2014-04-21 PPS School Board Regular Meeting, Public Hearing

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2014-04-21
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular, town-hall
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Budget Hearing/Regular Meeting - April 21, 2014

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the woman in the redcoat wanted to say hi okay good evening everyone i'd like to call this public hearing for april 21st uh 2014 to order to convene the board as a budget committee thank you all for being here the board has set aside one hour this evening to hear your comments on the superintendent's proposed budget for 2014-15 budget public feedback is very important to us the board acting as the budget committee will take everything into consideration before approving a budget we have interpreters with us tonight i'd like to invite them up at this time to introduce themselves and where they where they are located um um great thank you very much um with that i'll read the testimony instructions and then miss houston if you called the first two speakers to the testimony table so thank you very much for taking the time to come to our board meeting we deeply value public input and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board lies in actively listening and reflecting on the thoughts and opinions of others 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 have left your contact information with miss hewson or on the sign up sheet pursuant to our board policy 1.70.012 speakers may offer objective criticism of district operations import 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 and a copy of that policy is taped now to the speakers table 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 come on during the last minute of your testimony a yellow light will go on and when time is up the red light will come on and a buzzer will sound and we ask that you please wrap up your testimony at that time we sincerely appreciate your input and we thank you for your cooperation thank you very much miss houston our first two speakers michelle arnst and maria silva i think he's testifying there we go thank you my name is michelle arnst a-r-n-t-z i have two children at wrigler our neighborhood school in northeast portland where 90 percent of our students are historically underserved
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since 2007 the number of students per fte at regular has increased 20 percent in the last two years regular students have also lost nine instructional days from their school calendar for mandated professional development rpta has advocated at every level of your administration to ask how exactly these choices benefit our students we have mostly felt that central staff are uninterested in or unprepared for genuine answers to our questions i have also sought advice from the parents coalition and learned that reclaiming lost instructional resources takes intellectual capital teamwork and the tenacity to enforce a state mandate your proposed budget does not restore any staffing at wrigler and forces our principal to choose between funding academics or social and emotional supports given regular significant progress with behavior and discipline we feel that this choice is unconscionable and counterproductive improving our student outcomes will require you to fund classrooms as well as their support systems your proposed budget adds two paid days for required professional development which is a step in the right direction but clearly not enough last year alone mandated professional development costs regular students 10 instructional days on average 5 with substitutes and 5 with cancelled school days why must students at academic priority schools who need the instructional hours the most sacrifice these hours for extra professional development our students need each and every school day and they need highly qualified and well-trained teachers choosing between the two will never close the achievement gap and prepare them for middle school high school and beyond how can a system disinvested in its foundation succeed i am urging you to increase ratio fte allocations and proportionally reinvest in elementary grades how can students at your lowest performing schools raise achievement given less time i also request that before the budget vote you find solutions that ensure compliance with state mandated hours specifically for our fourth and fifth graders without pursuing a waiver from the state for next year ultimately this budget does not reinvest in the staff or the time needed to implement your racial educational equity policy regular students will need both of these resources to meet your policy goals thank you for listening thank you very much steve we're not doing questions right now thank you the ruling of the chair okay all those okay chairs ruled that we are not receiving or the board is not commenting a pursuant to our policies all those who uh well we haven't disagree with that second and we're going to go of course you know you're doing responsibilities right and then you don't need it for that well yes you do for an appeal if you can if you look on section 24 outlines it here maybe we could have our uh person who's in charge's jolly here patterson go over and give us a give us a thank you thank you okay okay and then we have to vote on it right that's what we're doing right now vote now yep right now and okay and i get all those in favor of the appeal no we don't there's no discussion on it there is discussion i did i did look at these this weekend so thank you there is a discussion on i believe so all those in favor what i don't even know what will go down so i ruled that the according to our policies we do not engage in question and answer with our speakers during this part of the board meeting budget meeting steve has uh ray's point of order i'm raising a point order of you giving him an explanation now because if we can't speak to it you're speaking to the motion i'm not i'm preaching i'm explaining what the motion is the job to find out i'm explaining what the motion is so that we can move forward the emotion is it wasn't emotional it's a point of order second it's absolutely not a point of order it's an appeal it's different i'm sorry to do this but we have such a mess going on here after last week that i just don't see any other we're not we're not going to go forward like that thank you okay so we have an appeal of my ruling um all those in favor of the appeal of my ruling please say aye i'm appealing the fact that you're not allowing discussion say i all those opposed names thank you you may go forward
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yeah three three can pass it here five you have to have you have to have four to pass how many did you win you had two and you had three okay you lost yeah better okay excuse me yeah can we move on to the rest of the game would you like to go ahead thank you this is the first time here first time please forgive me for my pronunciation as i read this letter i will give you the letter when i am finished yes my team from wrigler helped me write this letter julius dima information i gave them my information and they helped me write it i have added an extra word and that word is racism and they don't know that please don't take it personally it is from the perspective in the point of view of budget my name is dama i am a single parent of two children maya and my son meshi means mexico my son has a special needs and attend head start program and my daughter attends at regular elementary school as a kindergartner i work full time and i'm also a volunteers and teacher with kindergarten nurses students i teach them in spanish and i teach the music i used to be middle class but after separating from my husband last year i now know what it's like to experience poverty eighty-six percent of the families at regular qualify for free and reduced meals my daughter told me the other day that she could not go into her friend's bedroom who they live in the trailer homes on kellensworth and coley street and i asked the mom why and she told me because the whole family sleeps there the other distress of poverty manifests itself in the classroom in the halls and in the playgrounds of wrigler that's why the restorative justice program has been so vital to have a regular i have seen firsthand the power of this program when we deal with recent conflict between kids of color a restorative justice specialist was able to intervene and help them come to a resolution with the budget regular has been given for the fall we will lose our student management specialist our black community liaison and our restorative justice coordinator the people in these positions are more than simply mediators they are strong role models and help students believe in themselves and become empowered to resolve their own problems when children lack positive role models at home they have been able to learn the coping skills they need at the school from these role models they listen to our students when teachers can't and when teachers don't to finish i just wanted to say that this position have worked together over the last year to create an atmosphere of greater cultural understanding and appreciation of each other's unique
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differences the budget proposed for this coming fall will undermine the great work that we all have been doing and all the work that's been done at wrigler and threatens to further divide us this is racism thanks thank you very much gracias thank you very much for your testimony our next two speakers nathan means and rebecca navarette yeah we'll check don't let her get out of here are you going you can go ahead whenever you're ready uh thanks to the board and the superintendent for this opportunity to speak with you uh and thanks for your work and service of the school district my name is nathan means i have a third grade at wrigley elementary school in northeast portland a few weeks ago i took my son and his best friend who's the second grader at abernathy in southeast portland to wrigley's playground to run around run around when they got to the play structures the friend looked around and said you guys don't have any good stuff to play on and my son replied well our school is poor at seven or eight my son and probably every other regular student has learned a very simple lesson about inequality if you have less money you don't just live in a crowded apartment you get fewer public resources our neighborhood doesn't have a local library or park or sidewalks on busy roads shared by cars and pedestrians but i believe the most damaging single element of this inequality is what kids find or don't find their local school for kids at poorer schools like wrigler which is 85 for your reduced lunch there's a long list of resources that kids at wealthier schools enjoy that aren't available to them for example well-funded computer labs well-stocked libraries and the newest playground equipment but if budgets have tightened this inequality has been laid much more raw every school has lost something but wealthier schools have not experienced the same loss for example wrigler has lost considerably more ftes as was mentioned before per student than alameda our neighboring and wealthier school since 2007. this is in large part because of the ability of these schools ptas and foundations to raise tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars this money doesn't just go to ipads but the most fundamental learning resource teachers our fundraising capacities in comparison are extremely limited we can't have silent auctions we are however selling decals here tonight for five dollars we need to sell uh about 20 000 to keep our sms so please consider buying two or three here's what i request some elements of pps's equity policy are being implemented for example wrigler received some money in that end but not enough to match the donations by wealthier schools foundations to their own school's budget i would like to see pps pursue these equity aims more aggressively i graduated from a wealthy high school myself in montgomery county a school system that has become a model for reallocating resources to promote equity that school system has a huge advantage of being in a wealthy politically liberal county where citizen buy-in was relatively easy but that doesn't mean it's not a model to consider here in portland whenever pps pursues more robust policies of equity you will have our full support and fervent advocacy i would also urge the board to reconsider the impact that foundation money and transfer policies have on budgets and school performance both tend to encourage the conglomerating of the wealthy and or successful students and the further impoverishing of poor neighborhood schools in a specific case of regular i would also like to see actual reinvestment in our school this year we would like to be able to keep for example our student management specialists or restorative adjustment specialists without losing classroom teachers we have a great principal and teaching staff but without these kinds of basic positions filled too many of our students will be underserved and inequity will remain a pernicious everyday reality thank you good evening thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak my name is rebecca navarette n-a-v-a-r-r-e-t-t-e i have a child as well at wrigler elementary for many reasons we're here tonight speaking and i was told we're losing three staff positions at our school this upcoming year when questioned well who's leaving the response was it's not who it's the positions that we're not going to be able to fund if we say who it's personal my response was this is very personal
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you need to understand as spoken earlier and we'll speak later we're losing three positions next year for various reasons of funding they're not any positions they're positions that provide so much for our kids not just my son but every student there on campus we're losing three male role models on campus an underserved school underserved students that struggle just to survive on a daily basis my son every day everywhere we go he asks me first question mom is there any other africans here in this room he looks around every time that's the first thing he looks for when he goes to wrigler next year there will not be one staff member of color how dare this happen i pray every night that you guys make the right choice to not allow this happen we have through portland public schools racial educational equity policy please go home and read that see what it says regardless of where money needs to be allocated equally when we fall behind under racial equity it the monies can be appropriated differently all our kids look forward to these wonderful males they look up to them they give them lots of love and praise every day they don't have male role models in their life a lot of our students that are there consistently these positions i don't know their exact job descriptions however i do know they teach our kids discipline they teach them how to make the right choices every day when they when they do something wrong they show them how to do it right and when they're gone when these three wonderful amazing males are going to be gone from our campus who's going to be there for our students who's going to be there to lift them up we had three 7.3 students were suspended last year at an elementary school 7.3 we have 13 african american students plus an additional 32 that are multiple race i urge you to stop consider and think about the decisions that you're making that will affect our kids thank you thank you next we have sybil kelly and charlotte kelly hi my name is charlotte kelly and i'm a third grader at regular school yo quiero de sierra creo que estan importante para mi comunitad para montenero i want to tell you why i think it's so important to me and my community to keep mr tobin and mr cohen at my school they have been very helpful so we all feel safe on there was a boy in my class who was gone for most of the year when he got back he and another boy weren't getting along he started to choke the boy it really startled everyone and made us nervous in class ever since mr tobin has been helping them it's been much better and now they're friends el senor tobin el senor cohen el senor fernando ian nuestro consejero yun montonte otros adultos mr tobin mr cohen mr fernando our
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counselor and lots of other adults help my community at school that's why you don't want budgets to take them away gracias thank you thank you very much and thank you for sharing that in spanish with us very good there's a lot of great stuff going on at wrigler they're including the immersion program um hello my name is civil kelly k-e-l-l-e-y and i'm assistant professor of science education and sustainable systems at portland state university in the graduate school of education and though i can never completely shed any of my identities tonight i'm here as a regular parent and i want to acknowledge that all of you have a really hard job and it's mostly a thankless job so thank you um thank you for your service the community in our schools and we need you to do more we need you to put into action the words that you all supported in the equity plan specifically the words reading the responsibility for the disparities among our young people rests with adults not the children rather than perpetuating disparities portland public schools must address and overcome inequity and institutional racism to achieve educational equity pps will provide additional and differentiated resources to support the success of all students and these are excerpts directly from the first page of the equity plan for most of you this isn't the first time you've heard me advocate for regular school the last time i was deeply engaged in advocating for equity and justice it was when wrigler was literally bursting at the seams due to overcrowding i'm not going to spend my precious three minutes tonight reminding you of the blatant inequities we brought to light three to five years ago but what is we're saying is that through that process we chose a data-driven rational collaborative approach rather than a litigious one i've had a long history in the north northeast community and i've witnessed first-hand how our schools are facing the complex societal and historical factors excuse me that contribute to our inequities our students face which is also in the equity plan when we joined the regular school community as a family in 2007 it was christy lindholm's first year since that time the culture and climate at wrigler has improved a thousand-fold student achievement has improved the ratio of referrals of african-american students compared to white students has dropped from six to one to one to one at times to one to two and for latinos that's actually reverse so from four to one latino to white students is now one uh one to two we have an amazingly strong interconnected group as you've seen tonight of students teachers staffs and families that are committed to building a strong multicultural community where everyone is valued for the assets they bring i want to bring this to your attention because even in these past years of continually declining resources christie and her amazing staff have transformed the culture and climate of wrigler nonetheless there is so much more work that needs to be done and morale is often very hard to rally because it feels that everyone is working extremely hard all the time yet the system that your equity plan is supposedly addressing continues to create barriers and push us in the opposite direction as charlotte shared firsthand our restorative justice specialist black and latino community agents student management special and all the other teachers and support staff help students from very diverse backgrounds learn to understand and embrace their differences to develop problem solving skills and generally create a safe and supportive environment as you know an overwhelming majority of regular students are students of color and come from low income households research shows that stress from poverty has similar neurological and physiological impacts as trauma it's time that those of us with power and privilege stand up for what is true for what is right and truly differentiate resources to ensure all students have the support they need to reach their full potential thank you thank you next we have tom kane and laura molton wow you can start any time thanks um first of all i'd like to thank stay steve director steve you'll for coming by our school and carol for talking with jerry eaton and i about the long-term vision of alternative ed in the district um oh my name's tom kane k-a-n-e um we do need a long-term vision for alternative ed but i'm also concerned that we are cutting our own throats in the short run and last year you may recall i was a little bit upset when i came and talked about the 20 cuts we were getting i've just gone through the most difficult year of my teaching career and ironically i came on the same night
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that you were celebrating the grant constitutional team which had more volunteers than we were left with staff we're asking to be restored to our previous level we need to build up cte programs and as we restore cte programs particularly such as a culinary program or alternative energy program we can use that to leverage money from the state because as we develop new programs we can apply for grants from the department of labor so i think we can leverage actually additional dollars and um i'd like to say that also during the accreditation process that we went through recently we were dinged pretty hard for lack of support from the district on cte programs we've become antiquated from years and years of cuts reductions in staff reductions to programs and finally we've had a very bad economy and as was referred to earlier we are deluge with mental health issues i'm really glad to see counselors being restored all over the the in some of the middle schools and elementary schools that's a really important thing but we need extra mental health services we're dealing with a traumatized population an older population that brings a lot of historic issues to the table and then one more thing i'd like to express concern that the behavior programs are being cut in the in the larger high schools and i'm concerned that those students are going to wander their way to our building where we have even fewer services available to kids that are really dealing with complex behavior and mental and emotional needs and then they're coming to us because we're smaller and friendlier and nicer but we just don't have the services and support to help them out so i'd just like to see our programs restored thanks very much thank you my name is laura moulton it's m-o-u-l-t-o-n i teach writing at lewis and clark and merrill hurst in portland and at the alternative high school program at meek in northeast portland in fact i'm in tom kane's classroom so it's odd that you status together i have two children at wrigley and i'm grateful for the opportunity to speak to you tonight with my concerns in june 2011 the school board unanimously approved the racial educational equity plan and called for among other things to shift our practices to see students as individuals this sounded great to us at wrigler where students are hispanic african-american asian native american and white with up to 12 different language groups represented having a plan for equitable education which considered each student's own particular cultural context and background was vital for the past three years our school has worked to create an environment in which kids can thrive regardless of their home lives of their socioeconomic status or of the color of their skin tobin krell with northwest resolutions helped implement a restorative justice program designed to keep students in our school community rather than suspending them or expelling them for bad behavior our african-american community agent ivory nichols has worked together with tobin to build relationships with kids who need this support and our student management specialist jeremy cohen has worked with both of them to develop plans with students check in with them daily and provide them with the outlet and resources they need this fall the proposed budget eliminates those positions our student management specialist and our african-american community agent will be gone and the restorative justice program will end the equity plan calls for us to see students as individuals and i think it might be instructive to look at schools as individual entities as well to consider the particular needs of each one our families deal with immigration issues unmet mental health issues and are often refugees from gentrification or from their home countries not all of our kids are equipped with everything they need to be prepared to learn as nathan mentioned in his testimony wrigler has no foundation no ability to hold a quick fundraiser to save teacher positions the two to three thousand dollars we hope to raise at this year's spring carnival could be the cost of a school picnic at some of our neighboring schools our sms mr cohen whose job will be gone in the fall has a photo on his desk that shows him with a student both of them wearing neckties both of them grinning broadly this is a student who was suspended six different times during his kindergarten year which was last year the same student this year as a first grader working with mr cohen has been suspended zero times last year he was known for running from the class and having explosive outbursts in the hallway this year he checks in twice a day and knows that mr cohen's room is the place to go if he feels close to anger it's also the place he picks up the necktie mr cohen bought him when he feels like dressing up a little
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administration parents teachers at wrigler said yes to your equity plan and we built a community together to help support those aims now a vital part of that team will be gone in the fall and it will be impossible for us to continue as we have been i ask you please to take a closer look at the needs of wrigler elementary and provide the funding we need to be successful thank you so much our next two speakers nicole arose elardo and monique mclean hello my name is nicole iras-allardo i-r-o-z-e-l-a-r-d-o and i'm a parent of a student at scott k-8 which neighbors wrigler and i'm tempted to throw this out today and just say how much we admire what they are doing and how similar our problems are and how much we want the fte to start a restorative justice program but instead of doing that i'm going to go on my script and tell you that that i want to point out that there's a particularly grievous instant where pps is not reinvesting resources to overcome equity issues and that is in counseling staff scott is a title one school with over 84 percent qualifying for free and reduced lunch 82 percent are non-white and 41 percent are english language learners and that includes significant latino somali and vietnamese populations scott is also designated as a focus school focus on priority schools as we all know are high poverty schools that are struggling to meet the achievement levels of other similar high poverty schools oftentimes this is because a greater proportion of these children have social and emotional needs that must be met in order to support learning in the classroom in light of this i was appalled and incredibly disappointed to see that only a half-time counselor has been allotted to support scott's 497 students in this coming fte budget this is in line with your with the school district's policy of assigning a full-time counselor at 500 students i'll do the math we're three short scott is also at building capacity meaning that the school isn't necessarily under enrolled even if the uh the likelihood of ever sustaining 500 students is quite small the situation is incredibly inequitable and makes a mockery of pps's commitment to address equity at a school like scott the crisis in kids lives do not neatly schedule themselves around a half-time counselor a parent losing their job or a sibling arrested does not wait for a counselor to come back for tomorrow a kid who doesn't have a full fridge at home or is walking home without a coat cannot wait tomorrow to have the counselor show up the challenges of assimilating into life in the u.s with many different languages and customs and diversity which we love at our school again does not just only occur on the days in which the counselor is in the school these children need trusted adults that they can count on being there every single day and counselors are an important part of that support system limiting the counselor to a half-time allotment perpetuates racial and economic inequities by failing to support the social and emotional needs of students that need the support most the situation at scott is particularly frustrating because we're only three students short but other focus and priority schools like lee with 470 cesar chavez with 487 and wrigler with 441 have large schools with and need that full-time counselor focus and priority schools need that no matter what the size and the reinvestment shouldn't prioritize those populations who need it most please provide scott the fte to perform to support a full-time counselor in this budget cycle and i urge you as a board to prioritize focus and priority schools in this year of reinvestment thank you thank you my name is monique mclean m-c-c-l-e-a-n and i'm here on behalf of the parents coalition a city-wide group of parents galvanized last year around ending the practice of mandated part-time high school and restoring instructional minimums as you consider the proposed budget we ask that you take these questions into account does this budget inform an educational vision and if so what is it does this budget serve every student in all levels and from every demographic does this budget support pps's
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compliance both the letter and the spirit with the state's minimum instructional hours last week the parents coalition requested data and information from pps around forecasting and staffing by may 1st so that we can evaluate how this budget aligns with providing high school students with a full school day and restore pps compliance with instructional hour standards we hope that pps has also reviewed their instructional hours compliance at all schools we would be disappointed if there were efforts to pit high schools against elementary or middle schools as this isn't a zero-sum game the parents coalition has been following the forecasting process carefully we're pleased that the three proposed schedules for high schools appear to be in compliance with the state law on the number 130 of instructional hours per course as that deficiency has exacerbated the challenges pps high schoolers have faced over the past three years these are promising developments we remain concerned however that these changes are tenuous at best positioned as vulnerable to other pressures given the level of funding pps has significantly more than other districts and all the investments that it's making we urge we encourage pps to achieve minimum instructional hours at elementary middle k-8s and high schools and to stretch for more access to public education should be a given never a luxury this holds true for all grade levels and all demographics let's adopt a budget that infuses an educational vision into every line item and produces outcomes worthy of our great city thank you all for your dedication to increasing the value of a diploma from pps and for your service to our city and its students thanks thank you and our last speaker is diana wu good evening is this on can you all hear me yes good evening uh my name is diana peiwu wu and i'm the director of organizing for the asian pacific american network of oregon and i'm here on behalf of both uppano and the educational justice committee of the coalition of communities of color on which we sit i'm also here on behalf of our educational equity committee and our vietnamese and chinese parents who are members of appano we wanted to thank the portland public school board as well as the staff for the fabulous implementation of the vietnamese dual language immersion program as well as the expansion of the mandarin dual language immersion program and the plans for the creation of another chinese dual language immersion program which will serve both cantonese and mandarin speaking parents especially english language learners in portland public schools in the very near future we're also super excited for the willingness to try something new and also for funding that right the incredible collaboration between portland public school staff in the dual language immersion program and the community based organizations including apono but not limited to us but also the other sort of community specific organizations that exist in portland there are dozens of them and a pano's statewide list has over 80 to 90 community-specific non-funded community organizations representing asian and pacific islander communities and so and also i don't know if you all know that that model for collaboration we're exploring being able to share that nationally with other public school administrations um and so you know funding that collaboration hopefully will result in new models for community and district collaboration and finally we wanted to thank you for your commitment to implementing equitable solutions for some of the most vulnerable members of portland's communities including english language learning students and their families and also the coalition of communities of color wants to thank you for your support in developing those collaborations towards equity in our school district thank you very much thank you thank uh and thank you to everyone who testified tonight and all of those of you who came to listen to the testimony we're going to adjourn this public hearing we have about 15 minutes so we're happy to mingle among you and talk about any other issues that you might have thank you
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so other people you know couple more board members see tom out there nope we got a car yep do now this formal meeting of the board of education for april 21st 2014 is called to order i'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers 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 throughout 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 directors regan and morton are both absent this evening so tonight we will again honor two of our outstanding partners i'd like to invite lolenzo poe chief equity officer and jay gooder is that right jay gaider thank you i.t program director to the staff table sorry jay good evening chair knowles and co-chair bellows directors superintendent smith lolenzo pope uh it is again a privilege to do our quarterly partnership recognition where we as a district have the opportunity to recognize some of the districts literally hundreds of partners volunteers committed individuals who support the academic missions of our district we literally on a daily basis these hundreds of people who bring their talent their resources and their energy to support what we're doing some of the most incredible work in the district so this opportunity for us to recognize several of our individuals tonight is a great honor for our department and i can tell you this as i do often when we do partnership recognitions how important it is for our partners to have the opportunity to be recognized by you so
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with that i will turn it over to jay he will induce his partners and talk to you about our first committee partner thank you my name is jay kaiter i am the acting director i'm sorry i am the acting deputy chief information officer for portland public schools i've had the pleasure of working with mount hood cable regulatory commission for the past nine years across a variety of projects via a variety of strategic initiatives the mounted regulatory commission has been an invaluable partner for portland public schools in addition to directing the institutional network their community access capital grant program has afforded pps with grant funding to build out essential infrastructure as well as seed innovative instructional technologies in our schools as well as across our various departments with funding from this partnership their community capital their community access capital grant program was able to upgrade over five thousand phones in our district from legacy rotary dial phones over to state of the art voice over iep with voicemail as well as multiple language options within the autodialer system it has improved the way that we communicate with our families as well as how our families can communicate with us beginning three years ago we embarked on a very innovative effort at roosevelt high school this is the technology immersion pilot without this partnership this level of innovation would not have been possible in this district over the course of these three years we have provided the staff at roosevelt high school with some high value very rich professional development we've upgraded the essential infrastructure out at roosevelt high school and have ensured every single student out at that school has a mobile device to support their own learning the foundation that we established at roosevelt has been carried forward and has seeded programs at both madison and franklin high school at those locations we have pilot efforts underway with the freshman class with aspirations for expanding those programs much the way we did at roosevelt high school additionally our learning and credit options program has partnered with mount hood cable on a digital transformation project this is a project that runs concurrent to our efforts at roosevelt and seeks to build out essential technology and infrastructure systems to support the personalized learning of all students across our district aspirationally what we are looking at is a world-class learning management system as well as a digital asset management system to support personalized learning goals that this district has going forward these essential technologies are what it will take to future proof our organization and prepare our students for the world to work ahead at this point in time i would like to bring forward sue disciple who's our mhcrc chair and carol studemon who's the mhrc vice chair to say a few words about this partnership welcome to both of you well thank you well um board members and um and madam superintendent thank you so much for um inviting us we're honored to be honored um uh just a couple of of things um it's been the mhcrc's pleasure to get these good grant proposals from the district and to fund the district with two over 2.2 million dollars of grant funds over the last five years going forward we're launching a long-term initiative that is focused on raising educational outcomes for kids throughout the district and we're going to be focusing a better part of our funding initiative toward those student achievement outcomes so we look forward to an ongoing partnership and more millions that we can hopefully make available to the school district we are really looking forward to the partnership um i guess uh the only other thing i would say is that i think that's really notable is that we couldn't do what we do without our support of city council we do have one of the best structured franchises with our cable company in the country that does allow us to make these grants into the community because we've had ongoing political support from our council and a lot of support from mayor hales
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we're able to continue to do the work so thank you so much and i my our vice chair carol stoodman would like to make some remarks too chair knowles and board members and superintendent smith i'm carol studenman and i'm the mhcrc commissioner that represents multnomah county um i'm here on behalf of the other jurisdictions that are part of the mhcrc which includes gresham wood village troutdale fairview fair yeah that's it and on behalf of those other jurisdictions i look forward to working and developing a deeper relationship with portland public schools and the other school districts that take part in our grant program and those other districts are park rose centennial david douglas reynolds and gresham barlow so thank you so much for recognizing the work that we're doing we're really excited about it when jay was listing off some of the items that we've done i nudged rebecca and said is this where we start the wave you know it's just it's such exciting work and we're really pleased to be a part of this and thank you for having us here tonight well thank you very much and we would very much love to be a part of your way thank you and if you could if you would come and stand in front of the dyson board members we'll get up and go around and then we'll present you with some lovely plaques and have a picture rare everybody ready let's take one more thank you thank you are you trying to get tech support out there i called it i called those guys last time i have problems turned verizon around on her ear there you go comcast so we have stalling for 24 hours call me in about 20 minutes where's andre are you andre here go ahead good evening good evening board of directors uh i'm here to recognize one of our long-standing partners portland rose festival that's been a partner of pps for over a hundred years we're clearly one of our oldest partners that we have here in the city of portland about a month ago i had the privilege to meet jeff thicke executive director of portland rose festival and hear the amazing things that rose festival has done within our school district and provided our students throughout the district and it was a no-brainer for me to realize and understand that it's time that we as a district just show our appreciation and all the things that they have done for not only the district staff but also the students and the parents and at this time i would like to have jeff the ceo of portland rose festival say a few words chair knowles board superintendent smith it's just a privilege to be up here um i always almost said this is 107 years in the making because we've been working together for a very long time you know the roast festival foundation is more than just events we're a non-profit with a mission to create and produce event and programs with the focus on arts education and volunteerism um you know history has shown over the years our events and programs with specific community outreach goals and education elements that are are the main ingredients of our success whether it's been integration of school projects out in the community or classroom curriculums
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the rose festival has always been there for our kids um we have in fact this year we showcase kids of all ages and specifically we'll see lincoln high school will be marching in the starlight parade as well as wilson high school will lead our ground floor walk amongst lots of kids and integrating the junior parade and on and on and on and on very nice to see portland represented in the parade i couldn't agree more i couldn't agree more you know those are those get all the headlines but there's a lot of things we're doing within our our program and events that are more arts related and talk about different skill sets for example our international youth silent film contest this takes emerging artists and young filmmakers and pairs them up with professionals in the film industry where they pro they actually create a three-minute silent movie and if they're juried and selected they'll get to show those films at the hollywood district at the hollywood theater that's just one of our newer programs another newer program is the rose festival sing-off where a cappella groups get a chance to perform and some amazing talented groups in our community those are just some examples of what we're doing that don't get the headlines what gets the headlines is the concerts in the parades but they're all integrated into our kids and certainly into our schools but nothing is more integrated nothing is more established and nothing is more powerful that exemplifies our partnership as since a program that we've been doing since 1930 where we've been selecting a representative from each of portland high schools uh we've been doing this since 1930 a young woman represents the very best to showcase their community and represent their schools as part of the rose festival court these are extraordinary women you're getting a chance to meet them in just a minute but before i do so i'd like to introduce the volunteer who leads this organization as president of the rose festival foundation to my left todd johnston todd thank you thank you for having us here tonight you know we produce a lot of events uh have a large economic impact of over 70 million dollars to the portland community but it can't be done without partners like yourself you know we um have the privilege to work alongside of a lot of volunteers personally there's a 60 member board as long as along with 3 000 volunteers that make this event just an amazing community event i'd like to recognize first our court chair terry bulls atherton could you please stand terry along with terry we have volunteers and staff who have dedicated thousands of hours not only to this year's program but to the last nearly 80 years of programming and it's it's amazing what they do for the community and how they they shepherd and mentor these young women uh through not just this program but through life lifelong contacts have been made through this program um and has been mentioned before you know the the young women that represent the very best of our community there one from each one of the high schools is is here tonight and it's it's amazing uh what they can do not only just uh representing their own schools but but the greater portland area you know each student went through a process that included evaluating the gpa their extracurricular activities their community involvement along with going through two judging sessions where they had to give speeches and communicate effectively to result in what we have here tonight and i'd like to have each one of the girls stand and introduce themselves and where they're from tonight thank you hi everyone my name is mary's academy hi my name is jasmine brown and i am a senior at park rose high school hi my name is samantha westmoreland and i'm a senior at david douglas high school hi my name is teresa golotti and i am a senior at central catholic high school hello my name is amy whipple and i'm a senior at madison high school hi my name is taylor debnum and i am a senior at grant high school hi i'm jasmine mckenzie and i'm a senior at johnson high school hello my name is mary valenzuela and i'm a junior athlete from high school hi i'm callie kravenko and i'm a senior at cleveland high school hi i'm isabella regelman and i am a junior at franklin high school i'm marlo acker and i'm a senior at glanco high school in hillsborough hello everyone i'm emma weibel and i'm a junior at wesleyan high school good evening my name is deja brooks and i'm a senior at wilson high school hi my name is amelia ryando i'm a senior at jefferson high school hello my name is kiana serrano and i'm a junior and i attend roosevelt high school thank you and i just want to close by just summarizing a little bit about what they represent um in 2012 we did a study uh and researched all the past princesses since since the very beginning um and collected data on them and it's an amazing group and what's really important is what they've done with
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their lives 74 of them graduated from college these are all going back all the way to 1930 and most recent last 20 years the graduate the college graduation rate is 97 of these young women and they're doing great things in their community their lawyers they're doctors they're teachers and educators um all past princesses and some of those experiences are generated from both the classroom and what they do through the rose festival uh program um and all a lot of them end up right back here in portland over 70 of them actually move back here after they've gone off to college and and really amazing things in this community so with that said i want to thank you as the board andre and his team for this opportunity to be up here thank you very much and i on behalf of the board thank you for your partnership with us or um love the rose festival i love the parade but like you said many other benefits to the community from your organization particularly interested in hearing more about the acapella night and again very excited to see that portland public schools will be represented in the parades this year so if you both come up front and any any other comments board members princesses coming up thank you yep sure come on up yes there you go thank you okay that's really that's really nice isn't it okay our next agenda item we get to call up another wonderful partner of portland public schools if dan ryan the executive director for all hands race would like to come forward and present your report to us and allow us to thank you so much for the work that you do on behalf of the district good evening superintendent smith and co-chairs lyle and pam knowles how are you thank you for your service it seems really there's not a lot director caller's coming back okay and two people are gone anyway it's good to be here a small intimate group tonight yeah the dream team yeah it's always hard to follow rose festival princesses did you see the way they posed like yeah yeah that's all right i've been through worse anyway it's great to be here and you know sometimes it's framed let's just be honest as an unnecessary evil where the parent community puts in so many volunteer hours to raise funds to buy back some positions in the schools by back faculty and teachers and it started a long time ago i mean people you know starting to feel ancient when you talk about ballot measure five but that was there was a reaction to that and actually the school's foundation was built expressly to manage that money because it was all this money was coming in it was coming in from the parent communities that could raise that kind of money and then the schools that didn't have a parent community like that were not able to so it's always good to have that history because in portland public schools which is still the national practice for how to do this unnecessary evil this goes on throughout the country there isn't one city in the country that doesn't deal
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with this we're the only ones that have an equity system in place so that third of the money that's raised actually goes into the equity fund and then we have the pleasure at all hands raised the portland public schools foundation to make sure that it's executed implemented the policy with the integrity and efficacy that was that it was founded upon so it's our pleasure to always uphold that duty and so we're here to just uh celebrate that this evening i wanted to introduce um who's up here at the podium with me we have over here we have a principal peyton chapman from lincoln high school we have miss glazer from alameda foundation yes and we have leverk robertson he's the principal at cesar chavez and we'll get to your stories in a moment but we want to give you just an overview of what's happened this past year is this how you is this this cool all right that's who's up here here we go so it was a record year um the fundraising that took place and there's a fundraiser that took place a year ago was at 4.1 million and of that 118 teachers and staff were of course uh that's was supplemented by these funds and this takes place at 44 active foundations throughout the district and again i mentioned that this is the largest equity fund in the history of the foundation so it's by far the biggest amount of investment that we've been able to give out to the schools 47 awards were announced and we also give awards to and by proportion to the alternative programs and that's based on proportion of how many kids go to the alternative schools and the awards range from 14 000 to the smaller alternative schools to 20 to 40 000. 20 is the number that we received over and over again from principals that giving them anything less than that was really difficult to work with so that's why that numbers we select that number and we did inform the principles of this decision prior to spring break so they could have a chance to actually reflect on their staffing model in your budget process it's a formula that we uphold it's a conversation that took place several years ago where we wanted to come up with data that everyone could agree upon and how to measure that so in the school demographic side we look at what that says as students in poverty is weighted at 50 percent students of color are weighted at 0.25 and then english language learners at 0.25 there were a lot of conversations that went into this being a fair and equitable way to do that then we look at the finances and as you can see that goes into the number of students that are in a school and that looks at the formula in terms of the revenue side we do count title one money but at 33 cents to the dollar and the rest are at exact dollar figures and then that put that puts together the school rankings then we make those tough decisions look where there's breaks look where there's a not just one digit um deciphering between forty thousand and thirty five and twenty thousand and cut off so we look for where there's patterns and that's we come up with our decisions and we do this collectively with a team from pps this is just kind of a snapshot of the work that's been going on in the trajectory of growth actually a lot of this is because the parent community and pps is just so organized and there's where the number of 4.1 million there you can see the investment in equity funds and then it gets down to exactly how that impacts the staffing model and pps and this is kind of inside baseball but we just like to say that a lot of our work is stewardship work and it's 15 000 business transactions there's a lot of activities a lot of auctions that have a lot of vendors so we basically cut a lot of checks for this volunteer group and we're happy to always report that there's zero this costs zero dollars and that's something that we do but when you go to new seasons market i mean you have a plug for them they have this little area that says cans for kids and when you put your return cans and bottles in there that's kind of how we pay the rent to do this work so give some love to new seasons and return your bottles and cans if you well that was fun to do let's see if there'll be an uptick because of that commercial so anyway i'm going to do right now is um what's that oh it's the highest rank yeah it's big blazers aren't playing tonight i'm sure it's real big tonight so um i'm going to turn it over to the guests that are here but before i do that i just want to acknowledge the team at pps and the accounting office they don't get a lot of love because they're you know they're accountants they're up there in one of those cubicles working away but sherry lee and david uh is it shekel that's the guy um see carol and i talk about this superintendent smith and i talk about this several times a year but it's really people like david and sherry that really pull this off karina wolfe who put her attention towards this to make sure that the alternative grants were really fair and then we also and our my team i have
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rosemary schwimmer here who's the rep mr team that is the liaison with all of the parent leaders throughout pps and then another person who has been on my team for four and a half years and he's actually moving on to another chapter but that's the cfo of the school's foundation john driesen and he's been behind all of the details to make sure this is all uh it's just all it all makes sense and that the data is accurate john stand up so i'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to the guest and i'm gonna actually move over and have you sit here peyton and uh good evening superintendent smith and board members it's really nice to see the rose festival princesses they're really talented human beings i didn't understand that when i moved to portland initially but after 15 years of seeing just incredibly talented dedicated young women strive and thrive through that program it's really an honor to see them here as well i i remember first learning about the portland schools foundation before became all hands raised when i was a vice principal at madison high school and um used to working on big grants like gates grants and um and i was really proud of the work that we did there around equity and and um equality of opportunity and access and outcomes and i'm equally proud of the work that the lincoln foundation is doing in the foundations at other schools because i'm really here um representing all those schools that work so hard to raise that money and through auctions and phone banking and house parties and just the list goes on and on of what parents and communities do to be a part of the equity work so i'm proud that eight years ago the lincoln foundation was raising about two hundred thousand dollars a year a third of which was then given to the portland schools foundation and over that time we've raised that number during the hardest economy during really bad economic times to about five hundred thousand dollars where we're able to give a significant third away to be one of the largest donors to all hands raised and we're really excited to do that work we feel great about it it's um we've really made it transparent that we don't keep a hundred percent at lincoln and that that's been a real plus and it's that transparency and commitment to equity that's helped inspire uh more than double the amounts of giving and thrilled that that money is going across our district to students and schools who can really benefit and also to east county partners we're really really following the lead that you all are setting around equity and appreciate your leadership and the opportunity to help so i'm i would you know list the parent leaders but i'm very thankful to our foundation and and their commitment to all kids and equity thank you thank you and none of this would happen without the parent volunteers we have erica from the alameda school foundation to give some parent voice to this conversation hi my name is erica coghlan glazer and i'm just one of many parents that volunteer our time for raising fte and what's great about how the money is distributed just what they were saying is that when we go and ask parents to donate to the school we're saying two-thirds of it will stay with your children but one-third will help our entire city which i think is a really great way to get people to realize it's not just about our neighborhood it's about portland as a whole so that's it thanks there it is my name is levert robertson principal cesar chavez school it's definitely an honor to be here tonight special thanks to steve for coming out and visiting the school along with dan ryan today i guess what i would like to talk about is some of the benefits from all the funding that you guys have been able to raise and at our school it's really created access and opportunity for our students to things that they may have never dreamed about this year we had a snowboarding club through the snowboarding outreach society many of those students have never thought about snowboarding and once they became a part of the club they really learned a lot about teamwork in addition we believe in or in addition we believe in sports and activities that connect students this year we started a boys and girls basketball team for many of our out at or at risk eighth graders it was absolutely amazing many of the students never played organized sports ever and so this was their first opportunity and they found out that it was more than just i and sports and that was more or less team they learned how to build each other up and support each other to the point where seven out of
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ten of our young men who played on the basketball team had a gpa above a 3.0 our entire girls basketball team i believe their cumulative gpa was a 3.5 and it did wonders for those students who sometimes struggled with attendance so thank you guys for all the work that you do and hopefully we're doing a good job spending your money so this is how it works this is why it's a national example in fact we were invited to go to austin texas two weeks ago and someone from my staff went there and helped their school board understand what we were doing in pps they're kind of overwhelmed with how we ever got to four votes if you will on such an issue but there and that's usually when people hang up the phone when they realize it has to be a school board policy so anyway your colleagues years ago made the right decision and thank you for upholding that work any questions comments board members director bill i consider dan a friend of mine even though he beat me for the school board way back in 2006 and i find it odd i do have a question but before i have a comment i find it odd you're a well-known personality in town you really are a man who people admire and and like and and i like you but i find it odd that i'm allowed to ask you a question but i'm not allowed to ask a question of a woman who's sitting here crying over her child and over regular school and the difficulties and i'm not allowed to ask i i'm not allowed to ask a question of them and so i just find that very odd and i know you were on the school board and i would imagine you would find that odd too from your days because that's not the way it's been for the last 30 years in portland my question is you've got how much of your budget come how much is your budget for the people that you hire versus you have 4.1 million dollars through the school foundation and how much how much is your other budget and none of that comes from the school foundation i just want you maybe just kind of outline your budget for people who are watching so they understand absolutely so the 4.1 that comes in is a temporary restricted account so all of that money goes right back into the classrooms and then after that there's a 1.2 million that all hands raised raises um private funds so that we can do the partnership work in multnomah county the system change work that we're doing from birth to career so i hope that answers your question yeah there's a there's a division between them right and then i just like like to have people understand that because it makes a lot of sense and operation funds to basically run this full-service um hopefully friendly and accurate bank for all of the parent volunteers is subsidized by new season's market by a roy fund a private fund at the oregon community foundation and the demaris family foundation and then last but definitely not least proceeds from the annual roast event that we that we just put on back in march thank you sure i just want to say thank you all for being here this evening um and i just want to again emphasize the appreciation not only for the organization for making sure that it is accurate accounting and that there's a transparency in how these funds are brought in and brought out but i also really want to thank our parents our parents go through extraordinary efforts and they spend a lot of time putting on these events organizing the events raising the funds for funds that really should be coming out of tax dollars so i just i i can't say it enough i would love for us because i believe that our parents would love to actually split 50 50 the money they raise but in times when our state isn't investing in what they're supposed to do you said this grew out of measure 90. um and unfortunately it is a time um when we're measuring measure five sorry in 1990 right that i hope that it doesn't become forgotten past that this is just the way it normally is that we need to continue to to raise that as an issue so that these dollars can actually go towards more enrichment rather than folks being up here in tears because they don't have the supports at their school that they need but this makes a huge impact and the families and that because everybody is stretching there are no families that i come across that are just living comfortably and well within their means and just have money to throw away so i just want to thank the parents and thank you as an organization and remind us as a community that it shouldn't be a necessary evil so i thank you for that director belial because i'm also really proud of our community because we're not fundraising to get extra teachers we're funding fundraising to try and lower
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some of the largest overall loads that teachers at schools large comprehensives have so we're no longer fundraising uh foundations to have something more than what other schools have we're fundraising to try and get as much staffing as um we're able to put into school so that's true for alameda as well yeah in fact we actually depleted all of our foundation funds every last cent we were down to zero and we still were short a reading specialist a math specialist and the kindergarten aides all went home at um 11 15 in the morning which left kindergarten teachers with 28 30 children and no other adults in the classroom so right our fundraising even at maybe some of the schools that have more funds is actually trying to get us back to where we were years ago i wish we could say i wish i could say we were raising money for foreign language and arts and music but we're not we spend all of our fte on classroom teachers or specialists that are needed and it has a tendency to set up this dynamic where schools as we've heard earlier right are still losing ft and they have very severe needs and they're looking at schools like you saying in some ways you're being able to offset those and everybody's just struggling to keep their head above water and again i think this is really an issue about tax reform and statewide how do we fund this so but that being said organizations that step up and say we can we can do something to to hold back the water for a while um and parents who are working really hard to make it happen thank you thank you thank you thank you very much report or are you doing it with me you don't know which majors okay all right me first and then you or okay all right whatever yeah come on mina okay we'll move on to our next agenda item get my glasses which is a conference report on the council of great city schools where i am a board member and a member of the executive committee and so just a short report on the what happened at the last meeting on march 21st to 25th a delegation from pps attended the council of great city schools legislative conference in washington d.c with me were pps government relations director david williams pps strategic communications director john isaac student representative andrew davidson abby paschen who is also the student body president at roosevelt and mina jswall who is the editor of the lincoln cardinal times and who is sitting up here in front of us oh excuse me and director uh greg belial sorry yes i don't remember voting for director below to go yeah yes we did yeah you missed that four boats i wasn't here or something you were here you were here i voted thank you craig bellow to go yes you did when was that what was the day you know we will get back to you later but that's can you send me that could you send me the video of that uh i'm sure miss houston can handle that thank you you bet okay so these students actively participated in the conference abby had the opportunity to uh question secretary of education arne duncan about how he is informed about student voice and all three of the students assisted us in our lobbying efforts with the oregon delegation including a personal visit with senator merkley and representative bonamici council great city schools represents about 67 urban school districts in the united states which means about 6.9 million students of those about 70 percent are eligible for free and reduced lunch 80 are children of color and 19 speak english as a second language the topics of this meeting again it was a legislative meeting we're on two major themes one was the inability of congress to act on the reauthorization of the education for all students act which has been going on for a very long time and the second was maintaining the funding for urban school districts increasing allocations to education from the sequestration ad banks maintaining current calculations for title 1 funding increasing funding for special education above the current rate of 20 to the amount promised by congress when it was enacted which is 40 percent and then some discussion about the possibility of additional funding for perkins grants which what we use for career technical education the board of directors for the council and its executive committee both of
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which i'm a member discussed a couple of additional issues the first of those being common core state standards this discussion centered on professional development for teachers and communications with parents in the community about the common core state standards including issues around it's not a curriculum requires students to master critical thinking skills and demonstrate those on their tests we reviewed several sample tests and answers students were students are graded not only on reaching the correct answer but also showing how they got that answer these are the critical thinking skills that our students must have to be successful in today's workplace the council also provided communication materials including psas parent road maps in several different languages and the other issue that was covered by the executive committee was that of testing i mentioned before in my last review of my last meeting at the council in the fall that there was a lot of discussion around how much testing is being done in schools and raised serious concerns by many districts in response to that the council is going to be surveying all council members all all those schools to gather information about every kind of test that is currently being done by each district and this information will then be shared with other districts and the can and the discussion about the amount of testing that's happening in our schools will then be reviewed by council members and a resolution brought forward so it was all in all a really uh wonderful trip i'm not going to steal andrew's thunder about all the things that the students did i think he's going to talk a little bit about that and mina may add into that so but very worthwhile for us very helpful for us to be able to visit with our congressional delegation we actually visited with either staff members or the actual member for all of the members of our delegation here in the portland region sent both senators and three reps three representatives so very very uh successful trip for us andrew thank you so i'll let you know jump in whenever she wants to but uh some of the things i was really struck by on the trip were you know here in pbs a lot of times we look at the federal things when we look at the state things but it was really cool for me to be able to talk to other superintendents board members and staff members from districts outside of oregon and the issues they're dealing with in their you know actual states themselves and then you know what's how things are moving across the nation and trends that are happening outside of oregon it was really really interesting we got to talk to superintendents and staff members from other districts that were really interested in what we were doing as students there on the conference so we talked to them about super sac we talked to them about uh our student feedback forms that we've been working on for a while now you know things like that they're really interested in and they they were really happy that we were there actually i don't think we met anyone on the trip that was upset that we were there so that was good um but yeah it was it was a really great opportunity for all of us to meet with our elected officials and really have that dialogue with them about you know what's important to us and not many students get to do that you know meet in their offices and talk to them about that so it was really a unique opportunity yeah we had a really good discussion with the superintendent from another school who's now actually going to take the idea of supersaf back to our district and make it a thing she thought it was really interesting the way that we added student voice and that's something that she was looking towards bringing to her district and overall we all felt the students that we just got a good perspective about where portland public schools is and how we can improve things that other school districts are doing well and keep improving the things that we are doing well yeah so yeah oh were you gonna play something oh okay no i mean it was just uh you know a couple other things it was it was good to actually you know like i said have that experience in the actual offices of the elected officials you know and uh talk to them abby got to speak to arne duncan which was really great we're hoping to get him out here so that he can you know look at some of our focused priority schools we got to actually learn a lot at the conference which was really awesome because you know a lot of times we talk on the board you know using acronyms and stuff and there's a lot to learn especially at the federal level when it gets even that much more complicated so it was nice to be able to hear them spelling things out for us you know really i learned a lot and i'm sure abby amina did as well so yeah well i also have to say that uh we were very well represented by all of you they did a fabulous job and it was a pleasure to have them along and to provide that student voice for our representatives made a tremendous difference when we were speaking to them about a variety of issues and all of these student representatives that were with us spoke up and were very clear about the concerns that they had about our education system in the united states right now they did an absolutely phenomenal job so thank you very much for coming along and i should say it's the first time
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students have ever gone to the conference and uh they were quite a hit with most of the superintendents and and other board members who were there and again just as mina said pointing out uh the things that we're doing here in portland public schools that many of them took what will take back to their district and and try and implement so thank you very much thank you any other questions for these guys okay great thank you mina okay next on our agenda student testimony miss houston do we have any students we do not okay um do you have something okay yeah more okay student representative davidson can we have your report thank you superintendent smith and fellow board members thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you all tonight last wednesday we heard what i thought was a fascinating discussion about common core state standards and smarter balanced assessment after said discussion i feel that many of us are in more similar positions on this topic than we realize and i would like to see us talk through the issues both as a board and with the community so that we may appropriately address this issue in a way that is best for the students of portland i recognize the fact that we have many things we still need to do the time is of great value and that we cannot stop everything for a single issue however in this case i think it would be especially sagacious of us to really stop and consider what is best for our students and how many changes to the current sys and how any of the changes to the current system will improve education at the meeting last wednesday comments were also made about the need for a community conversation around common core and standardized testing including smarter balanced assessments i believe students are the most appropriate people to convene this conversation so next thursday may 1st at 7 pm here in the board auditorium at the besc supersac will be hosting a forum on standardized testing and common core state standards the members of supersac acknowledge the complexity of this topic which is why we hope that everyone regardless of their current knowledge will attend in the interest of becoming better educated and hearing what other members of the community are saying we will have question and answer time with a panel representing different stakeholders including parents teachers and students i know it'd be easiest for all of us to simply let things fall into place however i would like to see something different from us we were not elected to just watch things happen despite how out of control things like common core often seem to us i am pleased with the initiative to draft a letter to the state regarding our concerns but i fear that it will not be met with the type of reception that many of us would like we were elected as stewards for our students and community and in this instance i think it at least means having a serious conversation with our community i'm not interested in going at this alone this board showed remarkable strength and unity during contract negotiations with pat this year if we can stand so well against our employees and people within our own community i see no reason for us to cower and stand down now i appreciate director buehl's attempt to pass the resolution he has drafted bringing a legitimate policy debate to the board is an admirable move and it's something i hope we can discuss we are all on the same team we want what is best for students and together we can achieve it this board has in the past made decisions in the best interests of students which at the time were groundbreaking i think now is the time for another moment of creativity and ambition which will once again place pps at the forefront of educational conversations thank you for giving this opportunity to speak and on behalf of the students of pps thank you for serving on this board thank you andrew or representative davidson okay at this time we'll move on to public comment miss houston um i'm sure we have no we have people signed up for public we do we have six our first two speakers are joshua curtis and bill porter and i'm not sure if you were all here when we did the budget instructions for public comments i'll just give a abbreviated part for that including you'll have a total of three minutes for the first two minutes there will be a green light the last minute yellow light and when your time is up the red light will go on and we ask you to please wrap up your comments at that time and we also asked that um or we will not respond to your comments or questions at this time but board staff may follow up afterwards and we appreciate you coming forward and giving testimony thank you very much as co-chair of the board of our portland r schools i'm delivering a message to you since none of our other board members could make it here tonight dear superintendent smith and portland public school board members on behalf of our portland our schools
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we want to inform you of our disappointment in the district's process for determining a new high school schedule for the 2014-2015 school year then could not even drive on the new pps teacher contract before the district violated the basic tenet of working collaboratively with pps teachers to determine high school conditions that work best for our students it is an exceedingly frustrating and discouraging to once again have the superintendent tell parents and community members that the administration is soliciting teacher input in the development of the 2014-15 high school schedule only to learn from teachers that you've only that they have only been allowed cursory input in early march high school principals presented their teachers with three district generated schedules proposed to meet the state's 130 hour instructional requirement despite concerns that have been raised with the six of eight schedule based on the experience over the last few years as well as the potential violation of new teacher contract workload provision it appears the district has decided to maintain the six of eight schedule given the backlash pps received when the district adopted the high school schedule changes without meaningful collaboration in 2011 it is mind-boggling that the district would be so quick to repeat the same mistake teachers have presented schedule options that based on their experience better serve the educational needs of our students however there is no indication the district is taking such teacher input into serious consideration in their decision making process parents are only hearing the district's version of the high school schedule development process if anything at all and therefore unable to make fully informed decisions about what is best for their students and advocate accordingly this is not right and quite frankly a dereliction of the district's duty to provide portland students the best education possible given the resources available there are too many unanswered and unheard stakeholder voices for the district to be rushing into the decision for next year's high school schedule the district should recognize that adequately involving teachers parents and students does not merely mean informing them of decisions and listening to their complaints but to bring them into the decision making process our portland r schools respectfully request that you restart the 2014-15 high school scheduling process to involve those most familiar with the pros and cons of the five of seven and six of eight and blocked versus modified block schedules that have been placed over the past four years principals teachers students and parents of current high school seniors as well as high school middle school students and parents who will be living with your decision and will have the and should have the opportunity to observe and provide public comment on any proposals that influence that lead to a board's final decision thank you thank you for the opportunity to meet with you tonight my name is bill porter and i'm a parent of two public uh school students in portland a first grader and a sixth grader um i've actually never attended a school board meeting before i've assumed that all of you are elected and spend countless hours studying the issues and reaching the best decisions but i fell off my chair when i watched the proceedings last week of your meeting and saw the document that director buehl proposed about the common core standards and it motivated me to come down here tonight setting aside the unhelpful representations and half truths in that document i wanted you to know that i'm excited about the new common core standards and the smarter balanced assessment and for my conversations i think most parents and teachers in portland are as well i've actually read the standards and i'm excited about the expectations they have for my kids i'm excited about how the math standards actually ask teachers to focus on a few things every year so they can slow down and go deep and really make sure kids are mastering the content i'm excited about the english and language art standards and how they focus on text and really understanding what the author is writing about and asking kids to write from the text and use the evidence you know i've actually taken the practice items from the smarter balanced assessment and i'm excited about how much better that assessment is over oaks it's not a multiple choice test like oaks it's going to require a lot more writing a lot more problem solving it's going to ask kids to pull different content areas together how terrific you know look in our society we're always going to have expectations for what students ought to be learning in school and we're going to have to have tests that measure how things are going it's not productive i think as director bules suggests that we shouldn't have standards and assessments at all our focus should be on making sure they're the best and supporting teachers and students to succeed with them and i believe the standards the common core standards and the smarter balanced are the are much better than what we have in oregon right now how great that we'd have common standards with lots of other states that we could actually make sure our kids are prepared forever they leave wherever they go after they graduate how great to have standards that are updated to reflect 21st century learning skills it would be a shame to choose the direction that director buehl proposes essentially what director buhl i think is saying in his proposal is hey
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teachers thanks for all your hard work the last three years we appreciate you staying up late to kind of think about how your instruction might need to change thanks for researching those lessons but you know what we've changed your mind never mind or even better yet the proposal suggests let's actually withhold support and professional development from teachers during this time of transition let's let teachers flounder and set our children up for failure with these standards and assessments i don't think you all have done enough as a school district to support teachers the last three years but the conversation you ought to be having is so what are you going to do about it at this point many other districts around the country have done much more what can you learn from them what are the bumps in the road that you should be anticipating and how can you navigate them this isn't going to be easy change never is but that doesn't mean we should abandon ship so that's the resolution i would like to see and i would love to be helpful in any way that i can thank you thank you our next two speakers are brochure and katie zechnik um i had a handout thing for the board members would i can i give that to you give it to him just go ahead and give it to miss houston she'll give it to all of us or carol can pass it down either way okay um good evening board members and thank you for allowing me to speak to you um my name is katie zecnik and i'm a student in beaverton and i'm currently working on a project to reduce carbon emissions in schools around the area my goal is for schools to reduce the amount of meat that is served in cafeterias as the production of meat and beef in particular is environmentally harmful i hope that portland public schools will participate in my project by ordering more vegetarian options and less meat from food service providers ultimately my hope is that schools would serve entirely vegetarian food but that's a pretty drastic change so my proposal would be that portland serve vegetarian options at least once a week basically replacing meat intensive meals with vegetarian alternatives is the simplest way to reduce carbon emissions portland has already made significant efforts to reduce their carbon footprint by purchasing local food through the farm to schools program implementing an entirely vegetarian diet would reduce carbon emissions by another 1 450 tons a year for the district as you can see on the chart on the handout um switching from a meat intensive diet and just reducing the amount of beef you eat reduces an individual's carbon emissions by more than half a ton in addition to environmental benef environmental benefits there are many health benefits for students vegetarians have significantly lower risk of developing diseases such as heart disease certain cancers diabetes and obesity um i think this is an important issue the main obstacles i think are cost and public opinion the cost of implementing a vegetarian diet would actually likely be less expensive as beef is one of the more expensive food groups per pound to purchase and i think that um you can still offer diverse options even through a vegetarian diet as there are lots of lots of lots of options for students to choose from so basically i believe the environmental and health benefits of implementing a vegetarian diet greatly outweigh the challenges for the district and i just hope that the board considers this information and discuss potential programs to reduce meat consumption with the nutrition services if you'd like more information my email is on the sheet and thank you so much for your time thank you my name is bruce scheer first name bruce last name s-c-h-e-r-e i'm a parent at mlc where the problems the last three years to continue to compound and become increasingly bizarre and regressive but i'm not here to talk about mlc i'm here to talk about the word rigor and also rigorous rigor regor is a horrible word for schools yet many school administrators used it at the board meeting last week it connotes that the problems with schools is that people are goofing off but the real problem in our schools is student poverty we can't nag people out of poverty we can't get students out of poverty by narrowing their school curriculum we can't get students out of poverty by building expensive testing only computer labs like at my local high school roosevelt it takes more work than that a definition of rigor if you look in any dictionary shows how contemptible it is for schools rigor strictness severity or harshness as in dealing with people rigor the full or extreme severity of laws rules etc
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rigor severity of living conditions hardship austerity the rigor of wartime existence rigor a severe or harsh act circumstance etc i ask our school administrators to use better words than rigor to describe what is needed we deserve schools based on proven practices and researched not based on charles dickens that's it thank you our last two speakers jonathan hunt and nadia abdullah no i guess not okay thank you to everybody who um provided testimony if you make sure you have your contact information uh with the board clerk miss houston okay at this time we were going to move on to our next agenda item which is contract amendments i'll have to recess the board from its regular meeting and convene the board as the local contract review committee superintendent smith would you like to introduce this our item director to come up and provide the report along with tony magliano our chief operating officer co-chair knowles board members and superintendent smith hi my name is emily courtney i am the contract process manager and deputy clerk for the district also interim program uh director of purchasing and contracting and as carol said i'm here with tony magliano chief operating officer we are here this evening to recommend that the board adopt resolutions that will authorize amendments to two public improvement contracts that were awarded in accordance with intermediate procurement procedures based upon competitive quotes our public contracting rules allow intermediate public improvement contracts to be amended only up to an aggregate contract price of 50 over the original contract price because we are seeking to amend the contracts to a total price that is above that 50 threshold we must request an exemption from competitive bidding requirements under our public contracting rules the board may grant exemptions only after a properly noticed public hearing held by the contract review board staff published notice of tonight's public hearing on april 7th in the daily journal of commerce as required by our rules the first public improvement project at issue was the installation of a dance studio at oxley green school the contract was awarded based on lowest competitive quote in the amount of 11 749 dollars due to unforeseen circumstances including a more involved flooring installation process than reasonably anticipated based on manufacturer advice the resulting total estimated contract price is not to exceed 23 200. a price that is still well within the intermediate procurement limits the second public improvement project at issue was the replacement of a retaining wall at the playground at beech elementary that contract was awarded also based on lowest competitive quote for fifty eight thousand five hundred and six dollars the amount of work required to replace the retaining wall increased significantly because first of all the actual soil content was different from that indicated by initial test borings triggering significant additional engineering requirements and secondly there was significant rainfall during the project causing soil migration and additional work to remove mud from the construction area the necessary additional work resulted in a total estimated contract price not to exceed 162 500. it is our recommendation that you approve these resolutions because amendment of the existing contracts is necessary to complete the work in the least costly and most efficient manner both projects involved unusual circumstances that are unlikely to be repeated the scope of work was not dramatically increased nor the deliverables substantially changed what changed was the amount of work and materials necessary to safely and thoroughly complete the projects and deliver the finished project product given the existence of circumstances different from those expected tony magliano is here if you have any questions about the projects and change orders at issue thank you thank you very much the board has two resolutions to consider for this item i'll begin with the board considering resolution 4905 which is the resolution to authorize the contract amendment for oakley green dance studio project do i have a motion in a second director atkins moves in director belial seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4905. miss houston public comment no there's no none okay board discussion on the resolution can we still ask
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questions this is board discussion would you like to ask a question yeah director buell uh tony though now go over again now what was the change in the dance studio what caused the change you know the other one's mudslides kind of right correct well i mean did they think didn't they figure out when what happened stick with the dance studio first please i'll just ask my question since i'm great really you're not a arbitrator of my question sorry go ahead go ahead so at ockley green a number of things the the floor actually cost more than what the original bid came in at so you know as a large contracting agency this is a small business the district has the option to pass to essentially tell the contractor that um it's all on you you figure it out or we work with them and mediate a cost that we feel doesn't sink the small business and still we get value out of the installation but there were other things that caused that project to go up in in cost involved in you know it was the merger of or the moving of kids from students from chief joe to lockley green there were things that building staff were required to do that they didn't do that the contractor had to turn around and do the work and we had to pay for those things at oakley green and the other one was tripled so at um beach we have a safety situation on the floor right now we're just discussing the dance studio when we get to beach you can go ahead and ask that one okay when we're at that resolution so any other questions about ockley green in the dance studio that's what we need to do to finish the job okay the board will now vote on resolution 4905 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no any abstentions resolution 4905 is approved by a vote of five to zero with student representative davidson voting yes yes that's great so the board will now consider resolution 4906 resolution authorized contract amendment beach elementary school retaining wall do i have a motion so move and a second second director belial moves and director curler seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4906 miss hewson no citizen comment is there board discussion director buell so i remember that question i don't so would you go ahead you did would you go ahead and repeat your question it tripled that's my cat beach we have a quite large and long retaining wall that runs along the east side of that building that's failing it's a safety issue we had an engineer do estimates on what it would what the original scope was which required us to take bore samplings because the method that we were using you actually are augering in these long augers and then you bolt the wall to it to hold it in place so what's required is tension or torque in the soil well when we use the length of the auger that they recommended we didn't get the required torque necessary to hold that wall in place which required us drilling i think 11 more and adding a significant amount of length to those augers and in the meantime it also rained there and filled in the previous holes so that's you know this is where you know this procurement rule is disadvantage it is a disadvantage for us because we can't just allow the contractor to complete the work because it's going to exceed our procurement thresholds so we have to stop work or we could have completely stopped work went out and re-bid to another contractor which is also pretty laborious so we're here before the board to allow that work to go forward and complete now can i you know let me follow up on my question or do i have to wait you have another question yes i do thank you uh director buell so is it possible that some how many people approximately how many companies approximately bid on that oh i don't know how many originally made what do you think is ten or three the original cost was sixty thousand i'm trying to ask the question that someone in the audience might be asking yeah i don't recall the top let's say uh it was seven it was at least three
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minimums three for that okay so is it possible in your opinion that somebody who bid on that had that all figured out well i mean see what i'm saying you know so they bid a hundred and we're ending up at 168 000 and they figured this isn't going to be a problem and we're going to have to board a holes farther we're going to have to get to torque different than you think and we're going to build a bid at 130 000 and so when we give the guys who bid 58 000 who didn't figure that out the 168 000 we should be giving it to the guy who really figured it out or the woman who really figured it out in the middle there yeah i mean is that a possibility or what i mean how does that work with the exception that it was a so our engineering service isn't the firm that's actually doing the work so we contracted with an engineer to tell us what what work what the scope of the work was and when the contractor went in to do that work so this is regardless this isn't so the contractor is working off of the same person they're all working off the same person right thank you that answered my question i really appreciate it yeah and i appreciate your clarity too any other sort of doctor excuse me sorry director um i just have a question about the the roommate remediation cost especially with the you can't anticipate right a big downpour um but it sounds like the contractor tried to go in and do some work but they were delayed because of some city work um that the city was not allowed the city didn't have the permits out to not allow us access to that i just wonder is there any option for remediation is the contractor looking at the city saying perhaps if the work would have been done before the deluge before the downpour we could have safely gotten this completed and saved us some of the remediation cost i don't know if that's an option or yeah i'm not sure if that's an option either i mean we could look into that um i can look into it because it seems to me the cost was going to be there we still had to drill farther because the soils weren't what we were expecting but it seems like the cost of fixing the the whole issue about the rain seemed related to timing and it's chance but if the contractor had gotten in when we thought they were going to get in and the city delayed us for that or the city's contractor delayed us for that that there seems like some some recourse right get in line with a lot of other people right the contractor is going to want to get paid i mean and it wasn't unforced nobody predicted that it would the city didn't know it was going to rain rain either right sure so but if the city was the weather man to do the work when we wanted to we wouldn't have had to deal with it right so just to follow up the um so the engineering was turns out to be not that was not a good engineering work is that what i'm hearing well i mean it's also a a site where there were a lot there's a lot of infill so the site was filled so unforeseen circumstances is a it's it's a it happens a lot in the construction industry and you know when they began boring they started running into things that were buried underneath the soil that you have no way of knowing that all of these things impact the contractor and their ability to do that um based on you know hindsight 2020 i think we should have taken more core samples for the engineering for the engineering work yeah okay i'll just add a comment as the daughter of a civil engineer when i see wall is approximately one block long and 30 feet tall you know and given the the nature of what we're up against in the number of different projects that this district just fit you know to me this is we this is just what we need to do and it's unfortunate but we need to prove it and move on so any others the board will now vote on resolution 4906 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed no are there any abstentions okay resolution 4906 is approved by a vote of 5-0 with student representative davidson voting yes yes thank you okay now we'll call us back into regular thank you very much both of you i'll call us back into regular session and we'll move on to our next agenda item which is a report on a division 22 report superintendent smith would you like to not not here well can i make it at the end last week well we'll see where we get at the end you said i couldn't make it the end so i this week i thought i'd take a shot at the first no not right now so superintendent smith neither the hand or the first okay amanda whalen who's the senior adviser to the superintendent is going to present a report on our our assurances to ode about division 22 compliance amanda
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so thank you tonight we're doing our report on the division 22 assurances i just wanted to walk you through quickly so division 22 as required by oar which is oregon administrative rule 581 022 1610 operating policies and procedures all school districts must report the district status with regard to the state standards the division 22 oregon administrative rules so this is our report for 2013 we had that requirement to submit the insurance this was the first time in two years that had been suspended at the at the ode because of um capacity issues there so this was the first time that we had done that and they actually modified our assurances report made it shorter this year we had seven different regulations that we were not in compliance on i'm going to walk you through those seven quickly here so the first is credit options as you know per the march 14 2014 letter from deputy director rob saxton pps was found to be out of compliance with meeting this the 130 credit hour requirement per course at our high schools it's a way to rectify this for the 2014-15 school year we have developed schedules that already meet that requirement and have provided those to the oregon department of education in addition this will be part of a corrective action plan that we will be turning into the department by june 11 2014. second and third areas here are around expanded options annual notice and expanded options requirements so what these are is the regulation is around promoting and supporting existing accelerated college credit programs and providing public funding to the eligible post-secondary institutions for educational services to eligible students to offset the cost of tuition fees textbooks equipments and materials for students who participate in the expanded options program this allows students to earn concurrent high school and college credits in previous years pps has received a waiver for these two regulations and we have now submitted our waiver for the 13 14 and 14 15 school years we anticipate hearing back from odi on that soon the basis of our waiver is that the intent of the expanded options program which is to increase the participation of at-risk youth and historically underrepresented students is best served by expanding existing dual credit programs and developing new opportunities here within pps so that's how we've received our waiver in the past years so we've already submitted what am i on fourth pps is required to make a report to the community regarding compliance with division 22 by january 15 2014. we were awaiting results from a complaint that had been filed with the oregon department of education so we did not meet that deadline this report that i am providing to you now will meet that regulation we'll be providing copies of this presentation to the oregon department of education additionally there is a personnel policy um which requires that um that addresses the requirement for releasing to the teacher standards and practices committee another district or a person upon request the disciplinary records of an employee or former school employee if the employee was convicted of a crime listed in ors 342.143 while we have always done this as a practice we do not have a policy or an administrative directive that states it which is required by the division 22 standard for that reason we will be amending our current person personnel administrative directives no later than june 1st 2014 to add this requirement finally there is a requirement that when we are awarding alternative credit to students and approving a proposed alternative for an individualized learning credit schools must review those requests and then they must be submitted to the board while our schools have been approving those requests at the school level we have not been submitting them to you for review starting with the 2014-15 school year we will be doing that as part of our process okay that was it okay do we have any questions i have a motion well let's take care of questions first questions and comments no okay director buell um this common complaint procedure resolution do you have a motion sorry which would start with i move et cetera just you know what record i am sorry i forgot the last one i apologize
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and director bill's statement just reminded me could you so we do have a um my apologies so the final place where we are out of compliance is on our complaint procedure policy um this was also part of dr deputy direct director saxton's march 14th letter again the district is in the process of hiring an ombudsman and revising our complaint policies and procedures that process will also be outlined for the june 11 2014 corrective action plan sorry about that so at this time director buhl if you have a motion would you just go ahead and state your motion i move that at be resolved the superintendent is instructed to review the parent and student complaint policy procedures and return to the board with a report stating recommendations for changes or new procedures be it further resolved the above mentioned report shall be delivered to the board by june 16 2014 i have okay do i have a second for that i'll second it okay um all those in favor i'm going to speak to my motion oh the board discussion excuse me thank you yeah i guess i'm not in favor of this a because we had no inkling that this was coming forward beforehand and um also but more importantly because you just shared with us that that's actually what you're already planning to do so i don't think we need this additional procedure because you're saying or coming back would report to us so dr buell i have some comments concerning our parent complaint procedures which are relevant to this motion first of all what is missing is not necessarily a specific procedure but a balance which allows parents and the district to work together to solve problems in the best interests of our children the best we can it is not easy being a teacher principal or other employee that works in a school building teachers make thousands of decisions each day in relationship to sometimes hundreds of children they are bound to make mistakes or have their actions misinterpreted it comes with the job pretty much the same with principals and other employees at the same time parents want what is best for their children and when adults in the school system don't live up to their standards it is easy to be critical and judgmental this mix can lead to some serious conflicts parents and school personnel don't have the same perspective so it is necessary that there is a trust developed between them which allows for teachers to make mistakes or to be misinterpreted and have parents understand this happens and at the same time to have school personnel respect and honor the parent perspective several things need to take place so that a balance is struck which allows for decisions to be made in the best interests of our children there needs to be a serious effort on the part of all school personnel to welcome and support parents this responsibility doesn't fall on teachers and principles only on teachers and principals but on all school personnel secretaries custodians bookkeepers educational assistants bus drivers and all district staff right now some of our schools are wonderful at this but some are not we need a course correction that starts with us and the school board and our district administration there have been too many cases of denigrating parent complaints by not seriously honoring the idea that parents are just trying to act in the best interest of their child if the employee is a person of color we have sometimes said the parents are just racist if the employee is white we have sometimes said the parents are just crazy parents now don't get me wrong there are racist parents and plenty of crazy ones but that shouldn't be our default position our default position should be how can i help you advocate for your child and we mean it and we do it when we begin to put this into practice we can then expect parents to see both sides of the issues to see how difficult it is to be perfect as a teacher to see that employees have many other responsibilities that target them and that their child is not the only one but we all need to work together for all children so in summary i want to see clear concise parent complaint procedures which support what i have outlined above and i would also like to see us put a timeline on those or i have the assurances at least from the superintendent that this will not drag out into next year well i'd like to have it in place before the beginning of the school year new complaint procedures thank you very much dr blau um so about the resolution i won't be supporting it just because i heard assurances the state it seems over redundant to me but i do want to acknowledge that we've been challenged with our parent complaint process this past year and it's interesting because one of the first times i remember as a board member coming on this board and looking at budgets and i think we were cutting at the time 25 or 30 million dollars and at the time we had community agents we had a whole bunch a number of
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different pieces that we were looking at who should we reduce and our community clearly said you have to keep the funding in the classroom which we did and the city came up with their with their five million dollars but i also remember that we had an individual who was an ombudsman who for the first time gave a direct point of contact the thing that i hear so many parents complain about and she was doing phenomenal work and working on this very thing and then because of a budget cut we reduced that position so um i appreciate what you're saying director buell and i i do hear what parents are concerned about and i've appreciated um us looking at a reinvestment budget that even before that complaint came out we were looking at reinvesting in this position because it was a position that i heard board members saying um was interested in so i guess i'm while i'm not supporting the resolution specifically i appreciate the intent behind it and um also looking forward to following up to making sure that we can fix this thank you dr carter yeah for all the reasons that um director belial said that he wasn't going to support it i'm going to support it just for the same reasons um i think it's important and i think it's important for us to um to i think it's important for us to for it to come back to us and for the superintendent for some thought which i know is happening which is happening but um uh so i i'll be supporting it and appreciate the work that you're doing on it so yeah yeah yes yes in motion right now to look at the policy and we're actually um in the budget amendment this year you already approved the position for the ombudsman um and we're in the process of doing the interviewing right now and we're very eager you can feel the need for having such a position and we can feel its absence so but in motion derek um student representative davidson uh i i think i'll be supporting this um i think you know having it in writing is nice and if it's going to happen then it happens and nothing to worry about but yeah okay director beale when is ombudsman do you think coming online uh well they're interviewing right now so i don't have a well would you guess maybe was it next year or no we'll we'll bring them on as soon as we finish the hiring process yeah and negotiate when that person can actually start so if they're leaving another job it'll be you know figuring that out with them thank you any any other comments then i'm also going to be uh voting against the motion and the reason that i'm going to be voting against it i agree with everything that uh director belial said around the importance of parent and our paying attention to what parents are saying and i appreciate the work that the superintendent and staff are doing on the complaint procedure and i'm very excited to have an ombudsman coming on board i'm sorry that we ever cut that position i don't think we should have but as budgets go at any rate i'm very happy that that's uh we're bringing that person back but the the main reason i am opposed to this motion is the procedure by which it came to the board uh we have consistently said that we will not hear motions that have not been in the board packet so that everybody knows that they're coming to the board i went ahead and let this one come to the board so that we could use it as an example of the problems that we have when we have a motion where nobody knows anything about the motion is very difficult to vote on it and for that reason i'm going to be voting no another question check all the questions okay the question has been called all those in favor of a call-in question hi all right you know i think that's not debatable i think i just do failed right no we haven't gotten it we haven't gotten to the vote yet we don't have to we don't have to vote a question it's just called okay um nobody can just call so the question with no vote you can't just call the question we're going to vote right now we're going to vote now okay we're going to vote right now we're going to vote on the resolution we're going to vote on the resolution right now okay all those in favor of the resolution say aye yes all those opposed no no abstentions then the motion is not carried okay well i'm sorry davidson voting yes thank you thank you thank you for reminding me
02h 20m 00s
um okay now on to the business agenda point of order and what would that be that you made a statement that was untrue in that you said that we had decided that that we had decided that no that no motion should come to the board unless they were presented ahead of time a we've never decided that b it doesn't fit any it doesn't fit state law it doesn't fit federal law it doesn't fit robert's rules of order and it and it doesn't fit any of our policies so it's just something you're making up and you don't get to make things up even if you are the chairperson we if we want to have that policy we need to have four four votes for that policy and then that policy will be struck down because it's illegal because under the state's open meetings law you can't turn around and not allow someone to make any motions you can't make a motion uh if it's on the agenda you can't make a motion if it's off the agenda and you certainly don't have to run a motion as a as an elected official with 47 000 people voting for me i don't have to run them i don't think it was quite that much i don't have any i don't have somebody told me it was they i never did check they uh so the i can't i don't have to run a motion through you or the superintendent or mr curler or the i don't have to run a motion through anybody i can make a motion we haven't decided this and so your characterization of it is totally incorrect and if you're saying okay we're using this an example which means you did it but last week you did it and you broke the open meetings law in the state of oregon and no i did not absolutely no question about it that's fine and basically that's not that's not an appropriate action for the chairperson of a public body to break the open meetings law it's very important just disagree on that the board will now move on to the business agenda the board will now consider the remaining items on its business agenda having already voted on resolution 4905 and 4906. miss houston any changes to the business agenda do i have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda so moved second director atkins moves and director curler seconds the adoption of the business agenda miss houston is there any public comment on the business agenda there is not okay any board discussion on the business agenda okay the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions the business agenda is approved by a vote of four to one with student representative davidson voting yes yes okay as a reminder the board will hold a public hearing in spanish on the proposed 2014-15 budget on monday april 28th at 6 30 pm at cesar chavez k-8 the next morning meeting excuse me of the board will be held on monday may 5th

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)

2014-04-21 PPS School Board Regular Meeting, Public Hearing

Documents / Media

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Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Budget Hearing/Regular Meeting - April 21, 2014

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