2014-01-13 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2014-01-13
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

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Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

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  AGENDA 01-13-14 (f9bfa434dfcfd30c).doc Agenda

Materials

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  01-13-14 Business Agenda (3b6241295f8131d1).pdf Meeting Materials

Minutes

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  01-13-14 Business Minutes (462ee90bdb9bc41d).pdf Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - January 13, 2014

00h 00m 00s
good evening this meeting of the board of education for january 13 2014 is called to order i'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers all items that will be voted on this evening 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 on the pps website and also will be archived there for later reference if you're interested before we move on to public comment i know many of us are interested in how negotiations are going on superintendent smith can you give us a brief update yes i will so today we met mediation again at pat's offices we will be back at in mediation again with the mediator uh on thursday starting at 9 a.m um and both teams are working really hard towards an agreement so that's my update thank you with that ms houston do we have anybody signed up for public comment we have three okay our first two speakers are jonathan lewis and jessica thompson as you're approaching i'm going to read the instructions for public comment i'd like to thank you very much for taking the time to come out to our board meeting this evening we deeply value public input and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board lie in lies in actively listening and reflecting on thoughts and opinions of others the board will not respond to 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've left your contact information either phone number or email on the sign up sheet 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 of your testimony a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will appear and when your time is up the red light will appear and a little buzzer will go off and at that time we ask that you wrap up your comments we sincerely appreciate your input and thank you for your cooperation good evening portland public school board members my name is jessica thompson j-e-s-s-i-c-a i am president of chief joseph ockley-green pta i'm going to talk to you today about race i am a white woman my son has brown skin i have witnessed both as an educator and as a parent systems and pps that are designed to promote the racial achievement gap i am here today to ask you to do more to close the racial achievement gap in portland i believe portland public schools can do much more even given our current funding situation to ensure that our black and brown children are guaranteed equitable outcomes in education we can do more to close the gap a few weeks ago you approved kiros charter school the dedicated visionary leaders of kiros for a variety of reasons felt called upon to open a school that is dedicated to closing this socio-economic and racial achievement gap i applaud their sense of urgency for creating a new educational model that disrupts the status quo and implements systems that promote the achievement of black and brown children sei academy is already doing this work and has posted amazing results they have been honored by the state for this work my hope is that one day soon all of our neighborhood schools will be implementing these systems so that we will no longer be able to predict a child's educational outcome based on his or her skin color when i was an instructional coach in hillsboro a district with similar percentages of low-income and minority students a district with significantly higher graduation rates i worked for a great leader who told us over and over again we know right now that there is a direct correlation between race and achievement we should not be able to predict a student's academic performance based on their race we have to disrupt these systems now your job we were told over and over again is to go back to our schools and disrupt systems that we know mean inequitable outcomes for children we know with a hundred percent accuracy what we're doing now is not working for our black and brown children so we have
00h 05m 00s
to change it that must be the message to all of our leaders in portland public schools here is one concrete action that you can take to disrupt the status quo last year i had the honor of listening to jefferson cluster principles give you an update on their work we heard about bike fairies and murals and salmon and the like very few even mentioned the achievement gap i saw the direction they were given prior to the meeting about what to present to you and the information they gave was exactly what they were asked to give not anymore i urge you to bring the same sense of urgency to closing the racial achievement gap that kiros and sei are bringing to this issue every day my suggestion is that no principal addressed this board without a description of at least one system they are implementing to dismantle the achievement gap the next time principals at pps address this board they have to describe to you one strategy and tell you the update on their results i know you like so many parents and educators in portland would like to see our schools reimagined so that all teachers receive training and evidence-based instructional strategies that are designed to promote equitable outcomes for all our children regardless of race my child and the children of color and pbs don't have time to lose please give our principals the mandate now go back to your buildings and disrupt systems that we know perpetuate the racial achievement gap and then hold them accountable thank you folks join us welcome everybody um just a reminder that um to keep the isles clear per the fire marshal's rules as well as the area in front of the diocese but thank you for being here you can you can start thank you john jonathan yep ellen say your name my name is my name is jonathan lewis lewis it's a thank you board thank you board um smaller classes because my class had 34. thank you is there anything else you want jonathan thank you so much and lastly we have joshua curtis my name is joshua curtis that's c-u-r-t-i-s i'd like to start by thanking the board for their service and listening to my comments i worked at pbs previously for a year and a half as a student support coordinator at benson high school and tonight i'd like to talk about the data metrics that pps uses to judge the effectiveness of high school programs specifically community-based alternative programs recently the willamette week published an article titled flunk factories that highlighted the abysmal four-year graduation rate of community-based alternative programs only nine percent this data and how it's measured is important because policy decisions are made with it there are board members who have mentioned the graduation rate as a reason for making changes to the district contract with pat but comprehensive high schools with union teachers have much better graduation rates than the cbo's with non-union teachers however i would also argue that the article did not paint a complete picture of the situation first there's wide variation in the success of cbo programs some such as naia have much better results than others but perhaps the biggest flaw is that it
00h 10m 00s
focuses on a four-year graduation rate which for cbo's is largely irrelevant there most of them getting students coming to them in the middle of their high school education is sophomores or juniors they're already years behind they're not going to graduate on time no matter how good a job the cdo does for many students and because of this i think pps needs to find another data metric that it can use to compare the programs it should stay focused on four-year graduation rates that's really important the state makes you measure them for good reason but you can't really compare community-based alternative organizations with the comprehensive high schools using it what i would recommend is that pps develop a metric based on the number of credits that students earn per semester and that they collect it they make it very public so that people know how good how well different programs are doing and that then policy decisions are made by this if a community-based organization is doing a good job what they're doing well should be replicated if they're not doing a good job they should be closed some good news is that a lot of this data is actually closer at hand than you might think for all the comprehensive high schools the data needed to get this information is in your esis and for the cbo's similar information appeared in the 2011-2012 alternative education options report and so it should be very possible to get this information and provide in a way that both the public and pps's organization can make informed decisions thank you board will now consider its business agenda miss houston are there any changes to the business agenda no no okay um do i have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda second director morton moves to adopt and director knowles seconds the adoption of the business agenda ms houston is there any public comment on the business agenda no there is not is there any board discussion on the business agenda and i'll just remind folks that resolution 4858 the um intergovernmental agreement with the state of oregon on behalf of oeib is going to be a separate vote is there any other discussion on the business agenda okay the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions business agenda is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative davidson voting yes yes we will now consider resolution 4858 entering into an intergovernmental agreement with the state of oregon on behalf of the oregon educational investment board do i have a motion and a second director regan moves and director atkins seconds the motion to adopt resolution four eight five eight miss houston is there any public comment on resolution is there any board discussion on the resolution director buell i've got some real reservations about this one of the things that i've been doing the last two two and a half years is attending the oregon educational investment board meetings i've gone to all of them a couple i was gone in california otherwise i've gone to all of them for that period of time and what's happening with the governor's program is that they take money a lot of money they started out with 225 million in the uh originally to try and take 225 million which comes out of the money that they would normally send portland public schools part of it and they in the legislature they cut them down to 75 million but they still have 75 million dollars that they send out around for grants uh with the idea their educational investments that's what they call the oregon educational investment board and that money doesn't come to the schools so this fifty thousand dollars goes to an agency in town it's good agency we like them all hands raised they're good stuff but the money is it goes to that agency and then eventually more money goes out of this common school fund to these things all over the state and this is part of what's called the re regional achievement collaboratives and the idea is to kind of put together these these groups of businesses and groups of of government and make them all work together which is a really good thing actually the problem is that it's not as good a thing as the investment in our own schools the investment in librarians now the investment in class size the investment in
00h 15m 00s
music programs the investment in after school activities maybe for middle school that those types of things make a lot more sense for the state to spend money that way so every time they go to this type of approach the governor's program which is kind of really comes out of the business community doesn't come out of educators comes out of the business community and it's gone through the whole thing and what they end up with is spending a lot of money that the schools don't get because they sent it out another way now that's what they're doing here we're not spending any money here we're just saying okay we'll be the person that the money will go through that's it's not really our problem we're just being nice to a group that we partner with all hands raised which actually does a lot of good things in portland but it would be nice if that money went here instead we've been working on that for the last couple years i hope to ask the portland school board to work on that down the line where we should be down telling the oeib hey we want that money to be spent in our schools not in these other programs three and a half million or so sent out to eastern oregon to do something and there's all you know i've got a list here's a list of the money that they sent out and you can read through what it is if anybody's interested and you're going but none of this goes into schools really and so uh i'm going to vote no on it just because out of the fact that it's the oeib thing it's not that we're doing something nice in it but we shouldn't be doing we probably shouldn't even be doing it but we're not there yet hopefully we'll get there down the line and say okay that's enough of this we're going to go down and we're going to lobby in the state legislature and we're going to lobby at the oaib we're going to lobby the governor to spend that money in our schools are there any other comments in the last week any other comments board members please indicate by saying yes yes all those opposed please indicate by saying no no resolution 4858 passes by a vote of five to one with representative davidson voting yes this meeting of the board of education is adjourned our next meeting is tuesday january 21st at 6 pm

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)