2013-10-21 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2013-10-21
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Regular Meeting - October 21, 2013

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good evening this meeting of the board of education for october 21st 2013 is now called order i'd like to welcome everybody present and extend a warm welcome to our television viewers all items that will be voted on this evening have been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next couple of weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our pps tv's website and it will be archived at the board website for future reference at this time we'll move to our first item on their agenda which is the superintendent's report superintendent carol smith thank you so a few updates in a previous board meeting we celebrated the dedication of the grant high school turf field and we've got some photos from that event that will flash up here in a moment this has been part of a larger community effort places for sport and our 10 greats fields project that's been underway in portland for the last 10 years this was the dedication of the grant high school field so just awesome pictures and beautiful beautiful field the city of portland nike pps and community volunteers teamed up to build the year-round turf fields at benson roosevelt lincoln cleveland and now grant the detroit lions football star and domica sue's mother city commissioners nick fish and amanda fritz nike friends of grant grant's athletics joined us and also board members knowles belial atkins reagan and davidson joined us for the dedication ceremony and here you see our team dedicating the field for the first run around the track there we had last wednesday the roosevelt writing writer center who produced where the roses smell the best literary companion had a dedication at the heathman hotel what what happened at the heathman autographed copies of the book will be added to the literary library at the heathman and also a copy in each of the rooms in the heathman to welcome visitors to portland when they stay at the heathman hotel it was a really great honoring of the roosevelt writers students helped to write edit design and market this book they worked with portland state university's hooligan press and writing center coordinator kate mcpherson and it was a really wonderful dedication so i'm going to just do a little pitch to please buy copies of the book and give them to family and friends they're a really great gift we had a couple of exciting visitors to our school this past month including salman rushdie who visited madison high school as part of a literary arts portland arts and lecture series and students from three madison classes ap language and composition advanced journalism and fresh freshman english read the controversial authors new york times essays and young adult novels before the visit and then had an opportunity to to talk with him we also had actor doc shaw who came to king school through the federal arts turnaround grant shaw is known for roles in the tv show pair of kings the suite life on deck and tyler perry's house of pain shaw played dramatic games with groups of students on stage and with the portland playhouse and a troupe of students created a scene that they read to pre-k students and this is part of our larger turnaround arts grant that king is a partner in so i also visited abernathy elementary school to see that the school garden kitchen as parent volunteers were preparing for their annual harvest dinner festival organizers behind the program are really excited about turning a garden a campus gazebo into a classroom this is a group of students looking at worms the exciting thing about this program at abernathy is it's actually informed wellness and nutrition programs across the district so we have piloted recipes and menus and much of the district's wellness partners policy here at abernathy as well as our harvest of the month that is now present across the district so thank you to abernathy school garden kitchen for piloting such things for the rest of the district tony magliano if you are here in the audience someplace he was a minute ago
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today we inaugurated at buckman k5 school we did inaugurated the first phase of a year-long project to install security cameras and key card access in all of our 68 elementary k5 k-8 and middle schools across the district what this does it will allow people to front office staff to monitor activity at the front door and in the lobby or foyer of our buildings as well as access the doors with key cards so this was the completion of the first 14 we this will be installed in four phases across the district so that by the end of the year every one of our 68 elementary k-8 and middle schools will have both the security cameras and the key card access next there are some quick shots from um zgf so zimmer gunzel frasca's architect in the school career day where architects work with our students in order to actually tour zimmer gunsville france frasca's architectural firm and do design their own school so some shots from the day and we had students from across the district participating in this career day and we thank zimmer gunsville frasca for again organizing this career day and this is done in partnership with workforce alliance and then finally we have good news to report which is an increase in enrollment in our schools this year up to a total of 48 080 students based on our october first enrollment snapshot our enrollment grew by 605 students over last year's total and as in recent years again elementary grades saw the largest gain with enrollment growing by 384 students in grades k-5 so there we have our continuing increase and actually i'm sorry this was not the last one i think the last one we have shots of our goats do we have the goats so we we had a we had goats that were out clearing blackberries on a steep incline that um so here's the goat here are the goats this was an area that was really steep and un uh ivy and blackberries that we had a herd of goats here clearing the blackberries and they successfully cleared the patch and see that qua that quieted everybody here the goats were again captured the news media for the entire week they were here they were um supervised by a llama and they did a really good job on the area they were brought in to clear so thanks to the goats superintendent is that it great great thank you and welcome to all our visitors that uh joined us uh part way through the meeting or after we started just a reminder that if you have signs and you're in these front seats if you could just hold them down in front of you we see them just fine folks that are in the back you're not really obstructing anybody so it's it's okay to hold them up as you'd like i appreciated when first originally folks originally came in they did they made an effort to keep those aisles clear and fire marshals really as you guys all know in your schools are it matters to them whether or not we can keep that clear so thank you and welcome everybody um with that we're going to move on to our next item on the agenda student testimony miss houston are there any students sign up yes we have four our first two students emma crist and elijah satis great while they're coming up i'm going to read the instructions welcome and while you're here i'm going to read the instructions and this will go for both your public comment and the public comment that is just general for adults later we very much appreciate you taking the time to come to the board meeting tonight and we really value your input we look forward to hearing your thoughts and reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board lies in actively listening and reflecting on the thoughts and opinions of others the board will not respond to any comments or questions at this time but the board or staff will follow up on various issues that are raised please make sure that you have left your contact information either phone number or email on the sign up sheet guidelines for public input emphasize respect consideration when referring to board members staff and other presenters and while we value everyone's perspective our rules do not allow criticism of 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 your last
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name for the record during the first two minutes of your testimony a green light will appear right on that spot in front of you when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when your time is up the red light will appear and a little buzzer will sound and at that time we ask that you please wrap up your comments we sincerely appreciate your input thank you for your cooperation and folks in the audience again i don't know who's going to be testimo testifying or what they're going to be testifying but please be respectful of whoever is at the speaker's table so that they can share their thoughts with us thank you go ahead all right my name is emma crist and i'm a senior at cleveland high school and christ is spelled like christ just c-h-r-i-s-t um just excuse me i'm kind of nervous this is new um my eighth grade year was marked by the best teacher i've ever had he taught english and social studies but beyond that he refused to confine us to solely those subjects the classroom pardon my cliche extended beyond the set curriculum into a holistic look on every topic we touched be it the slave trade the 60s or to kill a mockingbird he was the type of teacher who defied censorship who created room for opinion and who challenged his class of 13 and 14 year olds to write 10 page papers on trimester-long projects when i eventually left that classroom for good i did so as begrudgingly as possible for i knew i wouldn't have an experience like that again i'm someone who throws away all my work at the end of the year but everything i did in eighth grade is in a folder in the desk in my room it is an undeniable fact that the best classroom experiences are those taught by teachers who truly love what they're teaching teachers with the freedom to open up on their opinions yet will you make will you to form your own the student-focused proposal enables every student to have the experience i did in eighth grade by giving teachers the academic freedom they deserve i really urge you to pressure the district to really consider this student-focused proposal it is time that the district has shifted its priorities from benchmarks and budgets to teachers and students my education is not and shouldn't ever be permissive thank you my name is elijah sidis c-e-t-a-s i'm a senior at cleveland high school as well um yeah so i've always been a student under no child left behind and i've watched teachers be left with the blame for poor decisions made by lobbyists business leaders and politicians i have watched teachers lose almost all ability to collaborate and create curriculum they are truly passionate about instead we have been taught to worksheets and standardized tests tests which my peers and i have been taking since we were 8 years old should we really be hammering memorization and button clicking into young children no not at 8 years old not at 10 years old and not 17 years old we should be taught to ask questions and explore answers we should be taught a love of reading and we should be shown that school is a place to be compassionate about the complex world around us not to have that same passion which is inherent in all students stifled by policies put forth by district proposals that force us all into narrow curriculum and overwhelming class sizes i know i know teachers feel the same because when i look at the two proposals here only theirs is willing to talk about the needs of students pbs there have been enough decisions made by those outside the classroom show your teachers the respect they deserve as professionals and start bargaining thank you thank you thank you both you can go ahead miss houston uh it's lily jackson hi my name is lily mclaughlin
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i go i am a senior at lincoln high school and i am not a test scorer all my life that seems to be the only thing that schools or people us would want from me and that makes me sad and it makes me think of a story that i was once told about a little third grade girl that came into the classroom and uh she was she couldn't concentrate and she was um very concerned and she was crying and uh the teacher you know and they were gonna take uh the oaks test score the oaks test that day and she obviously couldn't take it she there's no way that she was in a state of mind to do well and to be defined by that number in her later years and the reason why she wasn't ready to take it why she was so emotionally disturbed was that um earlier that that day her parents had a little fight before she had left and it had rocked it had changed her entire day and i don't think that that is a teacher's fault teachers should not be held at fault for things that happen in the home that suddenly make that little girl not be able to come take that test that will define her for the rest of her school life and currently i go to a high school where all of the classrooms are being used all of the time throughout the day and teachers only have one planning period which means that if i need help on an essay or that one last problem i'm not getting i i can't go to get that help because kids are lined around the corner all the way down the hall half of them don't even get the help that they need as it is but um you already know that and what i'm asking is that you just let the teachers keep talking so thank you thank you hi my name is ian jackson i'm a senior at cleveland high school a member of the portland student union and i support portland teachers every year i watch as cuts are passed on to teachers by way of larger class sizes case loads furlough days and cuts to their purrs the district treats the people responsible for the education of thousands of portland students as if they were dispensable you shrug as high school teachers take on a proposed 210 students 60 minute planning periods and teach seven classes a day all of which fall under us as students it's with numbers like these that leave me stunned as to why the district hasn't come to an agreement with our teachers it's absolutely absurd that you believe pushing pushing such detrimental proposals will make education any better in this city it's glaringly obvious that the conditions in which our teachers work affect the way students learn if teachers don't have time to plan curriculum or even build curriculum a right the district is attempting to take away then how am i expected to learn that curriculum under the district's proposed caseload it would take 30 hours to effectively grade 210 papers meaning checking for conventions giving proper feedback that 30 hours amasses to 30 days with the proposed planning period how am i expected to become a better writer if i have my paper returned one month later it's these issues that students and community members are concerned most about and concerned about most excuse me if you continue to refuse to bargain over the issues that matter most students will be stuck in an educational system that leaves no time for education please set aside your reckless union-busting agenda and do your job stay at the table and settle a fair contract that gives teacher the tools and lets students thrive thank you thank you
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it's always it's always great to have students here so thank you for taking the time out and talking with us we appreciate that we are we are now going to move on to our student test yeah our student testimony um no not student testimony student representative report representative davidson smith and school board members thank you for giving the opportunity to formally address you all tonight i would like to start by talking about the nature of this position as of late there has been much talk surrounding the student representative's role during board meetings i'm not going to dwell on this topic tonight although i would like to make it clear although i would like to take this time to clearly to briefly make it known that i do not think district policy clearly defines my role and i hope during my time on this board to see revisions brought forward that add clarity based on conversations i've had with each of with each member of this board i have heard that you all agree that the student rep should be more empowered i appreciate that and believe policy must be updated to reflect what you and i believe should be the student representative's true role besides that however i have another issue with this position i do not feel this board or this district has been properly supported by students this is something that i as the student representative must take responsibility for decisions that are vital to students to success have been made have often been made without students at the table which i consider to be completely unacceptable in an effort to improve the system supersac is taking a serious look at how student voice is structured within pbs and how it can be better improved on this note i would like to thank members of the pps staff who have reached out to me in an effort to gain student perspective on projects and committees and would encourage those who have not to do so so far we either have students or actively seeking students to be a part of the superintendent's advisory committee on enrollment and transfer the citizen budget review committee the special education advisory council the high school action team and a few others a group of students and i met for two days during the summer to develop a vision for student involvement within pps that would increase participation empower students redefine student leadership and make pps a true model for student voice we acknowledged the problems that were present and debated ways to improve the system after leaving these two days of deliberation it was clear that serious changes have to be made earlier this year the superintendent student advisory committee hosted a meet and greet at benson high school to invite pps high school students to become more actively involved in the district's decision-making and growth superintendent smith was in attendance and spoke with students about the importance that they play in her decision making on behalf of super sac i would like to thank benson for hosting the event and for sending benson's students mike ivesich chance sloane and tiffany asenberg to speak with us this year supersec has taken on some very ambitious goals we are not only considering what we can achieve in the 2013-2014 school year such as supporting state legislation that would secure funding for outdoor school making the student feedback form an accessible resource for high school teachers and improving more support to middle school students but we are also working to build a sustainable legacy for student voice in pbs this board has made it clear that we want to construct an educational system that reflects the values and spirit of the portland community while nurturing the next generations of upstanding citizens i'm here tonight to make it abundantly clear that this district will not embody that vision until its community employees and students receive ample opportunities to not only voice their visions for public education in portland at large but are given all opportunities and resources to be a part of the constructing of a system that will take us where we need and want to be the time for possibly sitting in wait is over and students realize this despite the importance that students are going to play in the change to a more successful public education system i found it difficult to engage many students sometimes the reasons for this are simple many students are already struggling to manage hectic schedules and do not have any time for another activity more often than not however the biggest issue i run into is students who have simply lost faith that their opinions and concerns have any importance the problems that they face in their schools they tell me cannot be fixed already before they've even left high school we have taught these young men and women to submit unconditionally to authority to never question the decisions of their superiors regardless of whether or not they may have valuable insights or solutions whether or not these students are satisfied with the status quo i must say that i am not and neither should anyone else on this board or in this room in order to make it clear to students that they can make the impact they want to i'm asking the audience members gathered here tonight to encourage the pps high school students they know to attend the next meeting of supersac here at the besc this wednesday at 4 15 pm in addition to policy changes that will
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be coming to the board later this year regarding a more sustainable and effective structure to support student voice and pps supersac will be drafting revisions that call for student appointments made by supersac to every decision-making or advisory committee within pps as mediation between pps and pat continues i would like to once again state the importance of reaching a mutually acceptable agreement as quickly as possible the effects of these negotiations have already reached the classrooms these professional educators gathered here tonight are doing so despite the hours of planning and grading that await many of them later this evening however however the consequences for students could be even more severe should a contract not be agreed upon in the immediate future as the belt of the new school year rings i would like to recognize the fact that youthpass a partnership between trimet pps and the city of portland has been renewed again for this year this time is a full year pass instead of one that needs to be renewed every semester this is an enormous relief for pbs high school students who now have greater access to safer and faster transportation which will open up so many opportunities for them and so on behalf of those students i would like to take a moment to thank the partners and people who have made youth pass possible pps trimet mayor charlie hales and city commissioner steve novick this is a crucial resource for pps students and is something we do not take for granted i greatly appreciate that i'm being included on the ongoing discussions between the three partners about the long-term future for youth pass as superintendent smith stated the new grant field had its opening ceremonies a few weeks ago and it was a fantastic day for the grant community thank you to all those who made that event possible it was a long journey but definitely worth the wait bond work is gearing up at individual schools as many students begin to imagine what they want their educational learning environments to look feel and sound like internships between students and companies we have contracted with to do bond work is another subject many students have come to me about while many are excited and already have an idea of the role they would like to play others are interested but still have no idea how to get involved i would like to stress the importance of engaging the students who want to learn but do not know that opportunities such as these are available to them i would also like to have schools do a better job advertising who the student members of franklin and roosevelt's design advisory groups are there are students and administrators who do not know who the student members of their dag is which is a major error and one that must be resolved with the utmost urgency any effort to connect students with learning opportunities outside of school should be made and i believe that this bond work is ripe with such opportunities i look forward to seeing progress made in engaging students in every point of this modernization process tonight i would also like to call for a brief moment of silence in honor of franklin high school freshman abu khan madi who passed away on october 14th after being shot two days earlier earlier abukar was known as a bright young man whose kindness and spirit were indicative of a successful future and he will be sorely missed i would like to extend my deepest condolences to his loved ones and to the franklin community a loss such as this is something no one should have to experience thank you for giving me the op this opportunity to speak on behalf of the students of pps thank you for serving on this board appreciate that at this time we're going to move on to our public comment miss houston can you please call our first two folks that are sign up for public comment our first two speakers are paul anthony and tammy andreas mr anthony's coming down from this way if you could make a little bit of room good evening my name is tammy andreas last name a-n-d-r-e-a-s i am a parent from the metropolitan learning center our family chose mlc because of its alternative hands-on experiential learning environment recently our administrators said that we are not an alternative school yet ode pbs's website
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and mlc's website all say mlc is an alternative school what's the story the teachers at mlc offer an experiential education this requires a lot of time and support the support comes from the parent community and needs to come from the administrative staff as well that works with the teachers to support their projects trips and educational experiences most of us understand that this type of learning cannot easily be translated to seat instructional minutes but we think it is worth so much more than that the mlc community has made huge changes over the years in response to changing curriculum but they made those changes collaboratively with all the stakeholders involved while preserving mlc's alternative education approach many families have tried to collaborate with our current administration to no avail countless letters to the district and the superintendent have been written and sent with little or no acknowledgement or results as a result of lack of collaboration poor communication and a divisive community climate a number of families have left mlc many additional families are thinking about leaving this makes me so sad i guess i'm left wondering why was mlc given an administrative team that seems to neither support nor understand alternative education when i first visited mlc to view the school to see if i wanted my children to go there i was so impressed mlc's teachers had such a wonderful understanding of teaching to the whole child my sister who recently retired from pps after 33 years watched the school district go from being at its best teaching to the whole child to the district's current crippling narrow vision not everyone fits in the narrow vision our school community believes that every human being has intrinsic value and our school has been a safe haven for children and their families who think and feel that they are different though mlc may not currently have the kind of racial diversity that reflects the population of our city it has a customarily it has customarily had diversity in terms of children with special needs the school has had as much as double the percentage of special education students of most pps schools our family has had the opportunity to see special education children truly flourish with the support of teachers and students alike additionally our current administrators are planning to craft a new mission statement for our school with our site council our current mission statement is our mission is a commitment to innovative learning for students of all ages it provides for an environment in which the participants needs ideas and feelings are openly communicated and acted upon appropriately self-esteem and love of learning are consistent valued themes why do we need a new mission statement eight years later i have two now tag identified students at mlc we feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience such a wonderfully compassionate supportive collaborative and respectful community for our children they have truly benefited academically socially and emotionally from being involved with mlc's amazing teachers and the alternative program there mlc's character traits are words to live by courage integrity compassion self-discipline and respect we would like to see our administrators set a positive example by following our character traits every day so they can be role models for the children the professionals they should be guiding and supporting thank you good evening my name is paul anthony that's spelled a-n-t-h-o-n-y i've been a parent at our neighborhood school beach for more than a decade my oldest daughter graduated last year from the spanish immersion program there and my two younger children are in beech's sixth grade immersion very simply in the last year beach has gone from being one of the strongest programs in the district of which we were enormously proud to having lost not just everything that made it special but even functional through a combination of bad management and poorly conceived district oversight the school's programming is simply falling apart long-time faculty and staff gone school's reputation in the community ruined crucial programs abandoned and the school day structure in tatters both pps teachers and outside faculty have been berated belittled and treated with open contempt in front of their students and colleagues formerly teachers would wait years for the privilege of teaching at beach now they're leaving as fast as they can find new positions some though not all of these managerial problems can be laid to a fearful obsession with oak's test scores and the ways in which they are addressed programs to address crucial performance and equity issues as championed by former director gonzalez have been judged inconsequential and cut not for want of funds but rather because faculty from the school and community have been deliberately driven away with insults and small-minded pencil whipping beech has also been using oak's test
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scores to publicly rank children achievement on the tests was used as the filter for determining not just who would walk across the stage at my daughter's last uh 8th grade graduation last year but even who was mentioned by name graduating students not perceived as achieving were left anonymous even as they were promoted similarly as test results are received children's names are recited to their classes in order of results all the students know who has the highest score who the lowest and where they as individuals fall in the spectrum many of my children's classmates are exhibiting signs of extreme stress around testing and receiving their results including openly weeping and hiding complaining of headaches and nausea and becoming increasingly fearful of school all together administratively each is likewise non-functioning when my children arrived for their first day of middle school they had no teachers while the entire sixth grade faculty had announced in early may that they were leaving no permanent teachers had been found in the intervening four months district support and response have created more problems and have brought us no solutions pbs has some well-written policies created through extensive public processes often with people in this room we would ask that you please follow them thank you uh can you call the next two our next two speakers dana brenner kelly and rita moore i'm dana brenner kelly l b-r-e-n-n-e-r-k-e-l-l-e-y i'm here tonight speaking to you on behalf of a group called parents for excellent portland principles the group was formed when parents across the district met and realized that many localized concerns with school administrators were not isolated incidents but we're representative of pervasive themes of dysfunction i'm here i'm here to share concerns in a constructive and solution-focused manner my 15-year career as an internal and external leadership and organizational development consultant and for my testimony as well i asked the board to consider the following and reflecting on principles policies practices and laws are relevant only if used and managed to many of the board policies are some of the best around however a large number of them are often not valued enforced or managed to by administrators at the building level and on up i ask what is the role of the board when lack of alignment between policy and practice is brought to light currently a principal alone can decide what kind of immersion program to offer whether or not to host a special education classroom or what long-standing unique programs can be cut an administrator's tenure in a school is usually only two to three years there is a great cost to communities when principals make these decisions unilaterally how much authority for decision making should a principal have and when and how does the district weigh in at the dis as the district focuses increasingly on the role of common core state standards principals are sending the message that what matters most is test scores and graduation rates at all costs this seems about the only aspect that is being managed firmly and centrally i ask how many of the conflicts between communities and principles are rooted in unpublicized central office directives rather than decisions made by these individual principles i commend the board for making school climate and 360-degree feedback a priority i urge you to use research-based valid and reliable standardized tools that set district-wide standards and leave room for the unique qualities of schools use them for professional development rather than punitive or performance-based purposes what the criteria what are the criteria for selecting and preparing junior administrators for principalship are we choosing people with good track records with teachers and families as well as those who are operationally compliant research shows that emotional intelligence and the ability to manage ambiguity are the greatest predictors of leadership performance and both of those competencies are difficult to develop do we use strategic and succession planning practices based in leadership science first time principles are by nature readiness risks with steeper learning curves if on top of that first time principles are placed in situations inherently more challenging as in schools with co-located programs alternative education or special focus programs for with which they have no experience the odds may be stacked against their success readiness risk assessment should be
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standard operating procedure for all placement decisions to ensure the best match between staff and school needs we urge the board to ask whether an effort to redress historical racism principles of color have been promoted too rapidly or placed in particularly complicated programs before having the opportunity to develop the full range of professional skills and experience do not misinterpret this statement we strongly support the commitment to racial equity can you please wrap up your comments we asked the board to improve and clarify on policies and look more critically at conflict as an opportunity to improve operations and relationships my name is rita moore m-o-r-e and i am here to present um a list of requests of the pps board and district of district officials from pep the group parents for excellent portland principles to reduce current levels of conflict over principle placement and performance within the district we suggest that the board one reinstate the ombudsman position to track mediate and help resolve community complaints and reduce conflict ensuring position influence authority and community-based relevance two refrain from dis dismissing complaints by citing racism as the motivator without conducting an actual investigation of allegations three critically examine district practices for placing and preparing principles and providing ongoing mentorship with the right mentors for needed growth four employ best practice tools and methods to consistently gather and make constructive use of 360 degree feedback to enhance principal performance and accountability five employ consistent formal and research-based climate surveys across the district that adequately assess the role of principles in managing and fostering climate six assure any revision of the district complaint policy a is not more restrictive b assures confidentiality and no retaliation and c includes an implementation and monitoring plan embedded in the policy document seven establish and implement district policy and protocol for complaints that are consistent with best practices for example assure no rule no real or perceived conflicts of interest in investigator assignments before assignments are made b level 2 complaints should not be investigated by the person's direct supervisor c all investigators are qualified experienced and versed in the laws and policies relevant to the complaints d ensure a system of checks and balances so complaints are investigated and handled according to protocol eight revise current board policy and harassment to specifically include parents and family members of students as well as the broader community and nine as district as elected officials the pbs board of education members must demand accountability and oversight from district employees assuring practices policies and laws are followed and complaints are investigated this is the best way to identify and solve prevalent problems in the long term rather than allowing complaints by the public to be ignored by district staff as root problems grew thank you thank you thank you next we have angel rodriguez and erica schneider hi my name is erica schneider thank you very much for letting me speak tonight schneider spelled d e s-c-h-n-e-i-d-e-r i've taught in pps since 2006 but i have 11 years of experience as a teacher and i've taught exclusively in title 1 schools the voices of the families i serve are not often and hurt often heard in a forum like this so let me give you an idea what it's really like in a title 1 school in my 11 years as a general education classroom teacher i have had in my classroom a student with post-traumatic stress disorder a child who was born addicted to heroin a child who was physically abused by his parent several foster children and several homeless children also in 11 years i have worked with more children than i can count who have one parent in prison more more children than
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i can count who come from one parent households more children than i can count who are being raised by their grandparents i have made more calls to dhs than i can count to report abuse and neglect when we teachers attempt to bargain regarding our workload we are not advocating for ourselves we know that when a teacher we know that when a teacher has too much to do or too many students to serve that service suffers in my own classroom i teach third grade at james john and st john's i have 32 third graders and yes some of them have some of the special needs that i just mentioned i work through my half hour lunch every day preparing materials for the afternoon i take curriculum and papers to grade home with me every night to do on the couch after i put my own children to bed during the school day there just is not time for me to check in with every student it just isn't right for an eight-year-old to share one adult with 31 other children there is no parent in portland who wants that for their child it is not fair to students so when teachers talk about our workload it's because our students suffer when their teachers are overworked we teachers are not so different from you school board members you're in a voluntary position we do this you do this because you know it's important we know it's important many of us teach because we feel we've been called to do it we are passionate about working with children but this passion that we feel makes us vulnerable it makes us work it makes us take our work home when our workload increases because our students need us our commitment to our children makes us do more with less because kids still need so much attention our compassion makes us vulnerable to pay freezes and hiring freezes because we need to be there for our kids we are willing to do this work for modest pay nobody is paying us fifteen thousand dollars a month like you're paying yvonne zacker we are here tonight asking you to please listen to us we are down in the trenches providing direct service to students every day please stay at the bargaining table please please do what's right for students mr rodriguez mr rodriguez before you start um i think we're having an issue with our timer it went off oh i missed the okay sorry rousing speech i was caught up in it mr rodriguez my name is angel rodriguez rod rig uh tonight i come to you as a concerned community member and also committee member here in pps um i got a report called the parent involvement assessment project final report in 2007 it has a ton of recommendations in here about parent involvement parent engagement family engagement community engagement and as i read through it the other day i found that nothing has been done for five years nothing in this report all the money that was spent done on this report and the surveys and the hearts that came through our communities that were done in this there's nothing there i'm now the co-chair of dpix the district parent involvement committee when i look through what our job tasks are supposed to be we're supposed to be advising the board on family and parent engagement i haven't spoke to one of you besides steve when i invited him to come to the meeting but i haven't advised anything except for what kind of food to bring and who to make sure that our daycare is taken care of so while i was sitting the other night i was listening to public radio and bobby was on there speaking about engagement so i just want to
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mention a few things she said we need to define what parent engagement means today that's huge like why haven't we done that yet but i think as we do that we also need to define what you mean by achievement because it seems like everything you guys talk about is focused on achievement what does achievement mean because right now i think it means test scores that's all it seems it means so you spoke bobby about you have parents that are helping their kids with homework waking up and getting their kids off to school we are doing that but when we get homework that we don't understand and curriculum that we don't understand common core and this new state standard tests that are going to come out how we expect us as parents to even help our children when we don't understand it and when i read everything that comes from pbs it says ask your teachers our teachers have enough on their plate as it is they don't need well i don't need to ask a teacher we need to have forums we need to ask questions you need to hear our concerns why aren't we having those we had one at madison school we couldn't ask a question we got felt like i was put through assembly line i want to know what i can do for my kids the last one was we contract with a lot of communities of color agencies that support communities of color those where are those communities feel the safest why is it that our families aren't feeling safest in our own neighborhood schools that's a big problem there we should have to go outside we should be taking care of our inside you know i engage with my teachers all the time i have a child with special needs and these people behind me are my family so if you can do me the courtesy because i do it all the time please look at them as members of our community not just people looking for a contract these people are all of our family our last two speakers are diana collins and paula fahey hi i'm diana collins c-o-l-l-i-n-s i arrived tonight with a few teachers like me i teach seventh grade at george middle school in north portland 90 of students attending george are living below the poverty line this isn't just a statistic this is real the realness of the stress and trauma my students experience from hunger homelessness drug abuse family members in jail violence lack of warm clothes not being able to buy new glasses when there's breaks these are all truths that i as an educator have to deal with daily in order for my students to even come to school prepared it's intense it takes a toll emotionally and psychologically on me at times along with poverty thirty percent of students at george are english language learners and thirty percent of my students are special ed this adds to the complexity of my job i am passionate about the work i do and put in many hours during the summer before school after school nights and weekends i've applied for multiple grants to acquire basic materials i work to make learning engaging and relevant and i teach seven different classes advanced language arts remedial language arts avid advisory science social studies and reading support i memorized it recently recently my class is engaged in a hands-on field study looking at the chemistry of the willamette river with local scientists and watershed educators during this experience i saw my my students minds light up through their eyes this is why i do what i do and this is why you the school board believe in portland public schools because of the passion educators bring to our students all over the city i want to ask you to believe in your educators the work that we do and invest in them invest in providing time for educators to think and make plans to support our students invest in the health and welfare of those who serve day after day to provide our students with the safety stability and security they need to be successful academically invest in our students by providing them with the opportunities to be surrounded by dedicated experienced teachers passionate about serving them believe in what we do we do more than teach lessons we've had to integrate synergy a new evaluation system a new email system a new testing system the common core and proficiency based grading all since the start of the school year with limited training these are big changes that require time to practice and implement during the day i have a 45 minute planning period to do what i do this is roughly six minutes per plan per period to plan for my classes
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if you take anything from my message please take this with you my story is not exceptional listen to your teachers about workload class size and planning time it is vital to the success of our students in our schools thank you hello my name is paula h fahey y it reads fighting for schools portland students deserve on the back of my shirt which leads to the question what do portland students deserve here is my answer partland students deserve classrooms where they can move around at the school i teach in many of the classes have over 30 students one solution investing classroom teachers for real reduction in class size portland students deserve educators who have time to consult with each other and work together one of the strengths and beauty of portland schools is the diversity of the student body to better meet the needs of all students and plan for the achievement of all students staff should be able to plan and consult with each other with every second of every day rigidly programmed this is not allowed to happen there is not time during the workday for special education providers to plan with general education teachers there is not time for teachers to plan with educational assistants whose workday often mirrors that of the student day there is not time for enrichment specialists to plan or coordinate instruction with teachers this is harming our students portland students who receive special education services deserve to receive a program where the general education teachers and the special education service providers work together my workload as an elementary school learning center teacher has increased tremendously in the last few few years the following duties have been added to my job copying filing scanning academic testing report writing case management of evaluations coordinating the transition of students from early childhood programs to school-based programs and writing their ieps monitoring and implementing behavior support plans as well as serving students with a wider range and degree of needs wider range and degree of needs than 10 years ago there is no time to work with general education teachers to plan for the needs of these children all of the above work as well as writing ieps and case management duties for current caseload students is to be completed in three and a half hours per week there is also the added workload due to the reduction of service providers on the motor development team and the very few autism specialists in the district there is no time to consult or collaborate with general education teachers this adds to their workload and in the end it's the students who suffer and the school board with your current proposal wants to make it worse portland students deserve better portland students deserve educators who feel respected and valued by the administration and the school board i've been working for portland public schools for over 25 years yes there were more resources in the 80s and the beginning of the 90s but a bigger difference between now and then is how decisions were made and programs were implemented i remember when changes made in the special education department were made by committee of current special education service providers working directly with children and families and administrators jointly now we receive now we receive an email with a change or no notification in the past when programs removed closed or changed the administrators involved sat down with the teachers to plan the changes and how best to meet the needs of the impacted students and families now we receive an email teachers and parents are left out of the conversation in the past when our jobs were reduced we had the courtesy of being told from the administrator we are asking that you do bargain with the portland association of teachers next item on our agenda um which is comments by president gwen sullivan of p-a-t per our contract with portland association of teachers their president their president gwen sullivan has requested some brief time on her agenda
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gwen welcome thank you very much thank you for the opportunity it always takes on it okay um just wanted to thank all of you for allowing me to speak today and listening to our very important stories it's hard for me to hear these it's really hard but i think i come to you today because it's the familiar message to listen to teachers and to talk with teachers and we think it's really important that you hear the stories that are happening in our schools that they're not made up that there's a serious problem in our schools we want to figure out how to take these priorities of of what's happening in the classroom and work collaboratively together to to solve these problems we know that at the bargaining table there's some strategy but we've heard often through myself as a parent getting emails and then i hear other comments from the district about these huge raises that we're asking for and i have to say if that's what you're publicizing you're not being very honest because if now hear me out i would just i think it's important when we're in negotiations we're not talking about pay raises we're talking about why we need to do things on behalf of our kids over and over we brought up stories about why things are important to us and what it means on behalf of our kids so if you heard those stories there you'd understand really why certain workload provisions class load provisions are important to meet the needs of our students now i would say at our first mediation session we were happy to see that some people who hadn't been at bargaining were there we had superintendent smith there was sean murray and we also had the consultant um yvonne deckard was also there we we um we heard that they were there though we didn't get to see anyone because in that mediation session that you think oh it's like a mediator a divorce that you know somebody to work things out it's not like that because at that first mediation session even refused to meet face to face with us just to get things going to get an understanding and really didn't hear anything nothing we got nothing from the district after eight hours and what what what we think is really important is that we do have more mediation in front of us we want to figure out how to make this work on behalf of our kids and it's going to take some time and some effort to really figure this out really figure this out in a meaningful way we know that you know if we had more of you at those public sessions you would have heard these stories and i know i know that that knowing this you would as elected positions you guys would know people that you would know that you have to do something to make sure it works on behalf of kids i think what i've heard at those sessions i know what i've heard is this urgency this huge sense of urgency from our teachers and professional educators of how the insurmountable workload of you just heard is actually harming children and so i hope that though i didn't know these particular stories i hope you heard it too that we need to look to figure out how we solve these issues together we could be looking at together how to reduce class size and workload not just eliminating certain portions of the contract those protections about workload have been there and they are the only thing at this point that has any protection to a student's learning condition is that workload language that's it
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we understand that there's been devastating years of cuts and we're happy to hear that there's more money coming in and we believe that there is a way that we could have a better process of making sure that that that money gets spent in a way that actually has direct impact to kids we think that there should be a process for that well we we actually do think that there's a way that we can do this because i know that when i go into any building and you sit down with educators including administrators secretary custodians paraprofessionals secretaries teachers everybody and you ask what could make it better what do you need in order to meet the needs of your kids that's the first place where we should start so um trying to do the face-to-face bargaining it's not over yet we sure hope that you will have the portland values in making sure that we do this the right way and don't go down a path that we can't turn back from because i don't think that those the pathway that it looks like we're being forced to go is not it's not just not good for educators it's terrible for students and it certainly is terrible for this whole city so please work with us not against us for the sake of our students hey hey is oh hey hey hey is okay okay um we don't see mr ryan from all hands raised um or our next item on the agenda so we are going to skip over um to our second reading of the amended cafeteria policy but before we do that ms sullivan i didn't get a chance to thank you for your comments thank you um so with that at our september 9th board meeting the first reading was held on the proposed cafeteria amendments after more than 20 21 days of being open for public comment and receiving none the board is ready to vote on the
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proposed amendments we will now consider resolution 4827 adoption of amended board policy on cafeteria plan policy 5.10.090.p or dash pm cafeteria plan do i have a motion and a second director knowles moves and director morton seconds the motion of to adopt resolution 4827. miss houston is there any public comment on this item no there's not no the board will now vote on resolution 4827 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution 4827 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative davidson voting yes yes thank you mr ryan has now joined us welcome we assumed maybe you had a tough time finding a parking spot but thank you for joining us mr ryan if you want to come up executive director of all hands ray defend all hands raised fantastic partner to our school district um welcome mr ryan thank you formerly portland schools foundation has come to us in the spring to do a report on the activities of the portland schools foundation when the schools foundation changed its mission to being the backbone for cradle to career and really now serves all six districts in multnomah county we thought it would be a great idea to have a second report from dan about the activities all hands raised and the collaboration across the six districts and so that's what tonight's will be although at the end he's also going to do a little bit of an update on on the activities of the foundation but two really different things and portland public is really like heavily engaged with the cradle to career partnership at all levels so we have staff who are working with each of the collaboratives that you're going to hear dan describe and pilot schools that we are testing out some of the strategies with the hope of having things then become more systemic but also just in the work of actually building the backbone and a way of collaborating that includes the city of the county the six school districts our business leaders university leaders and our really robust non-profit community so it's a really exciting thing the other thing i'll just throw in before i toss it over to dan is we're part of the national strive network and we were i don't know one of the fifth or six sites to come on board with strive but the infrastructure here in portland is really outstanding so when we go to the national convening just we've got a lot to share and a lot that we end up really being proud of about what it is that we've got to work with here in portland and i just want to also say thank you to dan for his leadership so dan ryan ceo of all hands raised thank you superintendent smith and i just want to acknowledge your leadership not just locally but on the national level everyone in dallas at the recent convening mentioned that they wish they had a superintendent that knew how to do community engagement with community partners as well as superintendent smith she doesn't stay in a silo which is something they're trying to teach other superintendents about so um good evening co-chair knowles and bile thank you for having me here it was a long walk from back there sorry i got lost in the craze it was great community engagement's alive and well and pps tonight and i'm happy to see all of you here this evening and thank you for your service so we have a little visual that we'll keep going through and it'll allow us to tell the story of the all hands raised partnership y'all oh by the way this is um my dear friend and colleague kelly torres cali torres is the vp of strategic planning for all hands raised and she's really here because they don't trust me going alone because i might screw up the technology so go ahead i could do that part probably yeah no no i'm just yeah so the footprint is important to know about because that was a big part of our story is that we decided and the big wii was the leaders roundtable and former mayor of former mayor sam adams education cabinet that the footprint would be the entire county and so here's the six urban school districts of multnomah county many of you know the demographics but it's hard to see on there but basically it tells a story that it's over 90 000 students but it's also almost 50 of color and there's other numbers in there that all of you are well aware but the general public is not and it's 55 of free and reduced lunch so it's real important that we put out that kind of story next this is the real case that you guys have
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been looking at for a long time and this one i think tells it the best looking at disparities when you look at who is actually equipped for a much better chance to have career and if we break it down by race which is very big in the partnership to do everything to disaggregate all the data you get to see in a ninth grade class if you look at the entire classroom in total it's 27 out of 100 have at least an associate's degree or above but that's it if you break it down by race you see that the native american students and the latino students are 10 and 10 of the 100 or 12 of those 100. so it's been very important in the storytelling that we're very clear about the disparities it was a big part of the storytelling and the process that the chair and the board and over 100 volunteers in the governance structure approved a set of indicators they wanted to make sure that the indicators weren't just academic but they also looked at social indicators attendance is a big measurement of those tools as you can see there's 12 indicators and they're broken down pre-kindergarten starting at birth weight all the way into the top one which is completing completing being connected to a career track of some sort by age 25. the governance structure is very vast we have over 400 people that are connected to either a collaborative work site or on the board or serving on a steering committee or the data team the focus though is always going to be on the kids and then it just how can we surround ourselves around our children and so it builds out from that with parents and families obviously the schools and the programs which are closely connected to the schools and families then you get to the collaborative work teams which are working on improving practice and it goes out like that the real backbone of this work is the fact that we want to improve practices it's not another fancy silver bullet coming down from my hot on high there's no superman or woman that's arrived in portland that's going to fix this it's organic work here in multnomah county the fact is we have a lot of great programs and services that partner with our schools and we have some relationships that are really clunky and we have a lot of disjointed efforts um so the real story the true story is probably that there's a lot more disorder and confusion than we want to admit and the hope is that we get to some sort of alignment and that's really what we're striving for it's about practice that's the real key here it's about improving practices one of our key mantras is that no one has the right arrow everyone has to improve so there's really uh ego doesn't get you too far in this game humility will go a long ways as we keep trying to figure out how to improve one way that we had to operate as an organization is shift i think where we used to be and where a lot of organizations and intermediary in intermediary organizations used to be that was easy to say um a lot of times what we have is the system where there are organizations that advocate or they actually are at the policy level which is necessary and then there's the practitioners right on the ground floor the teachers who are tonight are a good example of practitioners they're right in front of our students so our caseworkers and our social workers then you have foundations elected officials that of course set policy and also have investments but there's never been anything really in the middle that connects those two dots and so it's real important for us as an organization to try to get out of the political lanes so we don't do endorsements anymore we're not involved in the ballot box or the legislative lane and a lot of that is so we can really be that facilitator if you will of these of this type of work to connect those dots one way to explain this story is the scenario where there's the new greatest silver bullet idea and everyone chases that gazillion dollar effort and there's three years to make it work and then everyone writes their proposals to do that but there's not a lot of real capacity building in that type of a process so how can you really build authentic capacity for the long run that's the middle space that we have to operate in and i know with my staff we talk a lot about keeping our bumpers up we don't ever want to be the smarty pants up in the policy and think tank level nor do we ever want to pretend that we're the practitioners on the ground we are the people in between is that a look to hurry up should i am i behind okay so now the collaboratives are work on the ground and finally we have i say finally because it took about over a year in our newer collaboratives to figure out what the plan was going to be and they decided to focus on some implementation sites some pilot sites so what those flags are is they represent in the sixth district where those sites are the majority of the flags are with your ninth grade count sites which i'll talk about in a minute the other ones are for ready for kindergarten where there's a site in each district and then there's also the community attendance initiative by community supporting youth which also has a pilot site in each district
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with each collaborative there are some basic goals for example eliminating disparities in one year there was only one school district with an equity policy and in just one year's time there are now five school districts of the six in the partnership that have equity policies it's a honor to be here at pps because you guys were the leaders that paved the way for that so thank you for all your work and director atkins has just joined a conversation with other board members from the other six districts to have a parallel structure with the eliminating disparities committee and i know that that will add a lot of value the attendance initiative is looking at some promising practices at david douglas and that was a real breakthrough they have a real good ground game there and considering what their demographics are and the type of attendance figures they're getting they're a promising practice for us early learning was to notice that a lot of times your best solutions are right here in the local community you don't have to spend hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks on looking for the national best promising practice in fact it many times could be here so that was a great breakthrough um what about the um for ready for kindergarten the most important thing we've done there in a short period of time is the registration for kindergarten campaign and with that it was taking a promising practice at the county and just getting behind it and so we actually literally had people in a campaign this summer going to apartment complexes off sandy boulevard and other areas where there's a lot of high turnover mobility to get the parents and the new new immigrants registered for kindergarten we're hoping to bump that up another four notches all of this is to tell a story that together we go much further so the fact is we are going to get good results from each school district so by themselves probably but if we have a transparent program and we are working together and we're all learning from each other's practices it's going to go much further my throat is so dry i have to take a drink of water thank you and so a good example this is ninth grade counts it's a laboratory that's been around for four years and what we've seen is by especially this past year we have the quality standards conversation so what is it that makes a good summer program and we've learned from research and from one another what those are and each organization that's at the table there 20 of them are now aspiring to meet those quality standards there's also acceleration in this for example in the first year of looking at the data of our academic priority students involved in all six districts and in 15 community programs including some that are close to people at this table executive director matt morton we were noticing that um we just noticed that it was 7.4 in the first year and then in the second year when we looked at the data it accelerated up to 12.2 percent what does that mean it means that the academic priority students who are participating in ninth grade counts are attaining six credits or more at the end of their freshman year in comparison to those academic priority students who are not in ninth grade counts that's a good example of collected impact there's an acceleration of progress as this ripples out and we're all on the same page trying to align our practices so we had to tell the story and we put together uh something we delivered to all of you i hope you've had a chance to look at it we want it to be on kitchen tables we wanted to be in you know corporate boardrooms we wanted to be everywhere and it tells the story of this partnership carol said it superintendent smith said it great earlier and that is that the all hands raised partnership is actually making some headway locally but we're looked upon as an example nationally on how to do this right there's a lot of effort to make sure that we have a lot of checks and balances that there's a lot of engagement but there's also a lot of structure and we really get back to the continuous improvement discipline about everybody at the table can improve because no one's getting out of the park or we wouldn't have the disparities that we have today so that's a conclusion on our update on the collective impact work that's going on in multnomah county of all hands race partnership many of you have attended some of those meetings i did bring something that maybe you could bring this up there it's a listing of the staff members of portland public schools that are participating in the collaboratives and i know that when superintendent and i meet once a month it's really helpful to see who's engaged in what collaborative because it's really about building capacity and it's as simple as having checks and balances and far as far as who's participating before i conclude my thoughts here do you want me to go ahead and do this part or should we take questions on the collective impact work first before we shift i think any questions on this part sure director bill are you going to do another part yes there will be a second one thank you okay okay
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question this part at the end is that okay you can do whatever you'd like dr beale yeah great um so we are proud to let you know that the uh equity grants this past year hit a milestone of over a million dollars and that's actually a 45 increase over five years in terms of the equity fund that goes right back into portland public schools and we're really thrilled that after a few years of listening to parents say that they really would like to explain this equity fund when they're out in the community and because when people hear that one-third of the money goes away sometimes that's all they hear they don't hear that it goes into a equity fund and that zero zero not one fee is collected by all hands raised or portland public schools but that 100 goes right back into the classroom and that's of course because of our if you uh collect cans and bottles and send them into new seasons that's literally how we help pay for that program it's the cans for kids program at new seasons little plug for that your neighborhood store and we're thrilled with that we also know that this is a national this is a national promising practice we get calls at least once once a month from a school district around the country that ask us if this really does exist it sounds too good to be true well thank god in 1998 this school board passed a policy that said one third of those funds would go into an equity fund and then this organization your private partner it's our duty to ensure that that we maintain that and sustain that and we're earnest about that and we and every year we get some interesting feed pushback and we're grateful that it stayed intact and it is a promising practice and all of you should be proud that at portland public schools we have that because this is one school district and most cities are struggling with how to do that when they have disparities of income in their district so we now have a video which we're going to show thank you director knowles for the feedback that it might be good idea to show this tonight it's where we live play and go to school and this is my school and this is my teacher cinerita rojas and i'm one of the over 120 teachers who are supported by parent fundraising because parents care enough to give did you know there are over 80 schools in the portland public school district and over 47 thousand students my name is shanthi and this is my teacher mrs grissman she's been teaching us all year about keeping a steady beat learning recorder and having a nice tone when you're singing thank you shanti our local schools foundation worked together with parents and families to support music and art in the schools teachers like me all over the district and we really appreciate all you do thank you every year our parents do amazing things to support our schools parents raise millions of dollars that go directly into our classrooms more teachers means more opportunity and better learning my name is caitlin and this is my math studies teacher miss biker she's really challenged me and showed me how to use math in my future and in everyday life not just in the classroom the incredible support that we get from the pps parent community really helps keep teachers funded and in the classroom to help caitlin and students like her reach the next level our local school foundations work together to make sure every kid has an opportunity to learn and grow hi i'm in his role i'm elijah i'm trey quante i'm joe t and this is our school this is mr williams he's been a great mentor for me this year the equity fund provides funding for programs like this it's supported by the parents and it's student focused and it's all about student success parents throughout portland public schools are engaged and active on many levels and yet it is the foundations equity fund that weaves us together as one district in one community we have the gold standard in this county for parent-based fundraising with one-third of the funds raised supporting our district-wide equity fund it is symbolic to say that you care about all children in the district and it is a bold and concrete action to share your purse with those children and families who are most in need i'm proud to be a portland public schools parent where we all work together to raise money not just to support our own kids but to support kids throughout the community by tracking data and using a fair and equitable formula the portland public schools foundation make sure that all schools no matter their demographics or challenges benefit from the passion we all have for our kids and the portland public schools foundation equity fund grants ensure an excellent and equitable education for every child from cradle to career because at the end of the day they are all our kids future teachers
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firefighters community leaders and ceos i'm quinn i'm in eighth grade so that means i got four years to go before i graduate thank you so much for all you do for me and all of us it really makes a difference a really big difference thank you director knowles for that suggestion it's a great video yeah i should have led with that transitioning from that to this was over i don't know how to relate to it any questions or okay director bill i had two questions well three actually the first one is have you bought your twenty thousand dollar pink helmet yet from the that they're selling from the ducks games you know the uh uh the the question i have two real questions so first one is uh what what what kind of a filter do you use for the bad ideas that keep coming out of the educational reform movement for instance i saw you speaking at the oeib uh did a nice job down there too but there's so many it's like a cauldron of bad ideas down in the state department and it's it's having terrific destructive uh it's a really a destructive element we heard it tonight and the teachers when they were talking about the testing and the overload and all this junk that's coming out do you do you filter that out when because because i know you're really you're not actually doing specific things yourself programs yourself you're bringing groups together and do you filter out those people who want to do those kinds of ideas i'm grateful that there's alignment in the state about trying to figure out how to connect the dots between the community service programs the government programs and the schools and in the regional compact idea that's part of the best standard and actually it's multnomah county partnership work that's been going on over the last three years that's been a real spark at oeib to look at a more loose a looser structure so it can be more organic and in the local community so we're in alignment with the localized solutions that can come from the local best practices that are emerging from our community that's what we're doing is the i've talked to you about an idea that i had where the all hands raised would put together uh some sort of a booklet that lays out the various different agencies and how principals or counselors or whomever can use that booklet to get help for their children have you thought any more about that idea i have because we had a conversation recently and that's my most honest answer it was an earlier one but i think i don't think it was with you and i think that we have to look at how that could be constructed so that it remains relevant because i know there was at a time where we dug into this with united way when i first started and it wasn't nearly enough money and it seems as though every time we would get to go to production it was already it wasn't relevant and so it sounds like such a simple thing and how can 2-1-1 how can all hands raise how can we provide some sort of tool that you speak to which is very smart it's there's a lot of common sense in that so when you're teachers who are who are here tonight and others in our schools have some better relevant current information about resources and that is something that i'd like to have more conversation about how we can be a part of that so i appreciate that you have not let up on asking me about that because you sent me an email about that months ago and then you brought it up on friday and now here i am in front of all of you to say that i that i'm that i'm taking it in and um well i'll get back to you good yeah thank you you're welcome anybody else one question you currently provide grants to
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various schools in portland public schools and they're you know 15 20 25 000 type grants how do you go about assessing the effectiveness of those grants or is there a way to distinguish you know this 20 or 25 000 from all the other efforts that are happening in the school is there how do you look at what you're doing and know that you're making a difference well thank you director regan there is a paper trail that allows us to ask what they plan to do with the investment it's loose in terms of it has to fit into the school improvement plan and then they get to tell us what it is that they will do with that twenty thousand thirty thousand dollar investment there's a lot more leeway than there was at one time at one time equity funds could not be spent on staffing but we didn't think there was fairness attached to that because the local school foundations who have a parent community who has resources when they raise money it's always usually guided towards buying back constructors so if an equity school wanted to use that 20 000 to make an art teacher go from 0.25 to 0.5 then that's in the discretion of the principal and the regional director that it's an oversight we get many examples of what goes on with that there's been investments equity investments in terms of trainings there's been tutors that have been completely focused on the kids in freshman year who have failed their algebra class and if that's the case in the first semester at benson high school they had great success within the second semester having them be all of them signed up for a tutor and retaking that algebra class but then taking the next algebra one in sequence and so at the end of freshman year with that extra investment many of their students were not behind by a whole year in fact they caught up so we really allow the building leader and the regional director is that the right title or a regional administrator regional administrator in in partnership to come up with that idea we have um we have boundaries but they're fairly broad did that answer your question and they're on our website you can see stories of what those investments are that's great yeah dr martin i have a not a question but a comment it's nice to see you both here thank you for coming i want to say you know in my day job i work for an organization that actually has staff members who participate in each of the collaboratives and one of the things that that i found is is pretty remarkable and that's the the movement that has taken place in each of these um dan you mentioned the eliminating disparities collaborative and and uh the fact that we've gone from one equity equity policy to five equity policies in this region is pretty remarkable that each of these the outcomes around ready for kindergarten the work that's happening and and and the recommendations that are happening in the ready for kindergarten collaborative going back to the state in fact many members have testified before state committees talking about their concerns around readiness in our community so i really i i'm i just want to for a moment seeing the praises of all hands raised and the commitment that they've had to group uh community together to group stakeholders together to allow for a place for the conversation to take to actually happen and these are not easy conversations either these are very messy conversations there uh and to your your point uh director buell these are these are conversations that sometimes are on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of philosophy in terms of practice and and there happens to be a an actual method of bringing all of those disparate ideas into alignment and that's that collective impact and the fact that most if not all of the individuals as a part of these these collaboratives have come into it with that commitment and those that don't i don't think stick around too long because that isn't the place that uh that they feel heard or that they feel like like they can bully their way through through a process so i really appreciate the commitment of all hands raised to do this and uh and it is a uh not only an example across the state but really across the country so thank you both thank you and director morton i want to acknowledge your active engagement in the lemonade disparities collaborative it's very helpful so thanks thank you he does wear two hats and it's appreciated you know one of our mottos is that we fail forward and um we really mean that i can't tell you how many mistakes we make daily weekly monthly and what's important is that we notice that and then figure out how to redirect one of our big redirects over the last month is that we're shifting from a community of interest portland oregon is known to be a
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community of interest and then how do we shift from that interest to that practice and it might mean that the meetings that some people are attending with interest might not want to be there now that it's moving into the pragmatic who other practitioners are going to move the work forward so part of having a backbone is helping move the collaboratives into that next phase director question on the um uh the disaggregated slide you showed do you do that with income as well or is it just race we do it we break it down by income as well but the commitment by the partnership was to focus on race and that was looking at the objective data that we had from the intelligence at the table and it was also the number one priority of the partnership is equity and so it's great that we have an eliminating disparities collaborative but i think it's even more important to me that in each of the other collaboratives that we are constantly making sure that those practices are front and center so it's it's um as we look at attendance it's real important to break that down by race as well so but also do you do it with income as well we do it by race and we also do it by we can do it by income but our commitment the storytelling is by race yeah i mean i i applaud that i think it also helps flush it out to include income i would encourage you to free and reduce lunch data allows us to always break it down by using that as the as the indicator so to your point thank you our next agenda item is looking at achievement compact so the internal district achievement compact for the state and the other feature of all hands raised and cradle to career um is the becoming a regional regional collaborative collaborative do you want to just say a little bit about that and what that means just because we're kind of doing it a little differently i think than was originally imagined but i think it has good opportunity for us in terms of what's at the edges of the system so what's happening on either side of k-12 that we have great opportunity i think by being one of the model regional collaborators we're one of 12 sites that was selected we're one of three that's been asked to be a mentor site so we'll actually be working with some of the newer regional collaboratives for example douglas county we've also worked with the folks in deschutes county in jefferson county yeah we're thinking about a certain person right and so we'll be a mentor site to some other regions around the state and really it's taking that model that we've done here which is that the schools can't do it alone it's that basic fact 18 of the time the kids are in the schools what how do we make certain that our wraparound services that we've always called in government programs and the non-profit programs can also have practices that are actual in alignment so it's trying to flip the relationship instead of having pps have all these organizations come at you how can we be that intermediary that also helps figure out how we meet each other at our edges so that we're all improving together and we're all looking at the same kids so it really gets to extending learning people that just happen to have one or two functional parents at home they usually the data indicates that they have a much better chance for success it's how to do what director buehl knew when he was a teacher how do you care for those kids when after the bell ends at the end of the day when they go home for the weekend when they go in for the summer and what is our community's responsibility to figure that out so taking that model and having it be a region by region by region across the state we're looking at it right now here in multnomah county and most of the examples are surrounding themselves by one or maybe two counties good thank you both sure and i'll just mention before you leave i'm glad you brought up that last point because that's been the biggest impact i've seen it make is rather than saying the school district is doing something wrong and fix it it's really aligned a whole bunch of support services and a whole bunch of folks who were interested in doing their mission or their focus and knew they had some responsibility but they didn't have a way to connect those dots so i just really thank you for being the convener to bring those into alignment because again together we can do a heck of a lot more but we needed a place and an opportunity to do that so thank you absolutely thank you all for having us three minutes um by request we're going to take a short three minute break and we will be right back we're gonna go ahead and start all right we are back in order we are going to move on to our next item on the agenda which is the 2013-2014 achievement compact superintendent smith can you please introduce this item
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yes and melissa goff our executive director of teaching and learning and joe suggs director of research and evaluation are here to walk us through the achievement compacts and the the brief comment i will make before having them um like walk through the specifics just that this has come before you a number of times and as we've been working to align what we had been using as our milestone measures with the achievement compacts you've got definitions that continue to shift in here as we align so just know that we're working to end up with one set of metrics and walk ourselves over to the achievement compact but you lose some things in the translation because uh the definitions keep changing and we're working to calibrate with the state achievement compact so just there's a little bit of and we're now reliant on their data as opposed to data that we can then pull up ourselves so you're going to get a little bit of that transitional experience um and i will turn it over to melissa goff to walk you through so we've done a powerpoint in order to try and synthesize and give you high level so that you're not wading through all the data cells to understand what it is we're doing before we turn it over to miss goff can we just clarify that the definitions keep changing not from us no but from the state the state keeps changing how to calculate these how to calculate and when to calculate correct and how many times you can test like we've had what the cut scores are we've had numbers of changes as we've been working to do this and our commitment has been to do the alignment um so that we end up with a single set of metrics that we're utilizing so just to say that thank you yeah you guys are going to get to have the floor and do the whole thing here part of the issue though is the state in this case is actually two different it's oeib and it's the assessment and accountability office which is charged with implementing a lot of the definitions in the data collection and so we've got a disconnect there where ob oeib may change a definition assessment accountability may need to tweak it in order to make it work and so there's this back and forth going on there as well thank you all right thank you i'm frantically trying to pull up the powerpoint um while i address you so thank you i will do that in just a minute um so uh first i just want to say uh that it's important for us to start by creating a backwards timeline um of how we got to where we are and part of that story is also telling part of what has already been pointed out so thank you for the opportunity to share with you this most recent report the proposed list of advisory committee members and the existing committee's recommended targets for 2013-14 student outcomes for submission to the oregon education investment board a brief timeline review should help in establishing shared background knowledge regarding the achievement compacts in pps in june of 2012 initial recommendations for setting achievement compact targets were presented to the school board during the three board level discussions that followed through october of 2012 the board expressed an interest in establishing rigorous targets by which to measure our progress in serving our students on january 28 of this year the achievement compact advisory committee presented a preliminary board report establishing ambitious goals in third grade reading to learn ninth grade credits earned and five-year high school completion at this time the team shared with the board our preliminary recommendation for a methodology to employ for 2013-14 targets the deadline for districts setting these targets was extended from the end of last school year to october 2013. this reflected an acknowledgment by the department of education that it is easier to set targets when you have the previous year's data in hand we appreciate this acknowledgement in preparation for our recommendations to you tonight the committee has communicated regarding both the methodology and this report update finally i believe lead staff may have walked through some of this information um during an earlier meeting this month with the board as each of you have a copy of the recommended achievement compact data as a part of your packet staff thought it may be most helpful to view the data in a more easily digested format and to highlight the significant commitments to our students that this compact represents in order to do that i have to take a minute and try to get on my email i'm sorry correct i believe they have had ample feedback regarding the ease with which this data is viewed yeah thank you
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we'll continue to provide that feedback we will yeah all right so here we go so here's a copy of um a list of who serves on the achievement compact advisory committee uh you can see that i serve on the committee terry harrington who's a fifth grade teacher and vice president of portland's association of teachers we also have two teacher representatives one from roosevelt high school and one from lent k8 michael bauer and matt olsen we have principal representation from all of the levels we have a regional administrator and the director of esl in addition to these representatives portland approached our achievement compact committee a little differently than some of our other districts and we recognize ex-officio members to participate in our conversations so we have two students who participate thank you for the plug for student participation i appreciated that very much earlier um we also have representatives from our coalition of communities of color from the portland business alliance from the pta and martin gonzalez served as the pps board liaison i think it might be i don't know i believe it is you i think that's correct i believe that's correct please let me know in your next meeting i will let you know all right so hopefully this view is better than it does on the laptop so i'm going to walk you through the data in a way that is a little bit easier to read i think than the um then the mode that we are we type in for oeib so the first slide i'm showing you is the four year graduation rate so this is looking at our cohort of students who start together in the ninth grade and whether or not they finish within that typical desired four year time frame for high school graduation you'll see all students is on the left hand side in the teal blue column it all students who started school as freshmen in 2007 2008 62.3 graduated on time in four years 53 percent of historically underserved students in that same cohort graduated on time the next group of students that you see are are the next year's ninth graders we have set targets on the far right column and i'm explaining this slide to you so that you'll understand as you see the rest of them as well the grade columns are really looking at our targets that we're proposing for you tonight so when we're looking at targets we're looking at targets set for students who were 9th graders in 2010-11 who would be graduating with their cohort of students at the end of this school year and that those are the numbers that you see set there in front of you one of the things we always do when we present to the board is we desegregate our data by race here you can see the same data that is shown in the first two columns on the previous slide but broken out by rays again you can see the orange column is the most recent four-year graduation rate data we have a significant drawback with our american indian and alaska native students and slight increases in many of our other areas with a nominal decrease and a nominal increase for black students and historically underserved students respectively historically underserved students it's important to note is a terminology that you do not see on the achievement compact document one of the requests that portland public schools in conjunction with other school districts across the state has made with oeib is that they discontinue the term of disadvantage to refer to historically underserved students they have taken that on in most of their written documentation but in the oeib document it still reads as disadvantaged so i wanted to make sure you understood that those are the same two data sets so this is our first really aggressive target that we're setting a five-year completion rate of a hundred percent for students who are ninth graders this year so what we're doing is uh creating within this many sell document a back mapping based upon that five year completion rate of 100 for this year's ninth graders so you'll see those numbers getting closer to 100 in those cells and actually melissa on this one would you talk a little bit about completion what completion means yes i will and actually joe will make sure that i include all of the categories um so when we're talking about high school graduation we are talking about the uh the the diploma
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itself students who earn enough credits to earn a high school diploma high school completion allows students to be credited for for diplomas such as special education diplomas if students are are on an iep and are needing specific support it also recognizes students who receive their ged i'm trying to think of other oh there's the oregon diploma and the oregon diploma which has a lower credit rate than what we require for our students and all of those are included within the five-year completion rate and another year is also included in the five-year completion rate so this is the look of the five-year completion rate information taking a look at ninth graders from 2007.08 i'm not sure you can still hear me um and then ninth graders from 0809 you'll see we still don't have that data it's not finalized from the state until february of 2014. so we do have preliminary numbers ourselves but in order to to share specifics with you we want to we need to wait for the state's official data our target that we're recommending that you set tonight is for ninth graders from 2009 10 to have an 83.3 percent five-year completion rate and for the historically underserved students within that class to have a 78 completion rate that puts you on track going from 2009-10 to 2011-12 to 2012-13 and 2013-14 students this year's freshmen to hit 100 percent this is the data that we do have available to us the most recent data from the state disaggregated by race for our five-year completion rates so you can see there's a fairly significant difference between student performance in their ability to complete so our second ambitious target is in third grade reading we are recommending that a hundred percent of this year's first graders are reading to learn by third grade if you remember last year when we came to you we set an achievement uh compact target that uh last year's kindergarten students would be 100 of them would be reading to learn so our methodology that we've shared with you in that complex white paper back maps from that 100 percent marker to have students reading to learn here is the data as it breaks out when we're talking about again this is only state oaks data so this is not looking at other indicators of student success with reading it is the summative marker that we have in common across our state so you can see in the left-hand column how we did in 1112 and in the right-hand grouping how we did this last school year the far left the black column is the state performance the pale blue is all students within pps and then the bright blue is our pps historically under underserved students it's important to note that we are year before last we outpaced the state by 6.4 percent um overall in our student body this last year across the state we saw steps backwards in third grade reading and part of that is due to some pieces that i'll speak to in a moment but when you look at the steps backwards the nominal shift that you saw in portland public as compared to what happened at the state level is is pretty striking and we were really able to to maintain where we were which is impressive as you look across the state other districts were not that fortunate so again this is the third grade reading data disaggregated by race the bright orange column is our most recent data from last school year from last spring again you can see that only in one racial category of american indian and alaska native which is our smallest racial group and thus fluctuates pretty rapidly so sometimes you can see it take drastic declines and drastic increases that that racial group did see an over eight percent increase in students who met that third grade reading benchmark but across the board you can see that our racial subgroups are not faring as as well as we would like to see them again when you look across there is some consistency among those racial groups however we didn't see again the same uh
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fall off that that was seen across our state so here's the target slide so third graders last year in 2012-13 are in the far left third graders in 2013-14 are in the middle so that's this school year what we're recommending as the target for students and then the far right column is our our target for this year's first graders when they're third graders so our last uh our last indicator that i wanted to be sure to share with you tonight is around ninth grade credits earned and i'm going to pause as as we as i speak to this and just share one of the challenges with this data as as we were discussing at the outset is that we have seen repeated changes in how the state calculates data so when we look at the high school indicators of ninth grade credits earned it was originally coupled with ninth grade attendance there was consternation around when does ninth grade end does it end when you enter your sophomore year or does it end when you exit june 30th of your freshman year when we look at the high school cohort graduation rate and five-year completion rate similar conversations have led to a lack of stability with the numbers over time which has made it really challenging for us to provide you as a school board with consistent information because the information that we're reporting is in response to the most current requirements of the state one of the pieces that also changed has changed is when we look at indicators such as that third grade assessment indicator we're looking at oaks testing that's a summative test that is offered used to be offered three up to three times a year now we limit to just two times a year it's really best practice to give kids their best shot after they've had the most education possible and test them as late as possible in the school year part of the challenge is the the meets scores on our state assessments are are set on a bell curve so when students across the state begin to perform better then the state takes another look at performance and says okay is the bell curve changing and if the bell curve is changing then we need to change the cut score and re-establish the bell curve because of the way that is set it means that for many of our assessments over time just in the four years that i've sat in front of this board and talked about assessments we've had different cut scores in various tests so again it makes it very difficult as we look at year to year data to be able to give you very cogent information so i apologize for that so 9th grade credits earned this is looking at students as they enter their sophomore year it is not coupled with attendance so it all of the education that students are getting through summer programming does count towards their ninth grade credits earned correct okay making sure um all right so you can see the last two years of data ninth graders from 11 12 and then our ninth grade performance last school year which is which our students did not perform as well last year as they did the year prior and you can see our recommended targets for this year which are again our third ambitious objective which is really to keep kids get them the credits that they need to stay on track toward graduation and here's that data desegregated by race again you can see that fluctuation for american indian and alaska native students and pretty small steps backward or small gains across other racial groups all right questions can we get a copy of that report yeah absolutely the powerpoint yeah do we have questions before we begin to approve normally we would consider the motion and then we would have discussion um so let's let's do that um so we'll now consider resolution 4825 resolution to approve 2013-14 achievement compact targets do i have a motion in a second so moved seven director morton moves and director knowles seconds the motion to adopt resolution four eight two five miss houston is there any public comment on this resolution no there's no now we're ready for board discussion thank you i have a hi thank you that was a great
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report and much more understandable than what's in front of us i you can see i've bled all over this thing trying to understand it i did have a couple of kind of broad open-ended questions to start with one is there's a category called local priorities what other measures reflect key priorities in the district and i know it says it's optional but i'm curious that we don't have anything in there well i i can speak to that so one of the things that was a great advantage to us as a district with the achievement compacts is that they very much mirrored our milestones which were already our local performance indicators so so when we embarked upon the achievement compacts one of our conversations as a committee was are we going to add additional indicators and additional measures to discuss or are we actually going to continue to hold ourselves accountable to those performance indicators that we see as most valuable which happen to be fortunately reflected within the compact and so that was our decision around that or i recommend it maybe i i guess i was looking at some things like the fact that we are trying to introduce more and more language immersion programs to have an impact on our emerging bilinguals and i look at that as kind of a local priority that we hope will have a pretty significant impact but it doesn't make sense to have that level of detail in something like this it's more difficult because of the way the way the boxes across the the columns run we would need to be indicating um the number of disadvantaged students within our dual language immersion programs for example using that out to its nth degree um breaking that down by race where we know that if we're targeting students whose native language is that target language that racially the racial makeup may be 50 percent students um for example 50 hispanic students in our dual language spanish programs so it's hard to find indicators that would be consistent across the board because our targets for a mandarin program might be different than our targets for a spanish language program um i had another question at the bottom where it talks about the investment what is the public investment in the district and again that was blank there's a formula of revenue and then in terms of local revenue federal revenue state grants i mean we have a local option we have an arts tax we have title one funding we have special ed funding we have uh school improvement grants and so i was curious why none of that is included in here and again is that is this an optional no it doesn't look like exceptional so i'm just curious why that's not reflected in here i don't know i'm going to be really honest with you i do not know our first one it was pop those days were populated by the state or by us they were only populated by the state and that white cell at the top of the column is populated by the state so yeah we we've been trying to get some clarification on how we're supposed to derive these from you know looking to other districts for input and just haven't landed there so we've spent oddly we spent time verifying the formula revenue making sure that that was accurate because part of what we've been trying to make very certain of is that the white pre-populated uh boxes are accurate so that we're able to build from them but we will follow up on that thank you and i think part of the discussion from uh at least from a lot of the other districts has been uh because that's a goal that's being set do we set that goal at the qem level do we set that at something at three quarters of the qem level where does that target get set and i don't think anybody has a real good answer to that to my knowledge well my senses if we set it at the qem level then we wouldn't necessarily need to ask local voters to go out for local funding you know if the state was doing its job it would be a great relief too yeah you know on that note i mean the one thing i one thing i really do appreciate about this form from the state is that it does call out the qam number i did appreciate that too 84 million dollars more would come to portland public schools if the state decided to invest in its own constitutionally mandated quality education model so that would be you know for example 840 teachers right like 10 per school that would be a full-time librarian pe teacher counselor arts and additional classroom teachers in every single school so you know it's just you know so i appreciate the state included that i'd love to see rather than what they're putting into this and what they're putting every single school
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district through the hoops to try to reconcile the data and conform to this how about putting some effort together on how we invest in our school so we can provide you know the teachers and the folks that we need for our kids and just the percentage breakdown is 74 where we are funded at 74 of the qem model right thank you you can have somebody else going dr martin thank you very much for the presentation i have a couple of quick questions one is just a comment around actually language and i wanted to point out i really appreciate the language around underserved populations versus disadvantaged populations i think it it puts that underserved terminology puts the onus on us uh as an organization not not actually on the the community and the children um so i i appreciate that and hopefully the state will follow suit in that too but uh the other thing and i think this is important to to recognize for us particularly given the participation of teachers and earlier in the meeting and that's the composition of this committee and one that that reflects our leadership within buildings our principals regional administrators three teachers um and so on i i think and i know the and also community members at large or ad hoc community members um which i think is really an important voice to include in here and i know has been a voice that's been really helpful in the process too um so i want to recognize that and and many of those i know teachers who have been involved in this are actively involved and work with pat so um including the vice president um so i i think that's an important note to make the other is uh these recommendations are i think really um i mean it's exciting for me uh being a part of a community that that was on the far left of that column and with a 29 graduation rate i think let's be audacious about this and let's figure out a way to to improve outcomes for for each kid regardless of of race in our classrooms it is also i think very realistic for them to uh for the committee to say wait a minute we even doubt it in a in a way because of the because of the quality education model and the fact that we're 74 percent of that we're concerned about funding too and are we able to achieve this without that that quality education model funding i think that's an important piece in here to point out that the last comment for me and this is this is one that is sort of the brass tax how do we move particularly the methodology that they described which is really looking at 10 decreases it's looking you know double-digit change in in outcomes right now how do we translate that into or at least match that into sort of district-wide investments and then also realistically school-level um practice that's that's my ques and maybe not a question just for you but it's a question in general how do we do that and actually what we've got planned for an upcoming board meeting are presentations both about the third grade reading campaign which we're getting ready to launch both and we're going to do a work session where we get to go in depth on that so that it precedes the budget cycle for this next year and you're able to hear what are we launching now and what are we looking at for the next school year and then second the high school action team will be presenting its findings we ask them for a december deadline but we'll be doing a work session on those findings prior to the next budget cycle just so you can hear how do we do the deep dive that impacts the the achievement targets that have been set i'd also say it's it's about us working differently i mean i think dan ryan said that very well about how we're moving in with our community partners differently to to what superintendent smith was just talking about with a third grade reading initiative i'm really looking forward to being able to share with you some of the work that we're doing i spent my day today was out in schools speaking with principals about how they can really have dramatic change for uh to impact that third grade reading milestone and um it's really in dramatic partnership with our community partners who are wanting to lean in together to wrap around our schools so it's about us working differently one of the things i would just say as a as a story from the achievement compact advisory it's a great group for brass tacks as you said it's a very honest group of people who are very focused on what's best for kids who have hard conversations about how much emphasis do you put on a standardized single time assessment versus a five-year completion rate which
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indicates success for students in their ability for to open options beyond beyond high school we get into very deep conversations and and the quality education model is is not the least of those uh it is very difficult to to write down on a piece of paper a dramatic aspirational goal knowing that you are under um under resourced in in a significant way however everybody in that room also has aspirational goals for their students and at the end of the day the committee really collectively believed that it was in our best interest as a district to take a leap forward together and um and see what we're able to to accomplish when we set that type of aspirational target i just i just really wanted to commend the the committee and both for the diversity of the membership and i want to clarify it so that we're voluntarily or um we chose to add on ad hoc community members that that's not something that's required which just boggles me correct that that's not what the state is doing yeah and actually there was a proposal to like we did that originally when we set up our committee we identified community members because we knew that would be what we would want to do as portland there was then a move to do that statewide that then was turned down so like we remain doing it but it's not the case for the other achievement compact committees so but i would say that those ex-officio members that are listed in the powerpoint that i will send to you have been very actively engaged in the conversation the student voice in particular has been um has been extremely strong and the community voices i'm going to say it's been powerful for the community members who've been part of the committee and i hear from them about what a great committee this is and that they're in the conversations they want to be in about what's going to impact student achievement so this i mean this memo is just outstanding i mean i mean first the the aspiration goal is fantastic and then the calling out the qem and how we're being shortchanged by our state all of us in this entire state all our kids and um talking about sequestration the impact of federal cuts on our head start programs entitled to title 1 and title 2a and again calling out that challenge of wanting to emphasize a love of learning but then you have the targets that are based around the standardized test and continuing to wrestle with how to capture these values within the seemingly disconnected targets of the achievement contact i just really appreciate that like you said those conversations being being brought forward and written foreign to us and then that you're planning the committee's plan to focus on recommending strategies this year how do we actually achieve this which gets backs to matt's point so i had a couple questions around that just one being in terms of the third grade reading to learn you know what and i guess we'll be hearing about this at future meetings what are the practices the specific things we're doing in school that aren't just drilling to the test but what are the other pieces around reading to learn that are actually getting to that love of learning and love of reading which is we know is absolutely essential for child success throughout life and then um my other question was similar around the ninth grade the ninth grade credits what are the specific strategies we're doing as a district to get those to get that up but again i just really appreciate the work of the committee and the quality of effort here and i'm just really excited about about moving this forward notwithstanding the barriers and um my frustration with the state and the way they're they're choosing to go about this thank you and i would like to particularly call out amanda whalen the special assistant to the superintendent who has done an outstanding job in working with pretty divergent group of people in bringing us together and allowing it to be a safe place for us to disagree and move forward and find where all of our voices can be heard in the work thanks so much i had two more questions and one of them ruth just mentioned the earning nine plus college credits it seems in most of this those are blanks and i didn't quite understand that in the top oh and the top the top gray boxes um yeah i can address that those those actually are um the all the gray cells are data that are to be provided by the districts that's what the gray means and we have those data but what they are is uh what we had in there were the actual goals that were set for those measures and and because the rest of the goals in this sheet are in blue shading we remove those numbers just to avoid confusion part of the issue with the nine plus college credits is that that's one of the definitions that has just recently changed it went from the four-year
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cohort to the five-year cohort and in order to capture the fifth year cohort um of 90809 we actually have to wait until the data are available in february to show something other than the goals in that cell that makes sense uh yeah i would love to see that i'd love to see the data as soon as we could i guess one of the things that i have certainly talked to my colleagues about is whether or not at some point we would consider an audacious goal that every child in portland public schools graduates with a full year of college credit under their belt or a cte certification whatever it might be and so i find it kind of thrilling to see these nine college credits in the achievement compacts because there's first of all it helps our children realize that they are college kids if they can be successful in high school taking college credits and it also makes college so much more accessible in terms of finances if we can get there you know obviously there's a lot of question about what's accepted by universities or you know ap what's the test score before they'll allow you to do it i mean there's a whole lot of work i presume that's being done in this area but it's a it's a great goal to see in here so i'm real curious to see the numbers as we go so then the other thing i would just say in terms of board leadership is that one of the biggest frustrations i think that at least as a member of the oregon school board association we have had is that the oeib does not include a school board member or a parent on that board and it's incredibly frustrating so i'm very glad to see that we have ex-officios on this but i i guess i want to make sure that we have strong school board member involvement going forward i know that martine was a pretty regular one but you know it may be that we want to have two or three of us working on this going forward and it's pretty critical in terms of what we're trying to accomplish here and our goals are audacious going forward so i'd love to see us have more involvement and continue to fight with the state to get school board representation and numbers faster mm-hmm and numbers faster than that and not keep changing it so it's it's like they change this the type of fruit so we can't even sell the capitals oranges director martin real quick comment um and this is uh an interest one of the one of the people i had an opportunity to meet actually in the ready for kindergarten collaborative um who's a child development expert who now is is a volunteer uh in the area but she um has been really informative about informative about the ready for kindergarten assessment or kindergarten readiness assessment and uh and i'm interested we have a goal of 95 participation maybe this is a question for later but i'm really interested in how what we're gathering from that participation and and what quality information is coming out of that that is informing our instruction of those kindergartners and uh that's going to be something that's really important for me to hear as a father of an incoming kindergartner next year i think that's exactly the right question to be asking and we since we just finished that assessment time frame we'll be able to give you more specific information yeah thank you and i'll just add though that ode's plan this first year is to collect data to be able to compile that across the state and to figure out what kind of sense to make of those data so that they can recommend possibly recommend benchmarks possibly recommend various uses of the data to inform what happens during kindergarten but they're asking this year because they haven't seen any of the numbers yet that we just report on participation and that we not use the data thank you which makes it difficult dr beale to re-segregate out the common core stuff which reflects on this and the testing because our testing's going to go way down in a couple years obviously it has all over the country but did we segregate out uh in the common core and look deeper at the kindergarten and the k3 stuff because those were developed of course without any input from k3 teachers or did we just buy into it i mean did we have kindergarten teachers and k-3 teachers sit down and spend time and energy looking at the actual common core standards for kindergarten through third grade or do we just accept theirs and go with them are you talking about that in relation to the achievement compact or are you talking about that period in relationship to the common core state standards it relates to the achievement compact because it it would relate to the testing and the achievement compact on what we're doing around the testing and we're going to common core so we must think that is that going to help our testing but have
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we sat down with kindergarten teachers in continuing discussion about the k-3 common core standards around kindergarten through third grade we through professional development we've been addressing common core over the last two years in in k through high school both in literacy and in mathematics so yes so k3 teachers should be well familiar with the common core state standards but my question was have we sat down with those teachers and had them take a look at it and talk about whether or not those particular k-3 standards make sense for our children since there were no kindergarten through third grade teachers involved in their formation it's mostly college professors and so forth it would seem to me like we might want to take a look at that have we obviously we haven't done that or you would remember that i guess thank you any other comments questions i just have a really brief comment on mostly echoing um directors morton and and uh atkins and rican and my thanks to the committee my my uh hope i guess is these are audacious goals and my hope is that as we as a board move into our budget process we are looking at the strategies that we have found to be successful across the district and replicating those through the budget process because i mean some of these point spreads are 10 points and that is a lot considering in the prior year we took a slide back so um i'm just reminding my colleagues that when we get to the budget process our priorities we'll have to focus on the kinds of things that are being successful the strategies that are successful right now so but thank you very much for the report and i i'm not going to express my frustration with the state like everybody else thank you thank you and i'll just my only two sense is the folks that are working on this whether it's the achievement compact committee members research and evaluation it just sounds like it's just a shifting slope all the time which creates this work that sometimes feels duplicative or unnecessary and just i just want to say thank you um thank you thank you thank you welcome thank you the board will now vote on resolution 4825 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution four eight two five is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative davidson voting yes will now consider resolution 4826 which is the appointment of achievement compact committee do i have a motion and a second to adopt director atkins moves and director regan seconds the motion to adopt resolution four eight two six miss houston is there any public comment on this resolution no there is not is there any board discussion director buhari and the resolution i just wanted to point out that i know matthew oleson is a good ripper and terry harrington are pat people that's why we don't need to add pat representatives to this because we already have two really good people on there i just thought i'd point that out if we didn't have two really good people in there maybe we needed to do that but evidently we don't fantastic the board any other comments i'm sorry this is resolution 4826 we don't as an ex officio indicate a board member on here so could we add that place do we have to have that by resolution is that something that the committee can just well we list all the other exhibitions i don't know why we wouldn't list ourselves well i'm just wondering in terms of getting this approved if we can i guess i'd like to do a friendly amendment to add a school board member so director regan would like to amend resolution 4826 adding school board member as an ex-officio member do i have a second director regan amends resolution 4826 by adding school board member as an ex-officio director noel seconds the amendment all those and is there any discussion on that amendment so can i suggest somebody make another amendment which is just correct super sac to say superintendent student advisory committee just so you get the student in there because it just says the wrong name um so let's vote on this resolution okay uh any other comments on director regan's resolution to resolution 4826 all those in favor of amending resolution 4826 by adding a school ex school board member as an ex-officio member of this committee please indicate by saying yes yes yes all those opposed please indicate by
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saying no any abstentions the amendment to resolution 4826 adding school board member as an ex-officio member uh is passed by by a vote of 7-0 with student representative davidson voting yes yes we'll now consider resolution 4826 unless somebody else would like to make another amendment i don't get to make a board member would have to make i would like to change uh super sac superintendents committee to i believe it's a superintendent student student advisory committee and that says the first bullet under exophisu so there is a motion by director regan to amend resolution 4826 to clarify the super sac superintendence committee to change it to superintendents student advisory committee student advisory committee thank you student advisory committee director i think it was director noel's second impediment director note director bewell seconded that amendment uh is there any more discussion on that amendment all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all those polls please indicate by saying no any abstentions that amendment changing another changing super sac superintendent's committee language to the student advisory committee is passed by a vote of 7-0 with student representative davidson voting yes yes back to considering resolution 4826 any other board discussion all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes i was opposed please indicate by saying no no any abstentions resolution 4826 passes by a vote of six to one with student representative davidson voting yes yes thank you now we're gonna move on to the business agenda before we vote on the business agenda and i think they're going to be some amendments here as well i just want to call out a couple of resolutions the board is going to be voting tonight on its 2013 14 priorities and our operating protocols in addition the board will be voting on appointments to the citizen budget review committee um at least one member who i see sitting in the audience two members i think sitting in the audience thank you for being here um the board will now consider the remaining items on the business agenda having already voted on resolutions four eight two five four eight two seven could have a clarification sure no the board priorities are we going to go through four eight two nine and then take the board priorities as a separate thing are we voting on it now so we would be voting on it now um as part of the business agenda if somebody when we get to the business agenda once it's been set motioned and seconded somebody can remove it and then we can vote on those resolutions separately does that make sense yeah okay i always get lost here yep so it's now the time to ask to have one not quite yet um the board will now consider remaining items i just said this on business agenda having already voted on resolution 4825 through 4827 miss houston are there any other changes the business agenda no no do i have a motion in a second after we get a motion and a second to adopt this is when people would begin to amend it so moved second director atkins motion or moves and director knowles seconds the adoption of the business agenda miss houston is there any public comment on the business agenda no okay is there a board discussion it sounds like there's a couple interested in removing a couple of resolutions for their own consideration director regan has moved to amend the business agenda adoption by removing resolution 4830 for its own vote is there a second to that amendment second clarification director curler seconds director buell you have a question nope got him thank you yep this thing wanted to zoom ahead of me is there any other board discussion on the business agenda resolutions 4813-4829 except for four eight two five um and four eight two six and four eight two seven which have already been voted on said a couple quick ones yes directory one thanks uh one just to thank the citizens budget review committee members the continuing long-term ones and the brand new ones really really appreciate your service and dedication to transparency and information and all the amazing amount of time it takes so thank you so much on our behalf and also on behalf of
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everyone in the city all the taxpayers and i just wanted i don't know if we were going to um kind of call out specifically our priorities and goals i'm really excited that we have now adopted our board of education priorities and goals those are going to go up on the website after this is approved right soon you know it will be available publicly and um i just want to make sure that um a the public is aware and b that we're sort of publicly committing this i mean this is our we're coming objectives and measures of success around several um priorities and goals for the year so um this is the one that we need to pull out and and laminate and keep with us through the year so just appreciate everybody's work and coming together to wrestle through what those should be because there's a million things we want to be doing and we can't do it all but the more we can work together and align our efforts the more successful our kids are going to be okay director curling yeah also uh we'd like to to call out the citizen budget review and uh folks so thank you for your for your your service um one of the things that we're not discussing tonight but it's it's on the table it's audits and looking at one of the one of the items that we might consider is what can we do to look at the budget transparency so uh i would request your input on that and thinking on how to frame those issues that would be helpful to you as a as a citizen budget committee so thank you for your service any other comments on the business agenda as amended okay we will now vote on business agenda with resolution 4830 being removed for a separate vote all those a favor please indicate by saying yes yes all those poses please indicate by saying no i don't know what any abstentions the business agenda passes uh by a vote of seven to zero with student representative davidson voting yes yes we will now consider resolution 4830 adopting board member expectations and operating protocols do i have a motion in a second so moved second director atkins moves and director noel seconds to adopt the resolution number 4830 board member expectations and operating protocols is there any board discussion i just wanted to be able to vote no on this one because i as all of you know i'm not happy with the way the board currently operates with no committees and instead using the liaison model i don't think it's good public policy i don't think it's good public process and i have no interest in putting it into writing so i appreciate the opportunity to vote no on this thank you thank you any other comments director buell yeah the whole communication stuff is messed up we we've kind of clarified it over two meetings but when it comes down in writing it's still what we used to have and with no clarification and so i just want people to know that i'm going with the clarifications that we talked about not with what's written on the paper be nice if we did but by the time we go through the paper we'll be here at about 11 o'clock had the same old arguments we've had already so that's i'm voting i'll be voting no on this anyway so that's all right okay any other questions comments okay the board will now consider resolution 4830 the adoption of board member expectations and operating protocols all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all those posed please indicate by saying no no the adoption resolution number four eight three zero is approved by a vote of five to two with student representative davidson voting no no i'm gonna get back to my script can i ask one real quick question it's not a big deal just i thought we were going to bring back the i thought this week we were bringing back the when are we going to have the eight the 16 million dollars the recommendation from the superintendent to bring back that is that next meeting or two meetings sure because we were trying to hurry it ahead so i thought it was gonna be on this meeting no it my understanding is that it needs to wait for our financial audit to be completed before we can officially no problem so usually that ends my understanding and i'm looking at fiscal people usually november or december okay so it'll be one of those meetings um with that we're going to move towards the german i do want to make a note that november 4th is our next scheduled board meeting but we are going to cancel that it is our second day of mediation um and we would like to make sure that the superintendent and folks are available for that meeting so our next scheduled board meeting will be tuesday november 12th at six o'clock here in the boardroom we are now adjourned

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)

2013-10-21 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: Board of Education - Regular Meeting - October 21, 2013

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