2013-07-17 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2013-07-17
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

None

Materials

BoardPacket 07-17-13 (9b60e95173e26166).pdf Meeting Materials

Minutes

07-17-13 Business Minutes (4a02e7986cf12be1).pdf Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Regular Meeting - July 17, 2013

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good evening this meeting in the Board of Education for july 17 2013 is called to order i'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers all items that will be voted on this evening had been posted as required by state law this meeting is recorded as being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times it's also being streamed live on our website and an archived copy will be available via a link probably in a week or so they sometimes do it sooner but it is summer at this time I want to take an opportunity we as of July first we have two new directors with us so welcome director Steve Buell and radec director Tom curler and we'd like to also welcome back director Pam Knowles and tonight we welcome student representative Andrew Davidson from Grant High School welcome everybody we had a swearing-in ceremony prior to our board meeting and I was just moving to both see the family and friends that supported that came to support these folks and each one of them were sure to thank the voters in in their confidence to to elect them to this board so at this time we will have public comment I believe we have some folks signed up miss Patterson nine people our first two speakers are Kim Sparks and Aidan black well you guys are coming up I typically read the instructions for public comment prior to starting our responsibility is aboard lies and 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 emphasized respect and consideration when referring to board members staff and other presenters for remind folks that it's not permissible to criticize individual staff members by name during public comment you have a total of three minutes to share your comments please begin by stating your name and spelling the last name for the record during the first two minutes of testimony a green light will appear on that little table in front of you when you have one minute remaining the yellow light will appear and when your time is up the red light will go on and a buzzer will sound and at that time we respectfully ask that you wrap up your comments we sincerely appreciate your input and thank you very much for coming this evening thanks for having us so I did three and then he gets three sort okay my name is Kim minasian sparks and my last name is spelled s PA RK s and I'm from the Beaumont school community coalition we're a group of parents children and community and we're focused on excellence through school culture a physical and emotional safety and academic distinction and social respect did you know that over 3.2 million students are victims of bullying each year that one in four teachers see nothing wrong with bullying and will only intervene four percent of the time that one in seven students in grades K through 12 is either bully or a victim of bullying about fifty six percent of students who have have personally witnessed some type of bullying at school and that only over two-thirds of students believe that the school's respond poorly to bullying with a high percentage of students believing that adult help is infrequent and ineffective according to Daniel Flannery the director of the vegans Center for violence prevention research and education at Case Western University who gave a great seminar on school violence in May in clackamas the exposure to violence by either being a victim or just observing it increases a child's risk of becoming a perpetrator and using violence we're reaching out to you the school board because it is stated your policy 4.3 0.010 p that the board is committed to a positive respectful inclusive climate in every school that promotes academic achievement ensures safe and drug-free learning communities provides positive behavior support ensures equitable outcomes and discipline and maximizes the time students spend in school we want you to know of a study increase of bullying verbal and physical and sexual assault and harassment at Beaumont middle school we're here to raise awareness and ask for your help we know that harassment how harassment is dealt with is outlined very clearly on pages 14 through 15 and the PPS guide to policy rules and procedures it states that harassment or discrimination against any person is subject to school discipline it also states that physically harming a student or damaging the students property bullying and harassment can also include any form of harassment using electronic means it also states that poured public schools is committed to maintaining a learning environment that is free of sexual harassment when the implementation of these policies became confusing and seemingly uneffective we brought our concerns as parents friends
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and community to our to the attention of Beaumonts administrators and carl logan our Regional Administrator we have sent Karl a letter following up and asking for dates on items he promised at an initial meeting that we had with him other parents Liz and her her staff we are working very closely with Liz even while she's on vacation during summer and her administration to effectively manage the climate at Beaumont by reducing harassment and bullying and providing our students and our children as they are legally entitled to glean emotionally safe school where they can focus on learning so we just wanted to raise your awareness and ask for any help I'm actually done before my time is over so I'd like to introduce a Dan gladden thank you for sure my name is Aiden Glen I was a seventh grader last year ball on middle school and would be going into eighth grade next year I just wanted to come and talk to you about the lack of discipline at Beaumont and the incident that ended up me in the hospital since the beginning of the year me and my friends and several others at our school have been taunted and threatened by a group of kids at the school and the school has not dealt with it and over the year it's gotten worse we have tried and ignored that ourselves telling our parents and going to the office and then of the above seems to have stopped at getting worse each time we went to the office either by ourselves as a group we were asked to write down the incident and it's a waste of time as nothing ever happened until I was physically attacked it started with these kids calling us names and threatening to beat us up sometimes it was when you were alone and sometimes it was when you work together sometimes you had one kid confronting you and other times it was the whole group the week before the incident one of the kids in the group confronted me in the hall and started punching me in the head but it was witnessed by a teacher who sent the child to the office I was asked to go to the office and write down the incident it was the first time that one of them got a serious consequence the kid was suspended for two days and came back to the day I was assaulted and ended up in the hot and I ended up in the hospital on the day of the assault two of us were confronted by another one of the kids in the group and I was punched in the head and choked and tell unconscious the school was put on lockdown and I was taken to the hospital I think the kid has been expelled but the school won't give us details I want you to know what the school is doing and now tried to stop the its try to stop this isn't working and hope you can help for next year I shouldn't end up hospitalized before any real discipline occurs thanks build art and Donna Martin miss Patterson do we have contract information we do okay thank you before we start can we just we're from mlc and we just wanted to have the parents or anyone from mlc raise their hand just to show that support we have okay thank you my name is will dart dar t is the last name and I'm here in support of em out mlc metropolitan Learning Center my wife Catherine and I our parents did to mlc students one who just graduated from eighth grade and one incoming fourth grader both of them have been at mlc since kindergarten as many of you know mlc has been around a long time over the years it has built an incredibly successful alternative program with a focus on broad community collaboration and experiential learning students at mlc have always learned in a variety of non-traditional ways they are encouraged to think for themselves to respect others and to take responsibility for their own learning the school is by its nature a welcoming inclusive community there are students from all socioeconomic backgrounds students from the LGBT community students with specific learning challenges MLC nurtures and encourages each one equally toward individual success a couple of examples of the success that I talked about the 2012 valedictorians of Riverdale Lincoln and Cleveland High School's each attended MLC to from kindergarten through eighth grade one in middle school at least one of the 2012 valedictorians of mlc was on in an IEP our own son after his nine inspiring years at mlc is moving to a larger high school and he does so full of confidence and enthusiasm in his own learning this this extremely motivated learning is a common trait of mlc students and it leads to consistently outstanding test scores in short this is the kind of public
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school the parents can often only dream about and educators are constantly striving to create now you may think that such a school would be supported by the district maybe even held up as a model but the current administration coming up on its third year at mlc seems almost unaware of the success of the school that time-honored collaboration with teachers and parents has all but disappeared strongest pillars of mlcs alternative core have come under attack there's clear resistance to the very nature of alternative education some families with IEP learners are beginning to suspect that they are no longer welcome at the school none of us here thinks our school is a perfect school we embrace change in evolution as long as it is done collaboratively and supports mlcs core mission but for now we are confused to why such a success story seems to have been targeted for major repair so we ask that you urge the district to adopt clear principal evaluation evaluation and placement practices so that schools such as mlc can continue to thrive and improve thank you hi I'm Donna Martin ma rtin and I'm here to offer my support and ask for your support for our school MLC I have an 8th grader currently at mlc and i also have a graduate actually the 2008 valedictorian of the school a national merit scholar and who just graduated Phi Beta Kappa from reed college with a ba in chemistry and when she did her speech at the valedictorian recognition meeting with the school board years ago she actually praised PBS for offering this excellent alternative program at mlc mlc is one of the oldest public alternative schools in the country it's the only K through 12 school in PBS and it's a really good school we have adapted to many changes over the years by working collaboratively with teachers administrators parents and the school district not only do we deliver test scores that are regularly twenty percent higher than state and district averages but we have enormous wait lists and low student turnover because we also have tremendous parents satisfaction we're an alternative school with an experiential learning focus so if you were to visit the school you would see a lot going on you would find not only teachers but parents community members and even students teaching a huge range of elective classes from capoeira to sound engineering to Shakespeare readings and of course infamous marimba band you would see high schoolers taking college length classes where they can not only focus deeply onto subject matter but they are also able to take spontaneous research field trips or like my daughter she could go off campus to take advanced courses at PSU for high school credit during the school day you problem students of every grade learning math history and writing through a story line project where the whole curriculum is pursued through the lens of a greater topic parks or early twentieth century art these academic traditions are designed to both teach curriculum and to create independent and engaged learners it takes a lot of time and effort from the whole community to pull it off and it represents a terrific reservoir of talent and frankly a pretty sizable monetary value we offer a breath the student experiences that most schools just can't afford but our programs are being stripped away in a process that feels a whole lot like trying to fix something that isn't broken a slate of changes is taking place that erode the fundamental alternative structures of our school without community involvement that's historically defined mlcs culture we have appealed to our administrators in small groups and large groups to our PBS Regional Administrator and to his superior and we at the end of the school year presented a letter signed by over 100 ml see parents within three days during the last week of school that asked for a moratorium on program changes in order to allow the school community to reach solutions collaboratively with the administration and PBS but we've been told that the changes have to stand as implemented without a larger community discussion I'm asking you to act on our behalf to protect a good successful portland public school reverse the unilateral changes taking place at mlc and help us codify the value and educational legitimacy experiential learning storyline community electives we're ready to work hard with you for our school miss Patterson our next two speakers are Randy foster and autumn arms
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good afternoon my name is Randy Foster fos ter and I'm here in support of mlc as well my perspective will be is a little shorter lived than the others I've been there a parent there for four years my daughter Nadia was destined to attend school at Metropolitan Learning Center since before she was born since before our family ever moved to Portland since before we had ever heard of mlc our family has a deeply held belief in the value of an experiential whole student approach to learning my wife and I are committed to raising Nadia as a child who thinks for herself we think we have found a place where public education fits into that goal ml sees core philosophy of fostering independent thinking and decision-making provides a perfect match with our parenting philosophy due to my own non-traditional work schedule I've been fortunate to spend significant amounts of time in the classroom with each of Nadia's teachers and I've seen in-depth how they each model mlcs 5 character traits courage compassion self-discipline integrity and respect Carol her kindergarten teacher is a 60-something woman who is nearing retirement and yet still enjoys the thrill and wonder of rock climbing with her kindergartners at the Portland rock gym John her teacher in the blended first and second grade class is a 30-something man who day in and day out engages students with his unique sense of humor and his untiring enthusiasm for teaching his consistently positive demeanor and ability to adapt his teaching methods to embrace his students varied styles of learning provides a strong guiding presence to shape their independent development finally Ana deftly performs her key role of shepherding her third graders in their transition from the lower grades to the new whole new world that awaits them upstairs with their older peers in the upper elementary grades we chose mlc in part because of the strong involvement in parents and Families alongside teachers and administrators in the overall process of educating our children there's a very high level of daily parental involvement in all aspects of the school experience from standard chores to sharing our time and life experience going on adventurous field trips and teaching electives the kind that help keep students engaged in school in an era of constant educational budget cuts this strong parental participation is allowed MLC to continue to thrive in creating self-directed students who also consistently achieve some of the highest test scores in the district recently I've had firsthand conversations with several veteran teachers who no longer feel supported and carrying out ml seas mission by the current building administration and numerous parents including myself feel as if we are merely being handled and manipulated this past year there have been several significant changes that have been decided on and announced without meaningful input from teachers students and parents historically all of mlc is key stakeholders have been welcomed into the process of adapting the school's programs to meet the changing needs of students the district in the state while still staying true to its vision of experiential learning character development and service to the community mlc has been thriving for 45 years using this collaborative process and it can continue to work now we need mo sees administration to recommit to an open and transparent process and to genuinely listen to input from teachers students and parents as a team we can work together to make necessary changes while still preserving all that is unique and successful about mlc thank you thank you my name is autumn arms and I've I'm here for mlc also I've been there for eight years I have two children that attended my oldest son is the one who pushed to go to mlc I had not previously considered an alternative program Anthony was very shy and later diagnosed with social anxiety disorder making it very difficult for him to participate in class or make friends leading to him being bullied by kids and sometimes teachers one of his teachers told us about mlc it's an felt that it fit our specific needs we apply to more accepted in Anthony started in 6th grade with Ned Haskell the kids accepted my son immediately even with all of his differences I attribute that to the unique lessons they learn at mlc i believe the attitudes of our children about themselves and others is directly linked to the character traits incorporated in each lesson by our amazing teachers those are integrity respect self-discipline compassion and courage my youngest came in at kindergarten and Anthony left at high school with France to De La Salle within two months trouble had started where he thrived before he was now failing rigid rules impersonal large class size no outdoors he stopped going and I got no support from the teachers only threats about getting him to school in 2009 my son attempted suicide and was hospitalized he lost his entire freshman year he fell far behind we immediately got him back into mlc and
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Frank Scotto who was principal at the time surrounded us with support we put Anthony on an IEP for behavioral and emotional problems with allowances like timeout independent studies and days off for counseling in 2010 in 2011 changed we changed our vice principal and he brought within a foreign style to mlc a more top-down no excuses way of doing things many times the IEP was not honored at times that they clash a lot at one time the vice principal compared his daughter's success to my son's lack of and he was glad he did not have to deal with that in his home this of course instigated a negative emotional response leaving my son completely out of control it seemed he had can't encountered yet another bully and it escalated and eventually my son dropped out and I'll see has a unique approach to alternative learning helping and protecting these emotional children and helping them thrive it's imperative that our leaders are familiar with this approach or at least flexible and willing to learn and grow into it we have experienced many losses that are I believe are affecting our programs but the greatest maybe parent and student voices our administration is lacking in collaboration and the fact that PPS i feel that PPS is not to this point listen is very disappointing mlc has been hugely successful for over forty years and to destroy that for any reason is irresponsible leaves the children that find a safe haven at great risk doing them a huge disservice thank you our next two speakers are hung drawn and tweet rahman yes I'm the superintendent in lieu of asking questions of the people who were speaking and can we discuss this whole policy tomorrow in our meeting okay what about the question asked the question superintendent at the end of the at the end of the public comment sure okay great thank you preciate it my name is hung tran latinum pran I practicing for a parent of two kids than Vietnamese children to ask the public public school to choose the Vietnamese language become the second language taught in school at I learned the Vietnamese language can keep the student learn their culture and understand Kota family history and get a better study at school at home we had difficult to teaching the children at home sometimes they don't understand what it means and we have time to sit them because we don't have enough English to transfer to them and Portland published go help to get the children get close to a parent and get close to rent parent because it cannot speak English and sometimes we probably see the children translate to English for the prepare and go to hospital go to offutt document people and a lot of things to children cap to get growth with the society a phenom ii languid keep relationship with friend with family with orders closer and closer make the war smaller and smaller and also nowaday we see a lot of Vietnamese moved to Portland and population thrown up and business thrown up they need a connection between now and future if we not be now in the future we don't have it so we start invest from now so we collide to have published girl help us to do the transition between now and future Thank You Did big 32 he would speak Vietnamese and I were translated my name is huy
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tran in two volumes of abandoned aku kan poland to bang oregon totality to tova toy bad well don't go back on your hat to glory tomb was hurt you junto Lockean kuta bang oregon mayhem night over-controlling they removed a yuca volume knob abandon a yourself can conquer club at malibu beach a corner to go kempelen the good new toy but I so option to copy a toy you're huntin week know by hitting and don't allow cat keep connected me don't come on hopper to know so gentle and codington sangil and we take us a year and took on em to told don't we help you mean quinta canyon but in an Carmona via her hi sakira to him love me hi column two thousand aloo lot in the triangle and bevier Tintin jungle and they said you can't talk on and put it on my bill gob nedwin alla salute me kak am Cudahy written him then when Alison look near dhaka am got a somber Hughton england to win you jammin um banho my community loosen dopahar total temper acha am supporting in the commune morante martin onion you never know haha could cut into her calm down we'll be tracking down coach o yonder mountain high drunk again doctors otay coop Kempelen kak on Anton token downtown thing unbutton be there on your personal calm down will be attacked about Oregon comunicando 1800 my Tonto mamoon quarantine toll on income gained hockey tow bar dumb cops IAM IAM uno hockey learn man quieren tu hi tu Tinto mala tu Toa mumbai and up a banana quantum Dan Shulman coutinho Makarov single and be single Amberson hunting to blanco's movie I would like to translate my name is 32 I am I why on to have a treat children named car to my years old Laurie tune seven years old and count 21 years old we are living in portland metro area I and my children come here today to ask you to open the vietnamese immersion program unless and vietnamese island with classic due to the following reason first I and most apparent from Vietnam have limited of speaking and understanding in English we really want and wish to help our children to learn the school subjects in Portland Public School District have the bile and will enlist Vietnamese courses it will be easy for Earth to help our children to study and understand the skills concept and knowledge of the course at the graduate from high school our children good speed bruley at least two languages English and Vietnamese the violent one inless Vietnamese class it will help my children not only learn american culture and his story but also the Vietnamese culture and his story with that our children can understand and be behave to old generation like parent and grandparent and communicate to them with the good manners in addition our children will develop and open their eyes to excel and learn other ethnic cultures the Vietnamese community is the second largest community of the minority community in Portland Public School District our children need to speak English and Vietnamese well so that they can miss with the people enjoy them to do the Vietnamese community of Oregon activity and the Vietnamese community after nation at large we really want our children to be good American citizen and contribute to view the strong and big American which is our second home again we want the supreme tendon and other leaders are poland puppy school to consider a wish to open the bile and will english beard amid lasek for our children thank you and God bless you thank you miss Patterson do we have one more our last speaker is trans one good afternoon it's my first time here so I wasn't really prepared for this a
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lot of people thinking in front of people my name is John Doe I'm 37 I came here when I was 17 so 21 years i live in the audience of a proud Oregonian never left went to Oregon State and graduate here now working for Nike we have two kids eight and six elementary school so I'm here to support the imbecile program Vietnamese and English by lingo in a classroom so what we do today we talked with me at home we send the kids to send a school for Vietnamese classes just one hour week not enough we encourage them to speak Vietnamese at home among themselves but just like I need kids born in the US they speak English prefer that way and speaking me so it's a challenge always a challenge for us what I would like or what we are pushing to and why the reason is that I believe in practice makes perfect especially at the early age we send our kids to piano lessons playing golf at a very early age so I really believe that by sending the kids to immersion program at a very early age it's going to make it more successful at listening and reading proficiency both languages English and Vietnamese according to research it's also increased cognitive ability concept formation verbal abilities listening skills and general general reasoning it's also enhanced memory it's also in superior SI t score and standardized testing last but not least i'm an engineer so I like technical but I also a businessman so I believe that it's all increase the job opportunities and job skills because we live in the 21 century is not 18th century anymore we're talking about global economy in tonight's international business so I think two languages always better than one and Vietnam economy is ranked 42nd right now in a word so we have a lot of room to growth so to that I mean I want to conclude that 20 years ago when I got my feet on in Oregon there wasn't any restaurant Vietnamese restaurant beef noodle soup but now I'm sure you are aware of that so comes so I mean I want we as a bit is a Vietnamese I want to contribute more to to Oregonian specifically and also the global economy in general so I would like to see because I know Vietnamese a hungry passionate and and willing to contribute to make it a better word so I want 30 years from now I mean I want to see more companies owned by Vinny small restaurant more grocery store and eventually you know but it all comes down to we need your help starting with education could we believe in it so with that I thank you for giving me the opportunity and which you have a wonderful day thank you retribution tendent about a little bit about the mlc thing the two parts of the mlc program one of the exponential learning we don't have any trouble with that right women wear in support of that at mlc that's the first question I look so so we would expect whoever is running that school who ever happen to have dipped to support that too I guess what about the collaborative stuff we're in the community for years and years they've collaborated in sat down particularly any in the teachers to the same way it's much more collaborative than other schools a lot of time you get the fakie collaborative stuff i remember my cool they said oh you could say anything you want long as it didn't disagree with the principle of course but but in the it's always been it seems that mlc that that's something that we'd really held on to as a district we've got this this thing and in attractive district what's the question for a superintendent I'd like to move us on to the other agenda ah and so we so we're in support of that collaboration too yes and so we would expect whoever's the administrators at school to support that collaboration in
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that in the things that have gone before right I mean you're in front of all the people here from mlc not all but a lot of people i mean and i just wanted to make sure they understood that the district pretty much supporting that yeah okay good and actually I'm going to just do you a little bit more of it because the Regional Administrator and our chief academic officer have been engaged in conversations with members of the parent community i'm not sure who of who's here have been those are not in those but there have been a process about in conversation about how we can support the conversation occurring and there's a bit a suggestion of two things one is both strengthening and helping provide training for the site council as an ongoing mechanism within the school but secondly getting an outside facilitator that we bring in in the immediate future to perhaps shift the conversation or help the conversation move and so we have looked at the services of an outside facilitator and i know there's a dialogue occurring at the moment about timing and looking at trying to do that in mid-august so that it's happened before the start of the school year so just to say i know there's been active the other is there was conversation about electives the elective support and i know the combination of efficacy of parents and the advocacy of the principal for increasing capacity that i know another point-five FTE was added to try and build back some of what people felt have lost I know there's been movement on this and a lot of conversation and our regional administrator in a chief academic officer in it I've been in the numbers of conversations so just I know a lot of work is going to try and break the stuck place and keep it moving and get you guys in a solid place by the time you're starting school in September thank you will be on to the next item on our agenda the legislature has completed the 2013 session in our next agenda item will be an update on the session superintendent Smith do you want to introduce our legislative I do so our David Williams who is our director of government relations did a fabulous job look for us down the legislature both with his own presence and with organizing members of the board myself and other members of the staff being there at key moments and really being part of being partners with the legislators they were working on a number of issues that are critical for Portland Public Schools so we've invited him tonight to give us an update as the session closed he's also working with staff on things that he merged from the session that are now things we need to implement and build into our operational practices so he's doing those updates at David Williams and thank you for your working on the legislature Thank You members the board David Williams your director of government relations as superintendent Smith said the legislature did finish its business last Monday after a rather torturous week plus going beyond their original projected ending date of Friday jun 28 much to the chagrin of many people who had alternative plans for the first week of July including the fourth of July holiday which most then spent in the Capitol building doing the business of the state you know I I give us a sort of a lot of thought you know we come out of the legislative session and obviously if you read the news coming out of it that was I think a lot of disappointment over a lack of ability to come to conclusion on what what they had on maybe it'll probably termed the grand bargain but looking back on the session now that I've personally had a couple of days off to restore my sleeping habits insanity I think we can actually say that on par this was a very positive session for public education we saw very strong bhikhu see from both bodies of the legislature advocating for hire additional funding for education as well as really coming to better grips with the understanding of the legislators role these Ivy education policy in the state and beginning to act in a more mature as maybe not the right way but as we as we have gone down the path of the state taking control of education policy acting a little less like a 90 member school board and a little more as a global state education policy body which I think in theory should pay dividends for us down the road as they develop that role that they play in the legislature you have at your dais a handout that I put that this is a list of bills this is really we just call this the quick and dirty this is the download of the hundred and forty or so bills that did end up becoming law that in some way affect public education or your role our role in managing the public education system in the state I've taken the liberty of highlighting a handful of bills that are the more interesting and or more impactful pieces of legislation before you I don't have a ton of in-depth analysis on them here for you today that will be developing as
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we go forward and work with departments on helping them to understand which bills require immediate response and action from areas in the district and then which are just more overall changes to education going forward I do want to hit the highlights of course we saw one of the biggest increases in education investment that we've seen a long time I really go back to about the 2003 session where we saw an eighteen percent increase in funding for education to see a sort of on par positive and the whole body moving in the same direction when it came to education funding of course the overall narrative coming out of the session is a billion dollar increase in education funding as you recall the last biennium we were funded at a 5.7 billion dollar state school fund that is course the overall number they appropriated in actual cash 6.55 billion dollars and then they reduced expenditures by modifying the state's Public Employee Retirement System for education the savings will be in the neighborhood of 200 million dollars for this this current biennium hence what you will hear coming out of Salem is that comment about a billion dollar or six point seven five billion dollar budget for education we were hopeful as I said before in the waning days of the session that additional cost savings would be achieved as well as a revenue package that would have added about a hundred million double look the low-water mark that we heard was a hundred million dollars to education and as you know our proxy that we use for figuring out the impact on PBS is we are eight percent of the state school fund so one hundred million dollars is eight million dollars for PBS or four million dollars a year I don't think I need to explain to any of you the kind of impact that that kind of money would have for us all here now while 6.75 or 6.55 cash is certainly very strong for us and you are able to approve a budget that doesn't have the kind of cuts that we have seen in years past I don't want to gloss over the fact that there are many districts around the state that are still in a cut mode even at that 6.75 our neighbors to the west of us beaverton and Hillsboro salem-keizer Eugene most of the other large districts in the state are seeing continued reduction in their workforce as district still grapple with a systemic underfunding of the system as well as cost increases that outpace their ability to pay for them so I think in fairness to all of them it goes without saying a couple of we obviously went into the session with some very key PPS legislation that we introduced or sat to introduce with others two measures were constitutional amendments dealing with property tax form reform of course we mentioned fairly early on in this session that those measures were doomed in this particular cycle given some very downward polling information there is still a considerable amount of education to be done with the public about what has happened to our property tax structure in the state and the inequity inherent in the system that is also suppressing overall adequate collections in that property tax system so we were disappointed by that we also had a measure dealing with a state bond for school security infrastructure that we worked with representative green Lacan that that measure did not pass however the legislature did successfully recreate a school facilities task force which if you recall two sessions ago they created and then subsequently one year later completely defunded the task force so they never got off the ground so we've now recreated that school facilities task force to help the state to begin to grapple with how to actually tackle really systemic capital needs facing schools around the state going forward in a in a positive way we also had another bill dealing with the charter school application process and really reforming that in helping to focus charter school applications on the greatest needs of school districts unfortunately that one after a lot of work fell just very short one vote short in about the third day before the end of session we are very optimistic about our ability to continue that conversation and bring that bill back in February we're working with the chair of the Senate Education Committee to make sure on it is on his work plan for the februari session and I feel cautiously optimistic about our ability to at least keep that conversation front and center about giving you as a local board a bit more authority in being able to have an innovative model of charter schools really tackle the greatest academic needs in the districts as well around the state and then lastly a bill that we did in a passing which was very positive as a reform to the state's urban renewal statute which very techincal basically what it does is it takes for our local option levy it means we will collect a hundred percent of our local option levy
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upon renewal of that local option levy the top line of that is that's estimated to be about four to four and a half million dollars potentially upon renewal that would come back to the school district from the Portland Development Commission under division of taxes Portland Development Commission gets a slice of all property taxes levied and we merely wanted to implement sort of voter intent the voters approved a local option levy for a specific purpose one hundred percent of those funds should go to that purpose so we felt very strongly about that is linked together and I will note the city and the county and all parties were very supportive and worked very constructively to find a positive solution make sure that bill happens so we feel very good about that I want to do a specific call out to representative Margaret Dougherty who drafted and sponsored that bill for us way back in the interim working with p80 and Gwen Sullivan to put that particular legislation I think it's really a great piece that will really change that dynamic going forward and I also wanted to call out representative Jules Bailey who as a member of the house revenue committee that debated this bill really gave very very strong support for it on the committee to make sure that it moved forward some other notable areas of legislation dealing with education again I highlighted some stuff in here i'm happy to attempt to answer questions or at least put them down and we can get back to you later as well a lot of conversation this session around student transfers whether that be under open enrollment or inter-district transfer agreements that was a very very debated item and there was legislation passed that really deals with making sure that there's a fairness approach to student transfers whether it be under open enrollment or in your district that you there this isn't a pick and choose game this is you have to you have to do more of a blind process to make sure that everybody has a fair shake if you're a district that receives students from outside the boundaries as I mentioned our charter schools bill there were a number of other charter school bills one that did pass will actually modify the appeals process so as you know if you deny a charter school application it gets can be appealed to the State Board of Education this modifies that appeals process to clarify and allow the State Board some ability to send those applications back to the district sort of for a second review rather than immediately they're only boxed into the opportunity of either becoming the sponsor of the charter school or denying as well that it gives them a bit more flexibility in that process a lot of conversation early on around the use of seclusion and restraint as you know there was legislation that band a specific type of facility for seclusion and restraint and as well there was additional legislation that gave the State Board of that rule making authority around to finding appropriate seclusion and restraint facilities in the state so that will be an ongoing process going forward and then of course there was a lot of conversation or work continuing the governor's strategic investment initiatives and the work of the Oregon education investment board in a couple of legislations where they were creating one thing the teacher the educator effective effectiveness network which a lot of that is still to be fleshed out on but it's really focused around creating a sort of regional professional development system as well as providing grants to districts and others for a teacher mentorship and other teacher professional about educating educator mentorship and educate our professional development i say educator because it's both certified instructors as well as building administrators and then the the other measure that they have was a bill to give to the oregon education investment board a certain amount of money to focus strategic investments on three key areas that you know we had talked about previously the Oei be had been working on and I just I just have me other there three areas were initiative called Oregon reads another one guidance and support for post-secondary aspirations so that one is more about the connectedness between high schools and community colleges and higher ed and one connecting to the to the world of work which is a initiative focused on STEM education as well as career technical education in schools with that I'll kind of wrap it up again I think this was a very positive session for education despites on late disappointments I think we look forward to building on really strong relationships we developed going into and through this legislative session the work of you all as a board to be on call and advocating and make the calls this necessary I want to thank you all in the waning days for making the calls that were valuable and impactful to the process and I know that that will be a relationship will have with our delegation going forward into the interim the 2014 and 2015 legislative sessions that will really help us to be a positive force in Salem with our delegation down there you thank you any questions for mr. Williams I actually had two questions which might actually
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go to superintendent Smith instead but I just wanted to first David say thank you to you for all of your work in Salem this time around I'm in 10 years serving on this board I think this felt like our strongest presence in Salem so I'm very grateful to you for that i'm also really grateful that the Oregon School Boards Association is back and in much more of a leadership role than we've seen in many years they actually did a strong school strong state campaign that allowed every district to kind of look at what the various funding levels that were being considered and to help legislators understand what each of those would mean and I think that was a pretty effective place for them to be and they really rallied other education partners to make that a successful campaign I think for all of us so I would agree with you it was a really positive session in many ways I could have done more but it was it was very positive two quick questions one is the school facilities task force I don't know if the membership with that has already been said or whether Portland Public Schools will have an opportunity to either have a presence on that or at least monitor it and if so who would be doing that and exit that's a good day request okay absolutely thank you you know on the top of my head I don't know what the make up in the legislation is about the task force as you know many of these task forces have very specific slots shall we say there are probably about a half dozen task forces will be tracking this interim that will create it in the session and we'll be putting all those and sort of I put those all together in one spot and look to places where we can be more involved there's a task force on school funding that's going to look at the school funding distribution formula as well so I think that's obviously an area will have a very keen interest in and want to make sure that our issues are represented at the very least in the audience if not actually on for so uh you know obviously we'll we'll get all that out in the next month about specific task forces and where we have a spot school facilities task force like the funding is obviously one we have a keen interest given the role that our community has played in supporting the bond and now going forward the work that will be doing we want to make sure that our areas of interest are expressed to that task force and understood and then the second question is around I think there's a bill that is funding some department of education grants around career technical education and I think that that that was out there a couple of years ago and Portland Public Schools was a little bit late to the game so I wanted to understand if we're on top of that and expecting to put in an application I don't know what the exact timing is yes our folks have been paying attention to this and it's more going to be it was about what's the magnitude of money that's actually available so that was really our big question in terms of what kinds of things you could actually apply for but yeah we've been tuned into this and our folks have been paying attention to it you may want to my understanding you know we've actually just had a brief conversation in the back i believe on next week our CTE coordinator is going to be going to salem to do the sort of grant overview from the grantees and we're going to be very aggressive in seeking funding from that grant source and a bunch of the dollars that were made available through the session are now going to be administered by different departments and so they'll be issuing a request for proposals and work tracking all the opportunities to try and really figure out which ones are the ones that match with the things we're trying to accomplish I know when I was down in Salem a legislator pulled me a sign and I'm cut I'm kind of haunted by his words and up in a good way and he just said pay attention show up for this yes pay attention to this one so good thank you thank you mr. Roy chairman no pulse I go ahead I just real quick just kind of a comment and a confirmation both just in terms of the fact that we do I'm here in addition to our fellow districts here in Portland have cut still so I'm hoping our delegation and I appreciate all their hard work but I'm hoping that they're aware that we still are suffering in this district and our kids are still not being well served by the level of investment in the state and then also just that the federal cuts are continuing and my understanding is there's no sense that Congress is going to do anything about the sequestration cuts so that's kind of the new normal head start title won all the other and a whole slew of programs that assist children and families so just put that out there as a reminder and then my question just is is there was one I think hearing that talked about the long-term systemic tax reform who's the one little moment and then of course it went away is there any outlook or possibility and what can we either as a board or a community do toward finally getting some actual systemic change and Taxation and funding in the state thank
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you so first off don't take my positive tone as any as any indication that we let the legislators off the hook when it comes to school funding I think in two to a degree it becomes a little bit of a morbid joke in the Capitol with the education lobby when asked about the the current level of school funding are usually responding our usual response as well it's a good start you know we absolutely do have a long way to go and I think frankly one of the best messages we had in the waning days as they were attempting to find an additional hundred million dollars is what could we do with that and the things we were talking about the phone else later stopped the thing they're talking about was certainly as you know we're not we're not groundbreaking fiza these weren't new investments they were we need to restore these types in yeah absolutely so thank you a tax reform so text reform is that it's a little bit that's my white whale I you know unfortunately I don't see it on the immediate horizon I think we have to keep the conversation active the the polling work that was done around the to property tax measures that we did propose were intriguing in the responses that were provided and the areas where people need to understand what is wrong with the property tax system one of one of the just politically speaking one of the one of the reasons that Portland continues that very strong support for increased taxes and tax votes is the nature of our voting populace as well the demographic involved the the home ownership rates etc but that's also a challenge as there's a lot of that demographic that doesn't even get a property tax bill to understand the complicated problem facing them on that property tax bill there's also of course the broader narrative that property taxes are high and therefore any change to them is going to raise my property taxes again not connected to the narrative of what's your actual property tax bill look like when you're paying property taxes on fifty percent of the value of your house not actually paying on the actual value of your house where someone in a different neighborhood is paying on one hundred one hundred percent of the value of their house that's a conversation that really isn't understood among the public and it's not one that goes in a bumper sticker and that is that's the big challenge it's one that is you know coffee shop conversations and really helping people work through that dynamic of okay your property tax bill is high your bill is not high here is the difference here's here's the change and the two of you are similarly situated you might both be very well-off wage earners you might both have very high value homes but you're paying two very very different property tax rates or conversely you're both middle class or both in poverty and one is paying a high property texture being a low property tax rate so it's really understanding that that that problem doesn't break along socio-economic lines it doesn't break along a lot of traditional lines it's really have hazard and that that makes the conversation a lot harder to have and then of course more broadly when you talk about implementing any sort of sales type sales tax type proposal you run into a genetic predisposition to not pump my own gas and not pay a sales tax and I make light of it but it's a very real issue even with a new entrance to the state as well as we now are a state where more than half the population was not born here but they somehow inherit that genetic predisposition when they come into the borders and and take up residence so it's just continuing that conversation around public services and the values like Ohio border check revealed could you since I'm new and this is the report from now lobbyists could you just give a real quick two questions this person could you just give a real quick thumbnail sketch of how this works in other words before the legislature starts we give you leave how do we decide did we decide that the board decide into super Nana how does that work to get you your marching orders and then as the as we're going along how do we change the marching orders or when we add on I mean there's all that stuff how do you know what to support and whatnot spark just real quick as friends because so I get in my head for the next part so going the legislative session the board developed a PPS legislative platform that's sort of two page guiding principles it covers sort of the the overriding issues facing public education with value statements and position statements and then the board adopts that going into the legislation led a legislative session so we have a board adopted statement on that guides where and how I position us
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in a legislative session on specific bills and specific issues of interest and then we also working with department heads and staff and the superintendent develop some of the nuts and bolts issues that we might bring for instance the urban renewal legislation is one that came up the charter school legislation these are some of the other more technical issues that we do work on that we develop sort of from below going up and from top coming down as well so it's a it's a broad process to really understand what the interests of the board are and the interest of the district and you know where those intersect and how we can best advocate that in the legislative session absolutely the other thing to add to that is we also worked with cosa and with the districts across the state in terms of determining like a unified message around funding levels and really being very clear and I think coordinated and with ospa with other education advocacy groups so that we were all understanding very clearly whatever level of funding we got to here's what it meant and so developed a common messaging campaign that we were part of the crafting of that so we even even more broadly on on education funding that really is a broad coalition effort where we are a member of the coalition with the Confederation of School Administrators the Oregon School Boards Association the organ Education Association the Oregon School Employees Association PTA or Oregon PTA the American Federation of Teachers Stanford children i'm probably leaving a few out the organ association of SDS we can do the alphabet soup but you get a sense that that's a very best exactly and really two active conversation where everybody's working their own budgets and really trying to say this is what this means for us and then really analyzing how do we say to legislators understand if this is the level of funding we get to this is what it means just so that it's the graphic form and it was a graphic form it was a poster and it was not ever say around this year that had life that really defined kind of here's what it means and if we're wonder what a stability mean what is reinvestment mean so we weren't I mean so it was actually more in my time this was probably the most coordinated effort of not having 197 district different districts speaking their own thing but really happy or different advocacy groups having different platforms that legislature send us onto floor doubt we did a huge amount of the front end work I think that was really and then throughout the session I provide regular updates to the board both verbally and in writing and it's a great opportunity for us to have that feedback and dialogue about where the session is going and the tenor of the session and obviously there are a host of issues that bubble up during a session that we didn't even foresee arising them on that we deal with and move forward with them position the district on during the session and I want to thank the people from the border wet down there I know Bob Salim didn't Drake dinner I don't know Pam you did to right and I saw you dad was right yeah but as well absolutely loving for different yeah absolutely I guess at that time or did we second question is where did we take a position on the governor's programs though 32 32 and 32 33 well did we have a position on that so Thank You director Buell good questions 32 we'll make sure I get them I want to reference them correctly for you so 32 32 both House bills 32 32 is a bill the bill that creates the three strategic initiatives investments and then 32 33 is the bill that creates the educator effectiveness network we we supported both measures under the caveat that they don't take money away from the state school fund these were additional targeted investments above that for some very specific purposes that we think by and large a line with what we're doing in the district so we felt as long as those do not take money out of the state school fund you know we would support that effort they meant about 60 million or so right where did that money come from if it didn't come out of the stage school fun general fund well doesn't the general fund money often matriculate to the school fund so the state school see where I'm going with us no absolutely the the joke is often in the capital it's all our money we're just lending it to some people to use like Corrections and Human Services and I think that that's a fair point to be made and certainly one that we make on a lot of issues in the capital I think given the level of investment that the legislature was making the increase to 6.5 billion dollars and that that was both a significant aggregate increase as well as an increase in the share of the general fund which is what we've been talking about for a number of years as
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we've dropped from 45 percentage on front to thirty-eight percent this increases that share so the conversation would probably be very different if the increase was less and or that share was staying stagnant or decreasing but given that the legislature was making that commitment and was pushing forward I think the the argument that it's being taken at the sort of theoretical argument that it's coming out of the state school fund is a it's a little harder for us to make in the capital on this particular issue and these are also very soon these are also very significantly less than the governor requested he was up at 225 exactly beginning so basically they took about five million dollars out of our budget and put in some place out in either so because if we're at eight percent of 5060 million that's almost five million which is about 50 teachers that we gave their and I was loving to have and not take those 50 teachers out of Portland was part of what we were doing thank you very much for question thank you for coming here really appreciated thank you um thank you mr. woods um it was a very productive and I it's been echoed from director Egan director Buell our ability to be able to talk and have a conversation with our legislators to help them edge' Slater's to help them understand it's greatly appreciated it's been great dialogue and I really while it may not be everything that we hope for because we are still looking at some reductions it sets a very different tone about how do we collaborate together so thank you thank you thank you next one we're going to move on to our monthly update on the capital improvement bond ok notice this probably will come up but I also notice a member at least of our bond Advisory Committee who stuck around for our half hour late discussion about this so thank you superintendents meant if you introduce the same good so and actually Jim Owens is our director of statistical modernization and Michelle chariton who is one of our project managers are going to present our update tonight and the other thing I'd like to point out to you is you now have in your packet a topics schedule that lets you see going forward what are the topics coming up because we're doing these on a regular basis to keep our the progress on what's happening with the work on the bond very visible to you but you can look ahead and kind of get how it fits in the context of what you're seeing in the future Jim and Michelle Thank You serpentine Smith and good evening board this is our July update to describe how we are progressing with our work and out of interest in brevity we're not going to go through a detailed review of the balanced scorecard as the zoom time mentioned in your board packets you have the detailed report that describes changes I've tried to keep the narrative active to reflect what's actually occurring however will summarize the program and then Michelle sheraton who's the project manager working on our improvement project 2013 the summers work will highlight through a slide presentation and some narrative about how well that work is going what you see up on the screen is a summary of our balanced scorecard all of the categories remain in the green both in terms of the overall perspective budget schedule and stakeholder the yellow cell for the equity is a reflection of where we stand on how much we paid out to MW ESB own firms and you may recall last month we are a little over twenty six percent and so can you remind folks what mwe SB one of our objectives and our scorecard is looking at the aspirational goal of how much of our bond dollars are paid to minority-owned women-owned emerging small business mwe SB owned firms and it's a measure that we're using to reflect underrepresented firms in the construction and design professional communities and so the eighteen percent target that we are striving for which is aspirational is something that we're measuring on a month-to-month basis so when we report to the board on how that's progressing we present it in terms of percentage and so this month were actually at fourteen percent so we're a little behind where we would like to be and / the criteria in our scorecard we're showing that as caution or concern relative to it although can you give perspective in terms of our starting place as overall as a district
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we actually begun well below five percent so as we look across all of the public contracting of that we do we we've been very very low in terms of that so the fact that we have been able to increase that is certainly of significance as contractors and consultants go about the business of putting teams together it's something that is very very prominent in their minds as they're building the teams and being able to increase the dissipation by mws be home firms in the work due to the magnitude of the bond program there's a lot of dollars suddenly a significant increase in dollars that are flowing through the district and so we're looking for a increase in participation and has percentage participation and in our work some of the comments about the program or the ip13 which is the shorthand for improvement project 2013 that Michelle will be touching on is the is the front and center project that work we're working on and we have been really paying a lot of attention to that this is our first bite at the Apple for the bond and being able to deliver the six schools that are in this project is very much on track and something that we do want to highlight we've also begun the process to select the design professionals for our two large high school projects Roosevelt and Franklin and so we recently interviewed we've made selections that are going through fina go she ations and anticipate providing a staff recommendation for award at the july twenty fourth meeting so we'll be highlighting some of the details around those two firms and having both of those design teams aboard will facilitate us getting started with a master planning phase work the pre design phase work if you will for those high schools our baseline schedules that are really important relative to the overall eight year program have been updated and that is reflecting where we stand we had previously presented conceptual schedules the baseline provides more details in terms of activities and milestones and so that's something that we've we've gotten updated also not on the slide but just to quickly mention last month we provided an update on the work that we're doing with our spec process or educational specifications and really highlighted through some photos and some audio narrative how the community conversations have been progressing please report that we've completed the community conversations now we've met with over 16 different groups I think some 360 people we've got a lot of very valuable feedback from communities that we off don't hear as much from and its really helping shape the vision statement for our educational facilities or physical facilities I should say that will be very helpful in informing the next days the work which is the actual head spec document itself next month we'll be bringing the initial draft of the resolution forward to you relative to the vision statement and then subsequently in September will be coming back with our phase two work our red spec were particularly interested in the phase to work for the two high schools because it'll begin to describe programmatically what a comprehensive high school looks like at Portland Public Schools so we're very anxious for those to be progressing so with that I'll introduce Michelle and she'll go through a quick presentation on the IP 13 and when she completes if you have any questions comments or concerns we'd be happy to respond to this so Michelle is the project manager for ip13 Michelle Sheridan joins us from San Francisco Unified she's doing a fabulous job managing ip13 and she's also doing double duty because our summer 2014 project work which actually includes 12 schools is also on her plate so we actually have interviews scheduled for tomorrow and friday to to review the proposals from from consultants who are interested in that work so Michelle thank you I hope I'm just as excited about you know showing all this is mr. Williams before me that guy was pretty excited about what's going on so I think you could dive down into the construction world where I love to live we're going to go ahead and look at the project budget 13.4 million dollars for the construction work going on right now we have a project duration of three hundred two days if you think about this is from the beginning this is when I go out and I look at the site and all the way to the end when I'm out there and over maybe we're losing light sorry um
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it's getting the final punch done so we've gone through 250 one day's worth of my schedule and we have what is the sprint I call it 51 days to complete I get the schools open on time for everybody luckily my comment says that I'm really excited about us being on schedule and open these schools on time eighty-three percent of project has been completed and again like it says completed on schedule at this point if we're going to go ahead and go clockwise from construction scope to the awesome pictures that we took out there this is Alameda we have roof replacement and seismic bracing happen happening on this project it's 2.3 million dollars worth of work on the first slide or first picture that's pretty much going to show you how tight these sites are this is our urban constraint here of roof tear off we're going to say roof replacement once you look down to the next one in the lower right-hand corner we've abated we've removed any of the lead or the asbestos in this area and we're showing you a wall that's going to be now the new shear wall there's five of those we're going to put plywood up and then put a bunch of nails in them make them really strong for everybody the next one over is the cafetorium we're installing footings if everybody knows what footings are there just like we have we have footings for their feet and then we're going to bring rebar up and attach rebar to the cleat tile and strengthen that cafetorium as we bring up kind of give it a big squeeze so everything moves together all works out great any questions I like to read the town anyways what you like seismic how many hours we are burning through so how important this was and I appreciate all the support that I got all the way through is I'm burning thirty-two thousand dollars a calendar day I have 72 days to move 2.3 million dollars worth of work through this project and everybody's buying since the beginning once I jumped on this project getting everybody out and getting everybody in spent huge and so we've almost moved almost a million dollars worth of work here the roof itself is about 1.2 acres worth of work and if you think about if we're talking about property taxes here I know my house it's on a tenth of an acre so throw 10 of your properties down and that's what we got up there worth a roof so that's a lot of work next one bride a mile Bridal ball and Luis which will be the next screen we actually bid those together these are strictly roof replacement work but we are doing what we call in the line seismic work so if you think about a girdle you know how it holds everything in as we go along this roof we're actually um fastening anchors to the framing which bind us all together with the plywood that we're putting down on top so while we're ripping the roof off we're like hey let's put some plywood down strengthen up these girls get her going so twenty six thousand dollars a day on this project and the pretty self-explanatory most of these I'm hoping that black stuff is a water type in and I went out to Bridal mile today and we're about fifty percent complete when it comes to this we even got the white shiny stuff down meaning we're almost finished on parts of parts of that roof so Louis it's it's alter ego and when it comes to this contract work you're going to see down in the lower right-hand corner that is our seismic work bringing all the chimneys down to a more you know earthquake friendly height still does what it needs to do but now it's just down a little bit lower making us all feel a lot better about that any questions all right we're doing good we're going to keep going here laurelhurst roof replacement and science classroom improvements all part of this bond project upper right hand corner that's the science lab to put in the new science labs sinks we actually sometimes have to do a little bit more and what we do is remove the tile flooring so it looks right we remove something we want to make it look right we would put it back so that's why you're seeing the
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flooring is gone and that's work is underway the man bending over he's putting down the liquid applied roofing and then once we move to the left those were the old skylights at laurelhurst Wilson this one's super exciting this one's almost over three acres worth of work and we're at burn rate a fifty one thousand dollars a day there is so much work here that I got about 50 guys crawling all over the top of that roof and I have to roofing construction companies they actually blended together and said we could do this and they're tackling it right now and we are almost fifty percent done there as well the lower right-hand corner you're going to see that's the north entryway we're doing an accessibility entrance that's the beginning of the puddings to create the ramp that's going to bring our own how many people have been to Wilson but this will allow a DA access to the gym area which i think is super amazing oh we're gonna go back so I mean that's pretty much what I have hopefully I sound just as enthusiastic asticus mr. Williams but you can tell how much enthusiasm other is here we show tonight so we're all very excited about the work like entertaining question 2 comments right so first of all it's great seeing the pictures it just makes it all real so that's really exciting I had two questions and thank you for your enthusiasm one is do we have any idea at this point how many jobs this is created in Portland just doing this summer work or is that something you could calculate and give to mr. kaui back there so we can help our community we have done a study in terms of what the total impact of the bond was but relative to this particular project we can look at how many workers that the contractors have actually put on these projects and that's relatively easy to pull together so I just think it's something that taxpayers would love to hear about is pretty exciting sitting here we don't actually know how many but it's a fairly sizable number would be happy to provide that that'd be fun and be more off to being able to give you a count of heads and then the other thing I just wanted to mention to my colleagues that Pam and I were just at the bond accountability committee meeting prior to this and one of the questions that I have been asking about a bit is the idea of whether or not on some of these roofs both this year and going forward we could be looking at any kind of solar film solar panels whatever and so what we learned in this last meeting is that an engineering feasibility study is happening we're going to have some results back from that in August both looking at our current roofs would you go back and put solar on our next roofs for next summer and then as part of the high school builds and fabien that feasibility will be done during that period of time so I think once we get those feasibility reports back we can regroup with some of our community partners that Tom and I met with along with CJ and Jim and a whole variety of folks who are very interested in trying to partner with us and kind of figure out the strategies so that we can make our buildings sustainable in terms of energy efficiency going forward as well and it's also just a great thing for our kids to see solar panels and realize you know that we're making a difference in terms of the environment too so I was really pleased to hear that we are in the process of doing that feasibility study social and make sure you all do that too so thank you and if I could if I could add something to that Bobby I think dead a much smaller scale the organization I work for who purchased a building from PBS and 2009 rebuilt the roof on on that building made it capable of holding rigid solar panel installation last night at my board meeting we approved a budget the significant cost reductions about and my average of about fifteen or sixteen percent a year is being paid back because of that solar panel installation and that over a period of time we talked about that sort of being a below the line cost for the organization we can reinvest in programming reinvest in classrooms or invest in students so it's a big difference it costs more at the front end but it makes a big difference in the long run it's like director Reagan had brought up in a bun accountability committee meeting to see if the saulic engineering was the consultant doing the feasibility study would provide some of that data and we'll be providing that as well
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anything else okay thank you very much Thanks moving on to our next item we're now going to vote on board leadership roles leave leadership roles are voted upon twice annually state of Oregon requires a Board of Education to have a chair and vice-chair so that's going to be how resolutions read this evening however we as a board of chosen to operate as a co-chair model will take nominations one at a time so at this time do I have any nominations for chair I'd like to nominate director Belial as chair second thank you both um you have accept the nomination hey sorry I do will now consider resolution 4782 election of board chairperson with director Belial nominated for this possession I already have a second in motion there's a motion in a second is there any board discussion thank you for serving thank you for your great work and for being willing to continue I'd also like to thank you for he done since you've been doing a lot of it alone this summer and that really appreciate you extra hours you're putting anyway okay board will now vote on resolution 478 to all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no resolution 4782 is approved by a vote of if I can do the math right 522 with student representative Davidson voting yes yes thank you all it's an honor to serve in this capacity moving on to Vice Chair do I have a nomination for Vice Chair I do I'd like to nominate director panels for Vice Chair so will now consider resolution number 4 783 election aboard vice chair with director nulls the nominee with emotion from director Adkins with the motion and director curler seconds to adopt resolution 4783 is there any board discussion and of the same of thanking you for being willing to serve and when we talk about being serving on the board is a thankless job serving as co-chair is even more thankless beyond that no but thanks yeah background work the extra time and phone calls and meetings and even additional level of kind of the weight that's on you of the decision-making and the responsibility so appreciate here stepping out sir thank you thank you board will now vote on resolution for 783 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all pose please indicate by saying no no resolution 4783 is approved by a vote of six to one with student representative Davidson voting yes yes thank you moving on to our last item it's our business agenda board will now consider the remaining items on its business agenda having already voted on the resolution 478 2 through 4 783 we did want to provide a brief background on resolution for 781 mr. Sullivan our chief financial officer and Sarah bottomley assistant budget director are with us this evening if you could come up and provide us with a little background in the city on this item directors this resolution that we have before you is an intent to clarify the fact that we had figured out in the process of piling our documents and of our adopted budget we discovered a clerical mission of a paragraph that actually appropriated is an appropriation paragraphs what they call it and we did adopt but that one the paragraph was omitted in error our recommendation in order to clarify the intent of the board when they adopted the budget is to approve our proposed resolution before you and the intent was the Appropriations as attached in attachment a on that board adoption resolution there was an attachment and it was actually a schedule of appropriations and that was June seventeenth of this last year so our recommendation is to approve thank you if you guys can stick around because we're going to move to adopt our
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business agenda and then at that time if we have questions well thank you that has to segregate out to one Apple computers incorporated them and have a question on that and also the one on the teachers development crew but I don't have numbers so you can't it's hard to ask to separate them out by number so what we'll do is well make a motion to either approve or deny the business agenda and then at that point we can ask individual questions about what's thank you um miss Patterson are there any changes to the business agenda there's one change on resolution number 47 79 regarding the expenditure contracts the US bank amount should be not nine hundred and fourteen thousand dollars as opposed to 1 million 983 860 the new number was nine hundred and fourteen thousand okay Joe and blah i'm confused in what you said i asked to segregate those two out so what we're gonna then what we're going to vote on the agenda and then we're going to go back and rebuild on agenda again and then with and then throw it on each of those segregated items is that how you're going to do it yeah so what we'll do is somebody will make a motion to approve or deny the whole it the whole business agenda somebody will second to approve or deny then we'll have a discussion about those um that's when we would ask our questions and at that point it's a yes or no vote on the business agenda well that dead according to Robert's Rules order when he has to segregate something out you vote on those individual agenda items by themselves that's what I'm asking for so I assume that that's appropriate thing to ask more so are you asking for because what you secor segregate out would be the resolution yeah I'm sorry you know I second see that would be though so we would vote separately on those right well I don't know I can't vote on the business agenda until they ask the questions on those right so if we segregate those out we bought in the business jinyan of minus those crime then we go back and vote on those separately so because their package is part of the resolution so we can pull out resolution for seven four seven nine no you pull up in Sacramento zero he pull out sections of their resolution to the resolution doesn't have to be voted on as a whole lot can be voted on we could vote it I eat son vigil things'll so it has me for their typically we would vote on the resolution if there's during the discussion a recommended amendment to remove something or to add something that's at the time that you would do it does that make sense but we're voting on the resolution as it's okay but once you've passed it you have to we don't pass it so we moved to approve or deny we second to approve or deny at that time if there are questions discussion and any amendments that would be proposed amendments first then would be considered then you would move to the entire remember would be then to remove it hey Lou to remove it to alter the numbers that you can make an amendment to vote on it separately we can't pull it out of the resolution has posted unless you pull it out at the beginning man so you could pull it out now you pull out Apple computers incorporate it and segregate it and set it aside and then vote on that separately no it's packages the resolution so you can amend the resolution as we move forward after the discussion pulling those out asking them to be removed there will be a yes or no second the motion approved that motion I don't think that's correct we can maybe argue about it tomorrow but it's not correct because you can Robert's Rules of Order which is what we work on you can segregate out any section number so that what most that would be an amendment to the resolution they're segregated have those out and then you would have a second and then we would vote on that resolution for that motion that amendment you'd vote to whether or not to segregate it out correct that's not I don't think that's correct either okay okay can do it that way if you want it doesn't accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish which is the whole point of Robert's Rules orders accomplish what you're trying to accomplish but go I can do it that way we'll talk about it maybe tomorrow if we get chance okay so do I have a motion of the second to adopt the business agenda so moved okay director Atkins moves director Nowell's seconds the out option of the business agenda is miss Patterson is there any public comment to the business agenda there is not there is not okay so is there any board discussion it sounds like there is some board discussion so this would be where you would particularly either ask a question that was direct mr. Sullivan and miss Bottomly brought us or if there are other amendments or items that you'd
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like to discuss or have clarifying questions now at the time yeah I was interested in on Apple computers for Roosevelt High School know what are we using those particular computers for I'm trying to get a handle on whether we when we go out into a school or we these computers sitting in a creative for classroom use or is this going into the computer lab in how does this spending this particular money which I don't have any problem with but I have a how does that play off against the fact that we have so many of our computer labs closed down for huge portions of the year now there was a we buying these computers here to help we are we taking any steps to have those computer labs not closed down i mean i was talking to teach you the other day in he had the computer lab in their school was closed down for three months so we couldn't use it for educational purposes for a three-month period of time is this has anything to do with that or what's this specifically about so I'm gonna ask josh kline who is our chief information officer to come on up and come on up to the podium yes and provide some background on this specific one but this is part of Roosevelt has done this is a particular part of their school improvement grant and it's that's a multi-year initiative that they've been working on and Josh thank you hello my name is Josh Kline I'm chief information officer for important public schools as of about seven weeks now so I do have some information about this particular line item so the the purchase of these iPads is a part of the roosevelt high school technology immersion pilot which is funded through a grant that has been generously provided by Mount Hood cable Regulatory Commission it's a three-year grant with the with these 400 iPads that we purchasing they'll be a total of eleven hundred iPads or Roosevelt with the goal of creating a one-to-one program at Roosevelt that would serve as a model for other schools in the district moving forward sort of where those iPads are given to kids or do they check them out of the library or what are you how do they get in the hands there they're provided to students permanently for that school year for that school year true and then they turn them back in and using the next school year for somebody else or um that's my understanding okay so it doesn't have anything to do with alleviating Lee overcrowding in the computer labs during the testing for a Roosevelt correct okay and we you don't know if we've asked for grants to help alleviate those overcrowding you know not that I'm aware of okay thank you i'll add some tomato thank you for that appreciate Christmas Howard Apple how's the iPads chosen today I know they're great I also know they're twice as expensive so we could get twice as many by going with another brain the director Kohler bacnet pronounce that correctly colon hurler curler excuse me director Kersh I understand director Crillon I the selection process occurred before I was hired here so I couldn't speak to that I could get you an answer do you have a view viewpoint on that going though going forward I think it's important that we undertake a competitive process anytime we purchase technology equipment thank you very much are there any other comments or questions about the business agenda I thought director hbu base of the lash thank you thank you I the teachers development group what type of what are we time out there researching here what are we researching for we've got this another grant $300,000 for some sort of research that's a revenue contract actually but i'll ask sean murray to describe what's going on here hi sean murray chief human resources officer the agenda item in regards to the professional development deals with an administrator who is taking a two year leave of absence to do professional development to teach math the district is reimbursed the district is reimbursed the administrators salary by the teachers development group and upon completion of the leave of absence the
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administrator will return and assigned to principalship that is available what are they researching I actually they will be teaching math not professional development for administer the name of the group has research in it but they're just simply reimbursing us for the cost so this is a this is a people who this is a professional development for common core curriculum mathematical I mean in mathematics oh yes it's professional development for the administrator and they will be teaching math and learning different math skills that they can come back and bring to the district in this particular administrator before she was a principal was one of our math ptosis so it was a thing she basically sought to be able to do that increases both her professional development but is also a value to the district and they reimburse the district so it does not cost us from you to do this for two years so it's it ends up being a great professional development opportunity for her and enriches our professional capacity as administrator and I think it's specifically teaching doing professional development math for other administrators so building the capacity of administrators instructionally to the instructional leaders is it common core curriculum stop you know everything at this point is about how are we about common core standards so it's not common core curriculum it's about common core standards so yeah so buddy I don't know enough specifically if that okay maybe I can ask that later and actually parent I talked to so many yeah okay thank you Thank You Sean thank you thank you and actually we get these kind of opportunities like from teachers have them as well where they're asked to go do something that will support this as a professional development opportunity I was out visiting Maplewood in at one point they had switched with somebody a teacher in England and in English and teacher from England was in one of our is there any other discussion on the business agenda ok the board will not vote on business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no the business agenda is approved by a vote of 720 a student representative Davidson voting YES the next meeting of the board will be held wednesday july 21st 2013 head I'm sorry july twenty four you're right sorry it says right there thank you for dads what it says on the paper now look the amount of my mom the next meeting the board will be held on wednesday july 24 2013 at noon the regular this regular meeting at the

Event 2: PPS Board of Education Swearing-In Ceremony, July 17, 2013

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good evening everyone if you guys if everybody could kind of join up here so we can get started check check good evening everyone if I could get your attention please thank you very much I'm going to ask if everybody could kind of scoot up to this I don't mind if you I know if you're in a chair and comfortable if you want to pull the chair up that'd be great too but it's kind of an awkward long haul and it feels feels better when we're all closer in so my name is Greg Belial i'm the current co-chair of the school board and i want to welcome everybody here tonight for our swearing in of our new board members and one returning board member and our student representative it is always an exciting time we are lucky to live in a city that is passionate and focused on great education for their students and I know that we are excited to have new board members join us and again returning members in a student member being sworn in tonight so with that we're going to do a quick introduction superintendent Smith will join and have a say a few words of welcome after that we are going to invite each of the board members to come up and justice Tom Ballmer is with us this evening to do the actual swearing in and he'll swear in each member and at that point excuse me before before they get sworn in they will actually each board member will have an opportunity to to say a few words and then we'll do the swearing in and at that point again we ask you to stick around and have refreshments and congratulate our new members and those newly elected with that superintendent Smith and I would also like to say thank you all for being here welcome and I will just start with like expressing my appreciation to our board member who is renewing renewing her term of service and to our new board members and to our new student board board member this is probably one of the most rigorous volunteer experiences that you can possibly engage in in terms of what the complexity is that you dive in and have to get your head around as a board member and then be prepared to really try and balance a ton of different factors in making the very best decisions you can for the district so I is with very deep gratitude for our current serving board members and those that are coming and joining us right now thank you so much for for signing on for this service and working in partnership with the superintendent and the staff and doing the best we can for the students of this district but I also want to say thank you to family members who are here because you are also signing on to lending us your loved one for a period of time when they won't be home for dinner they will be doing things with the board rather than doing the things you'd want to be doing as a family and just it's with deep appreciation on all of our behalf that we say thank you for being here to celebrate this moment and and thank you in the months to come as you are aware of the fact that they are with us rather than with you so with that I will turn it back to Greg so at this time and I didn't take them alphabetical order so i'll just do them off the top of my head I'm going to eat invite each board member to come up and in fact if the three elected board members and the student representative maybe want to come up here and you I don't need to introduce each one of you maybe well i will introduce each one it's more fun that way so perhaps we'll start since she's here first with our re elected board member pam knowles so i just want to say thank you very much to everyone who is here tonight i particularly want to thank my husband David over here who's been incredibly supportive and as Carol said this takes a lot of family time and he certainly has witnessed that I also want to take an opportunity to thank the voters for their consideration and for their confidence and reelected me this time and I really do appreciate that and I'm looking forward to working with my new colleagues and with my present colleagues and and in continuing our work in equity and closing our achievement gap and raising your honor graduation rates those are to me the most important things that we're working on here at Fort in public schools and I I'm hoping that within the next four years we can make a very serious effort and and we'll be able to come back to you with great accomplishments so thank you again hmm
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Thank You Pam and next up is the new director Tom curler thank you um I guess I want to recognize my father over there uh who-who with my mother who's here in spirit taught me the importance of public service so in my aunt sue tea and and Carol mentioned my children you guys want to raise your hand there and then my nieces and nephews and my brother and sister-in-law so lots of friends and family so thank thank you and I'm excited I want us to be the best the best in the nation and I think we can all say we're not there yet but we're trying really hard when I was um there's a guy named Daniel pink who put three words into perspective and I think those are the the the prison that I'm going to look through to make us to help make us the best which is purpose mastery and autonomy and some purpose is getting our graduation rate up very good thing the equity work that we're doing but is that our real purpose making sure that our kids are ready when they graduate for college or community college or ready for the workforce all those things are important but I actually think our purpose is more ground and who we are as a community and salmon every year swim up the rivers to spawn and that's how they keep going and we educate our children and that is really our purpose mastery is all about what can we do tomorrow better than what we did today and having that culture you thinking about that every single day i think is really really important and autonomy another word for that is empowerment are we empowering people to do their best so that's those those I think that's a helpful way of looking at at every issue that comes to the board and I'm looking forward to working with really the great people that are on the board today starting today all right yes I'm reminded after Tom's comments of how exciting of a time this is and how engaging this is so thank you for that passion and that excitement it's going to be exciting next up is new director although a returning director on some of you may remember him from his service previously director Steve Buell they said I could give a talk so I'm in heaven as always but my family that's here is my brother Ron in my sister-in-law are from and they didn't have enough food for my younger brethren as 10 children and 19 grandchildren so also 100 is the president of Portland Association the teachers because they were really really helpful with it right over here there she is Glen Sullivan and there's also quite a few people here from Oregon's save our schools kind of hiding in the back back there and it's an organization that I helped found though we've been working real hard trying to improve education in Oregon it's a hard go as you know and I want to thank those people who came out this afternoon to support the things we've worked for during the last few months there are loads of wonderful things in our school district we have many many terrific people in Portland Public Schools doing marvelous things for children there are strong teachers and administrators who have dedicated their lives to educating the city's children there are numerous parents and other community members who support our schools every day by a tireless commitment to the future of our students we are led by superintendent the best description of whom which I had heard was from a friend who said she is a lovely person this is a description I wholeheartedly agree with I myself has said that the past school board five of whose members remain on the school board is the hardest working school board since I started paying attention in going to school board meetings in 1975 so there are many pluses which I recognize but we are having trouble and it is not because we aren't trying hard and are working hard nor that our heart is not in the right place it is because
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many people responsible for education in the state of art and our district of lost track of what our mission is that mission is try to educate the children in our schools so each child each child can reach their potential and go out in the world and cope contribute to society and be able to as it says in the Declaration of Independence pursue happiness this needs to be our central focus not creating data points not the labeling of our schools as failing or passing not reorganizing our state bureaucracy not incremental improvements in a teacher's ability to teach to a standardized test not the other myriad of things which to detract from educating truly educating our kids in order to do that we have to shift our energies so that more time is spent on making each individual school work on making sure each individual classroom is working making sure we give each child the best opportunity to succeed that we can this is our task it is in this pursuit that I will try to endeavor three weeks ago I would have stopped here smiled and we would have gone about our business but not today I have a little more to say I have only been here about two weeks but my first impression is we are way too busy you all know those parents are so busy working and focusing on their own lives to see what is actually happening to their children when they take time when they take the children to the zoo there on the phone talking to friends are talking about business sure they love their children but life is all about them to the extreme and pretty soon their children begin to suffer as a school district we have to learn to take care of our business within doing what is best for kids it is best for kids if they have a well-rounded solid education which engages them in school it is best for kids if we have time to listen to them to think about what is good for them it is best for kids if their teachers are respected and happy it is best for kids if our schools or a welcoming safe haven it is best for kids if we can help lessen the barriers which society and their individual conditions have thrown up in front of them it is best for kids if we have the courage to set guidelines and yet constantly nurture them and on and on we need to think on these things and be guided by these things I'm afraid we might have become an ocean liner on the high seas who is off course but it just keeps sailing along without checking its direction because it is too much of an effort to turn it around I hope we can all work together to change that direction little by little but it is the only way we can write our course thank you for coming here appreciate great and last but not least our student representative Andrew Davidson hi um I don't have mine written up like Steve but i'll try to make one close to as good as his i'd like to thank all the students firstly who elected me to this position i think it's a really important role that I play in the district I look forward this coming year to serve with this fantastic board and to get as much done it in the name of progress as I can I know that my role is an important one as I represent 47,000 students in this district and I'm the co-chair of the superintendent Student Advisory Council it's a really important job and I think a lot of times the student voice is overlooked in decisions that are made but i'm looking forward to allowing PBS to reaffirm its commitment to letting students have a voice in the decisions that are made so thank you and i just want to remind you Andrew that don't let people convince you that it's a job because most jobs actually pay they compensate don't want you to graduate with a misconception but jobs are somehow for free with that I'm going to introduce Supreme Court Justice Thomas barber who we Ballmer excuse me who will be giving the oath of office judge Palmer will call each person individually to take the oath please note that the board members have already signed their oaths so they technically we had to get it by July one so they've already signed it so they won't be signing again but Andrew this evening will be signing his justice Ballmer mr. cruller will uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States end of the state of Oregon and faithfully discharge the duties and faithfully discharge the
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duties of the office of director of the office of director of school district number one JAY school number one to hold on the county oregon to the best of my ability please repeat after me i steamed you'll do solemnly swear I Steve you'll do solemnly swear that I will uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States I will uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the state of Oregon ended the state of Oregon and faithfully discharge the duties and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of director of the office of director of school district number one JAY school district number one JAY loma county oregon on the county or e to the best of my ability the best of my ability regulation I Pam Knowles do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the state of origin and faithfully discharge the duties and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of director of the office of director of school district number one JAY school district number one JAY paloma County Oregon to the best of my ability Andrew please raise your right hands and repeat after me i Andrew Davidson I Andrew Davidson do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that I will uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States but I will hold the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the state of Oregon end of the state of Oregon and faithfully discharge the duties and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of director of the office of director of school district number one J of school district number 1 J malo makati origami county org to the best of my ability to the best of my ability thank you congratulations new members and welcome and returning member Thank You Justice Palmer for being here it's great to have you here with us thank you all for joining us this evening for this special occasion it is really it's a really special time and it's a big commitment as superintendent Smith pointed out but welcome to our newest members we hope that you hang around and enjoy the refreshments and our board meeting will start in about a half hour we'd love for you to stick around and enjoy thanks

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2013-2014, https://www.pps.net/Page/2224 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:54.073648Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)