um and then we also have as I mentioned before our Portland evening Scholars and this is growing over time but what we're finding is that really having a strong professional development program around um the pedagogy of online learning the technology of online learning um and making sure that we blend those two things for our staff has been really crucial and that is uh growing um over the course of the year so you wanted to introduce the piece I'll keep clicking sure thank you so I think um as far as on the um other end kind of Lessons Learned and growth opportunities one of the things that we really are as far as a program in within a school district is
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we're at a great place of of honest tension and so I think we've been online learning's been introduced and so there's a lot of curiosity within the district and we're also learning a lot as we're trying things out districtwide one of the things that as Dion said initially is we looked at our course failures for instance and and looked at it as an equity opportunity looking at focusing on Credit Recovery as our Focus um for this year that's really frustrating sometimes when you're a counselor in a high school and you think this would be a great opportunity and you have wonderful students who would really take advantage and would enjoy a certain amount of rigor and so part of what we're working with right now is a real kind of a pacing issue um and so that's one of the things that that is wonderful because people want more and we're at a place where we're really wanting to refine and make sure that what we do we're doing really um holistically and really um sound with sound fundamental practice all the way through um I'm going to um actually pass it right back to Dion as as as you can read certainly the the rest of the Lessons Learned on this um slide if you want to share your story of the young man from um Portland Union Scholars the other day absolutely um one of the things that we were at Portland eving Scholars and um as I'm walking down the um the aisle listening to students one of the students made the comment oh this means I'm going to have to be doing the work all the way through and it was sort of that aha moment that the student had that if I'm not here the course isn't going to move along without me and if so if the student is gone when they get back it's right where they left off and so that was sort of that one aha moment for a student and I think that that comes to the the whole idea around the rigor around online learning is um it doesn't let go it doesn't um doesn't go away when a student um decides that they're going to not come to class for example so one of the lessons learn is that it really takes highly qualified teachers to be part of the the system um that when you have that relationship with a a a motivated teacher Mentor a highly qualified teacher then having rigor and addressing the rigor of the course is possible students really need the structures um moving into there's a myth I think that students because they are very social on the internet they are and they do that without anybody's support they can pick it up very quickly and they move on however for students to become academic online they need teachers they need that guidance um and I think that's probably probably the most important lesson here is that they can't just smoothly walk into an online class and boom it it happens um the teacher guidance is important because students begin to realize that they have three things um that or three characteristics that they really need to develop to become strong online Learners one is that they really need to figure out what does it mean to participate online it looks different than what they've been trained to do since they were kindergarten they need to be persistent in a different way um that that looks different than what it looks like in a brick and mortar classroom and that their level of patience is different when it's online there isn't somebody checking to make sure you understood all the time so it looks different um to be a successful student online one of our greatest challenges is this year is really making sure that our online curriculum meets the need the specific needs of Portland Public School students one is that we need to make sure that it addresses the Common Core the second is that we look at the literacy needs of our students our Florida virtual is written at a 10th grade level and that's not always accessible by all of our students who are in credit recovery so what are we going to do about that we have language specific language needs for our students again we need to look at the curriculum make sure it's access accessible to students um our students who have special needs um especially if it's a learning disability that we need to make sure that we have different ways of students showing what they know know and learning what they need to know online it's not just one way of doing it and finally that we really look at our curriculum much of the curriculum that's out there is built on sort of a a generic United States view of online learning and so I think that we need to look at our curriculum and make sure that it's culturally relevant for our students um and that process is beginning um but we have a lot of work to do in that area so I just want to point out that yes you have about 15 minutes for presentation and we're about at that time if I'm looking at the slides I'm
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notely um very quickly in terms of it thank you for the reminder um Our IT department you can't do online without it it's impossible um we need to make sure that we're very scaffolded in our approach both for staff and for students to make that transition between online I mean uh trans uh brick and mortar classes and online and that goes around the whole issue of time and professional de velopment it won't happen by itself and finally in terms of lessons learns we have realized that we cannot treat all of our content areas the same online uh we're going to need to look specifically at math and foreign language and look at how we address those online it won't be the same as social studies or language arts so we have um we we know we need to look at our Effectiveness so we we've beginning to decide what the data points will be so this uh slide addresses those areas um and then we have three um top priorities for Investments depending on what the trajectory is what is the tier that we want to address next year um those would be the infrastructure and the infrastructure meaning our staffing and our equipment that we look at how we address the issues around curriculum and lastly what are we going to do in terms of the professional development that transition from a brick morar to the online what does it mean in terms of the pedagogy as well as the technology and the supports that we have for everybody along um along that Continuum of of intake and so I think this is our last slide so with regard to budget when we look and again continuing the conversation from at this time last year currently we have um 5.5 FTE in the program and drawing specifically from from our lessons learned one of the things we know that we're requesting in our as we grow forward is to look at acquiring special education instruction um on our staff to to look to incorporating um es and ESL instructor on our staff to look at having somebody who can do that scaffolding as a math specialist to work at how we really look at how did our students do and where do we really need to direct Our intention um and to make sure that we're growing in ways that again address equity and achievement for all and so really um using that as our um focus for looking forward so our request for the upcoming year is to is to grow to add 5.5 FTE to become a total of 11 FTE districtwide um then the following year as um as we've talked about previously is to look at and identifying if if we'll be ready to um open and create a virtual Academy um a virtual Scholars Academy and then in 15 16 3 years from now looking at really having implemented districtwide not just in Pilots all of our tiers one through five so that's those are really kind of where we're where we're at and where we see ourselves heading in a in a Healthy Growth model and this is just the appendix so we would love to answer any questions thank you and I'd just like to commend you for taking exactly 15 minutes for presentation yes thank you questions yeah I do um I and I guess I'm interested in hearing your your thoughts on this um we learned about the sort of specific Target around uh credit recovery and then as we're going through slides we see a uh the enrollment uh from last year to this year change uh and the demographics change um to become sort of minority majority in terms of the students accessing uh will becoming virtual Scholars um is that was there an intentionality around change you know changing those demographics or reaching out to those groups you know and the reason I'm asking is that earlier we saw one of our one of our schools creative science uh in what appears to be sort of a struggle of finding uh students to apply for programs and within that that school was there in Outreach or do we do have a disproportionate number of kids of color who are in need of credit recovery yes and yes okay um so yes we there was intentionality around it and yes we have um a disproportionality of course failures as an example I'll just take math as one of the things that really stands out when we look at course failures 20 just as a district um 24% um of our African-American students have failed um a math class they're 12% of our student population so we can look
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at specific courses at spec and then look at specific communities of color or communities of color versus dominant um white students and see how are we doing part of what we've done also and Dion's done an amazing job um coming in new this year is really working with counselors um around how are we getting the right students one of the things that we have is she talked about two different curricul Apex and Florida virtual and um and how do you help students who we so we do something that I think is pretty tricky we target students who have not necessarily been successful in courses before and we're asking them in some ways to really learn a new skill in addition to learning the content area that we want and so it's been it's been challenging and we've targeted we've targeted certain um populations thank you yeah but if I'm understanding it right I mean really the past with the Plato in the past it really was just sort of here's an option to maybe Rec recover some credits not as intentional but now we actually have the dedicated program and teachers who are supporting students so if I'm understanding it right it's the dedicated teaching staff and coordination districtwide that's assisting students around the district who are still enrolled in their regular school but this is more of an enhanced and more um hopefully more high quality experience for them yes I I am in terms of and I don't know that it's specific to Plato I think it this could actually happen to any online that you can have um without the role of the teacher I call it completion through clicking that's one option and then there's a rigorous option and the rigorous option comes because there's a teacher who's looking at the work students do don't just use a computer they upload assignments they do videos um and the teacher is providing them feedback um and they also do what are called discussion-based assessments so a student may have done something that was an assessment on the computer teacher calls them up or does a video with them and says so let's talk a little bit more about what you were learning what were your questions let me ask you some further probing questions and so the the rigor comes because there's a teacher there right right yeah it's just really exciting to see us actually move into doing this in a real way and then the possibility of potentially expanding it and the way you have it mapped out in terms of the tiar I think it's it's really helpful just to see the complexity of it but the differing needs and how how far it could go and meeting all the different um challenges that we're facing up to the point of having in addition to this the um potential for having a Virtual Academy as well as um enhanced opportunities for kids who aren't needing credit recovery but it would be an extra opportunity so it's really it's really exciting I want to say that as a um as a new person it was really it it I thought it was really smart to start with the hardest part I it's really hard to do credit recovery online but I think that what that does is the system has to pay attention to what makes it complex and so rather than having Solutions later that are sort of layered on something that was um that worked for everybody um that really what we're paying attention to is what makes it difficult and make give equal access to students and um so I think that though it's the hardest place to start I think it was a a great place to start and I think your Insight about students needing the support of the teachers is really really key here and really really helpful to hear that um I think we might just too easily assume that the students could just do it on their own right and that's not and they think so too and then they're surprised when it's really hard well and can you follow up real quick on um that there's the mentor teacher which I think is the person on site which may or may not be endorsed and that I'm not sure that and then and then there's the the virtual scholar teacher is that what it's called um yes and that's the person maybe that's highly qualified in that can you talk a little bit about that structure yeah um so the teachers um the majority of our students are in a credit recovery lab um and so the person who is supervising them but it's actually very CR it's much more than supervising um their role is to um make sure that students are connecting with the teacher which their virtual teacher which is new to the students they're kind of like teacher not here they're not seeing that I have my hand raised so helping kids through that process um keeping them on Pace um and that's a challenge right now because every student the beauty of this and the challenge is that every student is there in their own spot so kind of keeping track of a hundred students all in their own spot is a challenge in itself um and then providing some of the technical support that students need to to stay on track that's the mentor's role and it's a a really Cru I call the part of the three-legged stool they're they one of the the legs the other one then is the
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virtual scholar teachers and all of them are are highly qualified we have health um math um language arts science and social studies I'm not really sure had to ask questions so in terms of your me Mentor teachers um are these uh typically new teachers to Portland Public Schools or are these teachers who are learning online as they go the mentor teacher or the virtual scholar teacher the mentor teacher the mentor teachers are all part of the Comprehensive High School it's typically a period in the day that they have that the principal is assigned to the credit recovery lab and the mentor teacher who's in the credit recovery lab is a Portland Public School teacher yes and how is it that they get their professional development to do this work very good question um we didn't start off in September answering that question very well um we did after school um an hour two hours of support um and it proved not to be enough at all so um through our budget in um in learning credit options we then had a full day of training in January um which we should have done in September so we'll start next September differently I think um another part of that is that we really need to look at support during a summer so that teachers can really hit the ground running on the first day of class they should feel really confident about their um their techn technology skills and their role so I think that we really need to look at something during the summer to address that so they're not getting it after the fact and it it also occurs to me that there's many districts in Oregon who have pretty extensive online learning opportunities already set up and you know even some sort of professional development where teachers could go visit those districts Hillboro Salem several of those seem like they could be great opportunities absolutely and one of my questions for you superintendent is in terms of our schools of Education um are you getting a sense that um new teachers coming out of our schools of Education are also being trained in online learning at all you know actually that's more of a question for you I think than than for me I mean how do we how do we take this to scale I think is sort of what I'm asking I actually think that should be a conversation with um H Ed um what I'm noticing is no I don't see that as we have a few of our teachers and virtual scholar teachers who are currently Portland Public School teachers and um what they have is an enormous love for the kids and that's actually probably the number one thing um but our teachers who are new um who are either Subs right now or working in Portland evening Scholars they're new to this and um the pedagogy around online learning is much goes much further Beyond than a textbook online it's all of the pedagogy around that and it's new to them it's new and so one of the things you'll see in the budget request from this year one of the differences from this next year versus this current year is a larger request around professional development with some more intentionality around how do we do that for both our Mentor teachers and our online teachers yeah I would think that would be huge what was interesting is when we heard from the Madison teachers how often professional development came up in that conversation and in this one you can hear it loud and clear as well yep that's exciting can when I'm looking at the the budget staffing chart that you guys have laid out um there's a 1.0 ESL 1.0 special education which I think is great again focusing on how do we make this work for the people were students were most challenged to serve well so I really can you talk to me about what the 1.0 academic Le is on absolutely what is that that is when we look at our um our data and we do uh when we look at our data we look at kid by Kid how they're doing there is a lot of support that needs to happen there which is interfacing with um with each of the schools with the counselors with um the different folks that are support systems for students um in the buildings as well as the Outreach to parents um this is such a different environment for students that how we support the 360 around a student um takes a lot of energy and so I think that the role of an academic liaison really looks at the specific needs for each of the students be it um are the students not making progress because they haven't been going to school um are they not making progress because the course that we've selected for them is at a literacy level that is not appropriate to them so that person um I Envision having um very
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personal knowledge about every single student um all along the Continuum so help me understand if there's a mentor teacher which should theoretically have the smallest load you mentioned earlier that that it's hard for them to track 100 students yep um and then there's a highly qualified teacher the virtual scholar who has theoretically a much bigger because they're supporting at a how would an academic leison who would be serving the entire online learning be the one to best serve that individual student that's a good question the mentor teacher actually doesn't have the role of the Outreach at this point and it may be certainly something that we should talk about is the changing role of that Mentor teacher in each of the schools and that's an emerging conversation um when I look at when we look at our students we um we use a response to interven approach so when we look at um the majority of our students making progress and then our 20% of or 5% that are not making progress is being able to Target um that person being able to Target where we think we're going to get the most or the most critical movement uh so that students are successful but I don't know that it's a complete model it's the next step in the model um in terms of when I see what we're all spending time on that I think that somebody somebody who specializes in that will be able to move us forward ask one more question um we all spend a fair amount of time in schools visiting classrooms if we wanted to visit a classroom or two and really understand where we're at on this could you set that up for us or figure out where the best places would be because I know I would certainly be interested in that I had the great Fortune of while I was on another school visit of running into a mentor teacher and the virtual scholar there and I felt bad for the principal because I I latched on to those two um and talked for almost 45 minutes about how this is working so I I would love that up we would love that too yeah that would be great I guess my the last thing I I'll throw out for us and and for you as we consider as I look at doing our own online learning and I know that I I think many of us are excited about that but I also wonder if there's efficiency like why recreate if if the whole Advantage is that other people are doing it and the boundaries aren't is there advantage to us doing it I know there's benefit to us owning the material or knowing the system but um do you have any quick thoughts on that well one of the areas that I feel we spend that we're all growing together when we talk about system alignment as a district we also some of the conversations that are happening are between student services and the needs for instance one I think it was touched on early on on tier two is for home instruction so we talk about student services and the need for home instruction we talk about special education and some students who um who we need to be creative to meet their needs and we also talk about uh multiple Pathways where online learning um lives and how do we work and serve different needs in the system um as far as aligning all of our uh uh all of our academic services and so I think there's um there's a growing conversation about how we can articulate and and serve our own students best one of the things we do is we have um other contracts or looking particularly right now I'm thinking particularly with special education and some of the different services that we contract or we bill out for other um folks to provide to some of our high need students how would it work or could it work for different students for us to serve more collaborative more collaboratively inhouse and so I think those are some of the alignments that we think about where are we what's our vision for our best self as a district in the future I think also um one of the things that that my teachers are realizing that with curriculum that was written for the national audience when it comes down to a specific student who's let's say in Credit Recovery is is looking at language arts those um the national curriculum doesn't align to what Portland Public does and so a student may end up in a course that looks very different than what Portland Public does so my teachers are beginning to look at those um the different curriculum that we have a curricular that we have and adapting it so that it really meets it it zones in or zeros in right at what the student needs rather than kind of this broad swath of language arts or algebra one so we have a lot to do there but I think that what we'll end up with is something that's much more specific to the needs of our students rather than something was built for thousands and thousands of kids that don't live in Oregon or Portland
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Public great anything else thank you thank you thank you thank you okay you guys thank you very much back um and our our next budget topic um is dual language immersion and we have GM Garcia who was actually uh and Melissa Goff our director of teaching and learning GM um is in charge of our dual language immersion and came and saw us earlier in the year to look at kind of a vision of where we're heading with our dual language immersion and we'll look forward to this update and taking us deeper thanks JM good evening co-chairs and superintendent and um board members uh the last time that we met we discussed a little bit of the difference between ESL and dual language and I saw that it came up again and so tonight I will briefly go over a a little bit of clarification and some update on our student demographics which should lead us to the activity we've been doing this year and the investment needs for the future and so I'll start with uh just some quick uh definitions and I will just say right up front there's a little bit of um alphabet soup here um but just quickly dual language immersion is the program it is general education and so that's really the access that we're providing to students and within the Dual language program we have two types of students and so one of them is what we call elll students um these are the students for whom English is a newer language so you've heard us talk about referring to students as emergent bilinguals into a language we do make that distinction between an elll student and a native English speaker simply because one of the things that we PR that we want in the design of the model is about half the students are native English speakers and so you've also heard the term ELD and that really stands for the service or the instruction that elll students get so a as a state we are required to provide uh special services instruction to help them overcome the language barrier of English and so even within the Dual language programs we we have to provide some sort of ELD service and then as you've uh We've traditionally referred to the kids this way but ESL English as a second language is the department that oversees our approach to teaching El as well as overseas that the district is providing access to content so just a little bit of a comparison we have a lot in common uh basically uh the Dual language program our goal is bilingualism that the kids become bilingual biliterate whereas in the ESL uh program the goal really is English language proficiency that's that's really what their f focus is so we are general education basically the math Reading Writing and whereas ESL is a supplemental support for students that's above and beyond something that native English speakers don't get and so our Focus really is the development of native language and culture and the traditional approach to ESL is one that you might call subtractive where um English is actually replacing the native language in the traditional sense and as a district we're looking to really celebrate and uh encourage native language maintenance but the reality is the ESL model is designed to get to English as fast as you can and so there isn't a language preservation or maintenance uh piece to that and then again um when we look at our staffing um in the mainstream classroom we're talking about certified bilingual teachers just your classroom teachers and the service that ESL provides is usually in or outside of the mainstream but it has a specially uh certified teacher someone who's teaching English as a second language and so as you know we collaborate and have uh converging interests as far as our student enrollment we want half of them to be elll students and for both of our departments the goal is that the children do learn English that but that's just part of our goal and so quickly just a refresher I think that most of you have seen this graph before out of the colleag and Thomas um study this is what compels us to do these programs in our district that dotted Blue Line you see at the top represents the average kid at grade level each year and so that um is compared to where students are if they're English language Learners so you see that in the first years there's not that much of a difference in program outcomes but it is after five or more years of participating in these programs that are elll students not only meet the level at which native English speakers do at grade level but we exceed it so the
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two-way model you see at the top is the one that we are implementing in the majority of our Spanish uh programs and so we had also T and mind you I just wanted to remind you in that graph that is student achievement in English because that's a national study and so the question is how do the students fair so um some of our activity this year has in included the addition of Cesar Chavez um we'll talk a little bit more about new program expansion but for now uh what we have done is added kindergarten in Cesar Chavez we're looking at lent um uh for the addition of another classroom because as we discussed last time the schools that are still um conducting programs with one class per grade level are challenging our middle schools as far as sustainability of our programs and um we have also revised our timelines and activities for what it will look like to open new programs and so uh this Thursday actually we're meeting with all of our principles to talk about what dual language is where we have it why we do it and to form a subcommittee of Administrators to look at the entire map of the district where our student needs are in demographics and to be a part of creating what is the plan for where programs would happen Which languages and how we can best uh serve our students and in the past we have not really included principles at that level of planning and so in looking at our program startups that we've done in the past um at this point Spanish has materials set up and so we're estimating approximately $220,000 that is a very conservative figure just to let you know um that is just just with how we've done it in the past and so when we look at less commonly taught languages the cost difference has to do with whether or not it's a program we're replicating or one we're starting new so with the less commonly taught languages starting new takes a lot more uh curriculum assessment and uh development of the programs so um to replicate one is a somewhere between 25 and $30,000 and to start a new program we're looking at probably about a 100,000 and so that's uh what we have estimated it costs to start the new programs um just again I want to uh emphasize that expansion has traditionally included FTE people uh but that has been uh funded by a grant I'll tell you about later some of the grants that we have had so again principles have not traditionally been involved in expansion or new program development in the ways that we Vision so quickly I'd just like to go over some of the demographics because again this is a high leverage educational program that we are using to close the opportunity gap for elll students I don't want to underplay when we go into demographics we need 50% of our students to be native English speakers and so we have had an inbalance but I want to emphasize that our goal is that when we accept students in kindergarten and first grade we have a balance of about 50% native English speakers and 50% of the target language so we've dug into our data to see where are we and so we looked at our two-way models that's seven of the eight Spanish language schools and what we've had consistently year after year is about 42% overall of Spanish speakers uh or I should say of elll students in our seven uh models so in our Spanish language programs it's been about 38% and in our Russian program we're actually a little over it's about 53% which is okay that's about right and so one of the best um places for us to make sure that we have balanced student uh population is how we accept them in Kinder and first so that's really where our goal is to have half and half so we uh looked at our K in first grade numbers right now and we're at about uh 41% elll students in the Spanish PR program and 62 of our Russian speaking students so we looked also at ethnicity for student participation in our programs and found can I ask a quick question on that last slide you talked about you gave percentages of elll students but all students that have a native language correct may not be identified as elll so does that if we don't look at just elll population does that number change is our Target for elll students or is our Target for native speaking of that one right and that is um an a very good and compelling point that we've grappled with we have been identifying our native uh Spanish
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speakers through the elll identification but one of the things that emerges um is that we have a number of students who are bilingual for whom there isn't a dominant language and so the other piece that we that is also not reflected here is the student who was never identified as elll and has a home where Spanish or another language is spoken so we have not gathered that data at this point and when I share with you um some of the demographics in our Russian program that's problematic as well because they're white and so it's almost the opposite where we want to know who are the native language speakers but we did pull a little bit of data around Heritage language in Spanish that I'll get to in a moment um so thank you for asking the question it's something that we are looking at how we collect our data in the future so if we um look at our demographics like I said we are much more diverse than I think uh urban legend would say um again the um proportion of whites is uh probably representative of what we have in our native English speaking group that's always going to be a higher number and so in this is the part that I told you we just by um uh subtraction basically came up with we've got 36% students in our Spanish immersion programs who are Latino but not identified as English language Learners so that's where we get at the Heritage language piece that would have been me as a child English dominant but Mom and Dad speak Spanish and then when we looked at our poverty overall that was higher than I would have guessed as well overall in our Spanish uh programs we're at 63% uh students eligible for free and reduced now our Russian program as you know is at uh fifth grade now and so they're about to matriculate into middle school so we have quite a few of those students we can look at as a bigger sample again 92% are white but that doesn't really tell us a lot about language or Heritage uh Believe It or Not we've got 10% Latino students in our Russian program and um 71% is the free and reduced rate um of the students at Kelly participating in the program and then again one unknown is who are the heritage language speakers and so we don't know that at that point and we're looking at different ways to collect data as we enroll students isn't that isn't that information on a registration form do you speak what language do you speak it is and it isn't in different ways one of the things you do with the in the registration form is identify ethnicity and many Eastern Europeans will Mark White because they are and then the other question is whether or not a language and other than English is spoken in the home and we have a pretty high error rate of what immigrant families will typically report in that respect so it's not very reliable data and so um that's like I said something that we will um gather differently upfront when we um enroll students so um basically we current in our current budget we have three teachers who have been providing professional development for all the Dual language teachers they're teachers on special assignment and uh we are challenged at this point with our schools who are getting those first small cohorts of students in middle and high school and reducing their FTE and their building budget they're really looking at our department and saying so aren't you going to provide a teacher so that's this big gap and it's very difficult I think to understand on paper when you see 17 kids coming in that doesn't generate a lot of FTE and so this expectation or the I think the unwritten rule at the schools is well dual immersion will help you out and that's not an area that we have monies for we don't have a staff or a budget for that um the other piece is that we have had a number of uh foreign language assistance program grants um thanks to our esteemed colleague Michael bacon we have brought in a lot of money to the district that got our program started they provided uh people to start the programs as well as us to teach and so this is last year was our last year we got a continuance um so that this is the last year for all of those grants with the exception of the Chinese and so that has been a challenge in that um it was seed money and we used it as such but picking up where the grant leads off is always a challenge um transitionally and so um we were asked like any other department to look at if what if we did need to cut 5% and the devast stating uh piece that we just can't sacrifice is the professional development that the teachers are getting that is specific to the work
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that they do and so when we look at our priorities in the future uh like I said this Thursday we're meeting with principles just to give them the information and get their um interest in forming a committee that looks at the entire district and when we select which schools are going forward we want to be incredibly um aggressive in up uh frontloading what those principles get in the way of professional development and their opportunity to build their own programs and so investing in our principles and um other leaders in central office has been a huge priority for us so developing that committee is uh something that will identify the schools but then we want to send those schools to other schools send them to professional development so we have to make sure sure that when we're planning these programs we have sustainability in mind a k through 12 plan because some of the bumps that we've run into is that lack of foresight as to where will these guys go to middle school or how many middle schools and um some of you know that's that's really where we're challenged is moving our programs up to middle and high school and then we want to continue with the uh quality control that we've started with our principles and our staff we really have them actively reflecting on their programs in quantitative ways and making changes at the school level and so um this year uh the investment in the Dual language program was 571 uh 98 and we are um asking for a significant increase we would like to continue the activity that we've started with our principles and our leaders as well as our teachers um in their professional development but we want program expansion to look differently than it has in the past um in the past it really has been perceived as something that comes from central office and so um Scott is an example of a school that is in their first year they are spending a lot of uh monies and getting creative as to where they could pay for it to retroactively prepare these kindergarten teachers to work with their community so they're doing a lot of the things that we would like to see done before the school school year starts and so um we I believe and I know that my team believes that the buck really does stop with the administrators as far as our ability to implement quality programs and to expand in a way that's thoughtful and uh with the end in mind great thank you I'm just going to say another Stellar 15 minute on the dot so nice job and I I don't I I don't make light of this this is been a real effort to try and have staff presentations be 15 minutes and then have the rest of the time be for board members to discuss so thank you thank you and I was going to send a follow-up email after this this meeting saying something same effect because we have the information you've given us the information we need to let our audience know what we're talking about at the same time the value comes really in a dialogue for us to understand so thank you questions with that opportunity um so first of all uh thank you for the presentation um I have one quick question and then I want to get into my longer question longer question um in terms of an uh expanding the budget by 200,000 or so for next year is that primarily for professional development um yes as well as uh some of the materials and curriculum the gaps that we've identified that we have um assessment is a big piece of that as well uh we actually do an assessment above and beyond everybody else else in that we have certain benchmarks for assessing language and we're using a nationally normed test and it's expensive and so our grant has funded a lot of that activity I just was trying to figure out if you were talking about bodies or professional development or it sometimes it's going to be it's going to be both so another piece that you may not think of that I didn't think of before I was in charge of the instructional Resource Center this year is the fact that we look at bolstering our libraries at our dual language programs and when books come into those libraries in for example Mandarin Chinese um they're not translated books that are they're actually texts that we order from China that are in Mandarin in the first place that costs money for us and time to actually have people go in and figure out what does this title actually say and how do I apply a a number to this title so that every time this title comes through now it's automated and we we know what that number is um most books in English have numbers already applied to them but
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we're finding in Russian in Mandarin and Japanese we have a different um challenge in front of us interesting my first reaction to that was just get an interpreter and just do it but then I learned about libring an ISBN it's a big deal apparently because we actually create an ISBN number so then anybody body else who buys that Mandarin book has the benefit of what we're doing basically blazing Trails so I think my bigger question I want to ask is uh it seems like we have been encouraging expansion of uh dual language immersion programs and the question I have is related to Quality um so what is it uh and and maybe this Demands a bigger discussion but um how is it that we are ensuring during our hiring process that our teachers coming in have uh not just strong verbal skills but strong writing skills strong teaching skills and the rest um who are teaching an immersion programs and again are our schools of Education helping in this area and then the second question is when they're when we have teachers here and in particular when we don't have principles who are bilingual or native speakers um when we go through the teacher evaluation process how is it that they can tell that quality teaching is actually happening okay well there's two parts to that question about the uh quality of the teachers um we do when we uh hire bilingual teachers um it's a much longer process because they actually go through a screening process that uh measures not only their verbal skills in understand comprehension and speaking but also gets a writing sample and requires for them to teach um and I don't know if we do that for all teachers but we actually watch a mini lesson and so there is a screening process that's more impressive than I've seen anywhere in Oregon and in fact we've got universities looking at the screening process because it is so rigorous I've been out recruiting with HR and I have yet to hear of another program saying we've got a process in place and so that's that's one piece um the other piece as far as our principal's ability to observe and evaluate teachers um they should be able if we go back to what sheltered instruction is the Dual language teachers should be the most sheltered teachers that there are knowing that there's a portion of the kids often half or in our uh Chinese and Japanese programs more than half who aren't proficient in your language so I have said that we should be able to walk into any dual immersion class regardless of language and be able to identify the objective of the and what the kids should be doing if sheltered instruction really is happening you should not have to have linguistic access to know what's happening we have had some principles do it with interpreters um do the uh um observations but we've been talking with them and actually cross-pollinating that other principles are saying what I just said I don't need an interpreter I know when kids are engaged and I know when the noise is naughty off task talking versus you know really talking about the content area and I took it to the test I went into a second grade Japanese classroom and I knew exactly what the objective was after about two or three minutes of and and I knew when kids were engaged or not so supporting our principles on how to observe uh regardless of language is one big piece um the other piece about our principles um we have been very aggressive this year in looking for bilingual bicultural principles and that would be nice to have them in all our buildings but that is not our reality so just as much as we look at bilingual um you know diverse hiring in our administrative ranks it's important for us to focus on the principles who are not bilingual and building their skills to be the leaders for their building so I and I have been in situations where someone has been put in a position because of their language skills and it is after the fact that we realize that person doesn't support bilingual education because that exists in all linguistic communities so I would rather have a monolingual principal and I'll just name Brenda Fox who is just or or Mary Pearson who is all over their program and can tell you forward and backwards what the schedule should look like Etc I'd rather take that monolingual principle who has ownership and skill around dual immersion implementation than a bilingual administrator who is not Cooperative or close-minded to it and so it's not as as important it is ideal um to have the bilingual skills and our parent parents would tell you it's a must but I I would you know extend that to any of our schools that have a significant uh population and I I think the one thing I
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would add is um I think you've heard tonight the theme of professional development from start to conclusion um just as in our general education monolingual classrooms our teachers and administrators need professional development support in order to be the best that they can be for our kids and I would say that um GM has really focused this year on providing that professional development to our administrators in a more structured way than we've been able to provide it in years past given that we haven't had someone in GM's position um in addition to that our dual langual dual language teachers have had really strong support from both Marty Sol and Michael and also from Daniel kogan who's joined them this year and it it really is an essential piece that that can't be overstated and there's been a gap between that because what you find is what we have found is a room full of energetic teachers who love their kids and want to do right by them learning about how to do this and discouraged because they're saying I'm going back to my building where my principal is not going to support this type of schedule and so us pulling in that in now so for example everything we give to the principles goes to the teachers everything the teachers get the principles get copy of and so bringing the big aha this year was content allocation um how much of each subject gets covered in English versus Spanish I assumed it was getting done and it turns out we have huge discrepancies from one school to the other so we called it out it's been on paper we pulled it out and supported our principles on what will your schedule look like next year and again had from Principal to principal and we had Atkinson stand up and say you guys who are saying this is new to you this is what we've been doing for the last four years and I attribute this content allocation to the scores and the the raise an achievement that we've been able to experience so it's it's really holding them accountable for some of the things that we've said we were going to do and are on paper but my theme has been first we need to make sure they know second we need to support them and then third we can hold them accountable and so working with the uh Regional administrators has been a big piece of that and and increasing their understanding of what can be expected or what should be expected question I'm waiting for this side over here yeah well I I'm just really encouraged to hear everything that you're saying um and I guess so it sounds as if in terms of future um expansion so if I'm understanding you right that for the first time principles are having an actual committee around future program development so that's wonderful and as it looks like in the small print here new program recommendations for 2014 one Spanish and one less commonly taught language so we'll be seeing so that will be over this coming year this committee will be working on flushing that outre Comm and and in your packet you have a timeline that shows what type of activity would be happening in each month to move us along and we're about a half month behind I think uh but basically in February we said we would be looking at uh which programs Which languages and um I wasn't allowed to put at least in there but um I think once we look at our student demographics we will see a compelling um reason to look at more than one Spanish language program as far as our student demographics and the ability to because then what I'm hearing for you is really that balance of the urgency to expand with also getting it right at the same time so that's really exactly where we need to be um the other thing is you in your um secondary grades enrollment analysis piece um you touched on this a little bit but around just particularly in the Middle grades and the en maintaining the enrollment at 68 um and the issues you're having there so you do talk about the potential of merging 68 cohorts to be able in in one cluster to provide greater stability and ability to provide more cor offering and staff more Staffing can you talk a little bit more about that yes um in a number of our schools the group that's moving from fifth to sixth grade ends up being less fewer than 25 students and so the principles are challenged in the master schedule as well as the Staffing for that and so um we have eight middle schools into or Middle Middle grades into which our Spanish uh speaking graduates um matriculate into with those eight configurations and those low numbers what seems simple to me is to bring together those groups so for example um Beach happens to have 28 children moving from fifth to sixth grade but that's only because they collapse to classes with attrition uh Cesar Chavez I think we're looking at 20 some and so if the when those kids get
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together they're still not making enough and so um it needs to be done in the within the context of enrollment balancing as a district all over as well as um within the work that we're doing with um transfer or enrollment and transfer policies in our Lottery and so what we envision happening is we we've started the principles are forming a small group that are looking at the enrollment and transfer policies through the lens of dual immersion and what this means then we see ourselves either converging or at least submitting recommendations to the committee that uh moves forward with this districtwide and working with sacket on what that means um because it's a big deal to say you no longer go to this school you go to that school we just really want to be thoughtful about that but I don't believe that we can continue to sustain eight or more U Middle School grades um trying to staff and schedule for Spanish do you have a sense of the attrition in terms of it being native speakers or English you know are we and how that intersects with um achieving English proficiency for elll students in other words are we providing opportunities um for merging bilingual students all the way through high school so that they're able to take advantage and have it be an asset based approach all the way through or is it have that data off the top of my head but it it would definitely be worth analyzing and I'll ask Michael to jump in if he does because he's the guy who has data in his head all the time um one of the things that we're wanting to look at is um entry points for students and following them so that we can see who who when the elll students do stay K through 12 what the outcomes are so the most preliminary preliminary analysis I was able to get was um Spanish-speaking students in dual immersion versus spanishs speaking elll students not in dual immersion for five or more years in our district and to run some comparisons that way and so far the data is supporting what we see on the national level that our students Fair better yeah I mean I guess in the ideal world we would have a persistent K through 12 immersion option for you know everybody but if we have to be making this to me it's like we have to figure out how we're supporting our emerging bilingual students all the way through so if we're not able to sustain an emersion you know if there's another way I just you know just we continue to wrestle with this but I I worry about um some of the demographics and some of the oneway um focus options they're a fantastic opportunity for students it's wonderful enrichment but to me we need to be looking at prioritizing how we're um closing the gaps for kids and so yeah and just you know I I can make a guess just by looking at our middle and high School numbers that they're still fairly even between Spanish or I should say between partner language and English speakers so I would guess not but I will follow up on finding out if we have attrition that is uh different if there's a a big difference between our native speakers and our native English speakers we are taking um elll students later if they uh qualify if they have a threshold of literacy and so we're doing some recruitment around Russian and Spanish speakers in the middle and high schools if and when we do have space Oh that's great yeah thank you um thank you one of the you know things that that you stated and I found it interesting I mean it's interesting that the perceptions that people have particularly principles in regards to who drives this um and and it's more like who who holds up this process um and and and I mean I think the perception in particular I'm struck by the by the perception that it that is the central office that is actually imposing programs um and and just for the record I mean the the the drive it really in terms of dual language immersion programs and particularly the placement of those who are emerging bilingual students or ESL students have benefited and particular Latino students have benefited what was driven by by parent organizing at the local level in those schools um particularly I would say at Maryville Kelly and and and in in the Marshall cluster Franklin cluster um that I think led to to some principles uh at the local level particularly at I would I would say say you know what what was then Clarendon Bor mouth and regler taking the initiative actually to to move forward something so it was the initiative of principles that saw the need of of their student population and says we want to
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do something about it particularly as it related to closing the achievement Gap so you know it was not centrally driven I mean uh being an organizing on the other side of it and trying to push the central office to actually move on it there were two years of actually hold up in regards to um not moving not even considering it um to to the point that I think that you know we had to make good use of the press to lift up this issue to say Hey you know these are some real inequities happening given that you have you know strong immersion programs you know uh that are beneficial I mean I think in terms of enrichment I think you know we we need to support those uh but are not addressing some of the other needs that we see so you know I I was looking at the at so I was strucked by that by the way in regards to the the perception of principles that this is like Cent driven in the case of Scott uh yes I mean I think that you know last year at least not centrally driven but at least the board you know kind of saying look uh you've been talking to the folks in the community about putting this forth you have a strong um or or large student population particular from the Latino community and yet yet you are putting forth a program that is not as proven in some ways um which was uh literacy squared in particular uh as a dual language immersion program you know with a better track record at least in our district so you know for the for the school board at least for the board members to say Hey you know either get it together or you know move on um I I can I can cap to that part in regards to my message to to to folks so but I again I don't see it necessarily A centrally different given that I mean we were hearing those from the folks from parents at Scot uh that you know that we need to address that need and you know also in regards to the achievement Gap that that still you know remains there so for me I think you know that that's not you know uh it's hard for me to buy may I clarify uhuh um what I'm focused on is US Building Systems that survive the loss of any key people so when you have a principle that's excited about it and gets it started we should have the kind of momentum and structure that survives their loss so there is quite a history of this actually being Grassroots answorth was started by the folks at answorth but they're no longer here and so when we have a new principle coming into a school that has started that it needs to be a part of their culture so that any principal comes in knows what they've signed up for at building XYZ and so when we place principles in there without frontloading and supporting them there the perception that I've heard is that I've been told I have to do this you know this is what we do and so I think we have both we have some great um folks in all of our schools and some have more expertise experience and knowledge around the program than others right and I agree with you that in that part by the way because we saw that in Cesar Chavez this year in particular in regards to how effective the central office was in communicated in regards to the expectations and awareness of the program that was there and also in regards to in particular the the expansion of that program because I think you identify clearly that there is a um an important part of it in making sure that we start programs to be able to be sustainable in the long run and that means that we have to start at least two kindergarten classes right and once the culture is created in a building they won't need central office to tell them how one principal to the other you know what I mean when you're walking in the same way the principal tells you there's a behavior classroom there's this and there's that that would be a a a smooth transition into any program and and working with our HR department on what are the qualifications we would like what are the things that a principal should should know going into that I think is a start of that but we want it to be so that it's a natural part of the way the school runs you know the the the concern that I continue to have is is that you know it's particularly you know like on that document that you put it forth in regards to the the criteria for site selection and you know you have a number of things that are there uh what I'm concerned about is that the the role that or the weighin of you know particular like say School ad Administration teacher and staff support um because I seen it work the other way in in in and I see it right now with with one of the one of the schools that
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should add another kindergarten class or two um and I saw it in in in the in the in the Southeast also that you know the principal basically I right told me look uh and we heard it tonight by the way um you know a a principle that is overwhelmed uh or you know unable to to see you know the challenges that that are there and to look at creating another program the principal Bic got basically said to me look I'm studying for my PhD okay one two I already told my teachers that I wasn't going to bring another program okay they had you know the the the numbers there to be able to start the program they had the interest on the part of other the students um and again there was nothing that happened because they weren't willing to it right the the the the concern that I have is that there's there's no no real incentive for Mainline teachers you know that are already in in their in their school uh site already to start you know dual language immersion programs uh so we have to I think find a a a balance in regards to how do we look at in regards to the needs as District as a whole to what I hope is the is the common ground which is you know trying to close the achievement Gap trying to increase uh academic success for our students uh through this uh I think more conservative interventions so I just I I do want to say that that um in conversations with Union leadership last week we had a conversation specifically around um supporting the growth of dual language teachers and how do we grow our dual language programs in a way where we can actually support the students that we're putting into the programs with uh teachers who are able to teach them um and and I think we're at a a different place in people's Readiness to have that um a more um planned uh pathway toward the opportunity to be a dual language teacher in a dual language school and to actually um pursue that option uh within your own region to meet the needs of your own students so I think that opportunity I I feel a shift in that from when I started here three years ago the other piece that I would that I would share that just um that I that I feel is important to note is what I heard that principal say was he has 40 3 languages spoken at his school and that though there is an in the teens percentage of native Spanish speakers that it is not a 50% group of Spanish speakers and that makes a different conversation for a principal to have with his staff and his community um and and that's not to say that only we only go forward with the Willing um but it definitely means that we need to bring everybody's perspective to the table into those conversations and understand um what um what we're investing in and what that also means for students who may not speak either English or the the target language and could I point out that we start and end with student demographics and student achievement that's what decides if and when we'll do programs and so um I just want to acknowledge that our uh teachers on special assignment have been doing an incredible job without the lure or authority of Administrators and so this document when it was originally created was from a couple of teachers on special assignment who would work with principles to understand who the students are coming to their school what the need is that's not a deal breaker anymore whether or not the principal will go along along the approach that we're taking with this committee is to look at the demographics our student achievement and determine what is it that we need to do we have to look at our data to see how students in these programs are doing versus those who are not so can I I'm going to yes please okay um so if I look at the PPS dual language secondary grades enrollment sheet um so we're talking about a plan we have two schools Bridger K8 and lent that you don't even give a projection for 50 years or 50 students because they don't have the space but yet we just heard tonight that the plan is to make a second strand at length that that's just confounding to me I
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don't like it it either anticipates reconfiguring the cluster which is when people begin to say well you had this plan years ago or it makes it seem like do you not have the ability to plan right so help me through that one yeah the challenge that we're experiencing with lent is space and so I have a theory that the students who go to lent anyway would be the participants in an additional section of dual language and so we're working with the lottery applications and frankly some pretty aggressive Outreach to make sure that the families that already attend lent are aware of what dual immersion is as an opportunity for their children and get their interest so the reason that that principal did not feel compelled to open that other section is based on an assumption that most of the native English speakers would be coming from somewhere else and so where we're regrouping is to say have we informed the native English speakers of this community and so doing some Outreach in that way so to follow up on the discussion you you touched a little bit on enrollment balancing um we've been pretty consistent for at least the time I've been on the board the past two years that we need at least two sections in the middle grade of each student right 50 students does not get us that right so why are we setting up our immersion programs to not have what we're calling a really filled out schedule um knowing what we already know assuming the budgets stay yeah as they are um with all due respect that is my exact question when I came in and that and that is part of the reason that we did not move forward to open something next fall it has to be done within the context of where the students are going to go for middle and high school and part of that context has to do with all the other schools coming together and so um Judy Brennan of enrollment and transfer has agreed to co-chair the expansion committee with me because we have to have facilities and um folks that know about what's going on in buildings I mean I can come up with stuff and then I hear they have no room you know I don't know those parts so just having everyone at the table uh and I believe Bridger had submitted a request to add a kindergarten last year and they were denied that based on the space challenges they have two Behavior classrooms in there so they they couldn't grow it out um theoretically because they do attract a lot of transfer students for their program um and I guess then the last question has to do with um if I'm looking at Cesar Chavez um the number of sixth graders they're going to have next year in 20134 is 12 um I mean I I don't even know what question to ask about that other than how do the students get well and one of the pieces is that um Cesar Chavez students are supposed to matriculate into Roosevelt with um Beach kids beach kids are not going to Roosevelt is what we're finding and so we're doing a survey with those students those fifth graders where are they going they tend to be going back to their neighborhood high schools is what we have been able to identify as students are transferring into Roosevelt or excuse me into to beach for the immersion program and then they're going back to their neighborhood cluster schools for the the numbers are just incredibly low of the students at Beach and so it adds to the problem add to the opportunity for a real serious conversation around enrollment and transfer anything else okay thank you thank you thank you very much we are now going to move on to the next item of our agenda which is the capital Bond overview budgeting and financing uh this is the fourth of five overviews we as a board will receive on the capital Bond superintendent Smith so I'm going to introduce CJ Sylvester our chief operating office and Jim Owens the director of our office of school modernization who will do the next installment of our uh educational session on the capital Bond good evening again I'm CJ Sylvester Chief Operating Officer for the district and I would like to introduce in add in addition to Jim Owens who's the executive director of The Office of school modernization David wi who's our Deputy Chief Financial Officer who will be doing this evening's presentation as always I'll be available to answer any questions you have once the presentation's completed good evening board good evening I know it's a late hour and we'll move through these slides uh as
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quickly as we can and then uh invite questions that uh that you may have of us again these are the uh program topics that um we're presenting we've been presenting our last um design and construction topic will actually be presented on April the 1st not March the 18th and then starting on April 29th we'll be beginning our uh staff monthly updates uh to you terms of our topics this evening uh these are the ones that we're planning to cover and these are all included in your uh in your package uh starting with our our bond measure that voters approved highlighting the primary packages that are that are in the $482 million program this is a document that you'll be seeing on a monthly basis as we move forward and it highlights uh the uh five broad categories of the work starting with our our centerpiece uh three High School full modernizations and the replacement of Fabian that's the uh first category the 278 uh million uh followed by our physical facility and educational facility improvements and again the difference there is our educational facility improvements are our science uh classroom improvements at up to 39 schools and then our physical facility are the uh remaining items of work relative to seismic and Ada re-roofing and then in the uh debt repayment category that of course is a a separate item they $45 million and then something that we call program costs that I'll touch on briefly in terms of the financial component of that in addition to the bond work there are opportunities for us to inject other fund sources that would become part of the project and so we'd like to be able to present other uh categories of cost if you will or of of financing if you will on the projects and what you're seeing on this slide is a depiction of the seismic Rehabilitation grant program that we have for Alam the 1.5 million um as we get into Fabian and we start seeing how much Concordia is able to contribute then that'll also be another uh component so as we look month to month at the program we will'll always want to True up to that 482 million for the vond side and then be able to show what other fund sources there are that contribute to the uh to the projects in terms of the program uh elements um we I'm going to really touch on four very briefly U because these are items that I think it's important to recognize that you'll be seeing changes from from month to month uh as as we move forward in the in the 8-year program U the first one is the $20 million program contingency which was an item that was identified separately in the bond measure that was uh was there unknowns for contingencies that might occur uh these are above and beyond contingencies that we have built into the project level and it's a category that would only be used based on board discretion so as we would identify uh unknown issues that would surface we would be presenting those uh to you as part of our part of our regular reporting uh the second category is um is the biggest at the program level that being the construction inflation inflation costs over an eight-year uh program it's hard to say what we'll be seeing in the way of construction costs uh certainly these last several years it's been somewhat flat but hard to say what we'll be looking at so we put together a plan that uh tried to project what we think the construction material cost inflation would be so this uh category at the program level would be uh applied to projects based on where we are in the 8-year program and we actually have a plan on how these this would be allocated given what our inflation data would show us the third category is the uh the swing space improvements in Transportation uh because of the work we're doing at two of the high schools in having to swing students off to other sites and the replacement of f and uh we did want to recognize that there are also costs associated with making improvements at the swing space uh plus the cost for the yellow bus transportation uh to that site so again this another program element that would be allocated uh to the project level uh to support that work and then finally a $5 million uh component for transportation improvements with the uh City's Bureau of Transportation uh through uh interg government an agreement that we're working with with the city two additional components that aren't listed here um I'll just briefly mention it's not on this slide but one
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is our bond issuance costs that we have in the program uh we had a $3 million uh budget for uh for what might be incurred as a result of of selling bonds and then lastly we have a $1.5 million component for master planning at the at the six remaining High schools so together that should add up to that 84.5 million if you're checking the math on your on your sheets under our uh program accountability uh again the comment about aligning the the budget to the voter approv Bond uh we're executing a program that needs to conform to what voters approved and what the bond measure States so as we look at this from the budget or financial perspective we'll be uh will'll be validating this uh every every month uh the the TR up of the budget to the $42 million uh reflects not only our budget but also looking at what we're encumbering in the way of new contracts what our expenditures are and what we're forecasting the Dynamics of the program or such that uh we will be forecasting monthly based on what we know about the work and we'll actually have a good picture as we go forward month to month on on exactly where we stand we're using the districts Financial systems to to track this we have a web-based project management information system called e-builder where we're tracking project level information that'll be a principal transparency tool that we'll be using when we're reporting uh information on the individual projects and at the program level and then of course our district uh Financial assistant people soft will also be integrated so that we have uh that showing U showing the financial performance on the bond I ly touched on the allocation of those program levels components to the projects and so that's another feature that will be included and then lastly uh a board reporting framework um we are planning to uh during our presentation on April 1st when we do the final program overview topic on design and construction uh showcase a pretty Innovative tool that I think you'll find very useful to see program status uh using the the principles of the balance Bal scorecard if you're familiar with that the balance scorecard is a tool that allows different perspectives on typically it's used in businesses to reflect uh different perspectives and so what we're planning to propose is one looking at the budget perspective another on uh schedule a third on stakeholder review and a fourth on equity and we'll be talking more about that at the April 1st meeting but the budget component is one that's uh you know very important to track and then to be able to uh report on under our uh accountability we have uh we have really four different levels that we'll be uh reviewing on a regular basis with you uh the first actually starts with the with the staff presentations uh we will be uh on a monthly basis updating on a number of uh metrics relative to the the program and then these are the other categories uh that will help ensure the accountability uh the first being the bond accountability committee itself which of course was stood up in December and we're meeting on a quarterly basis with them and they'll actually be doing reporting to you uh on at least a quarterly basis the first report that the committee is planning to present is actually on April 29th and so they'll be doing an independent assessment of how the program has been St up the different aspects of it uh staff will also be making uh our first report uh to you as well so hopefully give you an opportunity to be able to see the independent assessment from the bond of accountability committee and then what staff is reporting the other two items uh depicted here are the performance and the financial audit and this is something that we also will be doing on an annual basis and our bond accountability committee will be looking at that information as we staff and we'll be reporting where we are with that and then finally on our uh cash flow this doesn't go into too much detail but again it's the cash flow plan for the program was built on the 8year uh profile and we have a cash flow summary of each of the projects based on the proposed conceptual project framework and sequencing and so we looked at what we would what we were expecting in the way of encumbrance which is the term for the amount in contract Awards expenditure which is the amount we're paying out on invoice and progress payments on a monthly basis and then that forecast that is really a a future
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look relative to relative to the budget and then Each Bond issuance itself and David will be touching on this in a moment is will be designed so that we spend each of the go Bond issuance down uh as as we move forward in the program so the first uh the first issuance when it occurs uh that'll be what we're starting with as we as we begin the work okay at this point I'd like to introduce David Wine who will be speaking about the bond issuance plan and some other details on bond sales so um couple of things on bond issu so voters authorized us to issue $482 million face value of bonds and as part of the campaign we indicated a combination of short and long-term debt and tax rates of up to A110 per th000 for the first eight years and then 30 cents a th000 for the remainder of the 20-year period and so that's one of the constraints we will be those are two constraints we'll be operating under then thirdly there are IRS Arbitrage rules that limit issuance to the amount that we can reasonably expect to within 3 years I realize once we start talking Arbitrage we get a bit financially geeky here but um I was asked to Define arbitrage and it's it really is the relationship between two prices or in this particular context two interest rates so we we're paying a particular interest rate to borrow the money and until we spend it we have that money invested currently at a very modest interest rate and there's a differential between those two and we have to report that to the IRS and as part of that overall um over side we have to um as I say limit the amount of debt we issue at any one point to that which we can reasonably expect to spend within three years so the cash flow that Jim talked about the expectation of when we're going to be spending money is an important consideration in terms of how we issue so other variables we take into account uh tax assess value that's the rate that's the the value per property that we apply the tax rate to and that will change over time uh tax collection rates we want to be sure that we understand how much tax we actually collect we've got good uh long-term historical data from aln County on that uh interest rates and then the timelines for expenditures because those will probably change somewhat over time so we're working with our financial advisor to identify a first bond issue that fits all of these parameters that provides the lowest cost to taxpayers and offers us flexibility to respond to changes in some of those factors over time we actually have uh a recommendation ready to bring you and um we will be bringing a staff report and a draft resolution for Bond authorization to your next meeting one week from today and then as far as budgeting is concerned uh the Bon program will be budgeted each year as part of our annual budget process the budget will include revenues so interest on investments Grant funds and other sources which primarily include the proceeds for memory Bond issuance as well as any expenditures in each year from those resources there'll be a narrative in the proposed budget that breaks out the budget by Major projects so for example summer Improvement projects for 2013 each of the high school projects Etc and shows that multi-year budget history and Reconciliation to the total $482 million program and again uh we will have uh an amendment to the 123 the current year budget to reflect activity that we now expect to take place during the current fiscal year and we expect to bring you a staff reports and a budget amendment to your next meeting which frankly is exciting that completes our short presentation this evening like to open it up any questions that you may have thank you thank you yeah very thr thank you no question okay so we'll now consider the remaining items on our business agenda having already voted on resolution 4735 at this time I'd like to pull out resolution 4736 for a separate vote so we will now consider resolution 4736 a resolution encouraging water floration do I have a motion so moved second director rean moves and director Atkins seconds the
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motion to adopt resolution 4736 Miss Houston do we have any public comment on this resolution no is there any board discussion on this resolution yes I wanted to go ahead and give a a little talk about what this is and then hopefully folks can chat about it so on May 21st uh residents of Portland will have the opportunity to vote on measure 26151 requ which requires the city of Portland to flate our water supply resolution 4736 States our support for this effort because we know that the health of our students has a direct impact on their ability to learn so in molma County Washington and Clackamus counties 21% of children suffer from untreated dental decay this often results in severe pain infection and needlessly missed school days impacting their education Portland's rate of tooth decay is 40% higher than in Seattle the principal difference between the two cities is that Seattle has fluoridated water fluoride is a natural occurring mineral found in nearly all Water Supplies a small increase will provide children with the optimal level of protection fluoridation is expected to reduce tooth decay in Portland by at least 30% the national Centers for Disease Control call calls water fluoridation one of the most important Public Health advances in the 20th century it's a tested and safe and effective way to reduce tooth decay as an equity issue Dental dis Decay disproportionately impacts low-income families and children many of whom are uninsured or underinsured low-income children suffer twice the rate of uncreated Decay and nearly three times the rate of rampant Decay and rampant Decay basically means more seven or more cavities um in my own family's case we had a son who suffered from rampant tooth decay because we were not informed when we moved to Portland that the water wasn't floridated in our case the damage my son endured was to his baby teeth and we had health insurance to get us through the intensive treatment that he required many families don't have the opportunity to fix the damage and children suffer lifelong consequences so for some fun facts More than 70% of Americans are connected to a floridated public water system in Oregon only about 20% of residents have floridated water of the 50 largest cities in the United States Portland is only one of two that don't have floridated water and in Oregon there are several cities that already have orated Water Supplies including Salem Beaverton and Forest Grove so in introducing this I wanted to uh thank uh mayor hails and the city council for placing the measure on the ballot um I think this is a measure that will certainly help to improve our children's uh health and School attendance so any other comments just wanted to thank director Regan for her leadership and bringing this forward I'm really pleased and happy to be supporting this mention something I think I um this is a uh this is a I think a personal interest to me um it's based on my experience the community that I belong to the community I serve uh on a regular basis uh is often disproportionately impacted by by these issues um very personally we the organization I work for partnered in starting a a head start classroom two years ago uh the majority of these three to five year olds in this Head Start classroom had either treated or untreated tooth decay um that is and this is the Native American Community the community that we uh has both the largest achievement Gap within our district and also has the lowest fouryear cohort graduation rate within our district um there's no doubt in my mind that when we look at look at ways for us to impact our overall outcomes within this District this is one of those ways we can do that and that's one of the reasons why I'm some BO of this any other comments no okay so now vote on resolution 4736 all in flavor favor all in flavor flavor it's 10 o' all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes allose please indicate by saying no no resolution four 736 is approved by a vote of 5 to one with director Sergeant absent and student representative Garcia absent and Co chair Bel I do know that uh director Sergeant who isn't here tonight is very supportive of this as
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well thank you we'll now move on to consider the rest of the business agenda Miss Houston are there any changes to the remaining items on business agenda there is one change on page 45 it's to resolution 4730 there's one employee number on there that shouldn't be and that's employee 00918 it's towards the bottom of the page thank you do I have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda as amended second director nolles moves and director Atkins seconds the adoption of the business agenda Miss Houston do we have any citizen comment on the business agenda I have four signed up okay I have Dr William Toffler and Victoria de Vincent um I'm not sure if you guys were here earlier um but the rules for public testimony are the same so you'll have three minutes green light will appear until you have 1 minute left in which a yellow light will appear when your time is done the red light will appear and if you could conclude your comments at that time thanks by the way I applaud your decision on the floration is a 5 to one decision thanks for those of you who don't remember I'm Dr William Tom offer I'm a professor of family medicine rhsu I've been working there teaching residents doing research and seeing patients for almost 27 years my wife and I support the public schools with our property taxes and most of our seven children have matriculated in Portland Public Schools but I want to speak in support of Mr Bill Des D who has the Integrity to risk his livelihood in the best interest of his students while I recognize that some of you may not agree with beliefs or with some of what I'm about to share I want to express my appreciation for your affording me the time to to speak I particularly appreciate those of you who may disagree for your respectful listening particularly after you've been here for almost four hours as I understand it there have been numerous complaints by some school officials who don't like what Mr biss believes or what he shares with his students or what he does with his free time on some occasions in the past these School officient officials have been taken to task even by the ACLU who recognizes the need to protect free speech in essence the ACLU condemned the poor Judgment of school officials who sought to force Conformity of thought on an award-winning Portland teacher more recently school officials weren't were apparently upset by Mr D who didn't want an affiliate of Planned Parenthood to interrupt and assert precious time for tutoring his students who need help with math and science as you're well aware several months ago The Oregonian reported that Oregon has the fourth worst graduation rate in the nation in the area of science only 60% of Portland 11th graders are meeting standards given this dismal data I find it remarkable that school officials are expending their energy legal resources shrinking tax dollars in your valuable time trying to fire an individual who's laboring diligently to help reverse this trend in essence help the school officials themselves be successful the misplaced priorities of these school officials speak volumes the lengthy Litany of their attacks on Mr disc makes transparent their inability to honor diversity it unmasked their bigotry against people of Faith unmasked their intolerance for people and teachers who promote Integrity of the body and who encourage students to seek commitment prior to Casual Sex it unmas their their contempt for those who believe that all life born and unborn is inherently valuable so once again I ask each of you do you believe in diversity will you allow a committed talented and award-winning teacher to maintain his Integrity will you protect his right of conscience I again certainly hope so as I said in December I hope you will because Mr D is exactly the kind of teacher I would want for my children not only because of his talents but because more importantly of his role modeling in short Mr D has demonstrated the capacity to follow the courage of his convictions and in so doing he provides a Priceless lesson not just for his students but for all of the entire Community rather than fire him I believe Portland Public Schools should hire more teachers like Mr D thank you for your time thank you hello I so I'm Vicki Victoria de Vincent my son had the privilege of being a student of Mr D's freshman year of high school my son struggles with ADD and dyslexia and Mr D was always there to take care of him and encourage him so and when I was when I was in the Navy and not much older than the kids that are being taught at Benson I had been told that people appreciate somebody that's consistent
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even if they're consistent they used a different word jerk they appreciate it because you know where that person stands so you know I appreciate you your time and considering this while while I'm speaking the the um issue with the teen outreach program we we consistently know Mr D doesn't believe that that should be there as a parent my student is now we're still paying tax dollars but he's in a public charter school that's online because he needed the more one-on-one attention even with an IEP all of the teachers have been awesome I since I have a student that has to be homeschooled I do believe the Systems Failing but I don't believe the people are failing the kids are not failing the teachers are not failing this you ladies and gentlemen are not failing all there are definitely strong and encourage you know amazing Hearts behind everybody at the in public in Portland and including our school district what we need in teachers we always hear oh why don't we have teachers like we used to well teachers used to be able to give encouragement have communication and have respect I don't know of anytime Mr D disrespected any child and pushed his feelings on them he stands up for them he encourages them he communicates with them he communic Ates with their parents he's what we need and he's consistent so I mean he is consistently teaching our children and encouraging our children and to see our school district lose a teacher that should be an example would just be heartbreaking and you know I'd be willing to share with all the parents that don't know because their lives are so busy I mean my life is busy but I believe we should definitely keep Mr D employed thank you thank you and lastly I have Sean niggard and Ryan olssen members of the board thank you for devoting your careers for the betterment of our schools and our children um as a scientist I've chosen a different route but I'm also very um concerned about our students all through my graduate uh education I volunteered to lead a program in North Portland The Humble neighborhood uh called Potter clay uh we ministered to approximately 150 U children mainly from disadvantaged families um children who came from poverty who came from broken homes um children who had the the the stack or the the deck stacked against them many ways oftentimes coming from generations of U of poverty and dysfunction and as we heard tonight previously the issue is not race that there were whites there were blacks there were Hispanics um but the the common issue really was broken families um um you of course know the statistics um not having a father at home um doubles a child's chance of of dropping out of school um we need to support uh programs that encourage the stability of our families and as Educators there are ways I believe that that that you can do that and one of them I think is by U discouraging the efforts of Planned Parenthood to get children involved um sexually at a young age um I saw firsthand how this type of behavior um really led to a pattern of broken relationships emotional scarring uh patterns that would prevent um these these uh youth from really connecting in a lifelong relationship and developing a stable family um so I think that is the belief that Mr Bill this shares and as he has um reached out to his children I think he's really trying to protect his children because of these beliefs he's he's trying to protect them from a philosophy and a teaching that he thinks will harm them and that type of protection is is exactly the type of teachers that we need to encourage u in
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our schools I think that if every educator in Portland cared as much for students as Mr Bill this does uh I think that the uh the scores would be skyrocketing and the the problems that we're facing um would just uh would disappear so I encourage you to um uh treat Mr buis uh equitably even if you disagree with his um opinions um certainly we can have the uh the equity to um to tolerate those who who who believe differently but um still I think share your concern um for these students thank you thank you my name is Ryan Olen OS o n um I've had two children go through port Public School uh both through Portland Public and Open Meadow I had my daughter graduate from Open Meadow my son graduated from Benson he went to Open Meadow in Middle School um I'm here also in support of Mr D um I I do take heart in the fact that we my family originally went through Kenton Elementary which under Phillips was taken out as well as Applegate combined at that point uh the Kenton group was then taken over to Chief Joe and now the decision had been made to close Chief Joe but as of your guys's decisions it has now been decided to keep open and I do appreciate that showing both possibility of change and open to discussion in regards to Mr D there are things I disagree with them on there I have a differing opinion than most people have regarding Planned Parenthood but that is not u a justification or a full belief of who he is he is very committed to his opinions and he stands by his convictions um one of the things I did do is I contacted my son he texted me back all I would say to the board is that I have rarely seen a person as dedicated to his school and his students as he is and that's from a graduate from Benson from last year uh the other thing I want to point out is when there has been problems with Benson such as the possible change over that occurred in the last two years he was one of many teachers but one of the more notable teachers that stood up he was one of them that walked down here when the class the whole school basically walked down here for the the board meeting and he's had that heart uh what he assumes is the best for the kids and for Benson and I think it would be a terrible disservice to lose him as an instructor especially when we had the discussion on continue um um excuse me for the getting the incorrect terminology but the uh training and such uh he's got excellent skills when it comes to the electronics and the sciences and math and those are the ones that we need and I can't count the number of times I've gone to the local colleges and people are having troubl with math but he seems to be able to communicate I had problems when he start my kids started with him but by the end I have full respect for him and I would hope that the school board would to thank you very much for your time thank you I'd actually like to thank everybody that stuck around to provide testimony I know it is late um it's not just our time um so with that is there any board discussion on the business agenda 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 6 to Z with director sergeant abson and student representative Garcia absent the next meeting of the board will be a study session held on March 11th at 6m I'm just going to remind folks that on March 18th we will be at Madison High School with the governor in a town hall starting at 6 o'cl p.m. this meeting is adjourned [Music] [Music] w w
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[Music] [Music]

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)

2013-03-04 PPS School Board Study Session

Documents / Media

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Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - March 4, 2013

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