2014-03-03 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2014-03-03
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - March 3, 2014

00h 00m 00s
do do otherwise i would have called you out of order good evening this study session of the board of education for march 3rd 2014 is called to order i'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers while our study sessions are generally limited to our receipt of information from staff and discussion of that information and review of resolutions prior to a vote at times we conduct votes during study sessions any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed through the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our pps tv services website okay our first agenda item is public comment uh miss houston do we have anyone signed up we have sync signed up great and our first two speakers are antoinette olivas and bradley gross oops okay while you are coming up i will read the instructions for public comment for everybody who's going to testify tonight thoughts and opinions of others guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration when referring to board members staff and other presenters 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've left your contact information either a phone number or an email on the sign up sheet pursuant to board policy 1.70.1012 speakers may offer objective criticism of district operations and programs but the board will not hear complaints concerning individual district personnel any complaints about specific employees should be directed to the superintendent's office and will not be heard in this forum 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 right there in front of you when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when your time is up the red light will go on and a buzzer will sound we respectfully ask you to conclude your comments at that time we sincerely appreciate your input and thank you for your cooperation and for being here tonight go ahead my name is antonette olivas o-l-i-v-a-s i want to thank you for letting me speak tonight i'm the varsity girls soccer coach over at benson high school and my understanding is that there is some talk about cutting the soccer programs over benson so i just came because i'd like to talk about keeping them and how important they are i have two soccer teams these are my varsity and my jv girls and they love to play soccer and i love to coach them at soccer um sorry i'm nervous i've i i sent out a letter in the in the spring to girls to come and and to join the team all levels anybody who's incoming freshman at benson i get 15 freshman a year some of them have never played before some of them have played for a couple years we grow we build this year i can say that the teams grew their skill was amazing their confidence
00h 05m 00s
grew i had a player who scored against madison we tied the game and the the look on her face was amazing she she didn't think she was a very good player i kept telling her that she was she didn't believe in herself after that we still talk about her goal i have another girl who almost scored against roosevelt she's a sophomore she also not a lot of confidence in herself she played phenomenally that game i couldn't have been prouder she now wants to play club soccer she went in and tried out unfortunately her mom didn't let her play but she tried out and she made the team i mean these girls the soccer is doing so much for these girls i was like them i was at risk minority student played soccer i've played since i was nine when i when we could afford it and and i love it i coach now i've been coaching for 16 years there's nothing better than watching these girls to take it away from them would be devastating just absolutely devastating they asked me when soccer summer workouts start they want to play spring soccer they want to play indoor soccer they want to play futsal now there's it's it's amazing for them it's it's helping their grades i hope i tutor them um my friends will help tutor them i mean you can't just take soccer from them i know it seems like it's just a game and it's just a sport but it's not that my best friends are from soccer from college they're gonna be best friends with these girls that they've played with for the rest of their lives it's it's a family that we're creating it's it's a beautiful thing and i just it would be such a loss for them and for everyone to take this away from them we can we can we can compete we're getting better every year the program is growing you know just let them play is really all i want to say thank you hi my name is brad gross g-r-o-s-s i was a volunteer soccer coach for the bensons boys team this past year during the season i had the opportunity to see several players learn how to play soccer but more importantly i saw them grow as individuals by exercising those character attributes that transcend the game and usher them into adulthood these include winning with humility losing with dignity teamwork dedication taking personal responsibility poise accepting criticism and i can go on and on these are the softer skills that are required for success regardless of overall team skill these skills not only apply to sports but will also provide the framework to us to excel as these students graduate to the challenges that exist outside the structure of a high school classroom i heard a wise man once say at a pil coaches meeting and i paraphrase as coaches winning isn't your top priority it's about building character and i submit that it's by virtue of those character skills that our teams and their constituent players will ultimately succeed on and off the field the benson athletic program not only fosters an environment that teaches students those skills but also provides the structure and safe haven critical to the success of at-risk youth when growing up it was my peers that weren't involved in athletics that were getting into trouble all the time my wife and i were recently at a tennis match where james blake was playing against andre agassi there was a person sitting behind us who on several occasions whistled loudly just prior to blake's service attempting to break his concentration it made me pretty angry as competitors we understand the importance of a level playing field and when that field is biased we find it frustrating the whistler didn't quite understand that and in my opinion it really exposed the flaw in their personality i'm guessing they were never part of an athletic team i'd like to think that none of my players would do that and even if they did they would be quickly reprimanded by their teammates banson has produced numerous professional athletes and been recognized in the past for having a leading physical education program whatever the driving force is behind the shutdown it has fallen to the community to act as advocates for both current and future generations that will attend benson everything i've said tonight goes for all sports not just soccer each has its own set of challenges and obstacles but in the end the details don't matter it's the community and environment that sports provides that's that is most important okay great thank you thank you both for your thank you thank you both for your testimony and for your work with the students at benson our next two speakers are anthony stoudemier and john slaughter let's go first
00h 10m 00s
how you guys doing my name is john slaughter s-l-a-u-g-h-t-e-r this is three minutes long i am here today not as a coach nor staff member or not or even former student athlete i'm here speaking as a proud alumnus at benson high school i won't bore you with names of famous athletes or an array of alumni that form our own private hall of fame i will give you details of our story sports programs and state titles from past and present legendary coaches but i will let you know that our school is bonded with education and sports with great models such as tradition of excellence our entire sports program is at siege not just football and it is the fact that if you're a student and you're passing five classes and you've paid the sports fee you have the right to participate in the offered sport with the school providing coaches and sufficient number of participants to form a team that is the case in every sport at benson high school we have the coaches and numbers we want to play our students rights and freedoms are at risk i'm only here in response to the inability for the pil athletic office to provide schedules for our fall sports rumors of our sports program closing no schedule schedules handed out as spring practices start and the reasons behind these actions seem to remain completely unknown and unexplained and biased during the high school redesign we march to keep our school open and our sports program available at our newly labeled focus school we now march to save our students and our sports programs our students deserve sports the pil and district are using the label of focus schools as an excuse to create an equity for our community we are here because the district is allowing the pio sports office to make maverick-like decisions that affect the past present and future of our school students and community not just athletes we are here because of a process that allows programs to be at risk overnight the superintendent and board tentatively agreed to lift the cap at benson high school and allow more students to attend great more students mean more student athletes as we continue to produce great numbers and successful programs prospering graduates and educating our students we are here again this entire process is screwed and skewed this is an issue about equity processes and procedures and unfairness we are building and adding new coaches with experience and knowledge many alumni like me i spoke with tripp goodall and understood when he exclaimed it's partly his fault not knowing what marshall haskins is doing i understand what john isaac said and i quote no decision was made about cutting sports at any high school then why no sports at benson why no false schedules might i add our community is the entire city of portland and we have spoken i've received hundreds of emails and thousands of posts tweets disclaiming their dislike in opposition we want sports schedules just like just like all the other schools why release preliminary schedules i end with a few questions how many more times are we gonna have to march and explain what we do at our school and how successful we are why once we continue to waste our time and energy in senseless battles what do we have to do as a school and community to not be in this position what do we have to do to be at the table during these back door conversations and what what do we have to do to not be in this position we just want to be part of the conversation thank you so much hello my name is anthony stottemeyer a-n-t-h-o-n-y s-t-o-u-d-a-m i am the head football coach at benson high school i come before you tonight to speak out on the atrocity of the sports programs that benson beam dismantled mr isaac made a statement in the paper the other day that benson sports programs would not be cut but also stated in the same breath that meetings with the benson community including site council ptsa and alumni would be set up yet benson still does not have fall sports schedules meetings at this stage of the game is like talking sex education to a teenage girl who is already pregnant what good is meetings going to do at this point benson needs a schedule not meetings these meetings should have taken place back in the fall and winter before mr haskins went into the scheduling meeting and came out without his schedule for benson was this his intent all along did his superiors know of this plan we are talking about a process that has not been transparent and has left the most important people out of the loop that is the benson community it was stated that these are preliminary
00h 15m 00s
schedules well i have coached over 25 years and there's no such thing as a preliminary schedule never has been never will be once you walk out of that scheduling meeting it is a done deal so i'm guessing that mr haskins had the approval of someone to do this who gave that approval the benson community would love to know this is not about numbers benson had over 65 kids in the program last year which was more than or equal to about half of the pil benson currently has 50 plus kids ready and wanting to play football in the fall this is not about focused school issues there's another focused magnet school in the district and no one is talking about cutting their program and they have less numbers than vincent when will the truth be told it is a hardship to the benson community to not have a schedule what district official is willing to look these kids from benson in the eye and tell them that they don't matter was it taken into consideration that some benson student athletes have been in tech programs for two years what are they supposed to do leave benson they cannot stay at benson and play for another school that's an osaa rule benson should not have to battle every four years for equity with the other schools four years ago superintendent smith stated that focused schools would have athletics what happened to change that enough is enough we demand schedules not meetings thank you thank you our last two speakers are lisa white and greg barrel go ahead hi my name is lisa white last name is w-h-i-t-e i am here as a parent of a benson high school freshman who is the doc who is my daughter and is the jv girls soccer goalie i am also the benson ptsa treasurer and i'm a community member i'm here to strongly encourage each and every one of you not to support the proposal to cut sports at benson high school here's what sports means to my daughter and i when my daughter received a letter personally from the girls soccer coach antoinette just after school got out last june inviting her to come to practice over the summer and join the team my daughter was over the moon here's a kid who has never played before but is being given the chance to learn and to play at the first practice i learned that they had just graduated 12 players in june and this would truly be a rebuilding year for the team in my mind i thought what a great opportunity for my daughter to get involved from the start in what two to four years would be a great competitive cohesive team as the summer pushed on the girls who were once nervous very shy towards each other were coming together as one group laughing joking with one another on the first day of school five of them were lost as freshmen in a huge school different wings multiple floors but they saw each other they worked as a small team to keep to keep each member to their class they planned where to meet after the class so they could each find their next classes had these girls not had the opportunity to participate in soccer their first few days at benson may have been very different by participating in sports our students are developing lifelong skills such as leadership dignity humility working as a team fulfilling responsibilities and self-confidence i think as adults we need to remember that while winning is great it is more important on how our students play the game did they work as a team were they all respective towards the players and refs and most importantly did they have fun if you can answer yes to all three of these then no matter what the score is they have won in the proposal we have heard that students at benson would have to play for their home high schools how would this work for kids whose home high school practice starts at 3 30 our school gets out at 3 15. for away games for the home high school our kids will lose an additional 45 minutes of class time just to get to the home high school to catch the bus for the game most importantly some of our students would not get the opportunity to play because their home high schools are full benson high school is a true community school sports at benson's gives our majority of our students a safe haven
00h 20m 00s
for the afternoon before dinner versus being subject to what is happening in their neighborhoods and due to being an inner city school in the state of our schools and our kids being in electronical world they do not get the opportunity to socialize as we did going to school so now let them have their sports let them compete and let them learn team building do not penalize us for one man's dream we are a community and a community who unites thank you good evening i'm greg barrel b-u-r-r-i-l-l back with my trusty computer last week i spoke to you about forgiveness now i've spent the last week talking with teachers about what there is to forgive instead of speaking for them i'll speak for myself pps substitute teachers are among the only subs in the country that have their own contract article 7e of that contract states in part that a substitute on either list may remove him or herself from further assignment during a period of lawful work stoppage by regular teachers by notifying the district in writing i'm not angry that i got a letter from signed by sean murray threatening my job and health benefits if i invoke that clause and refuse to cross a teacher's picket line i did however start looking for another job just in case i want you to understand that this is the best job i've ever had because i get to teach students so having to look for another job is not a pleasant prospect i can sold myself with the fact that if i no longer work for pps i can run for school board director and i'm free to move into several zones to do so i forgive pps for this insensitive act rather than forgive you for the district's bargaining strategy i want to thank portland public schools for trying the negotiation strategy that led to this contract seeing almost all 2900 regular teachers standing together for the schools the portland students deserve gave me hope due to your choices teachers parents students administrators and the greater portland community are feeling such solidarity that we can press forward we have made a beginning teachers need to ensure for example that the pat speaks for them i'm just getting the ball rolling because i'm speaking as a teacher a portland resident american citizen not as a union member today we all need to forgive each other for this mess and make it truly about the children this will not be easy because there are hurt feelings on both sides when in doubt please think of our children teachers believe that we in our classrooms have been starved as data collection and analysis have taken precedence over the resources teachers need to actually teach the more i experience data collection the more i clearly see how and why it's not necessarily a waste of time but of less importance than so many other things that teachers do the heart of teaching is the relationship one develops with the students one teaches it's in honor of this relationship that i asked the board and superintendent smith to attend a meeting with teachers at roosevelt high so they can be sure that you have heard their concerns about designing a high school that they believe addresses the concerns of business interests and the bond administration committee and architects i have a copy of the seven page letter that you received and after hours of research i have decided to support rhs teachers in their struggle to get a hearing where they will not be told the decisions about classroom size and use are already made thank you very much okay thank you again for your comments uh please feel free to connect with our board click clerk miss houston who can make sure she has your contact information the next uh piece on our agenda night is a vote on the portland association of teachers bargaining agreement superintendent smith would you like to introduce this item i would and i'd like to invite sean murray our chief human resources officer and brock logan our director of labor relations up and before they walk us through the specifics of the contract i'd like to do a few things one is to congratulate our teachers for the ratification vote on thursday night so congratulations i'd also like to recognize members of both of the bargaining teams who are with us here tonight i'm going to ask you to stand and i know we've got some back there and up here but part of what i want to do is just
00h 25m 00s
recognize the hard work of these teams at the bargaining table over the last 10 plus months because it's a very intensive body of work and both teams did an amazing job at the table could you please stand and just let us recognize you bargaining teams both sides and when i say this it's a really both teams come in with real clarity about what it is they believe they're trying to accomplish at the table but then what really happens at the table is having to both retain that clarity of what you're trying to accomplish but also be able to really listen and and understand the other perspectives coming to the table to try and figure out solutions that neither one of you may have had before you sat down and part of what happened over this 10 months was actually the most significant rewrite of the contract in the last 30 years so some of it are the big items that you've all heard about and that have much community attention a lot of it has been really looking at the nitty gritty about how we do our job together and how we work to serve kids in this district together and try and have clarity so that you don't have uh dispute and so a lot of that is trying to have both parties understand what we're trying to accomplish in a labor document and this particular negotiation had broad issues in it some of which actually belong in a labor document some of which belong in a budgeting process some of which belong in an advocacy process all of which we want to do in partnership but a lot of that was where the conversations happening at the table so i feel really proud that we actually reached a negotiated settlement at the table with the parties uh that we did avert a strike i feel just very grateful to our community and the patience and support of parents of of our teachers of our students of our community and of our partners being prepared for whatever it took for us to reach that negotiated settlement and i think part of what becomes important when you've had a process of such high emotion and intensity is the what do we do now that we have reached this negotiated settlement and we do we have a contract that i think reflects a lot of good things about how we want to do our work together but it's really what we now do in the go forward that lets us use that as a platform of how we actually do that work together and some of what we are talking about and planning to do is how we actually train our principals and our building reps in each one of our buildings in a joint training so that we all have common understandings of what what the intents were in this document and i tell you that because it's really the first step of then how do we use this document and how do we really change how we do our work together and i think that's the part that i feel great hope about but my biggest words as we go into giving you more detail are just words of gratitude for all the work that went on at that table and an appreciation and hope for positive movement as we go forward and with that i will ask sean murray to introduce giving more detail about the contract agreement good evening board member superintendent sean murray chief human resources officer accompanying with me this evening is brock logan who is our chief spokesperson for this round of negotiations with the portland association of teachers contract before the board is a resolution requesting ratification of a tentative agreement between the district and the portland association of teachers also known as the p-a-t the p-a-t has almost 2 900 members which include licensed teaching professionals school psychologists social workers social workers child development specialists students specialists and also audiologists the parties began bargaining in april of 2013 and met all of the requirements of the collective bargaining under the public employees collective bargaining act which is also known as pegba it included 150-day bargaining period a 15-day mediation period submission of final offers and a 30-day cooling off period from november 2013 to january 2014 the parties met face to face with each other in the company of a state mediator at least 17 dates several of them being marathon sessions lasting for up to 22 hours all of these meetings during mediation included the p-a-t president and our superintendent these meetings led to a tentative agreement in the early hours of february 18th and the p-a-t ratification on february 27th we started this process over 11 months ago and the board identified five
00h 30m 00s
core issues health insurance early retirement incentives hiring and transfer rounds additional instructional days and having the state definition of competence as it pertains to our layoff and transfer process we believe that the tentative agreement before the board is a balanced approach to addressing the board's core issues we also believe that this tentative agreement makes fundamental and systemic changes to a co to contract language that is over several decades old and most important we believe that this tentative agreement before the board is in the best interest of our students i would like to thank gwen sullivan who's the president of the p-a-t along with marty pavlik who was the chief spokesperson for their bargaining team and also members of the p-a-t bargaining team for their collaborative reach on uh settlement agreement i would also like to acknowledge and thank our district's bargaining team that included regional administrators building administrators legal and hr professionals as well at this point i'm going to turn over to brock logan who will walk you through some of the highlights of the tentative agreement before you good evening thank you as sean and carol mentioned this really was a complete rewrite of the contract as a matter of fact both parties came in opening virtually every article at the contract we actually even added a few articles we did end up with a three-year agreement but i remind everybody we're about the middle of the first year of that three-year agreement now and we have up on the screen a summary of some of these things i'm going to go over it in a slightly different order under the work year work day workload provisions of the contract we were able to reach an agreement that at the district's discretion we can add two days across the pps system that's actually um a very effective design and i want to give credit to the association for coming up with the way of doing this to where instead of mandating those two days in the contract it allows us to do it we can fund it but if we end up in a funding scenario we can back off of those days before having to lay off staff so while we all hope that doesn't ever have it doesn't ever come to that we've got that ability to adjust to our funding situation at that time it also gives us the ability to add up to three days of professional development for focus and priority schools and also recognizes a professional development day that we've been using before the school contract the school year begins it wasn't specifically detailed out in the contract we were also able to increase planning time for elementary grades teachers the pk through five which was an area where they really didn't have sufficient planning time especially when you look at other districts around us we maintain we reach an agreement that maintains workload predictions but updated the dates to 2010-11 and have a workload committee set up our workload work group set up to really identify the elements that impact workload and it serves two purposes at least two purposes first was to um address individual concerns so if there's a single professional educator out there who feels they have an inequitable workload or there's something in their workload that that needs to be addressed they've got a venue that they can take that have that addressed and uh there's ability to make recommendations to the chief academic officer to provide relief and but also for the workload group to look at the systemic issues of workloads so what are the things that are driving workload for teachers and where are the where are the areas that we can provide relief so that's looking at things like what is the impact of the new initiative if we're going to add work can we take work away that kind of a that kind of situation and as part of this we also reached an mou a memorandum of understanding that adds a hundred minimum of 150 professional educators so pat members and that would be 70 in the pk through 8 grades so elementary middle school grades 50 across our high schools and 30 in special education and that is actually greater than 100 percent of the funding from the grand bargain in the in the special session the legislature in compensation this contract provides for step increases which is uh an increase for years of service for the first several years you work for the district plus a cost of living increase of 2.3 percent in each year of the three years there will be a slight adjustment to the scale in the second year that smooths out where we have certain steps that are different we have one small step and one giant step we're going to even those out to where it's closer and we also recognize our full release mentors and nationally border certified educators by increasing their salaries by fifteen hundred dollars a year under insurance we maintained the ninety three percent seven percent district employee split so the district will be paying approximately thirteen hundred and ninety seven dollars per professional educator per month and the professional educators will be pitching in 117 dollars a month towards their insurance um i think a key factor in that is that we had our renewal this year was a negative 2.8 percent and i've told people i've been bargaining insurance for
00h 35m 00s
20 years or more now and i've never bargained it where there was a decrease on the renewal where it wasn't tied to gutting the plan we also recognize that in the next contract we're going to have to negotiate some changes to health insurance as a result of the affordable care act also known as obamacare as those things come forward in the areas of higher assignment and transfer and also layoff as sean mentioned we did get the state definition of competence but we actually i think did one step better in that the state definition talks about having taught a subject within the last five years but it gives no definition of what the subject is i think we did really work really good work together um with pat to come up with a clear definition of what that is where it really makes sense and i know that teacher voice and identifying particularly in the area of career and technical education was important in identifying where that is and how that would be used in doing so we also streamlined to the internal transfer process so we're still protecting the rights of inter of teachers that work for us to get an option of moving towards the schools if there's a place that they would rather be but shortening the time frame so that we can get out and be hiring teachers faster as we compete with other districts we also modified and clarified certain seniority exceptions we eliminated one exception we clarified the terms by which one can be used where there's been some conflict on that in the past and we added a provision for bilingual multilingual teaching abilities ability that's related specifically to the assignment and we're going to work we've got a date set next week to around the details of like you know what kind of percentage and how do we determine that the person really is competent in that bilingual multilingual ability um and lastly we did sunset the early retirement incentives that were in the contract so those will still apply to anybody who has 15 years of service with the district in september of 2016 but an important part of this was to end the practice of incentivizing teachers to leave particularly in areas where we may have a difficult time hiring teachers and as we go into a time where there may be a teacher shortage and we need to be hiring teachers it doesn't make sense to be incentivizing them to leave early thank you the board will now consider resolution four eight eight one two thousand thirteen through sixteen agreement between portland association of teachers and school district number one j multnomah county oregon do i have a motion and a second second director belial moves and director morton seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4881 miss houston is their citizen comment yes we have five this evening the first two sandra mcdonough and john hirsch thank you good evening chair knowles and cheribal island i'm sandra mcdenna i'm president and ceo of the portland business alliance i'm here today to express our strong support for the proposed contract that's been negotiated between all of you and the portland association of teachers as you know the alliance is a long time supporter of portland schools i don't think there's hardly been a ballot measure to provide funding for schools that we haven't supported and worked for with all of you and so our vision is that every student deserve and should have an equal opportunity for success regardless of their background so they have a real chance to reach their full potential in life we see that as being focused on a few areas number one achieving a ch improving achievement for all students regardless of their ethnicity their first language or their household income graduating more students who are responsible citizens and prepared for the next step in life and strengthening career and technical training and lastly ensuring that students have access to the resources they need to be successful we think this contract lays the groundwork for achieving those goals we applaud all of you as board members as staff and the portland association of teachers for your tireless efforts to reach this agreement we know it took a very long time and was difficult at times we are particularly happy that you've streamlined the hiring process as was just described we think that's going to enable you to compete for the best and the brightest and more diverse teachers for our schools we also support the changes that help are going to help the the district and teachers ensure that we have the bet the teachers who are the best fit for the subjects they're teaching in every classroom and we're happy to see that all of you together focused on achieving a contract with costs that are in line with the revenues that you can reasonably expect to have and not overly optimistic estimates
00h 40m 00s
as with every successful negotiation obviously not everybody got everything they wanted as you know we advocated for additional changes that we felt would bring portland's contract more in line with what other districts are doing and and while not all of the changes that we wanted were adopted we do think that you have built a foundation that you can build from for towards a common goal of providing all of our kids with the very best education possible we are very happy to know that you are starting already to work with the teachers on how you will implement this and that the contract gives you a lot of opportunities for that kind of collaborative effort moving forward we think that's very important for building on the success that you have this time so again i want to thank the district the district the board the union representatives for working so hard to achieve this agreement we know it was heated at times but in the long run we think that what you've done is best for kids and we'll move this district forward so thank you very much good evening my name is john hirsch h-i-r-s-c-h speaking on behalf of all three of the portland 80 percenters that includes eliza erhard eisen and margie brown and in support of approving the tentatively agreed upon labor contract early in the negotiations we established five language priorities and throughout the bargaining cajole both sides to remove contractual barriers that adversely impact student achievement in studying the new agreement we found that important positive changes were made in most all of our priorities we are especially pleased at the streamlining of hiring assignment transfer process and changing the definition of competence to enhance the likelihood of having the most effective teachers in every classroom we thank know we applaud both parties for making the necessary compromises to reach that agreement the new contract if approved by the board tonight will really benefit students in the community especially if bps and p-a-t see those negotiations as transformative that is if recognizing that they were on the brink of creating a community crisis both the district and union now learn from that experience and use it as a platform for building mutual trust and rebuilding public trust will truly become transformative what is written on paper will have little impact without cooperative implementation it's the administration of the contract that brings it to life we think there are positive signs that both parties are taking action to move from talking about collaboration to acting it out we are heartened to hear that the parties will jointly train building reps and principals and the new contract that pps is funding the workload committee in the amount of a million dollars that the committee is consisting of equal numbers of teachers and district reps will hopefully work collaboratively toward defining and mitigating workload issues the district recently reported its desire to entertain interest-based bargaining sooner than during this last negotiation trust will be earned by pps and pat when there are no surprises when both do what they say they'll do on time and when they demonstrate mutual respect to the satisfaction of the other party we hope this spirit of collaboration will become the new norm and this contract can be the beginning of transparency and accountability in the district if this contract is implemented well we see it as a significant step toward improving student outcomes and rebuilding public trust in the district and the union thank you thank you both our next two speakers mike rosen and jane greenall any time go ahead mike rosen roscn i'm here tonight on behalf of the citywide parents coalition which mobilized a year ago in an effort to restore access to a full schedule for all high school students and to eliminate the culture of late arrival early dismissal and mandated study hall our group is as committed as ever to improving student access to instructional time into staying engaged during and after the upcoming budget process we've waited with interest to learn the outcome of the contract negotiations and the inevitable impact on high school schedules and staffing we'd like to acknowledge the many positive changes for students that appear to have been made with this contract not only does the new contract appear to facilitate a more efficient and effective staffing model it also
00h 45m 00s
protects the teacher's student workload and of great interest to the parents coalition adds two days to the school year and even more days for academic priority schools adding days will help the district reach its goal of getting in compliance with state minimum requirements on instructional hours we applaud this decision we are also supportive of the commitment to add more classroom teachers at all levels we are however concerned about the potential loopholes as pertains to the additional days and the requirement that instructional days be prioritized for cuts in the event of a revenue shortfall this is a vaguely defined funding contingency and we believe it would be a mistake to go backwards and cut the added days as for our high schools we're eager to learn the outcome regarding the high school schedules we've heard pps commit to providing a schedule that will allow for 130 hours per course and applaud this necessary improvement to past schedule allowances both students and teachers will benefit from this change we would be remiss however if we didn't take this opportunity to say the current oregon state minimums should be viewed as a starting point not a goal and to encourage pps to continue to look for ways to increase instructional opportunities and while the parents coalition recognizes that high school schedules are not worked out in the contract but rather are informed by the contract we'd like to repeat for the record that we favor a model that is fully staffed and is structured to assist engage and inspire students whether via support classes electives opportunities for college credit classes or cte meeting the state requirements should of course be a given the parents coalition would also like to thank the staff for its efforts towards keeping us informed as parents we would encourage the board to examine its role there has been a lack of transparency and engagement with the broader community post pat ratification of the contract holding closed doors door briefings with limited number of stakeholders minimizes distribution of information and rankles community members who have a real vested interest in outcomes and rationales mr rosen are you just about finished yeah time is up engagement with the community especially parents students and taxpayers prior to your vote is important so that the community understands what impact this contract has on students and it can share its perspective prior to your vote thank you again for reaching an agreement and for consideration of our thoughts and i'm jane greenholsch i'm also a member of the parents coalition i actually came to say thank you for both to the teachers and the board and the superintendent for settling a contract and avoiding a strike my daughter's first ib exam was on february the 20th so our household was very happy that she didn't have to miss that um i also wanted to thank both sides for holding firm on some issues as a parent i'm thrilled we're going to be hiring more teachers but i'm also thrilled that the hiring process will be more streamlined and the competency will be taken into consideration for hiring and transfers and the two extra instruction days well they're a good start um i think we all know it really is just a start oregon sets a really low bar in terms of instruction time i read an article recently that said a kindergartner who starts in oregon in kindergarten and goes through 12th grade will end up with three years less instruction time than a similar student in maryland which i thought that can't be right especially as i moved from maryland when my daughter was four um but if you add up 990 hours in oregon 1 150 or so in maryland over the course of 12 years that adds up and certainly could explain why we as a state fall at the bottom of many of these academic um uh polls and so i'm looking forward to working with the state and with you to figure out how we can turn that around because our students really deserve to have the instruction time in classrooms which will make them competitive and i think as part of that we have to be really upfront about how bad the situation is so we need not to count standardized testing study halls teacher planning as instruction time and hopefully we'll be able to get more time in the class so thanks early thank you our last speaker is kim melton um
00h 50m 00s
no no okay okay i believe uh peyton chapman president of papsa our principals association would also like to provide some comments and i should say also principal at lincoln high school yes good evening superintendent smith school board members and student representative davidson i'm really excited and happy to be here uh thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak on behalf of all of our school principals and my role as perhaps the president we want to thank you we want to thank all of you as well as our portland association of teachers for prioritizing the issues that were the most important to schools and our students we're thrilled to see a negotiated settlement that supports a streamlined streamlined hiring process you've all heard our horror stories of not being able to interview the amazing temporary teacher that we found and recruited for their position when it became open and how devastating those kinds of things have been and we just we really wanted you to know that you've been able to help us recruit and hire 150 of the best teachers for our students next year and we're thrilled thank you for prioritizing district alignment with state definition of merit and competency and giving us the tools we need to put our best teachers in the right teaching assignment that best supports students and supports teachers success in those classrooms thank you for adding the instructional days to the school year we agree with everything that's been said before oregon and portland has a woefully short school year and this is a good start but not an end and principals work hard to support our teachers and our students thank you again for prioritizing school-based needs that most affect students and achievement in our schools and congratulations we're all just thrilled that we're here actually having this conversation now thank you thank you okay now we'll have a board discussion on the resolution no board discussion necessarily steve will say something yeah i am something okay director buell i'm planning to vote for this because i think it's a good fair contract the one major concern i have is the workload committee and that how we deal with that the workload committee is the key to whether or not this contract really works for children and we have to do something about dealing with the overburdened workloads for teachers period and i hope we'll take it not just for class size and and class load but we'll take it for lesson planning testing i mean we're actually seriously i just heard this tonight we're actually doing the dibbles test for all our elementary schools i mean we're actually if you're an educator out there you know how silly that is kind of but uh we don't seem to know it down here in this building i guess so but that type of stuff i hope that will come up and things like the professional development and how we work through that and how we work around it and how we set off time i hope that will come up initiatives that end up in our schools where these initiatives come down into our schools but they haven't really been vetted by teachers and so forth so i hope this workload committee actually becomes a committee that actually addresses the workload we haven't we've had a tendency to not work very well with our teachers we don't seem to we don't seem to respect and value the teacher input and it's it's really a major problem within the school district and it's not just in the district in this building it's also out in some other uh schools where this is this is really a problem and so this is the opportunity now to work on these things to make these changes that we so desperately need in this district and i hope we'll grab this opportunity to do that and so i'm feeling good about it and there we go so when we hit this workload committee i'm sure we're going to really be listening to those teachers who are on it and paying attention and making changes out there because it's not just enough to listen you have to also think and have dialogue and when you're all done listening you have to make changes where the cases have been made and that's where we have a lot of
00h 55m 00s
problem just making changes when they need to be made i don't assume we're going to eliminate the dibbles test tomorrow but hopefully the workload committee will get to something like that and and we will go oh okay let's get rid of that let's have let's take care of this instead of just going oh well okay we'll move on which has been the tendency in my six months here and so i hope that we'll move beyond that and i'm really thinking positively thank you so after serving as a pta president of two schools a council co-chair and an outspoken school funding advocate i was elected to the portland school board 11 years ago during those 11 years we've hired two superintendents in an interim we've increased our graduation requirements we've restructured our high schools passed a temporary multnomah county income tax and several local levies to fund teaching positions and we successfully passed the largest capital bond in state history we have six different language immersion strands supporting our emerging bilingual students our high school students regularly win constitution team competitions and other academic and athletic forums portland public schools graduation rate has increased for the fourth year in a row and about 85 percent of families in portland continue to send their kids to portland public schools we have so much to be proud of adding to this after 20 years of living under measure 5 budget cuts where k-12 share of the state budget went from 45 percent to 37 percent the legislature has begun to reinvest in public education last session we saw a billion dollar reinvestment in 2011 our community passed another local levy to help pay for teachers in 2012 portland residents approved an arts tax adding 45 more art teachers the economy is turning around in portland public schools at long last is in a position to reinvest in our kids our teachers and our schools as we entered contract negotiations 200 days ago we should have entered full of hope for our kids and schools and full of appreciation that we live in a city and a state that support public education in fact portland public schools and its teacher union could have demonstrated to our community our appreciation for their support and our excitement for our kids by settling our teachers contract in an amicable and positive and student-centered way instead our contract negotiations dragged on our teachers voted overwhelmingly as they say to strike and as i stated a few weeks ago this was an inconceivable place to land in the final analysis we did end up with the most significant rewrite of our contract with our teachers union in 20 years especially as it pertains to hiring and teacher assignment as we look at a contract our students deserve portland public schools finally succeeded in this contract in ensuring just one round of internal hiring so we can get out in the market early each year to scoop up our own student teachers teachers of color bilingual teachers in the best and brightest new stores out there we have tried to make this change for decades as we look at a contract our students deserve our kids should expect that their teacher is competent to teach the subject material at long last portland public schools finally succeeded in this contract in ensuring that competence is a factor with seniority in transfer and layoffs and as we look at a contract our students deserve our kids should expect to be in school as long as their peers from other states today oregon students have one of the shortest school years in the nation at long last portland public schools is turning that around adding two days to our instructional calendar this is a start and only a start during the next contract negotiation or two and with the support of our state legislature and continuing to reinvest in public education we should set a goal with our teachers union of adding another week or two to our calendar if we want our kids to truly be successful and as we look at a contract our students deserve our kids should expect that their teachers receive competitive pay strong health care and good working conditions they should also expect that the vast majority of funds left over after paying for raises in health care should go toward adding teachers counselors librarians and other school staff to ensure they get reasonable class sizes robust instructional time deep supports for struggling students and a wide array of enrichment opportunities to that end every time portland public schools is provided with new revenue whether it's from a local levy and arts tax or a greater investment by our legislature this superintendent and this
01h 00m 00s
school board put the vast majority of that new additional revenue into our classrooms and schools to support our students that is our reality on the issue of class sizes which the teachers union chose to exploit during this contract negotiation the teachers union and its paid consultants know that portland public schools already enjoy some of the smaller class sizes in the metropolitan area thanks to our local levy they know there is no way that this board would agree to class size language in our contract because we don't control the revenue needed to deliver on it they know that it is illegal to strike over class size and they know that class size should not be one of many subjects under consideration during contracts talk that is a budget discussion here's an example if portland public schools has 6 million dollars to spend we could reduce our student teacher ratio by one student possibly decreasing class sizes or we could add a full week to our school calendar now that's worth talking about and that discussion should happen during our budget deliberations with input from our entire community not with one union representing one group of employees portland school board members run for this volunteer elected position for the same reason that teachers choose their noble profession and decide to work for portland public schools like teachers we believe in public education like teachers we believe in our kids and we want them to have a brighter future and like teachers we hope we can make a positive difference i am grateful and relieved that we landed this contract it represents a compromise that is good for kids it also leaves many issues including unnecessarily expensive health care costs unresolved for another day but at this moment at this time i am grateful to our two negotiations teams for getting us to yes this is a better contract and i hope that starting tomorrow we will look at another way to pass our next teachers contract that recognizes that we're all in this together there is no us and them there's only we and that we includes our teachers our principals and other support staff our students the superintendent school board members parents and our incredibly supportive community i'll be a yes vote so similarly um i want to thank the negotiating teams and above all our superintendent carl smith um without your leadership carol we would not be here voting on a compromise settlement that provides several key improvements as folks have noted that give the district the ability to ensure we can get out hiring teachers earlier that we can place teachers based on their confidence to teach not just on seniority contract that provides additional school days although not enough i think we'd all agree most of us would and it extends for three years rather than two years so that we can focus our collective energies on serving our students so in the last contract negotiations we worked collaboratively the district and the union to reform the teacher evaluation process which was a huge step forward and with this negotiation we've made another huge step forward in terms of the terms around hiring and transfer and the competence pieces so as thrilled as i am and i am a yes vote on this tonight and great appreciation for the hard work by all parties it has been it has been hard for me to get to a yes vote tonight which is not in any way to detract from the huge relief we all share uh that a strike has been averted but the fact is the changes that the contra to the contract that the district stood fast on should not have been so difficult to obtain particularly in the context of offering a generous salary and benefit package but it was really hard to get these changes that we needed to the contract i am deeply grateful that the teams persevered we got the best deal that we could for our students and for the taxpayers under tremendous pressure and i'm very grateful to the pat team for the hard work at the table in the final weeks around issues like competence and hiring that was really good strong collaborative work and that gives me a great deal of hope going forward i do want to highlight though that work remains for future negotiations to bring parity and health care coverage and costs across all our employee groups to help contain our long-term cost as well as to lift some of the remaining rules and restrictions that hamper the district's ability to manage the district well for students for example in terms of workload pieces around the high school schedule so of course we as school board members want a contract that provides fair and competitive compensation and fair and appropriate protections for our teachers and all our employees who bust their butts every day for our kids but we also need a contract that enables
01h 05m 00s
the district to manage our district in a way that is fiscally responsible and that works better for our kids that was our bargaining strategy now the board could have rolled over early in the process but we held fast that the contract needed changes now it seems to me from my perspective that the pat was unused to this the stance that we were going to hold fast than we needed to make those changes and it was very disappointing to me that rather than coming to the table earlier on say over the summer for intensive collaborative negotiations excuse me the fed that the process was prolonged as long as it was so take class size again like director regan you know no school board or district wants large class sizes or overloaded teachers and we have spent you know year after year we have sent money directly to the classroom to the point actually where our buildings were crumbling precisely to keep class sizes as low as possible but the reality of course and again let's move forward dealing with reality here because that's the challenge that we all face is that it comes down to money we need to find a balance amongst salary and benefit increases for our hard-working teachers and employees we need to find money to add back teaching positions to reduce class size and we also need to find money to reinvest in the programs that work for our kids whether it be expansion of dual language immersion increasing supports for struggling students hiring mentors to help kids stay in school and stay on track restoring a full week of outdoor school or any number of investments that we would like to be able to make that help our kids thrive and succeed so yes of course class size matters but it is not the only thing that matters i also want to push back i also want to push back against the notion that the contract negotiation was the appropriate venue to push back against the larger outside forces of top down mandates and disinvestment in public education that we see in our state and across this nation so yes pps does need to improve and we should be held accountable for our shortcomings but we're not bill sizemore we're not don mcintyre bill gates or arne duncan we aren't in charge of common core or no child left behind or race to the top or the achievement compacts so it may have been convenient to pay us as the villains for the purpose of securing a more favorable deal but the reality is we're all in this together and we need to work together to advocate for the schools our students deserve above all pushing back against the disinvestment in public education at the federal and state level that results in the large class sizes the workloads the smaller the shorter school year and all the rest so it's wonderful that our state legislature has turned the tide a bit we are and i know people get tired of hearing me say this but i'm going to keep on saying it we are nearly a billion dollars short of the funding level that our state's own quality education model would provide for our students so in pps that would translate to about 80 million dollars or the equivalent of 800 teachers so we will still have even though we are grateful for the legislature's actions we still have a long way to go before we have the ability to have the class sizes and we want the librarians the counselors the curriculum and everything else that our students need and deserve so as we move forward with this new contract which does represent a huge improvement and a lot of hard work on by both parties it's crucial has been mentioned that the district effectively manage and implement the new the new tools and the clarity from the parts of the contract the many parts of the contract that were significantly improved and revised through the good hard collaborative work by both parties at the table so done right this is going to make a huge difference in our ability to hire and place the best teacher in every classroom and i take again great hope from the quality of the collaborative work from both teams at the table that really got us a contract that'll work better for everybody and i'm also hopeful that the collaborative work group on workload will help spur the community-wide conversation that we need about the quality of the schools how we manage challenges like the transition to common core and the level of funding that our students deserve and how we can all work together on our shared goals of great public education for all our children so thanks very much for the opportunity to share my comments thank you dr morton thank you thank you all for your comments uh so far um and i guess i'll build on those a little bit i'm a yes vote on this contract i think it puts us down a path uh to uh greater student success and i think that's the shared commitment that that both the teams had in in this process but like any uh any good contract or any good agreement it really is going to come down to implementation and it's my belief that this implementation won't be successful if we don't find a way
01h 10m 00s
to to come together and to uh to become partners in this um and i think that's going to give us an opportunity to really realize its full effectiveness uh director buehl mentioned the uh the workload committee and i think that is um that is certainly one example of many detailed examples of where we need to come into partnership in terms of implementation i think there are some other things that we need to find a way to work together on too uh one of those i think is has been mentioned director act and mentioned advocating for more resources on the state level we are anemic in our funding for public education in the state of oregon and although there has been movement there needs to be much more movement going forward otherwise we will continue to find ourselves in the in the same situation i think we also need to find alignment in the work that we do in our racial educational equity policy having having a greater focus a broader conversation about this and how it affects not only on a district level but in each individual classroom and with each individual student i think is going to make a difference in the implementation of this i also think it it as it moves us down this path of greater student success my hope is that it also results in minimizing our achievement gaps my hope is that it results in in continuing to grow our graduation rates because at this point what we've seen is not good enough we need to do more i also think in partnership and only in partnership are we going to be able to attract and retain and or hire and retain the best teachers in our classrooms especially those teachers that reflect the students in which we serve in our community and we know the growing diversity of that student population and we need to have a workforce that reflects that but as we do all of this we also have to consider and and take very serious the relationship that we have with our students and and that we take time to listen to that student voice as well as the families who who represent those students as well as those community members the 80 percenters who who don't have kids in the public school system they're a part of this and they will certainly be a part of the success of our of our district so as i as i mentioned i am an absolute yes vote vote but i am absolutely committed to to making sure that that the implementation of this happens in a way where we all come to the table and make it successful thank you thank you and i'm gonna vote yes as well as uh reflecting both steve and i kind of got thrown onto the board in the middle of this discussion uh and so i'm really glad that that we're going to end it tonight uh with with a contract so i'm going to vote i'm going to vote yes on it um i was thinking it also might be a good portlandia uh series you know only in in portland where you have a very progressive out and i've gotten to know everybody here everybody here on this board is very progressive ready to do the right thing um and our union and our teachers are also very progressive uh so we're so progressive that we almost went to a strike um so i'm i'm sure maybe portlandia might like that um uh but so there there was clearly tension and i think from our standpoint and and everybody has said it here in in their own different ways but we need to listen uh more to to our teachers who are really on the front lines um and we need to collaborate collaborate together and and that's a two-way street uh and so we just need to get that done and i think that this discussion over the last 10 months has has highlighted that and as carol as you said going through the the um the contracts actually helped get us to to a place where we can do that so i i'm a yes there is a there's one unfinished business which i'm which i'm not pleased at all about um which is in in today's world of obamacare when we are um really reforming our health care system nationally and it's all about providing health to everybody across this country we missed an opportunity to begin that that here and you know i i think we should start working on it tomorrow there there are
01h 15m 00s
absolute there's 10 or 12 different ways maybe 30 that we can save money and give teachers the best health available to them um and we and we didn't we didn't do it this time around uh so i'm i'm asking the teachers out there to think creatively on what we can do and ourselves as well and i think we should roll up our sleeves and begin that discussion tomorrow so thank you okay yeah so wow it's it's been a while since we started doing this you know uh like uh directors curler and buell i i came on at a point where we'd already started these discussions as a student i'm not allowed in executive sessions so i think i've had an interesting role with all of this um but i'd i'd like to keep the focus on the fact that although some good things got done in this contract there's it also exposed a lot of our weaknesses that we need to work on both as a district and as a community and one of those things being the fact that a lot of i think the the frustrations that came out of this negotiation process was the fact that we have an inadequate funding level of education in our district especially um that we all wish we could do the things that we want to do but we don't have the money and so really i mean this this is done for now but i think moving on we really need to get to the next step which is how do we avoid this the next time because i mean we've we've spent so much time and energy on this i mean all of us that are in this room tonight i mean it's it's really quite sad really i mean how much time we've spent on this when we all want the same thing and so i would just really encourage us all to take a look at that and you know try and work on it yeah thank you i'm going to be a little bit more upbeat it's it's felt kind of heavy because i think this is an extraordinary contract and i know it was hard to get here but there is a lot of good stuff in here there's a lot of really effective things that were done for teachers and there were really good things that were done for students and there was really good work done to keep us in line with our state projected funding so i am very excited i'm just gonna say again thank you to both bargaining teams i know how it felt sitting in this seat and i know what happens is people don't know you individually and so people begin to project things onto you that all of a sudden for example i heard a common refrain our teachers are greedy i know lots of teachers and i don't know any of them to be greedy so this wasn't about bad mouthing or how terrible our teachers were likewise for this board this board as director curler pointed out i was very progressive i don't know anybody here who's looking to break a union in fact it goes against many of my own principles in that but how do we keep how do we keep in line with state funding and so what i appreciate about this is class size may not have been the appropriate discussion in the negotiating room but it is a good discussion for us to have and parlay into the state legislature because i believe and i hear it echoed some people say wow the state has finally turned the tide slightly a bit we cannot allow our state legislature to believe that they have fixed this and they will think that they have fixed this and that isn't to say let's all go down and throw them out because i know they want to also find a way so i'm just going to encourage us all to look for ways to reform our tax system because it isn't always just about more money it is how can we be smart and how do we can enjoy the sustainability that we all need and should be able to count count on from our funding so i guess i just want to thank pat for raising the issue of class size because it is as we point out whether it's the student-teacher ratio what however we want to call it we know that pps because of our local because of our voters have done a better job of supporting or been in a better position to support our schools that doesn't mean that it's good enough and so please help us get that in fact i a parent who who came and spoke tonight at one point looked at me and said would you please stop telling us to go to the state legislature we've been doing that for years if that is the attitude that our community has then we will never ever see a change so back to the contract school board gets together every year and sets out priorities for for us for our for our work together there were three places where the pat contract showed up in our work this year one of them was under our goal a and it was the board will ratify a contract with portland association a teacher that promotes and supports the
01h 20m 00s
district's educational goals and again i think this because both pat and the district stayed at the table for so long we got really good wins in that area another place that it shows up the board ratifies a contract with portland association teachers that reflects the district's educational goals and goals of rich racial educational equity policy as director morton pointed out this is a reality and it's something we have to do because half of our students are of color and we have to make sure that we are serving all of our students that doesn't mean that if we serve just the students of color we're ignoring the students who aren't it means that we have to build a system that includes all of those this contract makes a great step forward in allowing that to happen the third place it it shows up is the board ratifies a contract with the portland association of teachers that supports our teachers and students within a sustainable and sound budget again because of the reinvestment we are in a different place than we have been in the past five ten years but let us continue that momentum we need your help i've heard some people even say well it's your as an elected official you carry more weight you get down there i will tell you that yes there is some import afforded that as an elected official but i will tell you that if it's not backed up by our community it rings hollow and we all know their competing interests so i just want to congratulate pat for holding firm as somebody in fact said i i want to congratulate both i think jane one of our speakers said i want to congratulate p-a-t for holding firm for knowing what's best for kids to making sure that we didn't walk away from it and i congratulate the district's negotiating team for making sure that they knew both teams went back to their teams teacher pat's negotiating team went back to their teachers to figure out what was the right way forward the district's negotiating team went back to their team and figured out where can we give how can we make this make sense so i know i'm really high energy and i'm going all over the place but i'm very excited for this i'm so glad that it's over and i look forward to interest-based bargaining this process is destructive i heard somebody in fact describe it as barbaric it really is something of a different time in a different place and so i look forward and i hope that we can move forward quickly with the new new way of interest-based bargaining thanks yes yes okay um i just want to say thank you to all of my colleagues for your thoughtful comments um and um i'm particularly uh both the good the good the bad and the ugly i guess so we all know that we've gone through a long process here but we also know that there's still work to be done and along with most of my colleagues i think i'm looking also for a new way to have these discussions with our teachers instead of the way that we we did at this time so for me this is a very historic moment i'm going to be as upbeat as director belial was the provisions of the contract with the p-a-t that directly affects student outcomes and the district has worked to change for many years have been significantly rewritten everybody spoke to those competence of teachers in our schools provisions that allow the district to hire teachers sooner so that we can get the best and the brightest and the most diverse provisions that allow us to lengthen the school year and of course adding 150 teachers to our schools all really important for us yay yes thank you more teachers more more teachers thank you for excuse me excuse me thank you i'd like to complete my comments first um so what i want to do is just do some shout outs and some thank you so first of all thank you to the bargaining team to both teams they stayed at the table during negotiations mediation and impasse they stayed after the pat took a strike vote they were intent on finding an agreement and not putting our families and our community through a strike so thank you to our bargaining team i also want to say thank you to some people that most people didn't hear very much about and that's our service continuation team who worked way behind the scenes to make sure that pps was ready to serve our students and families in case of a strike so thank you very much to that group thank you to our community leaders and organizations who stayed informed and continued to work with both sides without intervening directly in the process i think it allowed us to work out the issues that we needed to work out without that outside influence a negotiated agreement i think director morton said this a negotiated agreement is one that everybody gets something that's important to them but they also have to give up on other important issues so for me this is a time of celebration
01h 25m 00s
pps and pat stayed at the table until they found compromises both teams stayed at the table until they until they reached a negotiated agreement this is hard hard work i know the teachers know how hard that work was i know the p-a-t bargaining team knows how hard that work was and the district certainly knows how hard that work was they stayed and they worked it out that's something that other districts in this state and in this country have not been able to do so i'd like to have a round of applause for both of our bargaining teams so now the hard work begins let's take lessons learned in listening to each other during this process and and apply them regularly to the work we continue to do some of my colleagues have mentioned some of those possibilities workload and advocacy for greater funding is one that really strikes my heart and this is an effort that i look forward to working with both everyone here our communities our business community families teachers everyone on helping to raise the funding for our students and provide even a better education for them so thank you very much to everybody okay the board so the next is the vote the board will now vote on resolution 4881 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions resolution 481 is approved by a vote of 7-0 with student representative davidson voting yes yes thank you thank you to everyone who testified and to my colleagues and to everybody who's here to to see this historic moment okay at this time i'd like to invite gwen sullivan the president of pat to the speaker's table she'd like to say a few words thank you so um i feel like i come i have my prepared remarks and then it's really hard for me to sit and to listen not only to your comments but to other comments that i've heard so um i feel like i come here as a a bit of a truth teller one through negotiation since i was at every single meeting every single sidebar every single um exec and i was at everything so i feel like i come as a truth-teller um and with that truth teller i i do think that i listening to the the benson um staff and community i am a little taken aback i had not heard anything about getting rid of sports and of course um at benson i p-a-t representing what is best for all kids i'm sure you would agree that sports rolls in even though i'm not the biggest sports fan in the world i recognize what that means to kids and so i think whatever is happening there that needs to be definitely considered in a different way because um they deserve to have sports just like everyone else um there are also uh some things that i i feel like as a true teller and that we have to look at the word collaboration and we have to define what that is because it seems like we're we're saying two different things when we talk about collaboration it does mean coming together coming and finding out solutions that actually make sense and you've come up with together and you collaborate and you listen and you react i think that's something that is possible for the future and something that did not happen in this process and director buehl you talked about the workload committee and i agree with you completely and i and i think director morton you said the same how important the workload committee will be i absolutely agree i think it is a an important component to actually address issues now i would suggest that you would be on those committees if possible because i think that you as board members being part of that and listening to what is happening is really instrumental and seeing what is happening on the ground um i have to say i've heard things about insurance and it's really really hard um
01h 30m 00s
to hear that because we know all of us know that insurance it there's a crisis all over our country when it comes to what's happening with insurance and and the cost of it i would hope though that instead of turning it at teachers that the teachers are the problem with their health insurance that really you'd look at the bigger issue that that really it is the systemic issue of how all of this money goes into that we would fight together against uh how the insurance companies make most of the money and not the doctors and and the health care providers um moving on i have to say as we're looking at different ways to have new discussions about some of the things in this contract and in our schools i would repeat a question that i came to board leadership well over a year ago asking to meet on a regular basis with board members and so i would repeat the offer to meet on a monthly basis at a minimum it doesn't have to be organized it doesn't have to be agenda it is a time to really be able to talk about what's happening so i repeat that offer again okay so speaking of of all of the things with this negotiation i think um i have been asked over and over by colleagues and the media my friends my family how do you feel about this being resolved and i would need to be honest to say it's pretty complicated and it's a complicated thing to answer first i would say that i feel a tremendous sense of pride that i am proud to be a public school teacher i am also very proud to be part of a group a union of amazing fellow educators who work tirelessly every day on behalf of their students i am so proud that portland teachers despite being vilified and blamed for problems we didn't create remain committed to standing up for our students our schools and our profession second i am humbled i am humbled by the overwhelming show of support and solidarity from parents from students in the community the outpouring concern and encourage encouragement are what kept teachers going through some very difficult times and made it clear what we have been saying from the beginning that we are all in this together and last i must say that i am deeply saddened from where i sat remember having been involved with every single meeting and every part of this where i sat at times this contract bargaining was ugly it was mean spirited it was devices and what is worse that i truly believe it never had to be this way contrary to popular belief the collective bargaining process can and should be a way for two parties to come together to talk about students and the future of public schools to problem solve and to move the ball forward for kids there was hope from the beginning that we would bring this proposal that was centered around the schools our students deserve and this was not a gimmick this was not smoke and mirrors or a power grab or some ploy to get parents and and the public on our side for teachers those weren't just words on a page it was true that the honest reflection of what we believe for our students and what they deserve was what we need as teachers to help our kids every single one of our kids to have success in the classroom and in life a board and district administration who are truly interested in learning about what is happening on the ground in our classrooms would have welcomed to have such conversation and said instead we the response we received was at best dismissive and at worst hostile sometimes these conversations are hard they can get uncomfortable and you can disagree on a solution but the absence of these kinds of conversations were the result
01h 35m 00s
that would not be in the best interest of our students i wish pps would have treated this contract bargain as an opportunity to learn and to grow instead i feel like you treated this as a zero-sum game you could only win by teachers losing and for us this isn't a game this is about our students our lives our profession and our community we weren't interested in creating a system of winners and losers with this contract it was our goal to provide teachers with the time the tools and the resources they need to make things better for kids ultimately i hope you understand that it's students who lose with this union busting approach this that the district has employed so back to the original question how do you feel after 10 months of being disappointed heartbroken and angry i will tell you i remain hopeful i am hopeful that you as our elected leaders understand the folly of the failed strategy that brought us only two days um out from a strike i am hopeful that you see us as dedicated teachers with expertise passion and skill but not as adversaries i am hopeful that you stop blaming teachers this teacher's contract for every every federal state and local system failure as well as each and every challenge facing facing students i am hopeful that things will change one thing however portland teachers are more united than ever and we stand shoulder to shoulder with this growing community of educating education activists and advocates by continuing to work together teachers parents and students and community members there is no end to what we can accomplish for students and our public schools i look forward to working with you not against you in the future thank you okay on february 10 2014 the board approved resolution 4872 to provide temporary delegation of authority to the superintendent now that we have an agreement with the pat the board will reconsider resolution 4822 rescinding resolution 487 to the temporary delegation of authority do i have director morton moves and director atkins seconds the motion to adopt four eight two two resolution number four eight two two miss houston any citizen comment no there's no any board discussion on this i don't think so the board will now vote on resolution 4822 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions resolution 4822 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative davidson voting yes okay great okay at this time we'd like to take about a five minute break thank you do for the board members please return to the podium okay to move forward on our uh agenda uh we're about to have a discussion on the 2014-15 budget uh pertaining to district staffing superintendent smith would you like to introduce this item um i also need some people to return to the podium so i am looking for suanne higgins and sarah singer oh you're right here okay great come on up sue ann higgins our chief academic officer and sarah singer her assistant will take us through district staffing so part of what i want to do for the board who is partly missing
01h 40m 00s
um is just tell you what what it is we're going to do and where we are in the budgeting process so as you know what we'll have what will be coming up in the budgeting process is on march 17th i will be presenting to you both a district staffing plan and budget priorities that will include the two parts of the budget as of that plan we intend to push go on staffing the day after that plan is presented to you which is similar to what we what we normally do but this is to allow us to take full benefit of getting out and doing our early hiring okay um what will then happen between march 17th and march 31st is i will then be out doing listening sessions based on the things that you hear about on march 17th i'll do three listening sessions with students with hosted by students so andrew will be one of the hosts and organizers second by coalition of communities of color and third a parent listening session so i'll get three specific sets of um perspectives back on march 31st i'll come back to you and actually do my budget proposal and deliver the budget book to you so that will include the full boost the staffing and overall budget recommendations it then transitions to you and you are out doing your listening sessions and then you have your opportunities to tweak whatever so tonight and part of why i'm walking you through all those parts is because what you will hear tonight and we've done a number of community processes that have fed this budget so far so for instance we've done a lot of listening actually already about district staffing you just heard that we've got 150 staff that were part of our discussions with p-a-t 70 of which we know we're going to allocate at k through 8 50 of which we'll allocate to the high schools 30 of which we'll allocate to special ed but within within that then there are prioritizing and competing values um some of which we're going to walk you through tonight because those will be the decisions that i will then be making more specifically how we allocate them are we just changing the ratio are we adding librarians are we prioritizing counselors so some of these are there within those grade bands you then have other priorities that part of what we'd like to hear tonight we'll walk you through some information we'll ask you to do some clarifying questions about the information but then the real interest is to hear you discuss where your priorities are not to come to a decision so it's not looking for you to come to some a decision it's for us to be able to listen to how are you weighing all of the the various priorities okay so we'll pose two questions at the end of this that are really the places that are helpful to me then and putting together a budget okay with that um suanne higgins i will let you introduce good evening it's a pleasure to be here with you tonight and just share with you the work the district staffing team has been doing so one of the um elements that's been referenced this evening is the exciting opportunity of the addition of 150 p-a-t members and as the superintendent described distributed over the system and so our district staffing team is always active this time of year listening and then making recommendations to the superintendent about how to distribute staffing unlike most of the prior years um the last decade and more we are excited to be making a big addition of teachers instead of figuring out where cuts should go so i'm really pretty darn happy sitting here in front of you right now to do this so um our work of course is to align the resource allocation with board priorities and policies and um two key ones as it relates to staffing our schools are our milestones focus on increasing achievement for all students with particular attention to accelerating achievement for students we have historically underserved and also aligning with our racial educational equity policy where the board has directed us to make certain that resource allocation um works to eliminate the disparities caused by past practice and past resource allocation so with that in mind our prioritization looks to align with the parameters of the newly laid out agreement between portland association of teachers and the school district applying the racial equity lens tool which is to say understanding what are
01h 45m 00s
the impacts of any resource allocation who's advantaged by it who would be disadvantaged by it what can be done to mitigate any disadvantaging so that we meet those prior stated goals also alignment to our guiding principles and we'll walk you through the three guiding principles established by the district staffing team last year that we're pulling through again for this year also looking at what is the size of an impact so some resource allocation affects a smaller number or and other resource decisions can have a more comprehensive impact so sort of looking at how those things guide our recommendations and finally the immediacy of an impact is it something that will improve things in the short term or is it investment that helps build a foundation for a longer term improvement so all those things are under consideration so the district staffing team's focus is distribution of full-time uh equivalent fte well all of the staffing which we consider by the acronym fte or full-time equivalents our charge is to advise the superintendent on staffing the schools and to align as we said and finally what we are working hard to deliver in the short term is recommendations on how we would prioritize the addition of the 150 new pat member fte so the four pots of resources that the district staffing team looks at allocating are the largest one is the general fund staffing and then the other three are staffing that comes through the esl department allocation the title one allocation and special education allocation so what are some of the factors that we know right now about staffing well the first is that we have an increase of at least 150 pat positions in our schools and those those will be distributed with 70 of those positions going into grades pre-k through 8 regardless of school configuration so that would include middle schools pre-k fives pre-k eights and 50 of the fde going to high schools and 30 to special education another thing that we know coming out of our recently concluded negotiations and your just ratified contract with our teacher partners is that we need to allocate and make certain that all schools meet a planning time requirement for elementary teachers that's a new expansion of that time and so some of that will be done through schedule revision and some of that will require some small editions of fte as well also we know we've got an expedited timeline because we do want to utilize the new opportunity to have an uh staffing process for the schools um that moves forward quickly and finally we want to continue or pull through the guiding principles and theories of action from last year's staffing work so as a reminder and this uh is review for most of you and we'll just explain uh this for those of you who are new and those in the audience and so so instead of looking at what should we do here or there or having resources allocated in random fashion we worked hard last year as a staffing committee to come up with theories of action and then to staff towards those actions so that we would have the biggest net impact given that budgets are still quite thin and we know we want to get the best out of every addition so our first action was to make some strategic investments and therefore resource allocations of teacher fte by school type and achievement needs rather than simply by school size so in the past if you were a small school there were just certain things that you ended up having to live without and we looked at that and felt like that wasn't representative of how we wanted to support our schools additionally you had schools who had struggled as a result of the impacts of no child left behind transfers and other the impacts of gentrification and other impacts that we wanted to reduce we also had the assignment of priority
01h 50m 00s
and focus status by the state for lowest performing schools and so we made the determination to target those schools for additional scoops of resources in the form of fte so that was our first action our second one was is to provide clear direction to schools on how resources and administrative support must be used so one of the things that had caused unintended inequities across the system was schools utilizing resources differently or and so we found that we had places where it would be really important for cohesion in the system and for all schools to be both having local flexibility and autonomy but also having some resources where we were directing their allocation in order to have a real strategic impact and we'll talk a little further about that and finally our third resource allocation guiding practice is that we would provide enough time for a resource to shift culture and build capacity so this was to restrain us from assigning resources one year and then six months into the next year when we're making allocations again to say yeah we don't know what kind of impact that's having yet so let's do something different and um so the effort here really is to make investments so that schools can count on having those for two or three years at a time and we're really doing action research about what's the impact of those resources so with those theories of action in mind we looked first at what are some of the existing challenges in our system across grades pre-k through eight um and so we just enumerated some of them although we know that this is not a completely comprehensive list so from achievement perspective there are schools that have struggled to implement our whole core program there are others where many many of our schools are struggling to meet our ambitious goals of having every single student reading to learn by the end of third grade so our early grades literacy is a challenge there are a significant achievement needs at our focus and priority schools those are only title one schools but we have those achievement needs and other non-title schools as well meeting our new contract provision for teacher planning time and grades pre-k through five and limited or no counseling resources assigned to some schools so that's a concern we currently have nine small elementary schools that do not have an allocation in their support table of counseling resources so a consideration about that we have unique staffing challenges and opportunities in schools that host both a neighborhood program and a dual language immersion program another is other unique configurations so schools on a split campus or schools with unique grade configurations class size is a is an element of challenge across the system and finally the support and retention of new teachers so we've got this great opportunity to bring new folks on board and we want them to find a home here to feel engaged and supported here and again i just would say that with the challenges that we've listed this list are things that teacher fte may be able to impact so there are many other things we're looking at in other parts of the budget and resource allocation so this is specifically related to staffing so in the materials the board received you also saw some possible ways that staffing could allow us to approach improving each of these challenges and so while i won't read every single one of them what i would want to highlight is some of these could be affected with very strategic additions so where we would say we would like to increase the counseling resources librarian resources reading specialist resources at at a given set of schools or across the schools with 70 fte and 65 schools in this grade band it's a small resource to allocate in a really substantial impact in any school so how to be strategic and
01h 55m 00s
i want to also clarify a term that we use throughout here which is about staffing formula or staffing ratio so from the general fund the majority of those staffing resources are assigned by a per number of students per teacher allocation and so one of the things that we could do with these new resources is sweeten those ratios so that there are fewer students assigned by ratio and again this is from an allocation perspective ends up looking slightly different on the ground at a school because you have different numbers of kids in different grades and there are other restraints on that but so we also talked about i want to see if there any of these specifically we also had some newly identified focus and priority schools this year so one consideration would be to add an allocation to those schools as well like the other focus and priority schools we have so newly added to the list this year would be the two schools that will be completing their school improvement grants or sig grants so that would be king elementary and we talk about high schools madison high school additionally we had three other title one schools identified by the state with the term called other title one meaning their achievement also needs particular attention from the school district and so our theory of action would include them as a type of school that we would want to have a unique set of resources for that and those schools are yes george lee and boyce elliot humboldt you weren't sure i was going to remember them yeah i was getting ready all right um so on a second slide here again looking at these oh yes our current ones be taken off the list for next year have we made enough uh they would not for two reasons um by our theory of action one is that none of them have come out of the state's designation yet and also that's a four year designation from the state and so our theory of action about leaving resources in place to really have their full effect would apply in this case um although we do see growth in some of them we're really excited about so i'll stay under there no matter what okay yes um let's see so again some possible suggestions of how you would impact things um so we could add to the allocation for focus and priority schools you could decide to focus your resources only on those schools the new resource set you may want to distribute a little a long way or more to fewer schools so this is really where the tension is in making these recommendations is what's most strategic one of the ways that we could come at our early literacy challenge is to add licensed media specialists back to all of our schools with grades pre-k through five another way to do that might be through instructional specialists or reading specialists for those schools and there are others one might simply be enriching the fte allocation by ratio so that principals could target those resources towards grades one and two or k one and two so again there are many ways to come out these all right and then in terms of high schools again we've enumerated some of the challenges that we could that we believe could be addressed through fte allocations so this would be 50 fte over our high schools so it's a slightly larger percentage of fte given the number of schools so some of the big challenges in those schools include students often too often are not passing all their freshman courses and so students we know in pps if students are not tracking with at least six credits in the core areas at the end of their freshman year they're much less likely to persist and and graduate in four years or even five so we want to really get at that so how do you do that achievement needs in our focus and priority schools have been named we know that the counseling ratio right now which is close to 400 students to one counselor doesn't get close to allowing our counselors to really have the effect that they could have so one thing that the allocation could go towards would be
02h 00m 00s
lowering that student to counselor ratio to 300 to one or 350 one to one so making changes there we know that we've got a lack of capacity to offer interventions in high schools and so the work of school social workers could affect this other um resources that would allow opportunities for teachers to collaborate and have a more coherent sense of supports for students we also have challenges around just relevance in our curriculum and so we know that college and career-focused courses are a key here for incentivizing students to stay in high school we certainly know that we're continuing to build towards fully staffing our schools whether there is a seven period schedule or an eight period schedule and we have schools with high concentrations of emerging bilingual students particularly students who arrive to a school in the us or school in pps during high school who are still learning english we want to make sure that we're supporting those students and finally the support and retention of these same new teachers that we're talking about so we enumerated again for you some possible staffing solutions to look at that so instructional specialists have been shown in our high schools to have a really big impact in terms of supporting multiple teachers and academic teams looking together at how to strengthen practice how to accelerate learning and bring all students to benchmark and beyond improving class size averages is an important one we could certainly also staff so that that was targeted towards the freshman academy so that those students had the smallest classes and the most ability for their teachers to support them another opportunity would be as we talked about the counseling resource looking more at cte opportunities so we could assign resources and then have an expectation that enhanced electives or other college and career readiness opportunities were the focus of those resources and finally other wraparound services as i said a school social worker qmhps those would be mental health professionals in the school all of those members of the pat so looking at how might we make strategic additions or simply we could again sweeten the ratio improve that ratio assignment of fte so that there is simply more distribution broadly of teachers yes is there a relationship between the the cte x-man career learnings and the uh counseling are those are separate correct so they're listed as separate although certainly for students to really utilize those resources well we know that counselors being able to just see more of the students they support would help that alignment would help provide access to those and help counselors who get to know students well then better match them with courses that would be highly interesting to them so and then we've got just a little bit more to walk through so let me just uh say to the board or my colleagues that if unless you have something that's just a clarifying something that's in the attachments let's wait till we get done and then have a then there'll be plenty of time for discussion so we'll provide some clarifying question time and then i know the superintendent has particular questions for you to address so um we're nearly there um so we talked about the opportunities and challenges of um schools hosting dual language immersion programs so again that could be one of the areas of focus for fte allocation the concentration of emerging bilingual students in a school additional support in those schools could be possible and in just a moment i'll walk you through potential staffing solutions coming through our esl and special education departments and so we also have looked at piloting a college a career
02h 05m 00s
college and career exploration course or i'm trying to find the right word here for freshmen students as one of the allocations either as a pilot at one or two schools in order for us to look at how can we really be embedding college and career focus in our schools and carry that forward so how would that be an investment that we would do now but that would carry through and help us as a system deep in that work which we know is really connected to all of our achievement goals so in special education there's a new allocation of 30 fte and so the special education department recommends the following that we first of all focus on caseloads so their recommendation would include lowering the caseloads of learning specialists of speech-language pathologists and of school psychologists all of which have grown very thin over years of cuts another area of proposed focus would be early learners and so to have the early childhood evaluation team be able to provide support so that schools particularly as students arriving throughout the year can have that support another area is to have an instructional specialist focused on the work of life skills classes and other focused classrooms this is an area where there are a lot of demands for teachers particularly new teachers we'd like to really provide support there also looking at bilingual bicultural school psychologists so this is an area where we have significant concerns that emerging bilingual students are over identified for special education um and that a more bicultural approach would allow us to more appropriately assess those students and support them and then finally having some para educators in special education that could move be moved from school to school to support emergent issues support um onboarding new students who come after the school years started and so forth so those are some of the suggestions there in terms of strategic additions with again a big focus on improving caseloads and then in esl there's not a new fte allocation but they are in a hold steady pattern in terms of allocated fte so the recommendation would be to keep the ratios the same but to make some specific fte allocations one of those would be a clear challenge for teachers the esl teacher in a pre-k-8 school who's the only esl teacher is then supporting nine grades and that has proven really impractical and um just really a tough assignment so the esl department would like to make certain that we don't have singleton esl teachers and pre-k-8s also instead of having the disruption of adding fte once the school year has started trying to allocate more of the esl fte earlier to those schools that are close to the top of a ratio so if you were to get a new allocation of another 0.5 if you had 50 students and you've got 48 with the projection then to go ahead and tip that additional resource in rather than waiting to see if those students show up later because it's much better to schedule everybody from the get-go another would be looking at schools with split campuses where it's very difficult to support multiple grades and multiple campuses also we have schools that are piloting a content-based english language development program we'd like to provide even if the numbers in those schools are down we would like to hold steady on their fte and then also to maintain at least a 0.25 allocation even when schools have had a reduction in students and then finally to make certain that the school who will be hosting our vietnamese dual language immersion program would have esl fte in order to support the initiation of that program next year as our newest program in the one where we'll be developing both curriculum and um a whole new plan so all right so that is our um our snapshot of some of the opportunities and and some of the challenging decisions and if you guys have clarifying questions that give you the information you need we'd give you like 10 minutes to do clarifying questions but what we would
02h 10m 00s
really like and i'm going to tell you the two questions so you can make sure you've got the information you need the two questions we wanted to ask one is how do you prioritize strategic ads for non-classroom pat members meaning counselors librarians instructional specialists or social workers and weigh that up against improving the ratio to add teachers and if i just do you looking at high schools alone and you look at 50 teachers going into our high schools we've had in high school system design we identified that we wanted to go from a one to four hundred ratio for counselors to a one to three hundred ratio which takes us like seven ftes that we said seven fte that we just take off the top and add to counselors you can do those two things and do a significant ad to teachers but also get your counselor ratio if you start saying we want to do this this this this you might end up with tiny amounts of fte and have way less strategic impact so part of what i'm looking for here is both at the k-8 level and at the high school level are there things that stand out to you as things you'd want to do with strategic ads and how do you weigh that up against just doing straight we you know we're doing a teacher ad that that impacts the ratio so that's question number one question two how directive do we want to be to schools on priorities such as career learning so if we're giving x number of teachers we'll say we want you to prioritize adding another you know putting a foot making sure you're adding career learning is one of the things and sometimes we are like we always are looking for a balance in the sweet spot between what schools get to direct and where are we getting more strategic impact by saying we're doing guidance across the system so those are the questions so you got a couple minutes to do clarifying questions with these guys and then we're really looking for the conversation amongst you guys as opposed to back and forth with staff steve your two questions that gives me 68 not counting follow-ups these are just clear i want to know when the 68 are going to be asked is what i'd like to know do i get do we sit down do i sit down with the superintendent and uh maybe sue and we sit down for an hour or so come on in and do these questions or do we want all 68 now or so how do you want to do it we had this discussion yesterday okay and i think that you and i agreed that the best thing to do would be one clarifying questions two two an ability for you to ask the questions that you want and that are most important and three that you would sit down with suanne and talk about the other kinds of questions no i was would sit down with the superintendent and somebody else now i asked about that and was told and was told by the superintendent's staff that i asked that yeah we'll look at that let's let's yeah are we going to look at this or i mean so why don't we start with clarifying questions what do you got well it depends on whether i'm going to build a 68 i don't think i'll go first okay anybody else i also have 68 no i'm getting pennies um you know you have 168. uh the uh i do have a question though because one of the challenges that we had last uh in october when we taught when we added uh added fte back to uh that well i not back but we had opportunity to add fte to our schools a lot of that we saw in sort of a fractional way so we brought a 0.5 fte up to a 1.0 fte yes now it can be argued that we didn't see an actual number of professionals increase in the building we saw the amount of time professionals were in the building but i have a question as to how much of this is going to be sort of fractional increa or it's probably impossible to ask our answer at this point but how much of this do we expect to be fractional increases like that like a point and i know 0.5 is probably the the largest edition that was created it was probably like 0.12 infinity how much of it or are we really going to see new bodies in buildings new professional bodies and buildings because i think that was one of the expectations that that was really attached to this 150 new teachers and i think that um so we've been paying a lot of attention to how might we be able to track um these additions so for instance if by a ratio change a school was assigned an additional 1.37 fte right pretty easy to see how you add the one and how do you show the 0.37 so if you so let's say you thought well so you can
02h 15m 00s
certainly do that and you may have other slivers of fte or you may be able to add additional um parts of time to already part-time staff to make them whole so you would count those in the addition but um so let's say you said no we'll only allocate in pure whole fte or half ft right um if you do that however um in reviewing what the fte allocations in the schools already are they are they look like 23.64 and 16.72 and so they are already allocated in fractions and so you don't actually so we are looking at how to how to um navigate that yeah and i i'm not advocating for that at all only using whole whole ftes or half fdes i this system doesn't i mean isn't set up at this point to allow for that i think or allow for it to to so it wouldn't make much sense but i'm just interested when we're looking at bodies in the building and increasing those numbers and affecting ratios and improving opportunities for adult adults to have relationships with kids how do we how do we do that where it's really with a new body in the building versus a i just think we have to be clear about it you know fte is increasing but fte does not equal a body it equals um you know the could be equal a fractional addition of an fde so was that fully confusing out of the arts teachers we actually did do it in point in increments of 0.5 was up without what it was and did you know you bumped up or you bumped down depending on how close you were but but you could really look at what were the additions in in the increments of 0.5 which is different than what we normally do so go ahead well i wonder if some of that discussion is part of what we're discussing so for example if we're directive this evening or we're thinking that no we want librarians in every every school you're going to see for schools that don't have a librarian an increase in librarians if we say no we're really feeling the improve the student teacher student to adults um ratio you may not see bodies specifically so i think that's part of what you've kind of teed up some of the discussion for tonight um my clarifying question is do all these assumptions these walkthroughs assume that we've already invested at least at a minimal level for the dual language emerge like there are things we've committed to in previous meetings continuing this year this last falls investment right okay so yes when we're looking at this next budget we're looking at building on the current investments that we already have so those going moving forward the amendment we just made made those moving forward and things like the dual language immersion are going to show up in the central um school supports and the central budget as opposed to in here so that okay so there are some things when you start talking about them i'll tell you i've got that over in the other category yeah that's helpful so i had maybe i don't know if it's a similar clarifying question it may just be a comment but just a concern around the special education piece um and it may be that this again this process isn't where this is going to be addressed but just to you know the whole issue of wanting to pilot moving away from an exclusionary model to a more inclusionary one and as well as aligning assignment for special ed students um within a cluster in a way that's much more supportive and and coherent so that's just you know identifying those as as interests or concerns and i don't know if that would be you know so that's just something i want to put out there because i don't see it on this list so when i'm looking at improving the student-teacher ratio which i think we have at some point through our negotiations set some expectations there um or prioritizing strategic ads i guess i want to understand if we're talking about 150 fte or if we're talking about potentially considerably more and that of course gets into what level of reserves we're willing to be looking at in the rest so if we have um enough i certainly want to be looking at improving the ratio or doing both of the above and if if we're only looking at 150 it kind of becomes a tougher discussion so you're looking you'll use the 150 at this so look at the 150 the 150 will not count like we're expecting another 250 students in the system and those we will staff in addition to the 150. so the 150 would assume the same number of kids in the system as we're looking at it and really looking at how and we wanted it to specifically um apply to pat members so teachers
02h 20m 00s
counselors librarians social workers and anti-impact workload so like that those are some of the things that we're doing any of these positions impact workload so and you're just looking at a difference i mean i think you're kind of looking at what's the like how how many strategies are you trying to spread it across and how targeted and and like what kind of impact are you really trying to make with the strategy that you're naming and i guess what i'm what i'm wanting to understand is you know 150 teachers is about 15 million or so what i'm wanting what i'm wanting to understand um at this point in time in terms of our budget for next year if we end up getting to a uh five percent reserve versus a four percent versus a three percent i mean so here's what above the 15 million are we looking at so here's what i'll tell you and then um we're looking at roughly the 13 million in the in staffing we're looking at two million in days we're looking at um roughly 3.8 million that was in the central supports which includes things like the dual language immersion expansion it includes athletics it includes a number of other things that you've that we've named as being school-based but they are centrally supported school-based services we are looking at taking us down to uh a five percent reserve level for anything that we would want to be able to sustain over time so staffing will go down to five percent i will also bring forward a list of one-time budget investments that are ones that i would i will propose to you to go take ourselves below the five percent threshold in order to do the one-time investments on some things that'll include like curriculum um but there's they're clear one-time investments you don't need to be able to sustain them over time and i believe in the circumstance we're in right now that that's a wise use of a one-time resource so and i don't know how far below the five percent i'm gonna um suggest that we go but i will bring you a list of one times i would not do and are you tracking what i'm saying when i'm doing this okay but i think anything that we're doing that is staffing you want to be above the five percent threshold so that makes sense so we consistently yeah there's a there's an additional 1.9 um million beyond what i just said that then get you down to the the that is what's remaining from the 4.6 million that we just learned we had um that is that i haven't put either in central or in staffing yet but it will like right now the kinds of things that i'm putting there are um like doing teacher mentors because it's been a really because if we had 150 new um teachers to the system sufficiently doing providing mentorship for them so anyway that's got a little bit of a another set of things but um it's i haven't started parsing that that's the kind of stuff i'm going to bring you on the 17th but it gives you a sense of what it all is and the 100 150 staff is the amount that we're looking at for school-based staffing for teachers school-based staffing the continuation of the investment we already made the 68 classified staff we just put into schools continues so that was a concern of pfsp is making sure that that continues yes it does so does that give you enough of a sense here yeah and again we're expecting another 250 were projected for another 250 students so that would then be resourced in addition to so we wouldn't then take that out of the 150. so i had a question about i'm looking at the high school challenges and i'm thinking about the high school action team and the different suggestions that they had where do those fit in here or is that is that a surprise bucket of money we have someplace else some of both so um but in terms of this looking at the counseling ratio so the two big recommendations from the high school action team just to remind folks one was around just more college and career readiness access opportunity and incentivizing high school the other is around an early response system where and really so while that came out of the high school action team is not only intended to be about the high schools because we know students being on track with attendance and positive behaviors in schools all about success in high school but success at every level and so um so you see some of the recommendations can you go to the recommendations um include the the counseling ratio the potential of assigning fte and then directing it to be used for enhanced electives or more opportunities in that regard in the central budget allocation we've also made a budget request regarding a central position to coordinate
02h 25m 00s
early response system and that sort of thing so so that one is spread in a in a couple of different budget recommendations so yeah the other things i would i would just add is the um additional wrap around supports to provide interventions is part of an early response system that's sort of the boots on the ground piece of the early response system and as she alluded to in the centrally allocated budgets we've made several requests as well to support high school action team and then the second place i would say is just again the additional electives around career preparation and career exploration and that career exploration course in ninth grade those are all directly tied to the high school action team recommendations okay well i think that's where at least i would get more directive if you're asking about where we would direct things yeah you know if you're putting money in to um for example expanding career learning cte opportunities that definitely yes um and enhancing counseling ratio to 350 i wouldn't want that counselor to be off doing something else i'm thinking lower that number for our counselors they have way too many students already and then when you have a lack of capacity to deliver student interventions down here at the bottom early response to me i'd be much more interested in in that than i am in some of the other things that are listed here yeah i could just tag him on that and agree i mean i think given the um the integrity and the depth of the work of the high school acting team i would really want to see whether it's in this or in the central budget or you know all of the above that we follow through on that and make that real and make sure that schools are adhering to that so that's really important to me so the pieces that you named um counseling at all grades does seem to me like to be an important an important piece here yeah and then the reading specialist at the younger grades if i'm recalling correctly that was something that we put in was we were getting very promising results and then we had to cut so i don't know if this is the same restoring we've had a number of variations on the film right yes yeah so and this is you know this is really hard because this gets back to you know kind of what we're saying before in terms of trying to balance you know the very real need and and desire that we all have to make sure that classroom you know class sizes are lower but also recognizing that these are all everything here our kids need and want to succeed so knowing that we can't bless you not that we can't have it all and that there's been clearly a very high expectation built up that the 150 fte i mean i think the shorthand for that is classroom right but it's it can be a harder conversation to say well even you know a i don't think the 150 um the way it's been laid out would be enough to significantly reduce class sizes all across you know in every school across this district um so that's one piece versus you know some mix of and i don't know what the precise mix is of some reduction knowing that there needs to be relief in that area and yet that these these various strategies things like counseling things like enacting the high school action team recommendations things like reading specialists in the early grades not only are going to help reduce workload that are really going to have a strong impact so i guess i'm sort of coming on some kind of mix but recognizing that it's really tough because it's just not enough resource right well i think another piece that you have to consider is within the contract now we have this increase in elementary school teacher planning time and how do you get that planning time without adding specials or right you know being very creative so librarians more art teachers right whatever it takes to um right at one time we had our time we had a clear plan and goal to have a certified librarian in every yes we did so you know still there so weighing that but again i say that knowing that there's the mix matt so um i think that you know getting to the the specific issues around class size particularly those those classes that are significantly high i think we talked about this um and this is i think the benefit of really discussing uh class size versus workload and what do they mean and what are the relationship and what is the relationship so i think um i think what i i would like to see is how do we how do we create some flexibility um in our budget so when we see class size as being being a significant issue around um for either the teachers or for a particular you know segment within a school we can invest in that particular area so it
02h 30m 00s
might be a one-off or two off um but it really is sort of the flexibility of saying this doesn't this isn't working right let's find a way to um to create a some relief uh with additional fte um i think my my experience so that's one thing this sort of this idea of flexibility around around staffing the other piece though and and this is more sort of my you know from the heart if you will i i that you know my experience on a daily basis is with kids who are served by this district and districts around the portland metro area that have the deepest disparities that had the hardest relationship with education whose families have the hardest relationship with education and i and oftentimes it is it is the the challenges that exist outside of the classroom that prevent success inside the classroom so i i tend to have a broader definition of what wraparound services include but but in terms of this i would be much more inclined to say how do we find how do we find solutions to help support workload issues and by workload issues i mean kids that are ready to enter into a classroom to learn and either getting support from counselors they're getting reading support or other support from media specialists i think that's a that makes a big impact on the readiness of these kids to really participate in class and it also is more adults i mean i've been through schools where you have these roving educational specialists that are sort of the the jack or jane of all trades that i know the kids identify them they have other responsibilities within the school but they're really they really help to focus uh individual kids in particular areas so i like that idea too of course i wouldn't i'd be negligent if i didn't say social workers as well um but really the breadth of of wraparound services i think could make a significant improvement both on outcomes but also on on workload for teachers i'm totally confused we brought forward this staffing thing i am now i'm up to 68 questions without that doesn't count the follow-ups that just deals with this little section now it seems to me like this and then i get these two questions here neither of these questions make any sense to me well i think there's two ways to approach this i don't see us going either way i mean one way to approach it is to sit down and come up for once with an actual foundation level what is what is it that we have in this school system in each school a foundational level of what that means what does that mean we don't have that we're not i'm close to that we got milestones we got this we don't have any idea what that means and so i could go that direction and then once you get a foundational level of so everybody has certain things then you move to building on top of that now building on top of that can mean a lot of things can mean wrap-around services that can mean and then you prioritize building you prioritize building on top i could live with that or the other way to do it is the superintendent brings forth a budget and we argue over it and say i don't like that i think that money should be spent over here and we vote on it i could live with that but i can't i don't i can't live with this unless they're gonna ask ask answer all the questions and then move to one of those two things so here's what i'll invite you to two things steve so right up there on the top where it says core program implementation we actually have in previous budgets and this is one where i would be happy to sit down with you in fact tomorrow i'll set a time and i'll clear my calendar and spend the morning with you walking you through what that is because part of what we've done is identify in a k-8 here's what a core program is and a high school here's what a core program is we have not been able to fully fund that yet as you're identifying so like part of what we've prioritized is how are we getting every school able to offer that core program and that was one of the ones of like how do we do we prioritize that at the very top or we say actually getting every school able to get to full offering of the core program as the which is i think sort of consistent with what you're trying to do i'm saying it's going to be really weird but come on in tomorrow and i will walk you through and give your can do your 68 questions until about 11 o'clock we'll work on calendar after the meeting so but happy to walk you through that well but okay so you know where the baseline is what you're talking about one other thing i would um
02h 35m 00s
be remiss to not clarify is that all of our ratio fte as we allocate it includes our equity formula and so started last year and continuing forward this year eight percent of all the fte is allocated specifically by the number of students in a school that um qualify for free and reduced meals so four percent allocated by that and then four percent allocated by the number of students who are in the state's combined underserved category so that includes the four racial groups that we have historically underserved as well as students identified for esl or special education support so so that equity allocation remains in as we are looking at all the formula considerations so just wanted to clarify that that's not gone away and of course as you add fte through the ratio you get that the impact of the equity allocation improves over the more fte allocate is adam is that included in some way with the core program it does affect the core program in a couple of ways part of the core program in other words we have an eight percent so in those particular schools we then have taken that eight percent and built that into a into a core part of the core program beyond what the foundational level is in other words is a core program for school a different for school b no the core program is consistent across the schools so then the eight percent sits on top of that and then on top of that and that becomes the core program so then on top of that eight percent then we set the other things on top that we're doing in other schools too is that how it works i'm i think i'm using core program differently than maybe you are thank your pardon i think i i think the way you're using core program may not be quite how i'm using it well the superintendent was saying that a core program was a foundational level that's right so here's the foundation and then if we add the eight percent that creates a foundational level at that school that's different and then so that foundational level would be the foundational level plus eight percent so here's i'm going to back you up a little bit so the core program is really what are the what are the offerings at each school right we then are providing a staffing allocation to each school and from the years that we've been in budget like like tightness budget slashing a lot of folk a lot of schools have not been able to offer the full core program or we've been patching it together so last year the effect of the equity formula is perhaps you were not quite able it may have let you offer the core program where some other schools may not have been able to you may have been able to just not cut as much because you got a boost in the go forward part of what it does is it gives you more it's the waiting that lets you have more adult attention for kids that we've said have been historically underserved so part of what it does it just gives you it's not a huge amount but what it does is it gives you more adults in the school in order to have a more significant ability to have relationship with kids so it isn't specifically like you've got x number more teachers but you've got some bump in what are who are the adults there serving kids so that's that's essentially what it is eight percent would give you a pretty good bump it's an eight percent hold back that then it's reallocated you're it's not eight percent if the holdback is out of the whole pool we hold back eight percent and then it gets reallocated based on the number of kids in that category in your school so you don't receive eight percent more you're getting that's the amount we held back and then reallocated back to schools with this population so there's not actually a foundational level that meets our we've identified what the foundation is but we don't have a foundational level that meets our budget right have we been able to fully fund that yet no exactly well that's what that's what i'm saying you're correct we should have a foundational level that meets our budget we agree and then that foundational level we should decide okay can we is that it we should have the quality should we go the quality education model our own call we did the same thing when we did high school system design we said here's the core program we want every um student to have access to regardless of which high school you're in and we were really clear about what that was including this counselor ratio where we wanted to get to a one to three hundred rather than one to 400 but we were really specific about what we wanted we've been nowhere close and we actually did not do it with the idea that you needed a bunch of new resource but we have had less resource every year since we defined it um million dollar cut so we don't have what i'm talking about so we do so the way that we arrived at
02h 40m 00s
the eight percent for the equity allocation is because um the the majority of our schools were able to address all the core program requirements if they had the fte allocated in that first 92 percent of the total pot and so that's how we arrived at this and then in a few cases we do additional allocations so certain schools that were quite small were having trouble um in the k-8 or pre-k-8 model meeting their world language requirement for all their middle grade students and so we would do an additional allocation of a world language teacher in those schools in order to meet that core program so um and again those non-formula yeah so let me just on the technical side if you look at the ratio what what we know is that no formula in and of itself can be perfect but you need one like you need some sort of way to allocate resources so we do the we we allocate the resources but then if you look up there there's something called non-formula fte that's kind of a bucket of fte where we recognize that for whatever reason the ratio failed us in that particular school community and that's the bucket that we use to address core program implementation concerns so right after we we allocate the fte the ras are meeting with every single principal and they're saying and they have a list of here's what the core program is and they say where are you falling short with regard to being able to deliver this core program and then we deliver fte according to that non-formula bucket to address just that concern but there's but there's there's things on top of that that we add for instance we spent four hundred thousand dollars to get in somebody to help us deal with the common core well that's the thing you know we earlier in the earlier in the year we did i think you think you know the restorative justice support that we have contracted for that was the four hundred thousand dollars and um and so that's a wraparound service as director morton was referring to some additional support in our schools where the disproportionate discipline is really staggering and we're really trying to change those outcomes by having by you know utilizing a new strategy and then training other schools to utilize that strategy to change that getting back a little bit on kind of priorities or where where i'm thinking about um and i think actually director will i've heard you say this earlier i don't know if this is still kind of where you're sitting but the idea of spreading it around generally it's really hard to show an impact so while just adding to the fte ratio i what i appreciate about that is it allows some flexibility at the building level to target areas where you know you're insufficient in the building at the same time i think that with reinvestments we do have to be really strategic and so just some things that kind of come to my mind as i'm looking at high schools that really ninth tenth grade i mean it's just been for as long as i've been working with youth people have just been really clear that if kids are off track in ninth grade there's so much more at risk um and so i don't know if it's something that we can even do with a transition from eight to ninth but if they can earn a core credit even in that summer before they get in they're already on their way they've experienced success i'd be really curious about that the special education i appreciate director atkins i'm bringing up that inclusion model what do we need to do um to support our teachers to to kind of push in that that really resonates with me because it does while while we're moving while we're moving to this idea that every kid is our student to to educate not somebody else's problem that also takes some additional support so whether that's teacher mentors i don't know what that looks like but that target well having the print i mean the model that we have is the principle and working with the whole team and the entire building to have a whole different culture and way of working with the resources they do have so again as that's why i said it maybe isn't necessarily new in additional staffing per se but just wanting to signal that that's the culture shift we want to have and a priority um esl the the content-based english language development something we still haven't gotten our esl right we're technically in compliance ca congratulations for us but there have to be many pathways dual language immersion is one pathway but we really need to find other on-ramps for students so i don't know how that how that pilot is going or if it can be expanded but i'm just really interested in that type of intervention um the the maintaining of 0.25 fte as actually as we were going through these i was thinking you know what about when
02h 45m 00s
you're in a school and you don't have a really large asl population or a special ed population but you still have the need and you're in that's in the school and how hard that is to support sometimes just when it when it comes formula so that really spoke to me um so those are those are kind of my thinking is that i'm feeling right now to be a little bit more targeted um whether it's counselors or cte i'm not sure what's the right mix what that is but those are kind of what's going through my head is that it's feeling more targeted rather than general fte ratio i have director curler and andrew andrew d either one of you have any comments i think i think everybody here has had at least one another one though oh you haven't either okay well there we go yeah you go go ahead go ahead um so to answer your question here from where i'm sitting i i agree in terms of the high school action team that we need to be paying attention to those recommendations so if we're looking at kind of specific strategic investments um i would agree in the career prep and exploration early response team i'm particularly interested in a social worker um kind of care action team responder and the council student ratio is a is a big deal for us to start trying to have an impact at the high school level if you're looking at ratio i would agree that the ninth grade class size in particular is where i probably want to put some energies if we're just looking at ratio investments and i guess i'm really curious to understand when the workload committee is going to start reporting back and whether or not we can hear any of their input prior to actually making our final budget decisions because one of the things i guess one of the things i hear all the time is the workload of our english teachers or teachers who are grading papers and doing some really intensive grading outside of class time and so i don't want us to cut corners for our kids and have teachers not um assign writing because it just takes too much to so you know that would be one area in particular where i'd like to understand uh what the workload committee might recommend in some of these areas because writing is such a life skill for high school students i don't want us to be cutting corners there somehow some way but i don't know if that's the group that we would it won't be operational by the time in the next two weeks which is when they need it all the way in right by mine yeah so i mean however is that the depth that is the kind of thing they're going to be looking at and we so i will say one of the resources we did leave in place that we will continue is the um we did a dollar amount for a pool to do scoring of essential skills work samplers for our high school students because it was a workload issue that was identified previously and um and the esd was having less capacity to do this and it was a big burden on our teachers as we're having more kids having to produce so we are going to be we're going to we'll continue that resource okay so it's the it's the type of example that you're talking about and it is exactly the kind of thing i think will come up in the workload committee are those kinds of things yeah so at the pre-k eight level again if you're looking at strategic investments i guess i would i would like to make sure that in terms of finance foundational levels of support that every single k-8 school has some level of librarian support and some level of counselor support i mean to me that's just should be a given somehow some way um if you're looking at ratio supports i mean to me it's in reading it's in reading and literacy support so whether that's k-3 or whatever that's where i would probably put those supports great andrew yeah so um i would like to echo some of the things that that director regan said um i think she was you know definitely on the right track with a lot of that stuff um i think counselors again are a really important area i think in terms of intervention and just having that relationship with the student that's really important both for keeping students in school and afterwards having those connections to go past high school um like other people have said ninth grade really important if we can support those more again like director regan said i would love to hear what the the workload work group would say about a lot of this stuff but since we don't have that information yet and we won't for a while um no i i guess i would just say you know i appreciate the the language about uh wrap-around service supports i think that's great but i think again that's something where if we're going to do it we really need to be careful how we do it so i would almost rather go with something where
02h 50m 00s
i feel like we're more comfortable doing light counselors but if we can make that work i'd love to see that as well so yeah can i just do a quick follow-up and then i'll let you know okay yeah just real quick just on the workload committee in terms of the short-term piece of that though will that be operational by next fall oh please by next fall i just won't be in the budget process right but in terms of the oh my gosh you know this is the second grade with 40k you know whatever the egregious yes so that will address so the hope it will get we'll work to put this together so it'll be five pat members five district folks and it'll be two-tiered so they will have a million dollars so that's another million i forgot to tell you in the list i was just making for you um so they'll have a million dollars to work with in order to be able to make recommendations about the kinds of things we're raising right here right so if in fact they come up with an idea mid-year that is here's an issue we need a grading some kind of grading support you know some of the flexibility they've got the ability to make recommendations and it's both those immediate response ones but also bigger like could they weigh in on budget kinds of things in the next budget cycle yeah yeah and i started the one thing i forgot to mention earlier in my list of it's the school improvement grants as they sunset figuring out how we do the glide path is really important for the schools because we've had this tremendous blessing of this extra huge influx of not only lo super low class sizes all kinds of wrap around supports and we've seen great results from that so and that is included in the yeah and priority so figuring out so we don't do the thing that we've done in the past as a district let's have this new grant and then have it go away yes and i know you're aware of that i just wanted to call that out i actually uh resonated with um greg's comments of what we want we want to do things that are high impact and uh and and we also want to just do things well and so focusing probably gets us to those two things and so as an example for counselors you said we've set a goal for one to 300 and that would take seven fte to get there well if that's an effective strategy we just go do it and do that one thing and then move to the next obviously there's prior prioritization that needs to happen um but from a philosophical kind of budget process that's where my head is at and the other thing just to remind the board you know from our priorities that we set the career technical education was definitely one of them and so i would hope that um that we move in that direction of making sure that that um we increase the offerings so i and i was i'm still confused about the council i i don't think counselors are that i think they can help us get there but i if so we need to have the offerings um beyond counselors okay anybody else do you have everything you need that was really for now it's really helpful yeah that was good exactly what you just gave us okay great well thank you thank you thank you everybody thanks so we'll move to our next agenda item which is the first reading of the revised public contracting rules superintendent smith would you like to introduce this so neil sullivan our chief financial officer and david wind i believe are coming up to present this emil yeah david wine deputy cfo and with me is uh emily courtney chu is the acting manager of our purchasing and contracting group we were here for our first reading and you may recall with elaine hulk ain't baker rather who left for the city of hillsborough and emily has stepped up to run that group or we hire a new manager so she's going to briefly walk you through this second first reading good evening superintendent smith and board members as david said elaine was here on february 3rd with a first reading of proposed rules change and that would take our small procurement of goods and services um lower threshold from 5000 to 10 or upper threshold i should say from 5 000 to 10 000 dollars in the course of that first reading and after we realized that a couple other small changes need needed to be made as well for internal consistency
02h 55m 00s
um so i'm coming to you now with a second first reading with that change taking our upper limit of small procurements to ten thousand also moving our intermediate procurement level lower threshold from five to ten and then allowing minor amendments of small goods and services procurements up to a contract total contract price of 12 000 which doubles it from where it was at 6 000. anybody have any questions oh very good recommendations based on what we already discussed right okay so the proposed policy is posted on the board website and the public comment period is 21 days with the last date of comment being march 24th 2014 contact information for public comment will be posted with the policy and the board will hold a second reading of the policy on march 31st 2014 and thank you very much for your presentation thank you thank you okay adjourn the next meeting of the board will be held on march 10 2014. this meeting is adjourned do

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)

2014-03-03 PPS School Board Study Session

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - March 3, 2014

Sources