2013-11-12 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2013-11-12
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - November 12, 2013

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good evening this board this meeting of the board of education for november 12 2013 is called the order i'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers all items that will be voted on this evening have been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live streamed live on our pps website and will be archived there for future reference before we begin with our agenda i'd like to ask director adkins who joined me and superintendent smith to provide her report from a conference that we recently attended director adkins great thank you so much so um co-chair belial and i and i um also can we can get this posted afterward on the website i apologize we don't have the i'm completing in time to do that so co-chair belial and i recently attended the national summit for courageous conversation in st louis along with superintendent smith and nearly 80 portland public schools staff from around the district including principals teachers and central office staff this was the second greatest conversation summit i have attended and once again it was an intense rewarding opportunity for professional and personal development i came away with a deeper personal understanding of racial equity leadership a renewed appreciation of the portland public schools principal and teacher teams who are doing this work in our schools a deeper understanding of effective strategies and better practices to serve all children and a renewed sense of hope and urgency around our racial equity work a huge highlight at the summit was seeing superintendent smith and irvington kate teacher todd rainier receiving national awards for their work superintendent smith was awarded the summit leadership award to quote from the award citation this award is presented to an administrator who skillfully and courageously establishes an equity anti-racist culture and climate in schools that enables all staff and students especially those of color to feel their power and achieve at higher levels the summit leadership award recipient is distinguished in the following ways passionate about transformational leadership at the personal professional and organizational level practices are strategic equity focused mission-driven and results-oriented persistent in the pursuit of racial justice in schools end quote so i wish everyone could have been there with us as hundreds of educators from all around the country rose in a standing ovation and long loud cheers for our superintendent it was a very very proud moment for portland public schools so please join me now in applauding carol for this national recognition of her work and it was equally awesome in the same awards ceremony to see todd a middle school teacher at irvington k-8 received the summit learning and teaching award and there's one for each category so one one superintendent one teacher one community member so this is a big deal this award again quoting the citation is presented to classroom teachers who demonstrate radically innovative culturally relevant instruction that engages all students and especially promotes the highest achievement of underserved student of color populations todd's speech like carol's was eloquent and moving and again the entire huge ballroom was standing and cheering for him it was again a really really proud moment for portland public so i know he's not here but i want to give todd a big round of applause for his national award and i was in a session with him right after the presentation it was he was just a delightful person it was wonderful so during the summit we heard from several keynote speakers national experts with inspiring and challenging presentations on topics including finding joy in teaching students of diverse backgrounds culturally responsive and socially just practices in u.s classrooms and new strategies for combating the opportunity gap a native american perspective greg and i collaborated with fellow board members from the saint paul minnesota school district to hold a session where we talked about the challenges around doing the equity work from the board perspective this is the first time that board members had gotten together at summit it was very powerful to hear from and talk with our colleagues from districts around the country who are also deeply engaged in this work other sessions we attended during the summit included hearing from saint paul again how they in one year are changing their entire special education model away from isolated classrooms to full inclusion our own roseway heights k-8 team principals and teachers also presented during the summit on how they are doing this very thing in their school it's a
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very exciting work and a conversation to be continued here we are so proud that fully nine sessions at the summit were led by our very own pps teachers principals and staff it is a competitive process to get session proposals approved and our district led the way as national leaders and practitioners in the pursuit of educational equity i hope that we will celebrate and learn from the work and leadership of all these great pps teams so throughout the trip greg and i informally connected with our pps folks over meals and the hallways during sessions carol had an informal get-together of the entire team which was wonderful where we shared and it was a huge benefit for us as board members to have that informal opportunity to interact with our teachers and staff so for example on the first day we just sat down randomly at a table and introduced ourselves and it turned out that this was a teacher team from mlc and they were awesome they were energized they were united and so excited to present their work with their principal so it was just great we connected of course with folks from other districts around the country as well hearing about their successes and challenges and sharing our collective dedication to the work so that all our children of all races will benefit and thrive it was truly inspiring and will carry me through the year to come we noticed that a few districts were able to bring parents some parents and students with them in their contingents so i hope we can do this in the future and would love to have a conversation about how we might be able to do that it would be incredibly valuable and finally we learned that pacific educational group who puts on the summit is planning to hold one of their regional summits in portland next july so this is a huge opportunity for us here in our own hometown to provide access for more staff for parents for students and community members as well as board members to be involved so i look forward to working with staff and pacific educational group to make the most of this portland opportunity so those are just some highlights and reflections on what was an amazing experience and i just appreciate the opportunity to have this professional development and personal development to participate and to represent our board and our district it was an honor so thanks very much thank you director atkins um director knowles will be presenting a report from a conference that she attended last week called the council of great city schools so be looking forward to that at this time we'll have public comment miss houston do we have anyone signed up we do we have six our first two speakers bruce shearer and paul anthony as you two approach i'm going to read the instructions for public comment but i know that you're both pretty familiar as i've seen you here before so thank you very much for taking the time to come to our board meeting we do deeply value public input and look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board lies in actively listening and reflecting on the thoughts and opinions of others public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to address issues to the board while it's appropriate to raise concerns about schools staff for issues it's our expectation that this will be done in a constructive manner and that public speakers will have ensured the accuracy of their statements it's unacceptable to use this forum to make untrue or inappropriate statements about schools or staff 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 and there have been a couple of times when i've actually tried to follow up with somebody and they haven't left that contact information and so i wasn't able to guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration when referring to board members staff and other presenters 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 name for the record during the first two minutes a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when your time is up the red light will go on and the buzzer will sound we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments at that time again thank you for coming and thank you for your cooperation thank you my name is bruce scheer i'm a parent at mlc the last name is spelled s-c-h-e-r-e-r and i'm here to talk about bargaining instead of mlc the communication from the district about bargaining has made it seem like the contract with pat is something that dropped out of the sky written by teachers then foisted on the district it does not convey the district as a co-author of the contract representing 30 to 40 years of work by administrators and board members who preceded us i have been to several bargaining sessions i don't know if mediation is going better but here's what i've seen say for two board members who sat on the periphery i haven't seen any board members present let alone sitting at the table yet board members who haven't attended talk to the press as if they know what's going on with bargaining and they clearly don't
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there is no one at the bargaining table on the district side with the power to get a deal no superintendent no hr director no legal counsel no board member this is very unusual to me that shows the district is not taking bargaining seriously the district team has routinely counted out deadlines to the next point it could escalate rather than listen the district team seemed eager for a crisis so who is pulling the strings for the district there is a consultant paid fifteen thousand dollars a month to provide the sage advice the total billing is it up to two hundred forty thousand dollars by now what value are we getting for that money this consultant behind the scenes has been advising all along to escalate and draw this out why we're left spell speculate it helps create more invoices to the district certainly i think you could pay just two thousand dollars to anyone in the room right now and they would have been able to wrap this up and get a fair district deal by this past august the consultant is not a stakeholder in our district when this wraps up she's out of here i asked the district to take greater ownership the superintendent hr director and board members should represent the district at the bargaining table it's a natural thing to do the process is thrown out of whack when board members are not present to represent the public interest the teachers don't want to go on strike but they will we parents don't want picket lines but we will support teachers on picket lines and support them at rallies we parents will not support paying yvonne deckard more money please participate in bargaining thank you thank you good evening my name is paul anthony a-n-t-h-o-n-y i'm here to talk about my daughter's geometry class at benson high school i think you'll find it a refreshing change over the last five years benson math teacher amy slaughter and electrical engineering teacher timothy hirschu have developed a new freshman geometry course every other day they teach from a conventional geometry curriculum on the day following they lead the students in designing and building projects based on the concepts learned the previous day these projects range from riveting to building scale models to constructing small buildings the class is designed with a built-in feedback loop giving teachers and students immediate evidence that the concept has been learned or not and if not then the topic can be reviewed this also gives students real world experience and of course answers to the perennial question with higher math when will we ever use this these are not results that can be achieved by filling in a bubble test when the class started more than half of the students were working below grade level six weeks in the class now has a much improved capability with an 87 improvement in students confidence and perception of their own performance and ability with math 82 percent of the students now say that they actively enjoy math this class is obviously an enormous achievement of which benson and the district should be extraordinarily proud there are several important lessons here for pps it is a sad statement on perceptions of public education to have to say but it is critical to recognize that public schools are not businesses and should not be run as such anybody who tells you differently is selling something but there are many areas of business practice that can inform effective programs and in this case that's certainly true for the fields of innovation management and marketing innovation this is obviously a program the district couldn't get out of a box or buy for any money it had to be internally generated the teachers had been wildly successful innovators because they knew all the stakeholders they were intimately familiar with the needs of benson's students their parents their future employers and critically the teachers own teaching peers many of these students will be going on to four-year colleges and universities many for master's level programs they're getting an excellent grounding for further study of advanced algebra trigonometry statistics and calculus it would be an extraordinary opportunity if these advanced classes could have a similar practical component management former principal carol campbell and current principal curtis wilson have shown both excellent judgment and considerable courage as managers teachers have to have the freedom to be able to use their training and experience principals need to know that they and their schools will not be penalized not just in terms of criticism or promotion but in terms of reduced budgets or staffing for allowing teachers to pursue innovation finally marketing benson has clearly identified what the market wants it has stepped up to meet a market need and the community is clearly responding thank you thank you our next two speakers barb macon and jennifer grimes
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my name is barbara macon m-a-c-o-n my name is barbara macon and this is my eighth year at roosevelt where i love to teach though this coming information was never once mentioned to the dag team we've discovered that the long-range facilities plan calls for a college style moderate model of teachers having offices and sharing classrooms i must say emphatically on behalf of myself and nearly all the colleagues i've told that this model is antithetical to good teaching and learning for the students at roosevelt being culturally responsive teachers our classrooms visibly reflect the diversity of our students display their work and our place they know they can come and connect with their teachers as one of our nationally board certified teachers jaciardi said classrooms are places where teachers build community and relationships with students outside of class time lunch after school etc if a kid comes to me for office hours i want that time to be spent in the classroom where the tools of my trade are attended a high school and i student taught at another that had this model of shared classrooms the walls were blank i do not want this roosevelt the guiding principle d states that redesigns shall ensure that school campus designs are inclusive and culturally relevant culturally culturally relevant classrooms should not be generic or impersonal our students need a home away from home they need enriched environments in their classes in addition test scores and graduation rates at roosevelt have gone up the teaching methods that have led to the increase are not compatible with changing rooms we post learning targets for each lesson and unit if we're sharing board and wall space with other teachers we'll either be wasting time rewriting them or skip it for lack of time we teach from bell to bell trying not to waste a single instructional minute if teachers have to be packing up materials laptops student work we will lose instructional time and we will lose access to students in those minutes we now use proficiency grading which allows students to retake assessments students are coming in and teachers are volunteering during lunch and after school how many times will students give up pursuing that retake when they don't know where to find their teachers there's many more points my colleagues have given me so much feedback on this but i just will close with that our students are not college students the college model is not going to work i encourage you to contact the design groups and push for the one teacher one classroom model there seem to be keeping this a secret from everyone and we've only discovered this so please each teacher needs our classroom thank you thank you and know that if you have additional written comments you're welcome to submit those okay thank you my name is jennifer grimes g-r-i-m-e-s and i have two daughters in pps one daughter is in kindergarten and the other is in third grade my focus tonight is the teachers contract and i urge you the school board pps and pat to work together and come to an agreement that will ultimately benefit our students there are five areas that are not being adequately addressed in the negotiations one additional instructional hours two great teachers in every classroom three language that supports parent communication and engagement in order to encourage parents to be more involved in student learning four language that embraces the use of use of trained volunteers who support teachers five more teachers to reduce current workloads the implementation of these changes would positively impact students and would increase student performance improve our 63 graduation rate and help close the achievement gap particularly because currently we are out of compliance with the state for high school instructional hours and only 17 percent of students take a full course load but since my kids are in elementary school i'll focus there and on instructional hours as you know we have 177 instructional days that are 6 hours and 15 minutes long in the elementary schools the national average for instructional days is 180 days but not all days are equal my nephew in first grade in pennsylvania attend school 25 minutes longer a day than my daughter's my other nephew in wisconsin attends 50 minutes longer each day than my daughter's if we use my nephew who attends 25 minutes more a day as an example we learn that in one year he attends 16 six-hour days more of school than my children over 12 years my daughters and their classmates will have one full year less education than my nephew i know the argument has been made that more time in school won't benefit
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students if class sizes are too big and the teacher workload is too large these are serious problems my third grade daughter has had 31 children in her class since first grade this is difficult for both the students and the teachers that said the argument does not hold up as many teachers are barely meeting the instructional time that pps requires in its audit there are also numerous free educational opportunities like smart additional library time technology integration group projects and mandarin and arabic language classes that are not being implemented because there is not enough time for teachers to fit these in our achievement gap third grade reading scores and graduation rate will improve with more instructional time especially if it coincides with the other priorities of fully qualified teachers increased parent engagement trained volunteers and more teachers thank you for your consideration our last two speakers carmen rubio and bernie bottomley so good evening my name is carmen rubio and i'm the executive director of the latino network a non-profit that works to advance latino youth and families in multnomah county i'm also here as the co-chair of the coalition of communities of color representing the coalition and its 20-plus organizational members here tonight i also have two nieces and one nephew living with me attending portland public schools in elementary and middle school the ccc is an alliance of culturally specific community-based organizations with representation from six communities of color african african-american asian and pacific islander latino native american and slavic my colleagues and i urge you to keep a central focus on the most vulnerable individuals in this set of adult contract negotiations the children of portland public schools and in particular those who have been long underserved by the district the ccc prioritizes education and recognizes that racial educational inequities harm all students we believe that a successful contract provides an opportunity to further educational outcomes for all students by remaining focused on increasing outcomes for our most underserved students these are students of color immigrant refugee students and english language learning students in this light we urge the board to take the required leadership that will end disparities for those students whom have long been underserved the district's approach to a rapidly changing demographic have not kept up with the need the status quo is not acceptable with this in mind we urge you to keep the following values clearly front and center as you continue these critical negotiations first recognize and leverage the racial educational equity work that has been undertaken thus far while there is work to be done to ensure increased educational outcomes for underserved students we should take advantage of the good work invested by hundreds of community members parents and stakeholders over decades including the racial equity educational equity policy and utilization of a racial equity lens and budgeting as examples next we'd like to see continued differentiation of district resources based on iniquities long-standing in pps to advance racial equity or educational equity not all students are consider the unique strengths and challenges of unique communities not all students of color immigrant and refugee students or ell students are alike or face the same kinds of barriers we urge you to prioritize the increased hiring retention and promotion of teachers and of color so that our students enter schools where teachers and staff look like the students and understand their culture and students can see themselves in successful leadership positions portland's demographics are rapidly changing pps is currently almost half students of color but our teacher population does not reflect our student diversity the district must utilize existing opportunities to its fullest extent to conduct early hiring and retention and take steps to remove barriers that put us at a hiring disadvantage with other districts and also remove barriers to retaining the best content qualified and talented teachers at pps yes so in closing i just want to say that the coalition appreciates the challenges presented on all sides of the issue and our communities have a long history of activism both within education and within labor so it's precisely for these regions that we urge you our elected leaders to take leadership to engage in good faith and advance educational outcomes for all students thanks superintendent smith members of the committee bernie bottomley with the portland business alliance b-o-t-t-o-m-l-y
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uh i'll just note that i'm a graduate of mlc i heard good praise for mlc so i had a good experience there uh as you know the alliance is a long time supporter of portland schools over many years we've backed just about every school bond or operating levy measure that's been placed on the ballot the alliance in fact even engineered an increase in business income taxes some years ago to keep schools open when funding was at critically low levels the alliance's vision for portland schools is that all students deserve equal opportunity for success regardless of their background so they have real a real chance to reach their full potential and ultimately hold jobs that can support them and their families but with a graduation rate of 62 percent and unacceptably low achievement levels it's clear that portland schools is falling short of going giving our students the education they deserve something needs to change the current contract discussions represent an opportunity to dramatically improve the education experiences of our kids we believe the negotiation should be driven by doing what is best for our kids and that includes in addition i would second uh some of the comments that that my colleague made about uh some of the changes that need to happen but in addition to that improving achievement for all students regardless of ethnicity and household income graduating more students who are responsible citizens and prepared to take the next step in life strengthening technical and career education and ensuring that struggling students have access to the very best teaching the current labor contract unfortunately makes reaching those goals extremely difficult while other districts around the metro region have adopted state-of-the-art approaches to improving teaching portland students are held back by a labor contract that discourages innovation and fresh ideas we applaud the board's commitment and resolve to negotiate a contract that puts the needs of our kids first we appreciate that the board has come to the table with real offers and real solutions to address the challenges we face including raising teacher salaries and extending the school year you have been willing to discuss alternatives and you have made concessions in an effort to move the talks forward unfortunately the union has not reciprocated they have declined offers to meet they have made no responsible counter offers to district proposals and they have brought nothing to the table of any substance to bring the parties closer together it is not possible to negotiate when only one side is coming to the table with the goal of settling it is not fair to the kids or to the community to continue to maintain the facade that real negotiations are happening when in fact they are not it is not reasonable to extend negotiations when only one side is making concessions for this reason the alliance encourages the board to continue to be firm and resolute in its approach to these negotiations and hold fast to the principles that they have set forth to do what is best for kids and our community if no substantive and responsive offers are worth coming from the union we encourage the board to take the necessary steps to declare an impasse and to move the process forward towards resolution in the best interests of the kids in the community thank you thank you testify and share your thoughts concerns and ideas um before we move on to the next agenda item uh the discussion of the accountability the discussion of the bond accountability committee report um there is a resolution um that we are going to consider and i'm going to turn it over to um um if if somebody could um i don't have the resolution number in front of me i know sorry four eight three seven four eight two the board will now consider resolution four three eight seven four eight three i'm sorry four eight three seven um do i have a motion in a second so moved second director regan moves to adopt resolution 4837 director atkins seconds with that i'll turn it over to director regan so over the week over the weekend director atkins and i spent quite a bit of time putting together a resolution that basically states where we're at in terms of teacher contract negotiations and we have just shared that with our colleagues and we request that we be able to read this into the record so we're going to sort of tag team on this so it's resolution number 4837 titled board support for the teachers contract our students and community deserve a this is recitals a we the members of the portland school board know that equitable and high performing schools are essential to portland's
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economic health and quality of life today and in the future we honor the teachers in our schools who have committed their knowledge skills and life's work to educating inspiring and supporting our students b members of this school board are unpaid elected public servants who set a strategic vision for the school district hire and manage our superintendent provide fiscal oversight and most important work to ensure that our 48 000 students receive a quality education like our teachers and all school district staff we serve because we believe in public education and we believe we can make a positive difference for our students c the portland school board assumes the responsibility of bargaining with our teachers union in good faith we take that responsibility very seriously we are committed to providing a contract that ensures competitive salaries comprehensive health care and fair working conditions d since september 2012 the school district's professional bargaining team has successfully reached agreement on new contracts with every other portland public school employee union bargaining with the portland association of teachers started more than 200 days ago but the two sides are still far apart on core issues school board members are becoming concerned that the situation may be headed for impasse we want to move forward in a timely manner that means bringing negotiations to a successful conclusion and doing it soon e we are committed to signing a teacher contract that our students and community deserve that means making changes to the current contract so that all students can attain high academic standards regardless of race or class our goals include a contract that adds more school days to the school year and allows schools to stay open longer each day so that students have more time to learn a financially responsible contract that enables portland public schools to reduce class sizes and teacher workload by hiring more teachers a contract that gives our schools the ability to ensure all students have a great teacher in their classrooms we want to do this by recruiting the best teachers available prioritizing competence as defined by state law when teachers are assigned and diversifying our workforce to include more bilingual and minority teachers as well as hard to find higher level math and science teachers a contract that allows students and parents more opportunity to work collaboratively with all teachers in the classroom in parent conferences and during school events a contract that increases or maintains planning time for teachers a contract that allows us to quickly provide mentoring and support to teachers who struggle or allows us to move teachers out of the classroom if necessary a contract that focuses on core labor management issues such as wages and benefits so that our students and community as well as our teachers can participate in broader conversations about educational vision and advocacy f we believe our proposal is both fair and sustainable on salary and benefits our bargaining team has come to the table with a competitive compensation package our latest offer which our team presented at last week's mediation session would provide cost of living increases totaling five percent over a three-year contract for all 2800 pat members this would keep salaries competitive with portland area school districts in addition in our effort to increase instructional time for students we offered a one percent raise for all teachers if they agreed to work three more instructional days on top of this about half of our teachers will continue to receive automatic annual step or seniority increases which equal a salary increase of two to five percent each year these teachers would receive a total raise over three years of more than 12 percent we have also proposed joining other school districts in oregon who have phased out early retirement benefits this alone would free up to 5.3 million dollars per year equivalent to 58 teaching positions to support lower class sizes and student programs when fully implemented with limited resources our priority is to pay teachers who are currently teaching in our schools in terms of health insurance teachers currently pay 120 dollars per month for their coverage while the school district pays 1432.32 cents per month per teacher the school district contribution of over fourteen hundred dollars is three hundred and sixty three dollars more per month
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per employee than we provide for any other employee group we are proposing to cap the portland public school contribution in the first year at its current level we would increase this contribution by two percent in each of the next two years our goal is to work collaboratively with our teachers to select health care plans that are less costly while still providing excellent benefits for employees other than teachers portland public schools has had a health care contribution in place for years allowing the school district to offer comprehensive yet reasonably priced plans with cost savings that ultimately translate to more teachers and smaller class sizes g in addition to salary and benefits our proposal seeks to change outdated and overly restrictive contract rules that are a barrier to student achievement first regarding the issue of teacher hiring and placement the current contract has provisions that make it difficult for portland public schools to get out in the market early to hire great teachers before they are scooped up by other districts our proposal would reduce reviews of internal job candidates to one round instead of three bringing us into line with other school districts in oregon this would give current teachers a fair opportunity to compete while providing pps with the opportunity to diversify our workforce by hiring in-demand bilingual and minority teachers as well as higher level math and science teachers for teacher transfers from one school to another the current contract prioritizes seniority above all else our proposal would bring portland public schools in line with other school districts by using the state's definition for teacher competence this would require a teacher to have recent teaching experience or training in the subject or grade level within the last five years and a teaching certificate in the subject area again our goal is to ensure that our contract allows students to have the best teacher in every classroom in terms of student instructional time outdated contract rules unduly limit access to the teaching students need our contract proposal would add three instructional days to the school year increasing classroom time to support student achievement reduce the dropout rate and graduate more students prepared for college and careers h the pit proposal includes a preamble that speaks to our shared values for our schools and students it is an excellent statement but it does not belong in a labor contract the preamble calls for more electives for students including music art physical education libraries and world languages we agree and would add career and technical education to the list as well the preamble calls for using standardized testing as only one tool for assessment of students for equity and allocation of resources to high poverty schools and for more wrap around support services for students again we agree i the preamble also calls for reduced class sizes and workloads like teachers and parents we are deeply concerned about teacher workload and class size in fact the board has acted on this concern this year as a result of additional state and local funding and continued cost containment measures pps added more than 120 staff members directly into schools to reduce class sizes we added educational assistance and other staff at 68 schools to relieve teachers of non-instructional duties reducing workload we have gone out to voters seeking school levies to pay for additional teaching positions and thus reduce class sizes and teacher workloads our current levy is bringing in more than 50 million dollars per year which equates to approximately 550 teaching positions and has resulted in lower class sizes than many of our neighboring districts in fact portland's student-teacher ratios are lower than in beaverton hillsboro and salem kaiser in the last regular legislative session we partnered with pat to draft and support legislation the reformed state property tax law to take the portion of voter approved school levy funds that are now diverted to urban renewal and redirect them back to schools based on this new law we are hoping to renew our local option as early as the spring which would add as much as 4.5 million dollars a year to pps's budget this would add another 50 teachers again reducing class sizes jay to formally address concerns around workload and class size our bargaining team has proposed a collaborative work group of teachers and portland public school representatives to work together on this issue outside of contract negotiations the work group would collaboratively look at the challenges around workload and class size and would bring forth proposals that would meet student needs we believe a collaborative work group similar to the union school district work group that successfully worked to
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design the new teacher rebellion is the best way evaluation is the best way to tackle this issue resolution number one the board reaffirms our commitment to reach a negotiated agreement with the pat that helps our schools provide the best and most effective educational environment for our students a prolonged contract negotiations process disrupts schools and does a disservice to our students families and teachers the school district and the teachers association need to reach common ground in the interest of better serving our students we direct our bargaining representatives to continue using all of the means at their disposal to reach a contract agreement in a timely manner two the board directs its bargaining team to continue to seek agreement from the pat to develop a collaborative process outside of bargaining to address the issues of workload and class size three the board's highest priority is to increase our graduation rate with students ready for college and careers we believe that our current proposal provides strong and competitive salary and benefits as well as fair working conditions for our teachers by removing the restrictive and outdated provisions of the contract that are impediments to student success we believe we will have the teachers association contract that our students and community deserve thank you any other discussion director meal we're going to have a vote on this is that it yes i'm not going to be able to vote for this and the reason is simple i don't believe that we're actually using every measure we can to settle the contract i just don't think that that is really truly representing our position there's all sorts of good stuff in here that i think does carefully and does represent our position which i could really support so it's not because there's not supportive stuff in here i could go line by line i don't think my colleagues would allow me to do that and i think they'd probably throw me off the place i could go line by line on stuff and say well this isn't exactly correct in my opinion and so forth but really what it comes down to is i don't think that we're actually bargaining in good faith we're not using everything at our disposal to get a contract and to sit down and try and work through the problems i just don't believe that's the case and since this says that it is the case i won't be able to support it thank you thank you any other comments discussion okay the board will now vote on resolution 4837 board will now consider resolution 4837 board support for the teachers contract our students and community deserve all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all those posts please indicate by saying no no resolution 4837 is approved by a vote of six to one at this time we will now move on to the bond accountability committee the board is excited to hear the report this evening from the bond accountability committee we'd like to thank both mr spellman and mr peterson for being here with us this evening welcome i should mention that this is a quarterly report that you provide us despite your meeting more frequently than quarterly but we thank you for being here uh thank you co-chair belial co-chair knowles board and superintendent smith um just briefly i want to re restate uh maybe for the public more than you what our role is we are a committee of seven of independent professionals who are charged with observing the implementation of the bond program and reporting to you both the good and the areas for improvement so that's why we're here we met on october 16th at wilson high school and got a full briefing from the staff and i wanted again i said this each time i've been here i want to underline how impressed we are with the transparency and professionalism of your staff working on the bond program the highlight of of the meeting was the report that the summer 2013 work was complete it's under budget and all the schools open timely this is a relatively small part of the bond program but it was about 16 million dollars of work
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performed over the summer and that is that is not a trivial exercise so this is a good sign this shows that the the the staff has good systems in place and good people um managing the work i was also impressed to hear that although things went really well they've engaged in a lessons learned process so that they can improve for next year there'll be 12 schools worked on next summer there are three design teams working on on those projects as as we speak um the design teams for roosevelt and franklin high schools are very active and i know some of you have been involved in that um there have been seven or eight design advisory group meetings plus open houses etc and that process is still going on momentarily the rfp process for selection of your construction manager general contractors for those high schools that process is underway so the full team will be on board here i think the schedule says by the end of january so we can really start seeing this team in action this this group we've also provided input to your performance auditors as they've been work developing their work plan and they've expressed to us that they want to work very closely with with us um a few kind of key issues i think we had mentioned i think the first time we came here that we were concerned about how the budget was being reported that it was not deliberately non-transparent but it was non-transparent the staff has worked diligently on that and we're now fully satisfied with the way they're presenting uh the budget we could even even we can understand it so we think that maybe the public can too communications were also a struggle early on because largely because that area had not been fully staffed up now has been the website is again very transparent minutes of of all of these meetings of their schedules of their budgets are there it's we're very satisfied with what's been done in that area equity i want to touch on two pieces with regard to equity one relates to the student participation we would ask that well we believe that the staff has done what they've been asked to do which is essentially get the consultants and ultimately the contractors involved in biz net biz connect excuse me and some students have got involved but really in our judgment really not enough and i don't believe that's the fault of the consultants or the or the contractors i think we need some help from the education side of the district to get students connected this is a wonderful opportunity what we didn't know when we had our meeting was that both high school design teams have gone into the classrooms in both cases largely to get feedback from students but nevertheless that engages students in the process and that's really a powerful thing and we we'd like to see a lot more than that and i know you would too um the involvement of minority women owned emerging small businesses we have and the district has established an aspirational goal of 18 and we're well short of that on the work that's been done to date we bring that to you not to be critical of staff or the process in the summer work which is subject to uh the bid process i think the district is is um has some legal constraints as to what it can do and i think i in in our report i think we show 8.2 percent i believe that's increased since uh but nevertheless it's not close to the 18 percent um so we bring that as as a an observation and almost i think in our first report we warned you that this would likely happen and it's it's it's a function of the delivery system rather than anything that the district has done
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lastly we want to touch on schedule a little bit um we as we said at the outset the budget was maybe less little less than transparent uh the schedule is a little less than transparent and again this is not a criticism this is the this is a a um a big program shall we say and getting into the detail of all of these mini schedules and seeing the master schedule is is very difficult to do and and we'll never be able to do that but nevertheless we've asked staff to present to us the kind of differentials from meeting to meeting as they have with the budget and they've committed to do that and that'll be very helpful we still have concerns though over the schedule and and tom's going to speak to that in a second but um the ed specs um product has not yet been approved the high school size question isn't resolved it's going to be difficult to get a master plan if we don't know what we're building the master plans must be complete and approved by the board i think you've asked for schematic design to be brought and approved by the board and there are really there are some critical linear milestone deadlines coming up and that's not to say we've missed uh anything critical at this point but it's kind of raising the red flag i'm going to ask tom to talk about that a little bit yeah i'd also like to express my appreciation for the staff as well they've done an excellent job this summer you've got a great team of individuals there and i'm very confident in their abilities so that's that's good i just want you to know that just briefly i also want to comment on the equity issue and i would say given the type of work that was bid this summer and not having the same capabilities to set goals like i do at the port you did pretty well at eight percent uh so the eight percent was was is a high goal and i think uh when you move into the negotiated work you have tremendous opportunities to do much better than 18 which has been my experience at the port i think on our hq project we had all the available work we were at like 40 i mean so but it's because we're able to sit down with the contractor and work out strategies in a way that opened up those opportunities that's hard to do uh in the hard bid world so i think you're going to see an improvement going forward even though you didn't hit 18 percent it's not bad uh for for what you accomplished this year so and then specific to the schedule i kind of have the same concerns and if you recall we met with staff last spring just to get a better understanding of the schedule and how it's all gonna come together and at that time uh you know my assessment was this is a very ambitious schedule there are a lot of things that need to fall into place for this for this to happen and so far things are going pretty well but i was just comparing notes uh from the last time um we talked about it and the master plan has already slipped from what we the original schedule was and although it's you know there's always a term we call float that allows for some of that we're getting at the point now where the consequence of not hitting some of these key targets could have some uh serious implications on the team's ability to bring this keep this thing uh on schedule and so the the two areas of concern for me are master planning things like that these are areas that we we at the port also have challenges with but and they're really important but at the same time if you don't get them pinned down the staff can't really move forward with the next step so it's really important to get that nailed down in the next few weeks or whatever it's becoming before before you because it will have an impact on their ability to keep the project going forward so as i say you know as we're about to start the selection process for the contractors and once you bring the contractors on board all of a sudden the intensity and the pressure really ramps up you know as i put it the train is on the track and and you're headed down down the road on the railroad and it's hard to derail it and if you do there's big
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consequences and so uh you know you're you're about to make a big step here and i really can't emphasis enough emphasize enough how important is to make sure those decisions get made in a timely manner that's all i have to offer thank you both um i'm going to open it up to colleagues in case they have questions or comments directly again thank you for your reports and i i definitely appreciate when you're kind of calling things to our attention um the one in particular that i had noted also was the student participation piece and i know that i think after the summer work when we had some of the contractors in and we were asking questions about a variety of things i had been a little bit surprised also by the responses around student participation i think one of them said oh we had one student come and job shadow me or something and so i think that there may just be a little bit of a miss in terms of what our expectations were versus what's happening and i don't know if we could potentially i mean we could either have a discussion and set out the expectations of what we meant when we said student participation or it sounds like you're suggesting that maybe the academic team take a look at that and come back to us with expectations and either way i think would be great um but i think right now there i would agree that that feels like a miss and it's such an amazing opportunity um for our kids so um just wanted to hand that back to you we'll do discussion on the with the educational team about how we ramp that up and it's really about supporting and connecting is a lot of what our piece is and we're looking at how we do that absolutely and once the cmgcs are on board just like the design teams there's huge opportunities they'll all be really eager to to engage with students so it would be really a shame to miss that opportunity and so can you bring that back to us yes okay because i know i had kind of envisioned some apprenticeships and just a variety of much more hands-on substantive participation great thanks same thing just uh i just wanted to i think on behalf of all of us uh reiterate our thanks uh for your work it's i think we're very lucky to have the group caliber that that you have and uh we're counting on you so thank you thank you thank you thank you both thanks we're now going to move on to our next item on our agenda which is district-wide boundary review superintendent smith so yes i will invite we've got a large team that actually is coming up to the podium and as you know last may we set in motion two processes one a review of our enrollment and transfer policies and secondly a district-wide review of our boundaries which formerly we've tackled in more cluster-based units we said in order to really do this and do it well we need to look at the entire district so i will introduce judy brennan who is our director of enrollment and john isaacs whose senior policy advisor who will then introduce um partners that we're bringing before you tonight who are going to engage in this process with us so over to you judy and john thank you and i'm just going to start with a broad enrollment frame very briefly just to set the context as i'm sure you're aware portland public schools is a growing enrollment district i just can't say that enough fourth year in a row more than nearly 600 additional students this year over last year and that deserves big yay secondly funding has improved from last year to this year we have a better allocation from the state arts tax and a change in the equity formula all of which are bringing more teachers into our buildings and that's a double yay all of that also though more kids and more teachers accelerates our need for more classroom space so the uh oh that comes from this is even when all of these great things are happening our schools our buildings aren't necessarily accommodating the growth of the way we need it to and all of that puts into timely context what we're going to be talking about tonight which is bringing forward a team to co-convene a process to look at our broad district boundary related issues and getting some resolution to them so john's going to talk about that a little more okay thank you again john isaac senior policy advisor so if you recall in may we provided the board with an update regarding district-wide boundary review
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we informed you that currently there are many pps schools operating outside target enrollment ranges just as judy described and we let you know that we would be coming forth with uh to inform you of the clear direction we'd be taking on district-wide boundary review in the fall and that's what we're here to do today back then our initial thinking was that the 2012 long-range facility planning process would serve as a template for this effort and that planning partners such as the city of portland metro and portland state university would be called together with other community partners and education leaders to develop draft guidelines for school size and grade configurations as well as protocols for when and how to adjust boundaries in program locations the superintendent's advisory committee on enrollment and transfer would play a role in this process as well so that was our initial thinking and we also know that we have been quite deliberate because this is such a big important undertaking we wanted to make sure we got it right and we felt good about the direction we were headed so today we're very excited to have with us here and i want to just do an initial introduction and then allow them the opportunity to introduce themselves more fully when they present and answer your questions um three representatives of the portland state university mark hatfield school of government center for public service who we will be entering into a partnership with to co-manage a district-wide boundary review process and with us we have phil keisling who's the director of the center for public service who will be the principal investigator in this partnership don't need to introduce him former secretary of state he became director of the center for public service in july 2010 we also have wendy willis who will be the lead on stakeholders and interviews wendy is the executive director of the policy consensus initiative which is a national non-profit dedicated to collaborative and democratic governance and she's the director of civic engagement at the national policy consensus center at portland state university and then lastly we have shannon grosbowski who's the project who will be the project manager and lead for data collection and analysis shannon's a fellow with the center and she has coordinated strategic planning community engagement and evaluation projects for several agencies including the oregon department of education and multnomah county so why have we are we entering into this partnership with the center for public service as we were developing our recommendations and our plan for moving forward on this a few considerations and challenges stood out first the enormity of the undertaking it's a city-wide process that will potentially impact every neighborhood and every school community it needs to take into consideration other city plans such as the portland plan and it will require the engagement and management of many different stakeholders with differing interests and perspectives and it's going to require expertise such as data analysis mapping and modeling second we know that boundary review and change even at an individual school is historically a very challenging task and so coming to a boundary change coming to a boundary change decision is often very can be contentious with trade-offs having to be made between parents and neighborhoods and this dynamic will obviously be heightened in a city-wide process third to be successful this require this process will require two outcomes an updated citywide school boundary map and a recommendation for how pps can undergo district-wide boundary review routinely in a transparent predictable manner so we realized that to address these challenges we needed to find a third party partner to provide us the following expertise and assets process management capacity and expertise independent credibility with the entire portland community expertise in reaching policy decisions involving many different stakeholders and interests with different perspectives expertise with data projections planning and mapping and a track record of success solving tough problems with innovative public policy solutions this led us to approach the psu center for public service we firmly believe they are the only organization that brings this incredibly unique set of expertise and assets to pps for this very unique challenge you have the scope of work that's been presented and with that i want to bring up the team and we'll let them replace us here at the podium to go through that scope of work introduce themselves more fully and answer any questions you might have and then we'll also be available for any questions as well once they're done thank you welcome thank you my name is phil keisling as john mentioned i'm director for the center for public service first of all i want to just uh thank you all for this opportunity to work with you in partnership on this project it is challenging it is interesting and as one of my colleagues says uh says it's a wicked uh challenge of great complexity but those are exactly more and more of the challenges we face in the world of of public service uh i want to just real briefly give the broad framework uh then uh give wendy a chance to talk about the the public
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outreach and engagement part of it which i think is a real essential part not just a phase one but what we would project going forward and then let shannon finish up to just tell you a little bit about how the projects will go forward as john has mentioned there's two real key deliverables here one is quite honestly a map at some point that gets produced out of this process but the other is an ongoing framework that lets not only you but your successors for years and years to come to approach this problem in a way that people in the community believes have credibility and and integrity to it it it's important to look at some underlying principles of how we go about doing the work this is not something that we would own we are in partnership and in fact ultimately we can't avoid the fact this is a political process this board will have to make choices but our job is to help kind of frame that and assist you in that and the notion of co-production is absolutely key again it's important to recognize that there are so many people that give ex that have expertise people that work for the district the people who are parents in the district people who are citizens of the entire community etc it also has to be grounded of course in the values that you've expressed and the community has expressed values of equity values of inclusion values of looking at every child and the importance of giving everybody and access to a great education so we have proposed in this a phase one set of deliverables we've also said that if you choose to continue to have us be part of this and there will be a moment after phase one to assess that how we might today look at phase two and in phase three but anything that far out is a little bit less clear but before you tonight is what phase one would be about and it consists of of three um deliverables the first has to do with a contextual assessment and uh and framework recommendations where we look at at data collection and analysis the information that's available what isn't doing inventory look at where there's gaps look at peer districts the second is stakeholder interviews and focus groups where we get out and start talking to people not the end of this process but really just the beginning talk to them about how to go about continuing then to reach out to the community for the re for the bulk of the time and the third of course is recommending a decision making framework to use to then enter into phase two again whether we're part of this or not that's capable of being used as we point out in here for 20 to 30 years and maybe even beyond so uh this work would commence uh very soon and we would look to get it finished within a three-month period of time it's an ambitious schedule uh we know we also have holidays but we think that's important to then give time to those other phases the bulk of it being of course the community outreach and uh and and the engagement so with that i'd like to turn it over briefly to my colleague wendy willis to talk a little bit about that key part beginning which is the second deliverable in this phase and she can tell you a little bit more about that wendy great thank you phil thank you very much for inviting us here to talk with you about about this tonight one as phil mentioned right now we're hoping to spend to sort of approach the public involvement engagement process in sort of concentric circles so to begin with people who are very close to this process have thought about it a lot already um have a lot of established values about what what should go into a to a long-range boundary plan for the district so we'll spend the next three months starting with those values and then moving outward to say how do you engage the public in a way that asks them to approximate some of the trade-offs that you all are going to need to make down the road and what what are the values that need to come to bear on that rather than coming to the public with here's a map or here's a proposed map how do you react to that really start at the values level um including in this very first process where we'll we'll be doing this we'll be doing assessment interviews with any of you who who want to participate many other people who um have thought about this um over the over the last few months at that point um we should as you know in this assessment process you start to suddenly the universe starts to become a little bit more clear on where the the difficult points are where the rub is and so once that becomes better established then we will come we'd come come back and say these are the places where we think you really need to engage stakeholders in the public in these particular ways and there we've developed a number of ways of working
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with the public around the state of oregon and many of the and those would be um at the disposal of the district if you chose to do that or we'd just make recommendations to you on what you might do um to engage stakeholders in the public um over over the months between now and the time both the long-range uh framework and the map uh come to come to be to be so we look forward to working with any of you you can find us if you i mean at any point i hope that we'd be happy to talk to anybody about what their thoughts are and who we should be talking to to make this as as durable as possible um i'm shannon grzbowski and as phil briefly mentioned we see this as a as three mini projects within the first phase and so i will take responsibility for coordinating those different components we're going to be building small teams of faculty and staff and students to work on each of the different components so we'll have a data collection and analysis team who will kind of take stock of the current condition of the district um where we're starting with what data we have what data we're lacking uh and where we what additional information we need in order to to move forward wendy will be leading the stakeholder interview and focus groups um team that we mentioned and then we've got additional faculty and staff who will be kind of designing the decision-making framework that we'll then use to to present before we come to a phase two um discussion so um so my role will then be to coordinate those different components make sure we're on track and make sure we're meeting our timelines and deliverables that we've set forth thank you i'd love to answer any questions you might have i'm sure we have something we'd be disappointed if you didn't let me see if i can understand this we're you're you're going to work with us in coming up with boundary uh actual boundary plan we will the the process if i mean when you say the map is that an actual boundary not in this deliverable we will be working with the district first to create a framework to go out and gather the information that's value-based that uh that is a is a huge effort of getting input about what ought to go into that and then we would anticipate that in the fall of 2014 roughly a year from now a group that would have ownership that we think would emerge from this process would put forward a plan now if we continue to work with the district on this we would be obviously intimately involved in that but this particular deliverable tonight that we're talking about launches us towards that but will not in and of itself produce a map but the map you're going to that you talk about producing is a map of what then at a certain point this board will need to adopt district boundaries throughout the district for all of the schools so you have three three months and you're going to make a map no no no no you're going to make them up a map down the line right there's a we've outlined a three-phase approach to this this is just the first phase after which we'll have a discussion as to whether you would even want to proceed with us or take other other courses to do that but we hope that the work that we do will make you comfortable with having us continue down this course we would then in phase two with the work that when the particular team will be working on we'll be reaching out to the district in partnership with with you all to gather the input and the information that is necessary we believe so that when a map is produced in the fall of 2014 on this timeline that it is seen as being grounded in important and widely held values in the district that the process of getting the map seems to have integrity to it and while there will be disagreements about it they're always well i've had a little bit of experience when i did legislative redistricting about 20 years ago not everybody is is delighted with a given map but if you have done that process leading up to it well you have a far greater chance of of having whatever decision this board makes be one that is is seen as as having integrity by by the broad community so basically you're what you're doing is setting up a plan for us to come up with the boundaries inevitably this is is is the decision
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that this elected board must make not unelected no but i mean that plan would be you're putting forth a plan that we would then use yes that we hope would how how would you integrate that with our disorganized system of education in this i mean are we k-8 are we middle school where are we going are we what are our programs are we test oriented are we not well for me i i felt i felt all along for the last couple of years that i've been involved that we really need to straighten that out before we go messing around with the boundaries so can you how would you i mean we're just when i had that straightened out three months i mean the values are we want to educate each child i could tell you the values right now but the uh uh the idea that where are we versus the boundaries are you going to look at that at all is that your plan i mean for me that's the key thing uh uh and i'll let others weigh in as as well on this um you have what is probably best described as a multivariate equation in this where many many things are at work uh we met for example with the sackett group to discuss this with them and get their input it was very very valuable and helpful they of course are looking at the whole issue of enrollment and transfer policy which also is part of this you later tonight will have a discussion as i understand it of the optimal size or of a high school and structure of programs we can't we could wait for all of that to kind of get settled out and finally done but i think this reflects launching a process that respects and understands that all those things are going on and then again project forward to september of 2014 you will have to make the judgment call as to whether it's time for the district to adopt a map much less a long-term uh district-wide boundary framework but in the meantime we want to work with you to identify those issues recognize how they factor in and try to to help the district get to the point where they at least can make a an informed decision uh down the road as to that so basically you're absolutely right it's very very complex wicked you're putting together the plan that'll allow us to take those complexities into account yeah exactly away look at that is our hope that is exactly what we strive to do and then the phase the next three months where we we're going to have the contacts made is that it so what is your plan i mean you know good luck on that but i mean i think some of the things that you're the complexes you're talking about some of which we're aware of and some of which we're just starting to learn about so those will be some of the interviews that happen in this first phase and so in three months from now to say look these are the things that impact um will have impact on your decision about long-term boundary changes and short-term boundary changes and and that these are the people who um are engaged in that conversation and that'll be i think what a lot of what shannon will do we'll look at some of that um that context and then with that information then it puts you all in the position um to make some decisions about how you want to proceed or if you want to proceed now or later first of all let me say thank you very much for being here tonight we really appreciate this and taking on boundaries is i think our gnarliest i wouldn't say wicked i'd say gnarly gnarliest job here and i'm really pleased that you all are going to be involved in that i am curious about what the relationship with sackett is and so you guys can speak to that and then um but i also think that that this is the kind of thing that we really do need um because just like when we did our long-range facilities plan it's the ability to pull the community together in a process that they're familiar with that really adds credibility to the result in the end and allows the community to get behind that because they know that there's been a process and that we have followed that process and i think it's helpful when we're trying to make these very difficult decisions and nothing i don't think is more difficult than a boundary decision when you have so many families who are so invested in their neighborhood schools and there can be changes there and so those are huge decisions for us and very very difficult for families and we understand that so i really appreciate you guys coming forward and helping us try and find a path forward on this gnarly issue thank you does somebody want to talk about
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student student assignment superintendents advisory committee on enrollment and transfer which is what we're calling sackett somebody want to talk about that so as i stumbled through it so um and we're fortunate that jason trombley stack of co-chairs right now this is a team effort so what we foresee is that sackett will continue with their deep dive into the enrollment and transfer piece but they've been clear from day one that you can't do one of these elements without the other so that they may there may be times when there's deep investigation in either area we expect sackett members to be a part of both the planning the convening and the participation along the way and then at some point they'll probably come back together so the time frame that they've proposed which we support is likely to be a similar time frame for when you would be seeing sackett's recommendations on changes to enrollment and transfer policy so that we don't change a policy but leave boundaries that don't support it or we don't change boundaries and school configurations and then have a transfer policy that lets you that undermines it um it's a gnarly challenge and i appreciate that new labeling thanks for the chair so uh i'm gonna just comment on a couple uh of the things that were mentioned during your presentation that i wanted to uh i really resonated with me and i want to make sure that that uh we highlight those um one is uh really sort of stakeholder engagement early and often one of the criticisms that we've had over the past has been ideas already exist and now we're going to go after the fact and present those to stakeholders and try to get feedback at that point that doesn't work during our jefferson cluster enrollment conversation last year that was a very clear message that community gave back to us and i think it's it's really refreshing to hear that in fact we have this intentional process and it isn't a let's see what you think of this idea um which is um oftentimes creates a process issue versus versus a content conversation the other thing too is is this idea of starting at the values level which is i think really exciting but it also it also requires us i think to as we get to the point of creating a framework is uh create some adaptability to that framework so as values shift within our community we now have a maybe a long range tool that we can use that will be adaptable to the changing values i think one of the conversations we had last year uh during at the end of the the jefferson cluster conversation was how do we now incorporate our current values those may be best represented from our 2010 uh racial educational equity policy into enrollment and transfer policy and uh so so having a tool or a formula or whatever you want to call it at the end of the day that we can now have adaptability to is going to be really i think beneficial to not only us on this board but future boards so i definitely encourage that as a piece of it and again as others have said thank you so much for taking helping us take this on and we're looking forward to being a part of it one thing just to respond that for a second is um one part of adaptability is going to be trust building right with the stakeholder groups so that there's a feed there's a conversation loop that's happening between the district and the board and the stakeholders and the public so i think that's you know wanting to establish that early on as a way of of ongoing conversations so that so that it's in a way that those values shifts are seamless as the community adapts i think will be important to this process that's it i think a great way to put that thank you so thank you for being here um so this this whole boundary uh process has been described as wicked and gnarly and the only word that i keep thinking about is hair balls because i mean really when we've tried to handle these yeah when we've tried to handle these issues it hasn't been pretty and it really is a wicked gnarly kind of tangle of emotional stuff that happens and it sounds like we're getting to a process that maybe won't be that which is great so part of what i wanted to say is i think the fact that you're here and i want to thank john and judy especially for bringing you here and to bringing this to us is um is a recognition that there are some things that we in portland public
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schools haven't done very well and the jefferson boundary process is one and i think bringing in some outside experts to kind of help us with that is smart i would also say by the way that the past teacher contracts have are similar we have brought in an outside expert to help us with that i mean i think there are times when we need to do that so i very much appreciate that you're here and i'm excited about the prospects of working with you and as steve was talking about the processes it sounds like the first three months are sort of an initial assessment where are we at um but what i'm especially excited about is phase two which is stakeholder and community engagement which i presume would be focus groups listening sessions all kinds of community engagement and i guess in my opinion as i've been on this board over the years when we've when we've done that well and i think about our last two superintendent searches you know when we really listen to the community and we engage the community and we do focus groups um is when i think that we have the most trust with the community and so that's the part that i'm the most excited about and and hoping that you can help us do really well so um thank you once again um i was really excited first of all by the the list of commitments that cps is going to need from pbs at the end of the document i thought that was really great you know including a transparency default and active engagement buy and timely access to pps decision makers during the process i thought those were both great and overall i thought the document was really good i'm looking forward to what comes out of it and i look forward to seeing how super sack can be a part of this so thank you thank you um my two cents just echoes some of what my colleagues are saying um as i think about adaptability and how you build that in any time we've done an enrollment balancing piece part of what makes it challenging right is that we set out values and then eventually two values come into conflict at some point and you have to decide which one is going to trump which one as i think about our district as i think about when i visit schools in southwest portland or i visit schools in northwest portland or i visit schools in north portland north those communities value different things and part of it's their terrain and so when i hear the descriptions people talk about how do we pull that together as a coherent but still allow for individual communities to decide while still looking through an equity lens to make sure one doesn't pick something that's going to wind up short-changing somebody else um it's just a significant challenge and i too am really glad i do remember actually in one of the jefferson enrollment balancing comments a gentleman said you know i actually and i don't know if he works with you all i actually do public processes for psu and i gotta say you're not doing it very well i could help so here psu is so thank you um for for being here and um and just helping us because i think you're right that as soon as we can open up that dialogue with our community and director reagan pointed out that the more often we do that i think of our last bond i mean again we had what we wound up with is values that were in conflict and we had we wound up choosing but because the community was part of that and got to engage in that discussion they saw the trade-offs and it wasn't perfect not everybody loved what we put forward but obviously a majority of our our community was able to support it and so i'm really looking forward to that piece and um judy i i appreciate you calling out how sac it's gonna um and the enrollment and transfer discussion is gonna interface with us because that's a question i had is how would we possibly be ready to make a decision in january 2015 if we don't also have a recommendation from the group that's working on that so i was glad to hear that any other comments great we look forward to phase one thank you for being here favorable we're now going to move on to our next discussion item which is a revised recommendation for franklin grant and roosevelt high school master planning and related fiscal impact superintendent smith yes and this is a continuing conversation so cj sylvester our chief operating officer and jim owens the executive director of office of school modernization will lead the conversation and i just want to say thank you for the extensive work the staff has done to really re-examine and come back to us and the degree to which individual board members have engaged with your questions and dialogue with the staff as they've been working on figuring out how we land at this adjusted size so um cj and jim thank you for bringing us up to date on staff work at this point and i'm also just going to say so that we are not lost that this is a celebratory moment
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that we are able to be in the conversation about uh about what size we're launching and hopefully getting to a decision so we can move our design teams into action thank you and it is a good thing to remember that we're talking about investing not only tens of millions but hundreds of millions of dollars into three of our high schools in the very near term and that this is an exciting moment for the school district so not to say that there aren't some difficult and uh decisions that need to be made along the way but uh the overall impact of this to the school district can't be understated so staff is revising our previous recommendation of september 23rd regarding adjustments to the capacities of the three high schools that are being fully modernized as part of the 2012 school improvement bond those high schools are franklin grant and roosevelt the first thing i want to be clear about is that this recommendation does not impact the district's high school system which remains at seven comprehensive high schools and two focus options and other braun projects remain wholly intact as does the 482 million dollar bond program in its entirety our current status is the originally defined high school full modernization projects these high schools were originally identified at capacities of 1500 each while building out classrooms for 1200 at roosevelt as part of this 2012 bond building construction was estimated at two hundred twenty dollars a square foot in two thousand twelve dollars for a two hundred and forty thousand square foot program area following the september twenty third board meeting staff requested that we pause for a series of evaluations and analyses numerous site assessments have since occurred we front loaded civil mechanical electrical structural building envelope including windows geotechnical arborist and 3d massing studies staff and design teams have conversed with the state historic preservation office both design teams collaborated to further refine the draft comprehensive high school education specification these assessments provided additional information about the nature and extent of minimum required cost per square foot for our historic buildings in some combination with new ones all of which contributed to this revised recommendation there is a balance that must be struck between how many square feet we are building which is influenced by both intended capacity and the ed spec program area and the cost per square foot given limited resources if the cost per square foot goes up it limits the capacity and number of square feet that can be built alternatively if the capacity and number of square feet goes up it reduces the available dollars per square foot the work that staff has done to balance the number of square feet required to provide the comprehensive high school program with capacities and the available resources to retain the existing 220 dollars a square foot is an important aspect of this recommendation the 2012 bond is not a standalone resource when combined with the district-wide boundary review process which you just heard about and the intention of future bond measures to address the full modernization of the six remaining high schools it can be maximized to influence and begin to scale up for anticipated future enrollments it became clear that tight sites like franklin and grant should not try to accommodate the scale of four-story buildings that overwhelm the historic and neighborhood context further the resulting decrease in cost per square foot degrades the quality of the finished product the building evaluations that have been completed to date have served as a stark reminder that the bond project budgets have always been slim and to reduce them further would not provide the desired result both design teams have collaborated to prune the comprehensive high school education specification required area while maintaining program integrity there are a number of circumstances that further serve as additional background for this staff recommendation we have revised the draft comprehensive high school area program we are benefiting from high school enrollment stability as a result of the implementation of the 2010 high school system design and metro and the city project significant longer term demographic changes in the portland metro area as previously mentioned the current high school capacities are identified at 1500 core 1500 classroom for both franklin
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and grant and 1500 core 1200 classroom capacity at roosevelt staff is proposing that we revise these to 1700 core area 1700 classroom at both roosevelt and grant at franklin and grant my apologies and at roosevelt 1700 core area and 1350 classroom capacity the impact of larger buildings has a related impact on project costs the bond program reserve was established in order to accommodate project scope changes such as staff is recommending without impacting other bond project scopes and budgets staff has proposed for the full modernization of franklin grant and roosevelt high schools that the budget be revised from 247 million to 257 million the 10 million dollar increase would be funded from the bond reserve each project which would retain its contingency and the building hard cost per square foot would remain two hundred and twenty dollars prior to escalation making a final determination about the size of these high schools at your meeting next week allows for the franklin and roosevelt projects to remain on schedule we have been proceeding along dual tracks with our design teams this fall in order to remain on schedule during this time of further review evaluation and decision making that has been possible only because we are in the master planning phase all subsequent design phases require that the scope of work be defined we're happy to answer any questions you may have about any part of this recommendation thank you colleagues so i'm struggling with this on a whole bunch of levels in terms of the school sizes so i guess my understanding was that we when we passed the bond said that 1300 was the minimum that we could have a high school and still offer a full program and my expectation would was that we were going to be building high schools probably in the 1500 to 2000 range so i'm not necessarily understanding why we seem to be going to more of a cookie cutter 1700 core for each of our buildings at this time and i'm trying to understand if that's the plan going forward that every high school would be 1700 so i'm i'm not here yet and i guess i'm also wondering why we're not talking about expected enrollment forecasts at these in these different neighborhoods because every neighborhood is a little bit different so i guess i wasn't expecting a cookie cutter so i'm i'm i'm needing more help your understanding director reagan i i don't think the intention is that anything that we do moving forward is cookie cutter that in fact on a site-specific basis each and every school will remain very individual in its characteristics the bond program as adopted by the board originally was for schools with a 1500 core capacity at all three schools with the intention that classrooms be built out for 1200 at roosevelt so that has been in place from the very beginning what we are talking about is it's clear that there are significant demographic shifts that are going to be taking place over numerous decades here in the city of portland based on metro and portland projections and so while there are short term relatively short term so 10 and 12 year projections that we get from the portland state university demographer as part of an ongoing evaluation of where we are and where we've been there are longer-term considerations for the school district than just what we know may be happening in the next decade and so what staff is trying to do is to stretch the 2012 dollars to the extent that they can be stretched in order to assist with some of those future capacity issues now the boundary work that you just heard about in terms of the psu hatfield school of government and their partnership with the district is another lever that the board will have at its disposal and it currently has as well but they're of course establishing a new framework and all of those kinds of things in order to help with the distribution of enrollment across the district and so even the enrollment that we currently show or
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project for each individual high school cluster can and you know may well change as a result of boundary adjustments that are made in the next several years and several years after that and ongoing into the future so the capital solution which is what this effectively is is only one tool in the toolbox um and the board as you know an elected body has other levers they can pull as well in order to assist in developing parity across the district as to the size of the future high schools i don't think we know the answer to that yet we haven't had the conversation about uh what's going to be potentially is there going to be a next bond when that next bond will be what schools are going to be in those if high schools remain the priority which three high schools would be up next and of those three high schools what do we believe the size of those should be and i think that's another conversation that's yet to be had sometime this winter and spring so i guess i want to have an understanding that by saying that we're building out the court is 1700 for these three we're not saying we're building out the core for every high school going forward to 1700 because it sort of feels that way to me right now i don't think we can commit future boards would do because we aren't at that point yet and i guess my my general concern is that um you know we're talking about building out grant to 1700 when our enrollment forecasts show that enrollment might actually even be higher than that um when we're done so i think the enrollment for a grant is looking to be about so i'm talking about between 2012 and 2025 enrollment 8 grand is expected to be between 1416 and 1723 students while the enrollment forecast for roosevelt as an example is expected to be 800 to 1012 students so i'm just um which is significantly higher for roosevelt so there's huge potential there and i think the piece about you know that we're looking at bound district wide how can we adjust boundaries so that you know again that's another another tool and another factor here so and i don't know that i'm as concerned about building out the core but i wonder a little bit about the initial build out on roosevelt's the one i'm really looking at right now um because i don't necessarily think it's appropriate for us to be building out to a point where we could have you know 10 empty classrooms when we're done either that will look just as foolish as not building it big enough and having either portables or having to move kids out of it so i guess i'm i'm not settled on any of these numbers at this point and i know we're not voting tonight and i'm looking forward to some community input the other thing i know is that when we originally passed the bond we had indicated what we would be spending on each of these building approximately i think roosevelt was 70 million franklin was 85 grant was 95. i don't know how much of that was based on size versus the work that we thought we were going to have to do within it and can you talk to that a little bit because we're talking about adding 10 million dollars between these three projects and i know the part of the roosevelt cost is that we're going to build out a little bit less i know that we're not going to be moving the students into a different building so i know that there's reasons for some of the change but i'm just trying to understand in terms of the 10 million do we kind of know how that's going to fall out among those three high schools or all the numbers for all three are effectively changing because at the time when we did that um we were looking at a gross square feet per student 166 square feet per students which was 240 000 square feet for a 1500 1500 school and but the different schools at the time had different amounts of existing square feet which was also part of the calculation as well since then we've had a draft ed spec which you saw at your september 23rd meeting which has been further refined by both having both design teams uh work on it collaboratively and so the square feet that we're currently talking about building out for uh franklin and grant at 1700 1700 is about 245 000 square feet and at roosevelt for 1700 1350 it would be about 224 000 square feet so so the numbers for all three high schools would be changing effectively um
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okay and then the final question i have and i know that thomas brought this up a few times also is in terms of um when we're looking at student counts i don't know if there's an impact in terms of student count versus how much space we might allocate in each building for bigger things like career technical education space and so one of my questions on roosevelt as an example might be if we ultimately expect that the school will have fewer students do we build it out to that bigger amount but do we add more of something like you know we have several career technical education pathways that require far more square footage than others and i guess rather than assuming that we're building a classroom space could we look at that as an opportunity to you know build out more cte space in one of those areas that is in high demand but takes more square footage and has that been considered as part of this or are we just talking classroom space okay let me see if i can unwind this a little bit in terms of how we've actually calculated the numbers um currently we have six thousand square feet which i think most of you are familiar with four career pathways work in each of the comprehensive high schools each of these high schools is a comprehensive high school and that is built into those square feet numbers that i just um told you so the 224 000 versus the 245 000 for franklin versus for roosevelt versus franklin and grant all include 6 000 square feet as part of their common area uh we have not looked at for instance at roosevelt the example you're giving which is instead of building out for a classroom capacity of 1350 using some of that square feet to increase uh the the cte or the career pathways um that hasn't been part of the conversation to date so just to follow up on that um from a decision making because um kevin talked about the train or either was tom or somebody about the train and so um when from your standpoint does this issue uh need to be settled on on the square footage because i think there's there's a lot of discussion and um on it in terms and several board members have visited places um where the square footage is is is bigger and offers students into the you know we're building into the future uh and offer students ability to have hands-on learning and things like metals and wood and robotics and computer and and things that are even with a revitalize benson things that these other high schools i think would kids would benefit from so if if we're going to change that 6 000 square feet when do you need to know that next monday night okay and question two is can these facilities accommodate that can we add additional square feet yes i what we need to recognize is if we're adding additional square feet we were going beyond uh the 10 million dollar reserve use of the reserve that staff had been suggesting i know that jim and i have got a great deal of discomfort going beyond that 50 use of the bond reserve but that's a decision that you as elected officials get to make that's your prerogative and um and so and we just need some indication from you about what you how many square feet you would like that to be we've been continuing to operate under the assumption that our existing high school system which is the seven comprehensive and the two focus options is what we're supposed to be designing and constructing to and the comprehensive high schools have got a limited number of career pathways in comparison to say full cte options available at roosevelt at benson high school right i will say part of the the process has also been to have a cte presence at every one of the community comprehensive high schools yes not as built out as what we're planning for benson which serves the whole system um and a couple things in motion right now that like we have applied for two grants with the oregon department of education both for 350 000 a piece one that is revitalization for benson specifically and the other which is about revitalizing ct across the whole system so we're in motion on that we also have um
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uh we're convening a district-wide um convening on december 3rd that's really looking at the whole system of cte and have some of that conversation but i think we're imagining these are not going to be like building mini bensons across the whole system it'll be a strand that you do in a in a high school and there will probably be unique strands in each of the community comprehensives not that we're trying to build out full full ct and i get your maker space concept that becomes a versatile space um but i think so that's some of the conversation uh is that though it's a both and right which is why we might need more than six thousand square feet so um in terms of that um what what what cost per square foot should one look at it where you're going to expand that um 220 if you want to tell us how many square feet you'd like to add we could bring those numbers back to you next monday night because of course we should also go back to the hydraulics here's what i'm going to tell you too the 220 a square foot actually is not a standalone number there are soft costs that could apply to that contingency there's all kinds of things so it's you it's not as straightforward as simply um taking 220 and multiplying it times the number of square feet you want to add and so yeah if you want to go back to the hydraulics hydraulic slide i only say this because everybody was looking at your paper rather than the slide and i don't know if you got the interactive nature of the slide so which i would just be the getting to see just that you're at a choice point here in terms of what happens when you move one piece of this if the enrollment capacity in the area program oops now the opposite has happened okay there you go because the construction cost per square foot goes down as the capacity and the area program go up and vice versa that as the capacity and area program goes down it allows the cost to come back up it's and it is just going to be a trade-off kind of conversation and what do you what do you mean by trade-off conversation well it depends it's not a trade-off if what you're suggesting is you're going to go deeper than 10 million dollars into the bond reserve right then it's not a trade-off it's an ad right and um we do have uh um we do have some additional visuals tonight if you'd like to take a quick look at them um uh director belial was present at the franklin dag when that design team went through an exercise around career technical education and i went ahead and took some of those slides and have added them to this pack if you'd like to see them real quick it's showing both canby and gladstone both of which like uh sandy and sherwood and a number of other school districts around here are single high school districts and so of course they offer both career technical education and comprehensive in once in a single building but it does show the nature of the space and there are also a couple of slides that show the relationship between spaces that we know we're going to be building as core spaces um and and the simplicity of just adding a little bit of space and what you get for that space in other words if you already know how about if you take us take us to some photos here jim let's talk to them a little bit i guess i would also add that there's a relationship that's emerging between schedule budget and scope and where we are right now in the process is there's trade-offs so we're still committed certainly to the uh july or to the fall of 2017 completion for roosevelt and franklin but as we as we are impacted because we're not moving ahead for for a variety of reasons there's schedule impact there's cost implications if we delay things and you've heard that previously when we've talked about some of the contextual information on the bond program but it's really becoming very approximate now that as we're moving we're about to make a master plan presentation to you and so the timing of all this starts to starts to connect and you'll see that very vividly so the photos that are up here uh right now are from canby um up in the upper left is a what's called a pre-engineering space below that is their research and development area the upper right is you know visibility into a classroom and then a hallway and one thing you can tell that's that you'll see in all of these different photos both between canby and gladstone is the transparency of the space so if you're in a classroom you can see into the lab if you're in the lab you can see into the classrooms we can go to the next center also from canby and again you've got an i.t area so and below that you've got a standard
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classroom the upper right you've got a classroom where public meetings are also held and then you've got their bio and their ag lab below and again you've got uh physical and visual relationships between these spaces um that are part of the key characteristics of it and so at some point whether it's six thousand square feet or whether it's ten thousand or twelve thousand square feet in terms of career pathways there's a an important design element here where you take um well let's keep going and then and then i'll talk to you soon i also wanna say that it's um just to think about it as career pathways i think is a limiting way to think about it because what we're really talking about is the education of our kids all the kids and these spaces help in you know whether it's mathematics we just heard about that in benson um chemistry physics uh what have you so i i think talking about it solely is um in terms of what's required in terms of education for the next century just just career is in my view limiting and that certainly wasn't my intention if that's what it sounded like because the spaces we've been showing you here actually stem related so you've got science and mathematics classrooms uh science and mathematics classrooms that are surrounding you know the the enhanced elective uh which what's called enhanced elective in the ed program but it's called also called makerspace so you've got if you flip down to another couple of slides oh we lost some slides never mind there were some nice illustrations of um the fact that for an engineering and design construction or manufacturing that science ap physics math ap calculus intro to engineering are all required classrooms anyway and so what you would add is a stem lab that could be woods metal fabrication welding it could be any anything it could be robotics or an alternative energy lab so so the kind of lab space or maker space that gets developed at each comprehensive as the superintendent indicated may be quite different and that's part of the career pathways in other words every school is not going to be as robust as benson will be in terms of availability of some of these resources but at some point it does become a design related issue as well so it's not just the fact that we've got the square feet it's how we're using the square feet and how we're co-locating it with the relevant classrooms that are we're going to be required to construct in any case and then having that transparency between uh those spaces and the lab itself that was the only point i was trying to make in spite of the fact that i've been going through all these slides thank you sure so i just um i just want to say that i for one am not comfortable i am comfortable with the staff's recommendation appreciate all the hard work that's going going into it i'm not comfortable dipping further into reserves i think it is really important i mean the hallmark of all of this that we hear over and over again of the new spaces is the flexibility and we talked back in the high school system design process a long time ago about exactly what you've been saying tonight that we cannot since we're a multi-um comprehensive school district we're not one where we have just the one building where we can pour everything we've got into that one high school like in some of the other districts that we aren't going to be able to do it all at every single campus but what i'm hearing is that with these flexible spaces the six thousand foot space we're going to be and and the way it kind of relates with some of the other new spaces and the amazing opportunities that we're going to have there around things like the theater wing and the gardening and the other things that we are going to have those hands-on engaging and flexible spaces and opportunities for kids so i am not comfortable with delaying further i feel we need to move forward we heard very strongly from our our accountability committee that they're concerned that we are potentially not moving forward that we're not going to keep to our schedule and i have confidence in our professional team and their recommendations and the considerable amount of work and groundwork they've done and coming to this revised recommendation so just i just wanted to say that and i think it's time to move forward with their recommendation how much cte spaces are right now at franklin there's a substantial amount i know i think it's about 12 000 square feet it's about 12 000 now are we retaining that as cte space in our rebuild well we don't have an approved master plan yet um well theoretically in your recommended plan is there a recommended master plan well there will be one hopefully coming out next week that will ultimately come to the board the first
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part of december and in that plan the existing cte spaces actually there are existing buildings that are going to be demolished and replaced and so that the space that is currently cte may not exist in its current form uh we've identified a replacement space of six thousand square feet uh whether they're going to be able to um accommodate their needs in 6 000 square feet or whether they're going to do some horse trading internally in terms of that community in order to accommodate other additional square feet i don't know so we're demolishing some of the cte space that's there well we're also demolishing gymnasiums and all kinds of other space right but i mean what you're saying is that we're actually then decreasing the cte space at franklin that is correct twelve thousand to six thousand what's being proposed if we go over to uh grant grant used to hold three thousand students uh how much cte space is there a grant now i don't know that number off the top of my head is there any i don't anybody know is there none i don't know that number roosevelt any ct space at roosevelt right now um i don't know that number off the top of my head either i apologize for i thought maybe somebody from roosevelt might know that number okay uh that'd be helpful next week to know the changes when you come forward the changes are roosevelt that changes and granted changes in cte space those are great comments that we'll research and bring back thank you very much um so we right now you we have a 220 square foot per square foot cost that's the construction costs for the building only in second quarter two thousand twelve dollars okay and yeah okay and so that doesn't include design or things like that doesn't include any site improvements doesn't include escalation doesn't include uh contingency and ffa yeah fixtures for interesting equipment are ff e well i think it would be helpful just um just so just so we have data on the table what we know uh what would be if we were to put four thousands additional square foot feet what that would cost and then we all get to make a decision so 4 000 additional square feet for cte space in each school okay yeah well i i got three folks looking for um how about i go director reagan director no tom oh why are you okay go ahead direct reveal uh do you mean adding 4000 you mean switching 4 thousand 4 000 per school so you'd have 10 000 as opposed to switching 4 000 from some place else in other words you got a certain size building yeah and so you move 4 000 from this to c to e i i'm assuming that switching is not going to cost anything but i could be wrong on that switching it cost you right to cte because it's more expensive or would it well would that be a possibility we're still at the conceptual stage so at this point it would not if you wanted to but then there's other impacts what are you switching out are you playing right exactly exactly exactly it's our yeah exactly that that is the other impact and i was but that's why i was trying to clarify where we are i don't know you like can you ballpark that other impact no what we're talking about is bringing that material back next monday okay so that that would be part of that you would know next monday correct what they might switch around well no actually we're not talking about switching what director cooler has asked for is for us to bring back a cte of 10 000 square feet at each school so instead of 6 000 it's an additional 4 000 for a total of ten thousand square feet of cte at each school in addition to the balance of the program determine what the cost of that is right that's what is that what you're asking for tom just an additional but that's an additional piece of information right okay so the your staff the staff
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recommendation will still stand as an option correct we'll bring that that is information back in response to a board request this is also very iterative as we as we go back and pull this information we'll be presenting some information in our master plans and then as we go through schematic design which is the really the first design phase that we'll be starting we'll come back with even more detail so we'll we'll be giving more information as we as move ahead but what what we need is the is the profile for the master plans which is which is a key element right now director reagan and then director knows so director knowles and i went and visited sherwood high school recently it was amazing to see their cte capacity but i also understand that they are a district that has one high school so they kind of have their benson and comprehensive neighborhood you know as as one so i totally understand that that's not what we're looking at um what i think i'm struggling with is i don't have a clear understanding of what six thousand square feet of cta space will get us in our high schools and i don't know if it's a huge a huge amount of opportunities for kids or if it's a pretty limited amount of space and so i think that's why i'm struggling with the 6 000 square feet it seems like a very small amount of career technical education space and it was part of our um you know during our high school redesign we wanted to have some career technical education opportunities in all of our high schools so again i'm not anticipating that it would be a full-blown benson kind of experience but i do want to make sure that that kids have many many experiences to do the hands-on learning and i guess again in terms of the cookie cutter the reason i was specifically asking about roosevelt is if you look at the numbers and you anticipate that they may have potentially less students does it give us an opportunity to talk with that community about would you want to build more cte hands-on experience given that i don't know that we could have the same conversation necessarily with grant because we expect 1700 kids there so i guess i'm just asking if we still have the opportunity to have that discussion or not um so and it seems like if we don't have it soon we won't have the opportunity so that's all i'm asking i do believe that um representatives from the roosevelt community are planning on speaking uh next monday because this will be an action item at that time about how they feel about the staff recommendation thank you guys for being here today um i just have a couple of comments one is uh related to benson and our comprehensive high schools i i'd like to see us stop talking about benson as being the catch-all or the the comprehensive that is like sherwood or any of the others because i don't really think that is the same thing benson is a career technical high school period sherwood sandy camby all of those schools are comprehensive high schools and they all have full cte and i believe that over the years we have totally dismantled our cte program here in portland public schools and that we need to get back to that as a very important piece for many many of our students you know we have i think i've said this before we have 11 000 high school students and you know space for 2 000 if we get up to that at benson that leaves us with 9 000 students i'm sure some of them will want to do cte i'm i'm guessing about 50 of them at least will want to do cte especially if we're trying to get to 40 40 20. you have students who need uh cte to for that as well so um i think that that uh constantly saying that benson is our cte and everybody else gets this little thing over here is is the wrong way for us to approach this because i really do believe that cte is something that will help hold our students in school and provide them with what they need in order to be successful citizens when they leave our schools not that they're just graduating but they're prepared for a career or college and so um i think that's really important i'm i'm also a little concerned about um how late we are to the game and some of this discussion about cte and so i would tend to be a person who's going to err on the side of more space versus less as we kick off this group that's going to be discussing cte in december after we already have to make this decision that's a that's a real concern to me especially since at least i've been raising the cte flag for about a year so i i'm sorry that we're so far behind the ball on this one and i i am not willing to slow the train down i think we need to move ahead
02h 10m 00s
but i'd like to do that in a way that provides us with as much space for ct as possible one of the things that we saw out at sherwood was the space multi-use space in which you showed some of it here where you can use uh space for a number of different things at computer labs we they had about six guys who were in there working on old computers that the navy gave them refurbishing them and making them ready for using in classrooms it was pretty amazing that they were you know some of the things that they were able to do just in a regular classroom so when we talk about cte space i mean part of it has to do with the space that's got the saws and the metal and all of that but the rest of it is space that could be used for many different things and i think we need to take that into consideration when we're talking about the amount of space that we're going to need for each one of these and so i mean that's that's pretty much where i am i'm hoping that we'll be able to get to a space where we can um see if how much space we're actually going to need and i guess it's one of i know you guys are going to come back with that i think that's great i don't know how much space these other high schools are you are currently use for that i think that would be helpful for us to know that you know what what is the square footage it can be what's the square footage of sherwood what's the square footage out at sandy because again i think we need to have uh comprehensive high schools have a full cte program that's awesome yeah two two quick comments one is that i i think i tend to uh lie on the side of of always wanting to have uh as much space as possible plan for more students um and uh and but certainly have that plan within the the accountability structure in terms of the funding that we have for it um and i think you've proposed something that that does that so i i really do appreciate that the other thing too and this has been referenced at least a couple of times we've got a lot of rough riders in the uh in the audience today and um i wanted i wanted to make sure that uh you don't just what please come in and talk to us next week but uh don't just wait for that you can email us or contact us and and let us know what you're thinking on what you've heard so far i think that would be really helpful um you know i personally spent a lot of time in in north and northeast portland and i i see a lot of kids a lot of kids in in these schools and we certainly see them in our schools and we know that that in some areas we're not catching nearly as many as who we as what we would catch if in fact we had a rebuilt robust roosevelt high school so i want to be conscious of that too and that that plays into some of these assumptions in terms of student student numbers so but let's hear from let's hear from you guys they'll be happy to talk to you um to get back to director knowles uh real quick just so that there are no surprises next monday i mean some of the things we do know about other cte programs that some of these you know one high school district so can be sandy and sherwood is that they can have up to 30 000 square feet devoted to cte so what we're talking about is yeah is is a fraction of that um the gladstone uh is more in the range of 82 or 8 300 square feet and it is again that uh flexible maker space such as you saw from that that can be photos so i won't run you back through more photos of gladstone but very comparable same design team same idea but but the numbers are substantially larger in these single school high school districts so then we have to start thinking about are we dipping into our bond reserves beyond the comfort level of our professional staff are we taking away other parts of the building which will are also valuable parts of the building that i mean so well i guess i want to mention on a little bit about that process that's what this has made me think of like i think of the design advisory group that i get to sit down in franklin and these are some of the questions that we haven't delved too far into but the community is beginning to figure out what is its priority would they rather have twelve thousand square feet of community cte at that school or because one of their ctes is about nutrition in the foods program that requires a lot less of the maker space for example and so would they rather have a performing arts center and so again as we go through this process i to your point director reagan not not a cookie cutter even though the numbers look cookie cutter um how dangerous it is for us to think that every one of these high schools which have very
02h 15m 00s
different layouts and very different looks is going to wind up being the same so having some some people weigh in and the design advisory groups seem to be that the right place um the right to to come with us and have some recommendations or have some ideas i have no doubt that people are gonna want everything that's the danger right i want cte i want a pool we want this in fact i heard students right aren't they right students are saying we want a pool um i want a pool too by the way i was saying that as we toured seattle and when i imagined what that what that reserve that contingency was it was for things like that do we decide that we want to do something like that so i i piggyback on director atkins point is 10 million it's absolutely there um this is what we've we've looked to use it for to make sure that we right-size this so that we don't open buildings that all sudden we're saying well you were assigned to that high school but now we're going to reassign you before we even open it for you and i'm cautious i i'm worried about going well below that because one of the questions i have and this will tie into what i was just saying but it'll be different than our cte discussion um there have been some some questions that have come up in the franklin design advisory group about my understanding is that there is a former river or stream that runs underneath that building um people i've heard it called trillium creek or something i don't know um so one i wanted to know if if our geo technical work there it's probably not that in-depth is that correct that we wouldn't have discovered whether or not there's a river running underneath franklin high school actually we have streams running underneath a number of our properties and in fact if you take a there's a beautiful map out that shows portland as it used to be before we took all of the streams and put them in concrete and covered them and this entire area was a major tributary to the willamette and the columbia rivers and so i haven't heard that particular comment about franklin certainly our project team would be familiar with the nature and extent of it but in fact we know that we've got um we've got creeks running under a number of our properties and it's the nature of portland and i bring that up because i think of when we come to those when we were in seattle there was one school that a lot of people fell in love with and it was about almost double its budget that's because there were a number of issues that they ran into as i expect us possibly running into with our old schools such as old oil tanks right they we just talked we're about to talk about decommissioning but that wasn't done 50 years ago or 100 years ago so who knows what we're going to dig up when we start demolishing some of these buildings and i just i get concerned that we're we're going to dream and we're going to spend that contingency before we get to the place where we're actually going to come across some of those issues so that's i guess just one thought um one the next i want to comment on again as as i've gone through the design advisory group to see how they're co-locating and putting the adjacencies of do we put stem so science technology engineering math right next to that space maker which allows for that flexibility so it's actually increasing that space rather than just saying it's dedicated maker space and that's all it will be right multi-use understanding that there is an interplay between those disciplines right and that when we talk about 21st century learning that's what we're talking about is people do not build in silos anymore they build in teams and it's across disciplinary and so i guess that gives me less concern about the 6 000 square feet space and the last thing i want to mention was just a really fine detail but for all those music teachers out there i guess i was a little disappointed but glad to see that it might be one of the first things added back is the idea of sharing a band in choir room they're very different and their needs are very different and it could create scheduling problems um so i i i would hope that we could look at again putting two separate spaces um for that but are there other comments suggestions i just keep coming back to not getting hung up on x thousand square feet is what we must have given that a it's going to be flexible throughout the building and the ways we've been describing and b our expectation is that teaching and learning is going to going to go on in a different way so that we have hands-on and engagement and all these it's not just go to this one giant room and do these things and get engaged that needs to be happening throughout the building and all the different spaces so you know again given that we have a limited budget from our voters and an obligation to stay on budget and on schedule i'm really not comfortable with
02h 20m 00s
saying let's add here let's do more here let's add this we've got a really well thought out recommendation and again i really feel uncomfortable with um making last minute switches to that based on you know x number thousand of square feet wish list for this and that when we've got a clear vision that includes flexibility and hands-on learning for all students throughout the entire campus any other comments or questions do you have what you need from us do you know where most of us are standing so that you understand it sounds like you're going to come back with this recommendation with some options and what that result trade-offs would be if we decided to expand or decrease well let me confirm i mean the items that we're going to going to be coming back with are the existing square feet that are devoted and currently being used for cte at franklin grant and roosevelt as a as compared to the 6 000 square feet that's being proposed in the ed spec uh if we add 4 000 square feet per school of cte what's the additional cost and there was some interest in knowing how much cte square feet there was additional high schools that's why i wanted to give you the heads up that many of those it's far larger than anything we're i had a considering about what 6 000 square feet buys you so if you take three or four different cte programs if you could just give us some sense of whether or not those would fit or how many of those would fit within that kind of space i just i'm having trouble just understanding whether we're talking about just one offering or three per school or what we're talking about okay and perhaps we can do some uh have some quick visuals for you in terms of drawings um up on the board or something does that help you yeah one more question and which is um the uh the the 20 million dollar contingency fund which is basically scope changes which you just came to us with a 10 million scope change if we were to add more cte space as an example that would be a scope change versus seeing a river underneath the building and having to deal with that that that's a that's in the 15 contingency fund or in the escalator fund so uh essentially could you describe the three different uh contingency funds that that add up to quite a bit of money when we uh when we constructed the bond we had different levels of contingency that were built into the program at the project level each project had a 15 contingency associated with it so when you look at the total budget per project 15 of it was dedicated for unknowns differing site conditions jurisdictional changes things that were fairly small but typically was identified when you're well into design the next level was an escalation contingency of sorts 45 million at the program level because it's an eight year bond program we were anticipating that we would be seeing cost increases over that time and i would say personally given where we are we're just you know we just celebrated our first year in the bond program that we don't know exactly where construction costs are going where labor costs are going so we have an allocation model for the 45 million and again as the report states we're looking at allocating uh quite a bit of it to these schools and then thirdly the program reserve component and it isn't just limited to scope changes it's also for significant unknowns that occur such that such as if we have a major code change by the city of portland uh if we have something significant beyond what was anticipated uh that that would be another source that that would be available so what we're bringing forward here is is a pretty clear scope change but it was also intended to be used for other other purposes that may arise over the course of of the eight-year program i'm not sure if that fully answers that's very helpful yeah and then so when you add up all those contingencies together and they're they're separate buckets but what's the total dollar figure so it'd be uh 45 for escalation 20 for program reserve i don't have the the number for the projects on the top of my head because it's each it's each project and they have to look at each each one of the high schools plus fabian plus each of the summer programs so we have contingency built into the projects and by the way that's a fairly standard industry metric that's used for uh for project level work okay this summer ip13 improvement project 13 for example we came in at a little a little under 10 for unknowns that occurred so just to give you some order of magnitude thank you
02h 25m 00s
thank you both very much the board will now consider its business agenda miss houston are there any changes to our business agenda no do i have a motion and a second to approve director atkins moves to approve and director knowles seconds to approve the business agenda ms houston is there any public comment on the business agenda no we're doing all the numbers at once let me know when i can make an amendment please any changes i'm saying no okay um so is there any board discussion i'd like to make an amendment to segregate out resolution number 4835 the part on pacific educational group only is it is that a motion yeah so thank you director buell moves to remove resolution 4835 and move it to its own vote outside of the business agenda director curler seconds is there any board discussion on the amendment all those in favor please say aye aye all those opposed please say no no no no any abstentions i don't know what that vote was um i think it was two um in support and three director martin what's that uh it's fine we can remove it yeah we can segregate it okay director i don't have a structure i need you to vote for sure okay so we have one two three no yeah how did curler vote for one two three four thank you so good okay thank you four in favor um and three opposed with representative davidson voting yes yes to remove resolution 4835 into a separate vote outside of the business agenda having that amended we will now consider the full business agenda as amended all those in favor please any other board discussion all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all those opposed please indicate by saying no the business agenda as amended is approved by a vote of seven to zero with us with student representatives davidson voting yes yes the board will now consider resolution four eight three five do i have a motion in a second to adopt so moved second director morton moves to adopt and director curler votes for seconds why can't i not talk about seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4835 a contract with pacific education group is there any board discussion i just think this takes an explanation for me because i'm going to vote no and it's i would like to see us begin to shift this type of money more into our classroom things dealing with diversity things in our classroom whether it be history or whether it be uh trying to get children less prejudice i just think it would be we should begin we should be we've been doing this a long time we should begin to move it in the classroom that's my own but i think that's exactly what these consultants are helping us do so maybe there's a i mean that we've got our own folks trained in-house in the district to be able to conduct the trainings and the work now as per see as i understand it is proceeding along the lines of things like how do we transform special education how do we transform our merchant our education for our emerging bilinguals and so i guess i have a different perspective on to me it's all about classroom practice that's that's the key it's about the whole organization and the whole organization and i'll just say that we've had so every school has a principal and teacher equity team that does the professional development for the school this year we're expanding our work to include work with action research in the classroom so it's helping teachers do individual action research in their classroom that's focused on equity as also and also work with parents in some schools and then in central departments so the one you're seeing here is having every central department have their equity team but they look specifically at the work that they as a department do and what does that mean in terms of their decision making in terms of their resources in terms of what they prioritize um and it's supporting them and building their equity points so it's truly organization-wide part of that comes back to being able to have the capacity as a district to have a budgeting process that uses an equity lens so that we can differentiate resources and i think we've heard pretty clearly the importance of doing that but we can't do
02h 30m 00s
that if the organization as a whole is not using an equity lens and understanding and and transforming themselves all with the same the same goal so and we are working to steve's point on training our own staff to be able to deliver more and more of the training right so that we're becoming you know self-sustaining in terms of how we provide this right so i just want to make a quick point i think it's worth segregating just so we can highlight a little bit about and have the conversation because i think the conversation needs to be intentional and and i'm probably more on the side where we need to be unapologetic about how we invest in equity and how we invest in changing the culture of this district that is left out um left at a lot of kids and actually the largest growing population of kids but i also want um want us to understand too that that the investment that we make is really just that it's it's changing the culture of the district and this kind of investment has been criticized i think in the past but i my question is what is the price to changing the culture and the direction of a district this size with this many employees and um and if if those that have criticized can come and tell me no it costs this much and here's who here's you who can do it and here's how you do it i'd be happy to listen to them but but i think it's important for us to continue to maintain our investment in it and like i said i'm going to be i'm going to continue to be unapologetic about it one other thing i would add here is if we were looking to increase teacher access to these trainings we would increase our sub budget in order to release teachers to be able to participate in the training because that is the place that ends up being the employee group that costs us more money because we need to to plan for subs so if we were looking to your point steve to make this more accessible to teachers that would be the place we would focus on investing more money and i think it's important you know carmen rubio the executive director of the latino network spoke earlier today and i think she and the organizations that are represented in the coalition of communities of color are banking on the fact that this is just not an intellectual exercise that this district is going through but this is an exercise that in fact an investment in fact is going to going to see improved outcomes for each kid so uh and i think that's that has been from day one the commitment of the district to this to this work any other comments okay board will now vote on resolution 4835 the expenditure contract for pacific educational group all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all those opposed please indicate by saying no no the resolution 4835 is passed by a vote of six to one with student representatives davidson voting yes yes thank you we are through our agenda items the next meeting of the board will be on monday november 18th the meeting of the board is now

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)

2013-11-12 PPS School Board Study Session

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Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - November 12, 2013

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