2014-05-19 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2014-05-19
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Event 1: Board of Education - Regular Meeting - May 19, 2014

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any time you want good evening everyone this formal meeting of the board of education for May 19th 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 through the next two weeks please check the Board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PPS TV services website director Morton is not with us this evening so at this time um we'll move to our first agenda item which is one of the best things that we get to do every year our valid Victorian recognition hooray um so tonight we'll meet the valedictorians from every one of our high schools um superintendent Smith would you like to say a few words um and again I would just like to say congratulations to all of our our valedictorians and welcome to all the families who are here to celebrate and for our TV viewing audience we just had a wonderful reception um celebrating and naming some of the accomplish accomplishments of this group of students uh and we're going to get to hear some of their stories tonight so congratulations to all of you and welcome and we look forward to hearing from you tonight y um excuse me oh more Applause so each Val uh each valedictorian will come forward and state their name and the last student from each high school has been selected by the group to answer the question what in your years at Portland Public Schools has prepared you for your next steps so would we like to go ahead and start trip Gall who is our director of high schools thank you it really is a great honor we're going to start off with the valoran from Alliance hi um my name is James swinford uh yeah so I'm valorian from Alliance I didn't really expect it but uh no really I didn't I just found out during my IEP meeting um but yeah apparently I am yay a wonderful surprise yep very nice surprise so so can you tell us what uh at PPS helped you on your steps to where you are today well dealing I I learned how to effectively deal with stress that is going to probably be the single biggest thing in my entire life um it I have had to deal with a lot of stress like stress of changing schools stress of uh well stress of trying to uh reconcile what I love to do with with actually doing school um that was that was actually particularly hard for me um and yeah that that will that will stay with me for the rest of my life even whether or not uh well no matter what I do when I get out of college because I do plan on going to college um no matter what I do at any point in my life that will be an important thing just deal with stress effectively great thank you J that's great the valedictorian from Benson Polytech hello everyone my name is Valentine science Lopez and uh in my years at Benson poch I've learned from the countless nights of doing homework work studying for test uh stressing out over whether I was going to get a a in a class or not I've learned uh determination how to cope with uh you know not having enough time to study how to get it into my time schedule and I've also learned organization which has been key to me and punctuality along with maturity which
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I'm positive is going to help me in my later years as I go to Oregon State University go be and now the valedictorians from Cleveland High School hi my name is Caroline bber my name is Kar Brown May Graham our book there by first juel Holgate Joel H Scott nyman Brian Orosco Grace star Maryann Stites Kate Tomah hilard aelia Thompson Amanda oric Samantha uty be our speaker what do you think Franchesco Vernel Antonio Washington Aaliyah white Hill Emily win Tony Yan my name is Brandon Orosco I think many of us tend to believe we are born into or grow into certain situations and for this example we move or we move to or grow up in a neighborhood that belongs to certain School District I think the opposite is true for PPS PPS grows on to you PPS grows with you I can only speak on behalf of my PPS experience from being able to attend akkin elementary school a school that boasts about its diversity and appreciation of diversity and has an amazing Spanish imersion program to being able to follow the emerging program until finally ending up at Cleveland which is known for its International back lurup program apart from awesome programs I have encountered wonderful teachers and mentors the idea of motivation and finding the right career has always been in my mind during PPS schooling these teachers and faculty members totally selfless individuals do not work for the money they are motivated by something else and I'm sure involves satisfaction of seeing a student progress through the system and achieving success or running towards it I ow an infinite amount of debt to my teachers who have guided me along the way and the incredible programs I have priv been privileged with and have helped me prepare prepared for for the next steps thank you and now the Franklin valedictorians hello my name is uh Alexander fuk my name is Emma Irvin my name is Jenny Zoo my name is Joan Kim I'm Julia U my name is Lily Chen my name is Rachel Gyer my name is Sean Garing my name is tan NN my name is Shawan Hong my name is yanen hi I'm Frank I'm Ryan from Franklin High School and throughout my years at Portland Public Schools I've grown up given so many opportunities starting at ainon elementary I started learning Spanish or Chinese I'm sorry and at Mount T well I I learned both actually but at Mount Taber I continued learning Spanish and at Franklin I was given the opportunity to take both Chinese and Spanish um PPS has also given me so many opportunities like taking 11 AP classes participating in five sports and learning woodworking at Franklin High School for all these um
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great things that I've learned I'm so appreciative thank you Portland Public Schools next we have the valedictorians from Grant High School hey guys I'm Nick Ali my name is Luke Atherton I'm Piper Donahue I'm Lydia dernell I'm Helena Klein I'm Susanne lafur my name is Claire leig I'm mateline Len my name is Allison little my name is Elanor Neil my name is Abby Nyland my name is Sarah Ona hi I'm Christian adair's honor Powers I am Kenny Regan my name is Leah robacho I'm Ben Rosine I'm Ina van be hi I'm Rachel Sherman Jack shot I'm Isaac sensor and blae Williams my name is Anie Wong lifton hi I'm Lily love it um I'm a Slam Poet so I told everyone I was going to slam this but that's just not going to happen um so starting way back in kindergarten when I learned that 2 plus 2 equals 4 I also learned that I love math and PPS has granted me the ability to take six years of high school math and given me the ability to pursue it in the future and I am so thankful for that thank you and now the valedictorians for Jefferson High School MLA Johnson I'm Ashley Merryweather and PPS has prepared me because I've learned the true definition of of dedication and determination I've been a I've had to do the long nights of studying and cramming and homework and I know that that has prepared me for college and I'm ready for what I'm going to have to do in college and also the senior inquiry class that we have at Jefferson um gives us a lot of college prep work and I'm thankful for that thank you the Val Victorian for Lincoln High School hi my name is Marty Burger I'm Sydney cook Shaw my name is Julia eelan hi I'm Michael field my name is Juliet Foreman hi I'm Georgia Diamond Gustafson hi my name's Kendra Hong my name is Robin JS wall hi my name is tiarra Killian Henri Kim hi my name is Elita martini hi I'm Vicky new my name is Michael Pauline Andrew tratner hi my name is Alejandra pind duja and I would like to thank Portland Public Schools for teaching me about cultural competence and I'm going to
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Define that just because it's a little a little bit difficult to explain as knowing who you are with respect to the rest of the world and also being able to appreciate the beauty in other cultures when I studied Spanish French and Arabic at Lincoln I got to read philosophy in French I got to read Garcia marus in Spanish I got to read Arabic poetry but my teachers always made sure to bring the curriculum back to what's currently happening in the Arab world in West Africa in Latin America to make sure that we didn't treat all of these cultures and languages as ornaments but rather as the identity of a unique people so that's what I thank Portland Public Schools for and now the valedictorians for Madison High School hi my name is m h Adam Wright hi my my name is f hi my name is tandai hi my name is Michael laros and I'll be representing Madison tonight through my years at PPS PPS are presenting me with a plethora of experiences and life lessons one is that the backbone to any organizational group are the people who dedicate themselves and go beyond the Call of Duty I mean PPS has his flaws has made his mistakes but despite these flaws the staff the teachers and the commune members have worked tirelessly to ensure that we have been presented with an opportunity to a decent education and for them I thank them and also another lesson I've learned is that to not the labels Define me tonight I feel like I've been invited to a party where I have no business being at speaking like the reason I say this because based on my race my family socioeconomic you know um status and also because the fact I was born to Immigrant parents statistically speaking I am not supposed to be here but I thank the staff in the teachers in Madison for believing in me and making sure that I got the opportunity to better myself and the last lesson I would like to discuss is one that I will hold dearly and I will remember forever is that it is our civil Duty as part of our community to help those around us when we can behind each Val behind each valid Victorian here there have been a series of mentors pushing us stri like making sure we strive for Success there are students at PPS who are struggling they have the valid Victorian potential but they just need those mentors to push them to make them realize the greatness that they have inside of them just because we each are graduating here doesn't mean we can't come back and help out that's one lesson I will take with me just because I'm graduating does not mean I can't come back and help I've been present with opportunity and look where I've come I know other students can be up here as well so thank you PPS for making me realize that thank you and now the valedictorians for the Metropolitan Learning Center hi hi I'm uh Maddie Chrisman Miller hi I'm Emily Villa I'm Sarah pyan hi oh boy hi I'm Zoe MC Williamson and I had to write out my speech because I'm not so good at the memorization so um I've been attending mlc since sixth grade um mlc unique atmosphere and approach to learning has provided me with opportunities to gain skills that are not traditionally emphasized in regular schools its small size has helped cre create bonds with Incredible teachers promoting self- advocacy and self motivation the K12 atmosphere allows for cross AG interaction that Sparks creativity and Community this year I spent one period every trimester in the kindergarten class at our school I got credit by like being a role model for little kids and it was awesome they're pretty crazy um my learning has gone so far beyond a textbook education and become something much bigger something that that has prepared me for not just college but life as a whole now the valdi Victorian for Roosevelt High School hi I'm Olivia lter and I'm Roosevelt and through the 13 years that I've been at Portland Public Schools I
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have learned how to manage my time I've learned that I can do what I need to do and still do what I enjoy I've been very involved in theater in music and art I also have a job so I've had to learn how to do everything and still continue my education and be proud of who I am the valdi dictorian for Wilson High School hello everyone my name is Nicola Bachman I'm Jonah Harris hi my name is Abby Malloy hey I'm Kenny Noble good evening my name is Liam reee and and it is an honor to represent Wilson High School tonight um I haven't really prepared a whole lot tonight but I wanted us to speak about an answer to the question opportunities and um while we may be Public Schools uh Portland Public has provided all of us at Wilson and I'm sure at all the other schools in Portland Public with Incredible opportunities um I was asked to speak about some of these opportunities last year when I did an eighth grade uh parent night and I was really proud because I got to say in fact I'm taking advantage of one opportunity tomorrow I don't get to come to school because what I'm going to do instead is go to Microsoft and have a career day and stuff like that um there are just so many opportunities that we've been given and I'm incredibly grateful for for to have had these opportunities to have experienced all these new things and um they put me on the path that I'm on and I couldn't be more grateful to have this education and to have these mentors so thank you very much please stand if we could all just stand and and give a real rousing Applause for our valedictorians thank you superintendent Smith board members and thank you to all the valedictorians and also to all of those parents and Guardians and mentors and teachers and administrators and coaches and all the other people that help these young people get where they are today thank you so much to all of you you all deserve a hand as well so we're going to take a two-minute break in order for the foyer to clear thank you okay at this time uh superintendent Smith would you like to present the superintendent's report um I would and in honor of our uh evening of recognizing valedictorians I've invited Victoria new who um I will give you a little more explanation but she's one of our valedictorians tonight and she is going to do the presentation um for my superintendent report so um Vicki first came to my attention after being recognized by the national Center for Women and information technology in December um the organization selected Vicki as one of 35 High School women from around the country for their award for aspirations in Computing and come on up Vicki and have a seat up here after that I learned from Bobby that Vicki had done a compelling um speech at Forest Park on stem education so this is clearly a passion of hers and one that I wanted her to have the opportunity to speak to the board about um her counselor Danielle Holloway said this about Vicki single-handed Vicki single-handedly worked with the administration at Lincoln High School to develop four sessions of computer science courses as well as the very popular robotics courses for the school she led the recruitment campaign to add six new First Tech Challenge robotics teams at Lincoln and has pioneered relationships with Portland State University so that Lincoln can have PSU graduates and postdoc mentors for its robotics team in addition Vicki's also a member of the Lincoln High School Constitution team uh which last month the team won the National Championship in Washington DC it's the fifth win for Lincoln and the sixth for Portland Public Schools making us the first first
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city in the country to do that and finally Vicki's chemistry teacher admits that Vicki is better at the subject than he is she took the American Chemical Society exam and got the highest score in the state her counselor said she's wicked smart committed and wholeheartedly throws herself into areas that interest her um she's also a talented pianist uh and is Lincoln High School's valad dictorian Vicki welcome and thank you for being here with us tonight so to turn it over to you I haven't always known what I want to do but I've always known that I want to dedicate my life to helping those around me I used to think that I would have to go into law politics or medicine in order to have a human impact on the world but my freshman year of high school you could say I found my calling at the suggestion of my robotics coach I took an online computer science class through a program called Udacity which offers free online courses I discovered that technology has a power to break down socioeconomic barriers in a way that no law can I realized how empowering technological prowess could be and I fell in love with the process of Designing implementing and testing unfortunately most high schoolers in the United States don't have the support that I did in pursuing technological interests I've done robotics since the sixth grade and both of my parents are employed in fields relating to science technology engineering and math in contrast only 5% of percent of high schools across the United States offer the advanced placement course in computer science a number which has decreased 25% in the past 15 years the US Department of Labor estimates that in 2020 there will be 1.3 million job openings in technology only half of which were prepared to fill with current rates of graduates graduating with degrees related to technology if we want our students to enter a Workforce where they're in demand we need our schools to be offering more in the way of computer science and engineering education not only are computer scientists generally have higher employment rates and higher salaries but they also have skills which lend themselves to a VI wide variety of disciplines programming is more than just memorizing syntax or converting numbers from base 10 to Binary fundamentally computer science is about solving problems it's about seeing a challenge and innovating a solution and then testing that solution and this approach to life is something that's relevant in all fields and the prevalence of technology today ensures jobs and sectors ranging from software development to medicine and finance but the most important aspect of technology is that computers give individuals the power to change the world speaking from personal experience I know that there's nothing more gratifying than seeing the tools that you've created help others impact their lives this past summer I was able to work on developing educational simulations that over 6,000 people have used to teach themselves about about fractals in an online course run by Dr Melanie Mitchell from Portland State University the program I mentioned earlier Udacity has partnered with Georgia Tech to offer a masters in computer science for only $6,000 and also offers free courses to Millions more if we want to create effective solutions to the problems we face today ranging from climate change to disease and wealth inequality we need to harness the power of computers and the mindset of engineering if we want to move forward with a diverse technological Workforce we need to encourage our students to get involved with technology early and we need to do so in our schools we need our students to learn computer science alongside biology engineering English and Mathematics so that they understand not only what technologies they're creating but the implications of those Technologies on a wide variety of disciplines ultimately teaching computer science is not important so that our students are better employed or have higher salaries but because with the popul well-versed in the most powerful Technologies of today we can have great hope for the tools of tomorrow thank you Vicki where are you going to school next year I'm headed to Stanford congratulations good for you yep they are very lucky any other questions for Vicki from uh board members I was just going to say I saw you present to a group of K through five students students on stem and you gave a speech like that but one that kids that age could grab on to and you just excited them about stem and it was the most remarkable thing and just watching you do that again was incredible so thank you stford really is lucky thank you thank you so others Tom so an online course got you all jazzed up um do do you think that we should do more more of that in at PPS
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I think that um Project based learning is really important so one of the things that's most unique about computer science is that it's incredibly accessible so the course that I took um the basic outline of the course was centered on you building a search engine so rather than teaching lectures and having you take notes the first thing that we did in that course was to actually build something and to create it and I think that's incredibly important so that's why at Lincoln we're pioneering robotics which is completely Project based so that students are learning the Engineering Process and engineering principles by building robots and seeing something tangible that they can interact with and I think that stimulating that excitement and seeing something and seeing that you're making a real impact is really the best way um to learn about engineering and technology and really all disciplines so so in that course that um you communicated online with others in a project essentially yeah okay well thank you again for joining us today telling us your experiences thank you very much yeah thank you superintendent Smith do you have any else in your report report I wanted that opportunity I feel like it's it was really important to end up hearing a student perspective about something that's been a deep discussion on the part of the board which is stem education and this felt like our best messenger I like the the part uh about it where Vicky was talking about Hands-On learning because it's it is the CTE of it's the wood shop of tomorrow I guess is what uh it makes me think of so thank you okay um we will now move on to our uh student testimony Miss Houston are there any students signed up for student testimony there is not all those students here okay are too smart to so then we'll move on to the student representative uh report representative Davidson would you like to go ahead and give your report and speak for all those students I would thank you there you go superintendent Smith and fellow board members thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you all tonight tonight we'll be we will be voting on the superintendent's uh proposed budget I think that especially on a night where we have heard from this year's valedictorians it is important to reflect on what this budget means for the students of PPS these validor Ians despite their incredible achievements and worth ethics have witnessed years of continued disinvestments in dis in education this proposed budget does something that many of them never got to experience it makes crucial investments in programs within PBS that I and my peers including those who were previously standing before us have never seen invested in this budget is not a solution to the financial issues we Face there are still many programs that are drastically unders supported but it is a Bittersweet moment for me knowing that one of the last things I will do as a PPS student is vote on a larger budget than the previous year a trend which has unfortunately become abnormal when I started school in PPS in the fall of 1999 I wish I had been able to see the district moving in the direction I see it moving in today however I'm also hopeful that we will continue moving in this direction not in inches or feet but in Miles while I will not be here next year as part of this board I'm excited nonetheless by the future super saac recently had our election for student representative and I'm pleased to announce that Mina jwall of Lincoln High School and Sierra Jose of Franklin High School will be the 2014 2015 student representative and student representative alternate respectively as someone going into her third year in super saac MAA brings a wealth of experience to the table and I'm not only confident in her abilities but I'm excited to see her Champion the legacy of student Voice Within PPS please join me in giving a round of applause for Mina and Sierra and thank you for giving this opportunity to speak and on behalf of the students of Portland thank you for serving on this board thank you Andrew um this time we'll go ahead and take a public comment Miss Houston is are the excuse me do we have anyone signed up for public comment yes we do we have six our first two speakers are Denine Bergland and Nicole markwell okay so while those two individuals are coming forward I'll go ahead and read the instructions for public comment if they're coming forward I'm not seeing miss Houston do you want to go ahead and call the next two sure Eduardo Bella unar and Yolanda Cabrera no still 725
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our next two speakers would be Micah Y and Mary rower there you go okay I'll go ahead and read the public uh instructions as that yeah we see that thank you yeah okay 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 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 you've left your contact information with Miss Houston pursuant to board policy one 1.7.0 one2 speakers may offer objective criticism of District Operations and programs but the board will not hear complaints concerning individual District Personnel any complaints about specific employees should be directed at the superintendent's office and will not be heard at this forum you have a total of three minutes to share your comments first two please start start by stating your name and spelling your last name for the record for the first two minutes of testimony you'll see the green light for the last minute you'll see uh the yellow light and then the red light comes on and buzzer will sound and we ask that you wrap up your comments at that time we respectfully um we sincerely appreciate your input and we thank you very much for being here tonight thank you uh well thank you very much my name is Micah Yi yei G and I am an assistant Adjunct professor at Portland State University and a parent of two children at D Vinci Arts Middle School I was here last Monday as well um but since I was here last week I was part of a parent group that conducted a survey of just over 400 D Vinci Arts Middle School parents we received um slightly over 200 responses to our survey and overwhelmingly as you can see from in front of you parents support the current core structure that is designed to support the emotional and academic needs of our children um it is developmentally appropriate for children between the ages of 11 and 15 to have a supportive structure in place that is a bridge between Elementary School and High School um today at diin Arts Middle School over 250 kids staged a walk out they were out of the building for about 2 hours um and they um the Press covered the protest Oregonian was there in addition to the material you have in front of you there were over 300 comments to that survey um in meetings with the administration the conversation has been about some students not meeting math benchmarks this year the school tried an intervention using 84 minutes uh flex period about 20 times throughout the school year to support students stud who were struggling with math um I met with Administration um earlier the uh sorry late last week and when I asked if the intervention would work they said they had not collected any data to see if the intervention had worked um however um in an Oregonian article a da Vinci Arts Middle School teach math teacher um wrote a response to an article she opposes the changes and said that actually she had track data and kids had made improvements that they we were wondering did they start here and get to here and the benchmarks here or did they start here and got here and the benchmarks here well it turned out they had made growth and this was a thing that was um not very the teachers will say it wasn't as planned out as if they had really put efforts into make it very targeted and strategic as they could in the future um so students had improved so I would say that kids who struggle academically are those same students who benefit the most from having the current course structure when I I asked the administration last week how struggling kids are doing in their core classroom they have no data they have not collected any data to see how struggling kids are doing in their core classes and whether that is a support for those children I'm fully in support of finding a solution that raises math scores in the current structure there's that 84 minute block once a week that could be used to Target those children that um would would address the needs without dramatically altering the core experience for all the kids that structure benefits every child at that school parents are very dissatisfied with the proposed changes and we urge a more reasonable response and actually the parents are tomorrow night will be demanded at the school thank you you're go ahead I'm Mary rower r o w r i Am the mother of a sixth grade student at D Vinci middle school and I thought very hard to get her into Da Vinci she's a unique student Da Vinci is a unique place and uniquely meets her needs as a a student a young
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woman Anna will be one of the students that loses her important core teacher if this is implemented um I have uh um I've I've heard that a change in the scheduling um is um necessary for the students but I see it as a gutting of the core program it's just necessary to to homogenize um Portland uh schools um all middle schools so that they're all the same but it really short changes parents teachers and especially the students um as a parent with two students in the Portland Public School District I've endured leadership changes uh teacher downsizing District changes increased class sizes and a lack of stability uh within the schools um it's difficult to maintain support and Faith In A system that has been reliably unreliable um the proposed changes also hurt Da Vinci teachers teachers will not only teach more students it's significantly more students it's going to increase the number of students teachers are responsible for from anywhere from 60 uh 90 to 160 students versus the current 60 to 65 students they currently teach um that's that's perhaps upwards of a hundred more students they need to teach test grade and supervise there's no way they can give individ individualized attention to the students um at at those numbers um and I also question the board's motivation uh for the staff changes um and wonder if it isn't a response to recent teacher negotiations and voice concerned over these class sizes on its face the decision to see seems to be punitive in nature I know that teachers have voiced concerns about how how many students they're teaching and now they're going to have more more students on their on their roles to teach and most importantly this decision seems to be bad for the students it's not a good model for the developmental age of these middle schoolers um I've heard the reason is to better prepare the students for high school but the middle school years are when students get lost and this is when students most need mentorship guidance and continuity of a core teacher a stable adult who knows each student as more than a student ID and a standardized test score um if we're truly preparing these kids for high school why don't we take our high school curriculums and make them lecture Halls like they will experience in college to better prepare them for College there's a reason we don't do that it's not a good uh model for for children at that age uh also the gutting of the core program forego some important learning opportunities including uh Community involvement and um the uh uh field trips um it it reduces also language arts um and arts language arts is also an Arts based curriculum Da Vinci is an Arts based school so to say that it's not going to reduce Arts is um also Folly um I believe that D is a creative school and we can find Creative Solutions but this isn't it great thank you very much for Testimony thank you okay now we're going to move on to our bond accountability orderly update I thought I saw Mr Spelman up there the board is pleased to welcome Kevin Spelman the chair of the B Bond uh accountability committee to our meeting tonight on the committee's review of the work of the on on the bond the committee is comprised of I think it's seven individuals isn't it Kevin seven individuals with expertise in large construction projects and the board is thankful for the service of these individuals and and thank you very much for both of you being here tonight I'm coair coair B Bard superintendent Smith with me is is one of those experts Tom Peterson Who's chief engineer of the portter Portland and um he's especially important on our committee because there really aren't many people in a in a city like Portland with experience of a capital program like this and Tom's one of the few who does um he's seen more than one uh cycle of these programs um what we um bring for you tonight are really some mixed messages we're going to give you some I think good news and some concerns and then we're going to um suggest that we have a little bit of a conflict between schedule needs and budget needs um so bear with us um we met April 23rd at Marshall High School um and got an update on the program
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program um good some good things have been happening as you know the Fabian um master plan was approved um and they're continuing to work now on schematic design IP 2014 work has been broken down into six packages um cautionary note there they have even less time this summer than last summer to put to do this work um and they will be working since six days which I'm guessing has an impact on their bids um which at least the ones that have come in so far are over budget manageably so we think but we'll see um we have a couple of uh kind of social um related uh criteria that are underway the workforce training and hiring program is in place for this Summer that deals with appr ership and was continuing to watch the mwb participation we don't yet have a report on the summer the summer bids um uh but and nothing much has happened in the last quarter so the percentage hasn't changed okay some good news um we've uh talked to you and you've expressed concern over the past few reports about student involvement and what the seeming lack there of um the report we received showed that uh over 6,000 students have now been exposed to bond program related um um presentations or job fairs or um um having uh input sought from them um and this is this is a dramatic change from where where we were and the staff has agreed with us and I think with you that the metric we were using before was not sufficient and now we've got some more focused metrics that I think will be really helpful going forward um I also wanted to call out um uh three of the Consultants um Hari international program manager da the architect at Franklin and bti architect at Roosevelt all three of those uh will be engaging interns independent of PPS funding so they've really kind of stepped up to the plate here okay budget last time we talked about the fact that things seem to be generally on track as far as we could tell um except for the bond oversight cost if you recall that was a little the projection was over budget um staff has worked on that and they've reduced the projected overage item but of course another one popped up and that's the OIP owner controlled insurance program um but they also in the process of rebud getting some it to substantially take care of that from uh contingency and from the savings of from last year last summer um sorry to interrupt can you talk I think you mentioned in your report that over over the course of the bond program we're we're hoping that the plan with that would that that would be budget neutral correct is that correct that's the that's the suggestion for OIP some some of us have some skepticism about that just because I think you probably never really know but there's certainly value in it and so Tom has some experience with those programs programs support and what you're banking on you're kind of taking on the risk and what you're banking on on our low claims so in order for an noep to be um successful you need to have a really robust safety program to make sure you minimize your exposure to claims and if if you're successful then yes it is um there is H ultimate savings to the organization but you're rolling the dice a little bit U but we've had good success with our EP programs uh we in both cases we were able to um show a benefit in one of our o program programs actually uh covered the collapse of the garage that we had back in 97 where we had three workers killed and um which is a very unfortunate incident but actually the OIP program was very beneficial for us in that case as well so um so they can be a good good tool but they do come with some extra administrative costs and the part of the contractors and staff to some degree and um and and a really diligent effort on making sure you have
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a great a strong safety program so is that we have a good strong safety program Orr contractors that we work with have good strong safety program you need you need to help and make sure that generally generally your oep administrator will be actively engaged in their safety programs as well right great thank you Tom um at the uh at the meeting we went through the budget situation at that time and that's really been kind of overtaken by events and so we'll come back to that in a second um our focus at the meeting was primarily schedule and and remains schedule uh although that's now in conflict with the budget challenges we have uh Franklin High School um schematic design is 90 days behind the original Baseline schedule Roosevelt is 110 days behind those that sounds like a lot and it is a lot uh we just want to caution everybody not to get too excited about that in the fact that that's against a very very broad Baseline schedule and the designers and the contractors are now working to show how they can make that up uh nevertheless it's an increased risk item um part of it has been due to this board and the changes you've made part of it has been due to the um uh extraordinary amount of um public Outreach that's occurred and and we have a little concern about how that has played out not being critical of the concept of public Outreach at all or any of the public who were outreached um they really have done their job what you'd expect them to do they've advocated for the best possible facility that they're working on what they don't have is budget and schedule responsibility for the entire program so there's a conflict there that uh has come up um we were introduced at the last meeting to the the quote additional criteria for high schools and frankly we're still a little fuzzy about what that means well we know what it means quite how you get from that criteria to what it means we don't we don't understand yet and um we we actually have a briefing this coming Friday on Franklin High School and and I think the intent is that we'll we'll start to understand that a little better but as of right now we we don't understand that we also were not presented at that meeting with any kind of cost implications or funding sources those have since come out so again events kind of took over there and um that's really where the the remainder of our remarks need to be focused I think um the the BAC from what we know today is not supportive of the current budgeting because we don't understand it or the sources of the funding we don't understand some of the uh budgeting for instance there is a line item in the staff memo that supports the resolution that you're you're voting on tonight that says uh value engineering $18 million we don't know what that means value engineering typically is used in the schematic design phase or even later to bring scope back to budget and I'm sure it did some of that we we don't know but I'm sure it did some of that but one way to read that is that the $18 million is a failure of value engineering so we don't know what that what that item is and I think for the public they need to know what that is um the additional criteria is also um calculated at $18 million and clearly that's additional classroom so we know that but we don't really understand how we get from the quote criteria to the additional classrooms at this point maybe we'll learn that um so there's an additional $36 million that's got to come from somewhere and at this point the um memo says it comes from two places one is future IP work um with I I think in parenthesis the hope that there'll be additional savings someplace else to to backfill that
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um and from the escalation reserve and that one is really double puzzling I think for us because I think even in our first report we express concern that the escalation Reserve seemed maybe a little skinny to us and if you take money from the escalation that that's supposed to address inflation well inflation doesn't go away so if we take the money out of escalation and inflation remains let's say the original Reserve was exactly right um which we're skeptical of um we've got a scope hole so we've got to deal with this scope versus budget issue in our judgment uh at this point um the other thing that I think is important to remind everyone the resolution you're going to vote on today is to realign the long range facilities plan and the Ed specs with where we are today and that from from a practical from practice best practices that's kind of the that's backwards right we set guiding principles in the uh long range facilities plan then the edecs were intended to set standards and now we're going back to change them so they fit with what we now want to do may be exactly the right thing to do I don't know but from a practical standpoint it's it's backwards the the other thing that's I think important to remember is the long range facilities plan was was pretty um um straightforward upfront that non Capital solution should be considered prior to Capital Solutions and at least at this point we haven't seen any evidence that that has happened maybe it has behind the scenes and judgments have been made but um if if our um if the scope of our projects are not sufficient to meet capacity or or whatever then we should be looking at non- Capital Solutions at least as well as capital may be in place of capital want to add anything to yeah and I guess the other thing that I add and I I had some concerns um when I started seeing the designs and how much new construction um how much of component of both of the high schools was going to be new construction and never really quite understood how that was how much of that was anticipated in the budgeting process uh so I suspect that part of the growth although I haven't been briefed to the level to really understand it is that part of the reason that the budget has increased is there's a probably a higher percentage of new construction than maybe was originally anticipated in in the uh the bond Meer coupled with that what also is of concern to me is we have the fortunately we have the benefit of designs and process for Roosevelt and Franklin and contractors on board to help uh validate costs um and but which which equates to budgets uh do some be but we don't have that benefit yet for Grant and so my concern is and I have no idea don't really understand so what is the number and how much of that increase applies to the grant project where we haven't started any of that design process so I have some real concerns that you know given the how the first two have gone that you're going to be faced with a similar problem uh in a year or two when Grant gets into full swing and all of a sudden you see another increase because of the way the design ends up the amount of new construction and so forth unfortunately I don't have the benefit of having seen the numbers what they're based on or understand so so I'm kind of a little bit in the dark here but those are my concerns my reaction to what I saw the report so want to come back just to one thing to to emphasize maybe I skipped over a little the the the quote borrowing from future IP work um we're we're you know part of our charge is to is to um hold the program accountable to the promises made and and we feel pretty strongly that an there's an obligation to to um allocate the correct amount of money to the size MC and Roofing and
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science classrooms work there was a hedge there in the in the bond program that it was up to 63 million uh 63 schools but but at least my sense and I think that of taxpayers was we'll do that within that quote budgeted amount not that we take some of that budget and spend it someplace else so happy to answer questions okay board members questions director klerk um is is Staff going to respond to some of the concerns I mean as essentially what I'm hearing is you're you're you're saying that we shouldn't be voting on The Resolution that we're voting on tonight I don't know if we're saying that we're just saying that as a bond accountability committee we haven't really had had an opportunity to really understand and weigh in on the recommendations to be able to support this i' director col I'd add to that that the resolution really doesn't deal with the funding specifically it may imply that that's that's you know the funding will support this resolution the resolution pretty much says that staff will go back and quote fix the long range facilities plan as the Ed spec so that they're consistent with the current plan um I guess the question for you to answer is if if you vote for that to happen can you then roll that back again if you need to and I don't know the answer to that that's that's for you to decide um do you do you have specific questions for staff or do you want no I was just okay I was just the uh you mentioned the the process being backwards um and I guess I I just challenge that for a second I want to get your feedback on it yeah um it's we're we're looking at um more than three schools we're looking at over the course of Lifetime right uh doing a lot more than that um these are the first two that we've done and in that process um there seems to have been some learning uh which is which is natural um so isn't it appropriate to take that learning and put it back into um into the master plans and the design specs the larger documents maybe it is um but I don't I'm not sure we we know the answer to that and and I what what I guess I'm suggesting is that there is no perfect solution to or the perfect facility if we were to to continue continue Outreach for another two months we'd get more good ideas legitimately good ideas but at some point you have to say no more and maybe we have to say for instance that we really want the these programs we've identified and learned about in this period of time but we can't afford them with the planned capacity for instance so we have to if we want that program maybe the capacity's got to come back or to get it within budget um I there I think we forget how much Outreach there was in both the developing the long run long range facilities plan and the uh Ed specs huge amount and you know the sense is that the the the last loudest um um advocate um is gets gets their way and again I'm not being critical about any of those Advocates because if I were in their shoes I'd do the same thing but it doesn't fit within as far as we can tell it doesn't fit within the budget so we have to come we think we have to come up with other Solutions director bill when you say it doesn't fit what is the it you say it doesn't fit within the budget that it is the the changes that we've made is that what you're referring correct in all of the changes are part of D wellum I ask you guys the wrong question so I'm trying to ask you maybe a right question here okay well the the staff member that supports the resolution shows the iteration of how we got from the original budget for the high schools right it added the 10 million for the increased capacity added I think 1 million for for for fields and
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then added 18 million for ve which we don't again don't understand and 18 million for the quote additional criteria now when you add all that up it doesn't fit within the budget which is why the memo at least argues to take that money from someplace else within the program the programs limited it is what it is and and I guess I would be uh cautious about um looking for another Bond measure for instance that's supposed to put a roof on some of those schools that we said we're going to be roofed under this Bond measure so there's $36 million you just said you didn't understand what it was right so you're the bond oversight people basically and you don't understand what $36 million of the bond stuff is I mean I'm not saying that in name I'm just saying that's the okay no thank you uh the second question I have is if if we would went exactly with what we have now and just went forward would we have to in your opinion do you actually know and how strong is your opinion on would we have to cut any of the seismic retrofitting but that's the proposal director some yes I I can't be I don't know the specifics but but the proposal proposes to cut some of that retrofitting yes correct $8 million worth what how much of that is seismic we don't really know 22 million It's a combination of roofing and other repairs but a seismic is a component of that thank you Dr Regan did we have an opportunity to maybe get some individual briefings from our operations folks before we vote on this so we'll have discussion before we vote tonight yes they're here that's a later part of the agenda is actually talking about so I think you're generating some of the questions that are being raised here and seeing whether or not you're actually in the dialogue later on I mean this is a clear tension point that we knew we would be in it's exactly the conversation that you need to be having because as um director kler pointed out we have been learning things in this on these first two buildings that we were saying okay how do we use these so that the first two schools benefit from them it may be that we decide these are the learnings and they apply going forward but not to the first two school I mean there's these are exactly the tension points that you should be discussing so um and we'll have the opportunity to during um the discussion later today and it may be that you decide and you wait for until um the bond of accountability committee has been briefed and gets to have further discussion before you take action but you're also hearing the tension Point around the continued conversation and some of these have been your interests that we've continued to consider and look at are there ways to be able to fund the things people are now in deeper conversation about as we're further into the bond so I mean at the front end when we're talking with the long range facilities committee and then we're talking with the edpc group we're in a broad level of conversation we're now into really specifics and with a diff a different crowd that are talking about their own building and so naturally a different level of of specifics are being raised that we're thinking in form what's the Baseline um that we think we want to inform the entire high school system so like it's a right conversation to be in at this point um and I just think it's sequencing so people feel like you have enough information at the point you're actually making a call because all of it is tradeoff and risk and E and about the final product of what we're going to end up with and we have um I think as staff said these first high schools and the rebuilds of these first high schools are a really significant thing to do right um and so make sure that we've really you know given in the consider and the the community engagement where people have been deeply in thinking about again in two different schools and we've had the dynamic of two different design committees meeting simultaneously and informing each other so it's been it's been a complex um design conversation and the right conversation for you all to be having tonight can I just add a just for for for our um discussion with staff later thank you very much for your report and your your careful oversight um so then one question obviously is just with the the issue of the timeline and the schedule so no matter what we do whether we approve the resolution or ask staff to scale back to where we were before that's the question of what how does that impact our our schedule and our ability to regain that time and get this moving forward so um I'm not sure what the answer is but I'm hoping that that we can have that discussion with staff I'm also concerned to hear that our for whatever you know timing issues or whatever it might be that our committee really needs to have have that full that full information uh on the other hand I
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want us to keep moving forward so again the tension's here um and um like everyone else you know considerable heartburn about the possibility that unless things align and things were go well for us that we would eventually have to take in future years some of the seis B and Roofing um projects out um that we had hope to accomplish So that obviously is a huge concern as well um so thank thank you and I guess we'll hear more from staff later on tonight other comments from board members no no gentlemen thank you very much for being here tonight I know that I'm not sure if you're going to stick around and see what happens with uh when staff is talking with us but I'm sure that they'll be covering schedule budget scope all of those issues with us again um and would appreciate having you here so thank you very much thanks thank you too thank you okay um at this time we're going to off of my original agenda move off of my original agenda and um ask um Brenda Reagan who is the um Belinda Belinda excuse me excuse me Belinda uh president of pfsp uh to come to the staff table uh for some brief comments thank you very much for joining us tonight thank you I apologize I've coming have are coming down off of a a cold from the weekend so uh pardon me if I'm I stopped to cough during the midst of this I tried to sit in the farthest regions of this room so that I wouldn't disturb everybody while I coughed in and thank you Neil for the cough drop too good evening Carol and school board members I should announce that I'm Belinda Regan president of pfsp I wish I could say that I'm here this evening to share a feeling of Goodwill with all of you but sadly I'm not with such positive news coming from The District in the past few weeks that 350 to 400 certified employees are being recruited and for the first time in many years across the board cuts are not necessary those of us in pfsp were so very hopeful sharing our excitement with our membership that it appeared we would not see ly layoffs again this year that joyful forecast of a layoff free summer has been shattered as once again for the eth year in a row the fine employees represented by pfsp are the prime target of Portland Public Schools un assignments and expected layoffs having recently learned that 70 pfsp classified employees have been notified that their P positions will no longer exist in the fall I truly feel such a sense of betrayal by this District and you as members of the board of those 70 individuals who were unassigned thankfully many will find placements in the positions being vacated by retiring and resigning staff while attrition may seem a resolution to the bigger issue of un assignments please keep in mind that this remains a reduction in classified numbers by 70 people far too high in this year of seeming Financial Comfort when compared to the past seven while 70 of our workers are scrambling to maintain employment in order to keep dinner on their table shelter for their families and their bills paid we have seen at least a half dozen postings for highlevel positions that have been added to the administrative roster jobs new to PPS I can't help but wonder how many of the 70 employees cut from our schools could have been retained had these highly compensated jobs not been created and budgeted for at last count 27 members of our our bargaining group without jobs next year are educational assistance dedicated workers without whom the classrooms of our very youngest will not function successfully we see very little hope for the return of many of these Souls resulting in a significant number of layoffs once again and yet year after year during each budget crisis that has reduced the number of pfsp classified employees by now more than 400 in total I have sat before you asking why us why are such good hardworking people always under attacked year after year in such enormous numbers why why is it that the classified employees of PPS are not allowed to enjoy the largeest that is providing for the hiring of hundreds of new Personnel in other groups this year why are we being cut again I know my words most likely make no difference to you as I sit before you pleading for an end to this annual Slaughter I'm trying
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to make sense of something so I'm tired of trying to make sense of something so senseless those I represent are tired of the uncertainty of layoffs and joblessness will the classified employee be given an opportunity to ever ever truly feel appreciated by this District not by proclamations or plaques or by perfunctory words spoken at a celebratory school board meeting to which our employees are are no longer invited but by stable living wage jobs at work sites that can become their second homes along children and families and staff with whom they can form can form strong working Partnerships will this ever happen again all of this leads me to wonder when these 350 to 400 new teachers are placed in classrooms next fall who will be there to provide the assistance so desperately needed to help our students reach the Pinnacle of their success obviously it won't be the new EAS who were hired earlier this year when FTE was added back into buildings as they are low in seniority and they're now facing layoff how profoundly tragic for the youngsters inrolled in this District I would like to suggest that each of you take a few moments this evening to think about the consequences of the systemic eradication of the district's classified workers for without us your school your offices and your classrooms will not function I can only hope that you as Schoolboard members will suffer the effect of allowing these annual cuts to continue in complaints from building administrators teachers parents and from the community whether or not you will take heed is certainly another matter thank you thank you very much M Reagan question we're not doing questions with this woman really really we're not doing questions than you thank you very much questions of you I'm sorry that I am not able to ask you're out of order I'd be glad to call you and see where we're at crazy I can't ask a question okay at this time we're going to go back to um our earlier uh issue on the agenda of having public comment we were so far ahead of schedule that several of the families members or people who wanted to testify were not here so I'm going to go ahead and ask them uh Miss Houston will you go ahead and call for public comment at this time uh first two speakers Denine burland and Nicole markwell and I hope they're here I I thought I saw them come in there we go I'm not going to read the entire instructions for public comment again but just to let you know that uh before you begin speaking please State your last name and spell it for the record um the lights in front of you the green light will come on indicating you have two minutes the yellow light another minute and when the red light comes on we ask that you wrap up your comments okay thank you very much thank you so my my last name is Bergland it's spelled b r g l a n d my first name is Denine I'm here from Scott school and I just want to read a little um something that I have here Harvey Scott School is a k through eight converted in from a K5 in 2006 to save money during a financial crisis for the district we are one of the most diverse schools in the district 82% of our students are kids of color more specifically 56% of our students are Latino and 38% of our students are English language Learners we are also a high poverty School 87% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch our diversity is one of the things we value about our school and parents teachers and kids see it as a great asset to our kids education two years ago Scott school started a dual language Spanish Immersion program the best thing to happen to our school in years with over 56% Latino population of students and 38% elll an immersion program for our school was a no-brainer it was an answer to the achievement Gap crisis for elll and kids of color and it made our school attractive to families both in and out of our neighborhood who wanted language immersion people who were actually choosing to Lottery into our school rather than out of it bringing their much needed energy and support to our school our first first two years we had four kindergarten sections three of them immersion we've seen incredible academic growth in the first two years for the students in that program we've added talented specially trained teachers who reflect the culture of the majority of our students and who contribute to the overall diversity of our staff making our school more welcoming to all our families of color unfortunately because of the size of our building and the fact
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that we are K through 8 we were on a path to overcrowding and the District closed our lottery for next year as a result we lost an immersion kindergarten section next year and immersion kindergarten class sizes will swell to around 30 or more students registering late won't have access to immersion including Spanish speaking kids parents of immersion kids are worried that the program at only two years in is already dwindling and will Wither on the vine teachers will have to be shuffled around from year to year to handle these differently sized cohorts and as we know numbers equal staff so we'll earn fewer FTE and resources we are at capacity but under enrolled we can't grow and it's hard to maintain robust programs given the space we have and the range of grades we serve in the meantime our Middle School struggles to hold on to the enrollment numbers it needs we have very talented and dedicated teachers in the middle midd school program and every year as our enrollment at that level dwindles we risk losing their positions it's difficult to cover all the bases in a small program that earns so few FTE and must spread resources across nine grades this year our middle schoolers had no scheduled Library time they had no computer lab and no science lab their elective choices include working in the cafeteria of the school office they have no music classes they have no school sponsored Sports Scott students deserve better thank you very much go ahead Nicole markwell m a k w l l prompted by concern for our children a group of parents predominantly Latino and white started meeting and sharing stories in an attempt to be proactive through our discussions we decided to create a survey to find out what factors are the most important to the Scott Community we held three meetings focused on getting parent involvement in and two events during the the day during the school day one for Teacher input and one for student input as Denine stated Scott is very proud of the diversity in our community so it was very important to us that we engage the entire Scott Community rather than rely on a small portion of active people who tend to be mostly white we worked with liaison assigned to Scott Ula fan who made personal phone calls to invite and engage our Somali Community as well as provide translation at meeting at meetings where there was no paid Somali interpreter and Tony fam who helped with Viet amese translation and inviting members of our Vietnamese Community to participate in meetings additionally some of our Latina mothers personally invited members from the Latino community and went door too handing out flyers for the meetings because of our Outreach and crosscultural bridge building the meetings were very diverse our second meeting was made up of all Latino and Somali families over 30 families participated in that event for the parent meetings we had a presentation informing families about what Scott has in terms of electives and compared that with other schools SCH both middle schools like Bowmont and other K8 schools Dr Gutierrez also talked about why we're having this discussion boundary review and Scott classrooms feel filling up and running out of space then what she sees is the options moving forward following the presentation parents were asked to take part in the survey there were 18 large sheets of paper each with a statement in both English and Spanish parents were given 20 stickers and asked to distribute their stickers among the statements statements they agreed with more were given more stickers those statements that parents didn't agree with got no stickers parents were asked to use all of their stickers in our efforts to reach out to all of our communities we held meetings not just at the school but also the Henda Apartments where many of our families live we held meetings in English with Spanish Somali and Vietnamese translation we also had our second meeting conducted in Spanish with English translation over 110 parents participated in these surveys as well as about 30 staff and over a 100 middle school students by a wide margin the top two most important factors for parents and teachers are I want Scott to have a robust Spanish Immersion program and I want my child to attend a safe School those who support Scott remaining a K8 particularly our families of color cited Transportation convenience and the ability for older children to help with younger children those who support transitioning to a K5 program focused on access to Advanced courses art music and other electives in that order the middle school students indicated that their top priority was for field trips with after school sports team coming in second after that the votes were for more electives especially art I have included all the results um for all the questions in my handout which will be available online along with the raw data Scott students deserve better I made copies for everybody that's great you can go ahead and give them to us or you can give them to miss Houston and she'll give them to us so thank you very much to both of you for your comments and for your hard work in making sure that your in community is so inclusive and you're hearing from everybody in your
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community our next two speakers Eduardo Bella unar and Yolanda Cabrera there we go Yolanda couldn't make it tonight do we have another chair but we're gonna have um there we go then reading some of the things that are important about our school okay hang on just a second let's get everybody settled here okay great go ahead um my name is Eduardo baman is b e l a u n z a r a n and um these couple students are here representing Yolanda my name's a my name's Amy Alvarado a l v a r a d o and I'm a freshman at Madison and I went to Harvey Scott um kindergarten through 8th grade um um Isaac alado then I've G so Scott for since kindergarten through seventh grade yeah we're going to um say some comments that some parents and students left from one of the meetings that they had I want the school to be a safer place and that fifth graders gain access to a bathroom in an area to drink water and this and that there would be cameras around the school I want to know where my son will be for school in the future so we can plan I hope it is here I think that having a good imersion program is more important than are not so good Middle School my child struggled in Chinese immersion K through first we returned to our neighborhood school for the English only teaching she needs I want an effective Dynamic functional and diverse Library where my child can have access to knowledge it's ridiculous that I don't allow her to take books home I am very happy with the emersion program that's why we're here more advanced courses for example science math and language I want more partnering with parents in early grades for literacy and math I love my Spanish submergence teacher that room is very calm I worry about my child's safety out of this classroom we were promised the district was committed to the ersion program when our child signed up committing means committing I drive 15 minutes twice a day so that my daughter is in the Spanish emersion program it's very important and that's why we are here I love the diversity at Scott and hope to have my kids stay but if the academics don't improve in middle school I will pull them out keep imersion 6th through 8th should stay and there needs to be more safety I want safety surveillance at the school this seems like a no-brain solution middle school students should have better access to extracurricular programs and Spanish emerging programs should have room to grow I'm so impressed by the dedication of Scott's teachers but especially MRA Flores I want all teachers at Scott to be e l endorsed I want cultur competent instructors I want Ka through a and immersion to stay together we need to sustain the Spanish Immersion at Scott what we need is the most is for 6th 7th and eth to stay we need middle school for people that live in this neighborhood I want this school to have immersion buses and middle school security that protects the school good evening my name is Eduardo baman I am a parent at Scott School my first language is Spanish my wife is American I will be talking to you in English tonight tonight it is our first year as Scott my daughter goes to kindergarten it is a very special school and we are very happy with this community it's diversity there are Somali Asian Hispanic and American families I'm sure there are more the size of the school is also very satisfying the teachers and the Spanish Immersion program which is the reason we had to be at Scott School our daughter has learned so much Spanish during the past year it is very exciting and I hear comments like these from many other parents at our
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school nevertheless it is hard not to notice the lack of resources the students have to cope with they don't have a computer lab they need better technology and science labs they lack a solid Sports and art program their electives are limited to office or cafeteria assistance instead of drama music math or any other choices they could have to better their education and that other schools enjoy also because of the size of our school we don't have full-time counselors and many other necessary Personnel such as librarian an art teacher as a result teachers have to overextend themselves many times our kids are well behaved and have good family values they deserve a fair chance and education I don't believe the size of a school or the number of students that attend it should dictate the amount of support or quality of Education that they may get or deserve many of these students have unquestionable talents and potentials yet to be discovered and they deserve to at least have options during their upbringing children need a proper and equal education so that they don't fall behind further as they will go on high school they also need the confidence and tools that many others enjoy in the Portland Public Schools we invite you to visit our school I enjoy its warm diversity and to please support the needs of our students so that they enjoy a healthier growth your decisions affect society on the utmost human level and Scott students are in need of a fair and conscious education and growth it is a win- to- win situation for families and Society thanks for your time and attention have a good evening and thank you very much for your testimony we'll find out Miss Houston is that the end of Citizen comment thank you very much okay at this time um we will move to our next agenda item which is the evaluation for superintendent Smith um I'm going to um I think I'm going to start with this um we completed the valuation for superintendent Smith uh last week uh after some delay um because we were trying to make sure that we had all the information that we needed including where we were on our milestones and of other um indicators that were included within her um goals for the year and so uh so we were able to delay that and just finish it up last week um for myself um I uh was very I'm very pleased with um superintendent Smith's performance in this District um over the seven years that she's been here we have continued to um raised the graduation rate and in the last four years I think we're up 14 points um we've uh closed our achievement Gap not closing our achievement Gap and in some places closed it um we uh with under superintendent Smith's leadership uh passed a bond we have a local option Levy that helped us through those times that uh as we were having to make Cuts helped us make fewer cuts um we have done a number of things in this District to um help our students achieve including the uh initiation and continuation of um dual immersion programs more work on elll work at the high school level um the the list is endless of the work that superintendent Smith has done that has allowed us to move forward in this district and um have those uh gains that we've had both in our um graduation rate and in our um narrowing of that achievement Gap so I'm very pleased uh with her evaluation and what we've uh uh and and the job that she has done for us and I look forward to having her here with us for many more years so I'm happy to take the comments from all of my other board members I know that everybody else has comments to make as well so who wants
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to director cter yeah so um our evaluation I think uh that that is submitted is um speaks uh for it for itself and what what I wanted to do um was uh just lay out a few areas where I think we should focus focus on that I personally want to focus on for the next remaining um time uh 12 months or so the um uh and um so and they are they are this uh one is I think we need to um really secure a more um robust framework for our principles and um make making sure that the support uh is there that um that we have a culture to where we have the best principle in every single building we have some really wonderful principles um but I think if we look at ourselves in the mirror we can't say that we've got great principles in every single building and there needs to be a framework um to make that happen part of that is a 3 360 evaluation where um every year parents teachers uh and uh um students can participate in the valuation um I think that uh we can um do a better and and this is superintendance evaluation but I actually think it's it's boor as well um so we're we're doing this we're in it together and we're going to succeed together uh we're going to succeed together um so um I think the uh providing service to the schools is another area where I think we we can use some improvement um um we and and I want to uh the other issue is we had an audit a high school audit and it talked about um other districts of similar size and composition doing um doing equal or better job with with less money um and the the phrase that was used there was Fidelity of implementation um and so understanding that and one of one of the great of many things that that I've seen um our superintendent lead this district is is in equity uh and really built a culture uh of equity that permeates the whole um the whole District uh and you can feel it and see it and participate in it uh where folks everybody's focused on every single kid regardless of race um or where they come from and I want to see uh the same kind of culture in terms of the Fidelity of implementation and and management uh and that needs to build up over time it's not going to happen overnight um my last uh place where um that I want to focus on is making sure that um that the CTE uh programs expand and that they're they're done right and that we also deal with um with lifting the cap on Benson so my my focus is is moving forward um and I'm looking forward to to working with you uh over the course of the next months to make it all happen me to go director bu sure go ahead did you say yes yes we've had some real successes in the past 18 months the bond measure expansion of immersion programs some terrific work in our high schools Roosevelt Jefferson and Franklin particularly and superintendent Smith is well liked and approachable even though I'm often in disagreement with the majority of the board she treats me well and listens to what I think I really appreciate that but I can't vote for the evaluation as written well there are many reasons for this I'm only going to outline three and one other concern First We Take way too long in addressing obvious problems instead of solving them they are left to fester and become bigger problems than they need to be negotiations which dragged out for 10 months is the most obvious example of this everyone in the audience can
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probably name several more second we still do not have the mindset and will to involve parents and teachers upfront in our decision-making processes somehow we don't get it the idea that honest community and employee involvement can enhance decision- making not imped it third we aren't addressing in a competent manner the serious problem surrounding our Middle grades children are paying too high a price for this oversight there's also my concern about the difficulty in distinguishing whether actions which I deem errors are the superintendent herself or her reaction directions from the Schoolboard majority or co-chairs back room business I'm not there to see it so I can't fully evaluated thank you others Dr Atkins go ahead um I'll just I'll try to be fairly brief again I think um director kler said the evaluation speaks for itself and thank you to everyone who worked on putting that together and to everybody um so I mean my comment just goes back to kind of my history in this district and um starting as a parent in 1996 and going from there into volunteering in PT and so forth and so on until here we are today and looking forward to working with continue to work with you so um you know really when I was elected uh to the board in 2007 the first major thing and you could argue the major thing of the entire two terms I've been on almost two terms I've been on the board was the decision to hire Carol Smith to lead this District um we had we had many options and we listened to the community about what was the right fit for this city and we talked amongst ourselves and waited very carefully and we made absolutely the best possible decision we could have made um for this district and for the city and so I will always be proud of that as a decision um the key decision um during my service as U at the board along with it my colleagues at the time so I think it's easy to underestimate and undervalue the caliber of leadership that Carol brings to this District obviously this doesn't mean that the district is perfect far from it there's we we've heard several things tonight we're going to continue to work on a mirative issues but and when you look at the big picture which is what our job is as well as to attend to all the m details as best we can and respond to them um the momentum and the forward motion and the transformation of the culture and achievement in this District um has just been amazing and again I feel like sometimes we take for granted um that we have had a leader of the of the caliber of Carol for this District to take on the challenges um that she has on our behalf and on our kids behalf so I'm really grateful for that and knowing that we do still have so much to accomplish I'm really looking forward to um again soon as we get through this the school year and we pass our budget we're going to move into um summer work and and priority setting and working together on what we're going to try to accomplish and what we're going to tackle and focus on in in the year to come so I'm very excited for that work and just thrilled um to continue to be working with you Carol I've been busy looking through my notes because I had written up some lovely remarks but they are gone so oh well I share them with you privately um so I can believe that you are starting into your eighth year it's pretty remarkable and um I don't think we can um overestimate or overstate how uh important it is for an urban School District to have steady leadership um because I think there's so many times in urban districts where you start down a path and uh the superintendent changes the board changes something happens and all of a sudden you're moving in a different direction um so I think what I have appreciated most about um your seven plus years with us um is um is your stability and your focus on students and student needs I think there are U many many times when I see um your past in terms of your 25 years or so supporting um underserved students and uh students who were ended up landed somehow um in our community based alternative school programs um I I can see that coming through in your in your caring you're wanting to do well by all kids so um and I think that the fact that we've done our courageous conversations in such a deep way is a reflection of your work with kids who aren't necessarily making it in in our current Traditional School environment um and we have to figure that out and figure out how to help them make it um so um I was supportive of delaying the your evaluation because there were two
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big things that I was looking at this year in terms of what I wanted to see us accomplished one was the uh successful negotiations with our teachers union and while it was a long and arduous process when I think about what we accomplished for our kids I'm pretty happy um we have more instructional days we have um you more teachers in our building I mean there's just so many things around that contract that were that were good and very positive at the same time I think it's very clear that we have to repair relations with our uh Union that represents um our teachers uh the long our largest uh Workforce um and so I'm looking forward to kind of figuring out how we how we do that and how we go about it um but I think that's a a critical to-do going forward and um the sooner we we can kind of almost start working on the next contract the better um to try to help us see if we can get through that in a a different and more collaborative and uh way um I think we all want what's best for kids um and it shouldn't take almost getting to a strike to get there um so I'm actually really pleased with how where we finally landed it but it was a really painful process for everybody involved I believe um and the other thing is I wanted to be able to see where we're how we're doing with our graduation rates I mean in the end that's what matters um are we successfully graduating kids and are they ready for college and career and um especially in this uh next uh budget that we're you're proposing uh there's a huge focus on College and Career ready um and a huge emphasis um you know starting from uh prek all the way on up to kind of help our kids get there so you know the fact that our gradu uation continues to rise is very exciting I think uh we're a point behind the state at this point and I think the reason that the state the reason that the state uh Rose at all is probably because Portland Public Schools graduation rates Rose um but clearly it's another area like the contract where we have so far to go still um and again important to have some steady leadership um as we go and have a board that's working uh with you um um one I think a lot of people know that I'm not particularly pleased with how we function as a board um I don't think we're nearly as engaged and as involved as we need to be with you in leading this District um I think the fact that we don't have our committees and the rest um has been a huge Miss as far as this board is concerned and I've I'm not I'm clearly not in the majority in terms of feeling that but um I loved the way we used to work together more than I like now I feel out of the Lop as a board member and um I don't think that's healthy for our community so uh that would be my ask is to have you step in and kind of help us figure out how to lead with you um in a much more substantive way uh than we currently are um let see if there's anything else I think you need a raise um and I think that that's something we're going to be talking about at another meeting um but when I think about where you came in you didn't have big District experience and you do now and we're lucky um to have you um and uh when you see other districts around the state that are paying their superintendent far more than what we are paying you you realize there's a mess there we we've got to figure that one out as we go and we have to do it in a way that's you know uh aware of what our budget can allow for but at the same time um I think that's something that we have to we have to make some adjustments for and I think that we're all kind of looking at that and we're going to figure out how to how to get there so we appreciate that over all these years you've kind of stepped aside and said no now's not the time for a race but at some point we need to make that adjustment and uh I'm happy to step into that conversation so um so my big thing I think is that I would like us as a board to be working far more closely with you in leading the district than we've had the opportunity to since we've given up our committee so um and I I look forward to that if if we can get there so thank you so um kind of the main theme of um the evaluation um as we went through is um a real appreciation from uh the majority of the board of that the focus and steady steady leadership that you've
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provided um has provided the district with a lot of positive momentum um and we want to continue that momentum and we still feel a great sense of urgency um because there are still lots of students that need our support um and we aren't where we want to be so um I just want to start with saying thank you for your service to this District um you are uh my experience of you has been aelf less leader um there are lots of different kinds of leaders um that we find in superintendents throughout the country some are flashy some are um focused on one or two things um some seem to go with whatever the wind is taking them there's a wide variety and you have been really focused on your core issues and the issues that the board has brought and you've been able to maintain that steady leadership um and I think we're beginning to see the the the benefits I when I first joined the board three years ago um um everybody was celebrating a really big gain in graduation rates and while I celebrated I also said you know um one year I don't want to say it's easy but one year is one year I wanted to see Trend data um and now that I've been here three years we are moving absolutely in the right direction it's been consistent you don't want to see big spikes because it usually causes a red flag it means something something was wrong um you want to see steady growth and knowing that each cohort of kids is a different group of kids you're going to see some flux situation um but I've just really appreciated that steady leadership that it's um I don't want to say slow and steady because there's an urgency every group of kids we only have for a limited amount of time um but our growth and our Improvement has been steady and it's been really exciting um to be a part of that and I appreciate your leadership in that um I also want to say that um we get lots of input from folks about how superintendent doing how we're doing how their school is doing how the teacher is doing how the PE teacher doing how the dogs in the park are doing um we get lots of feedback um and I just want to let you know that um this past year uh what I've heard more often is people send people see me and they pull me aside and they just want to say you know I have to say that Portland Public Schools this year is in a better position than all and some of them have kids that are graduating or have graduated in the 12 years the 15 years the 20 years that I've been involved in this district and that doesn't happen happen by mistake it happens by you working with your staff working with the board to make sure that we are headed in a direction to see that growth so again I want to pass that on people get to share that with me I want to pass that on to you um and some things that I've appreciated your work one um director kler mentioned it before um you're focused steady steady hand on Equity um just mathematically speaking um our graduation rates would improve dramatically if we could get the students who have historically not been served by our district to raise their graduation rates um that's not to say that we're going to ignore that's why it's every student not just certain students but your focused um attention on Equity making sure it's been a long you know I um I get to see the history people who have been involved in the district for this year back in the 70s director bule last time you were on the board Equity was desegregation um this has been a constant and persistent um problem uh with our educational system and I just have appreciated your steady leadership and stepping into that so thank you for that um and I'm not going to list all the things that I see that um that give me excitement that you're with us and that you're willing to stay with us um but I will mention a couple successful um Bond work um last year um in the summer um people talk about our Equity um work not paying off but yet if you look at half of our Comprehensive High Schools race is no longer predictor that is significant work that doesn't again just happen overnight um and in fact the Gap um our racial gap between kids on track has narrowed by 10 or excuse me yeah it's been narrowed by 10 points that that is significant movement um contract while it was tough getting there I don't I can't think of a time when a superintendent is spent four months literally at the table I know we get a lot of flag about the super intendent had been there earlier I don't know how a superintendent spends 4 months at the table letting things go when you have a district of this size to run so I just want to thank you for that commitment um and the the piece that I like about it is that it's a better contract for kids one side didn't win one side didn't lose the teams were focused on what's best for kids and how do we get to a solution and your willingness to be in there working on solutions for hours on end and um as a direct result um we get to benefit from that so thank you um I'll mention equity and Contracting policies affirmative action
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I mean these are things long-standing things that this district has not made movement on and again it it works to this historically under served populations that we just haven't been we haven't been a friend to um we haven't served them well so I appreciate that I there's 11 11 different Community engagement Community process Community groups that um I just came up with off the top of my head that you're engaged in when I hear people say you don't do enough Community input or you don't have it we have Community engagement in lots of places and you are intimately involved with each of those so thank you and I'll um end with two two pieces one um you continue to look for Budget savings so we put over $3 million of savings from boiler conversions from um recovery Bond projects that then go directly to the classroom and again it's you and your staff looking for ways to do that um and then finally I'll just say that um again another place where your steady focused leadership of high school redesign um that you set out a plan it was controversial some people still communities still feel slided by it and I understand that um but somebody mentioned the Benson cap we Revisited we were able to revisit that today because the plan that you had put in place the one that you came to that you heard the community with um is beginning to work so we were able to lift that cap raise it slightly without hurting our neighborhood comprehensive that's significant and I understand people's urgency about wanting it to happen faster um but what we do to one part of this system H has an effect on other parts of the system and you have been really steady about trying to be responsive and making sure that you know that every kid in every building deserves an equal chance and you're not willing to sacrifice that for to the benefit of some um I'll stop there again I could go on I'm just really excited um and I couldn't be more pleased with your performance and thank you for your work and I agree with Bobby we need to find a way to to bring your compensation in line with um with not only this state but also across the country thank you thank you yeah student representative Davidson so I think most people have actually said all that I want to say but I'll try and touch on some of those things and add in some other stuff as well no it's all great stuff uh I'm excited about the future I mean I think uh everyone pointed out the you've done a fantastic job as superintendent of this District I think as a student I can definitely see where we're progressing and I think we still do have a lot of challenges ahead of us and none of us will disagree with that but I feel excited about it um and I'm excited because I think that if we continue with the rate we're going and with you as our superintendent not only will we overcome our challenges but we'll be stronger because of it and I think we'll come out even better than before um a few things that I've been really impressed with is I think that as far as as superintendent go especially of large districts you've been able to understand the uniqueness of our community um a lot of times you see districts trying to replicate things from other places that seem to be working and I think you've done a fairly good job of understanding what will work here and modifying things for us um and also you seem to understand the term of Investments which sometimes people get confused about about how education truly is based on investments that I can see here that we're making the right decisions for the long term that it's not just about seeing results instantly over one or two years but sometimes it's you know over a decade when you start to really see differences um I appreciate the grace with which you handle your job I mean it's really really impressive I mean we don't really realize it here as much but sometimes it's just for fun do you ever just look at other districts and let their boards are doing it's like wow you know we're in a good place so uh yes we are yeah that's right uh and really that selflessness that director B talked about I mean sometimes I just try and beat your car here actually sometimes early in the morning or late at night I try and see if I'm the the only one here but it it's never the case you're always here uh and I think that you know even with scheduling things like Steve said anytime we want to approach you you're always willing I've never had you say no I can't meet with you that's that's never been a thing you always fit find time for us and make us priority so I appreciate that um and I I do think director Regan said something that I completely agree with that we need to find a better way to support you and I think the committee system is a a thing something we definitely need to look at uh for the future so just thank you for all that you do and I'm really excited so thank anybody else got another one so director Morton couldn't be here tonight and um sent his comments so I'm going to just read those uh into the record um so these are from him I'm disappointed to miss this evening's vote on superintendent Smith performance evaluation I apologize to both my board colleagues and the superintendent for my absence hiring and evaluating the superintendent is one of the most critical pieces of work we do as a board
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as it is her leadership in partnership with a board that plays a key role in setting the direction of the district I'm sure more than one of my colleagues has already outlined District outcomes worthy of Praise increases in graduation rates reductions in our most persistent achievement gaps sustained and authentic Community engagement strategic invest ments that show positive results and the list goes on what we've done over the last year and many years prior what super smith has what superintendent Smith has led her staff to do is a wonderful example of what we can collectively accomplish even in the midst a financially anemic drastically underfunded system when we have a leader who provides both stability and vision that is what superintendent Smith has offered us as she has served the 48,000 students in our district of course her work and our work is nowhere near complete an enrollment driven system one that relies too much on the number of students in each School rather than the resources necessary to build a rigorous relevant system for our increasingly diverse student population regardless of their zip code we find too many inequities too many missed opportunities and too many of our most vulnerable students falling through the cracks and disappearing into hopelessness superintendent Smith knows this too and I trust her leadership will continue to guide us down a path meeting and exceeding our Milestones offering an example of educational Excellence for both our state and other Urban school districts around the country this will continue to be an enormous task and I encourage all stakeholders students parents teachers administrators and the 80 percenters to join the superintendent and the board in this work be critical be thoughtful and be present our superintendent leadership offers us a unique opportunity to build Upon Our Collective talents let's take a advantage of this while we have the privilege to ride the momentum of her that her leadership has made possible and Carol finally thank you for providing us with an example of leadership that confirms the importance of importance of balance and kindness listening and thoughtful action these unsung traits have acted as a foundation for our district to build key Partnerships act on important stakeholder input and drive calculated decisions to improve opportunity for each student in our district thank you for your work Carol and thank you for your leadership now actually I just want to say thank you to all of you for the thoughtfulness with which you um prepared and delivered your feedback and your remarks um both um prior to tonight and tonight and um just that it was really wonderful to get to sit and listen to all of you reflect uh and it is and to have all of you here hearing it um and being part of it but I just it's with great joy that I get to do the job that I do and there are frequently people who stop me on the street and go oh my goodness how do you do that job and I truly love this job and I love the work we get to do together and I love that we are doing what we do to make things better for kids in this District so thank you all for your board members and staff and Community for your partnership in doing that work together right it brings me joy thank you okay all right more more happiness okay we will the board will now consider resolution 4914 the superintendent's performance appreal appraisal excuse me for 2014 do I have a motion in a second move second director bile moves and director Atkins seconds the adoption of resolution 4914 Miss Houston is there any public comment there is not okay and we've already had our board discussion the board will now vote on resolution did you have another I have a question about this director Bu The Resolution we're voting on something that's upstairs in a drawer what's that the well the we're voting on a performance appraisal but we don't have any copies of it or see what we're voting on it's the same one we did right so you should have a copy of your Das and it's available for public is did we put it out lay it out for people or anything like I don't know but it's available for public review at any request the uh is this did we make any changes from when we talked about it no no we did not so it was identical thing yes and that and but we don't we're not going to have it for people it's available for public review if it's not up on the website right now it will be before the end of the meeting yeah probably be a good idea no not okay comments I don't have any other comments great no okay so the board will now vote on resolution 4914 all in favor please indicate by saying
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yes all in favor please indicate by saying yes roll call yes yes wait a minute all opposed please indicate by saying no no any abstentions okay director be's asked for a roll call vote so I will do that director Atkins yes director Regan yes director bile yes director kler yes director bule no and student representative Davidson yes yes okay resolution and director nolles yes director 4914 is approved by a vote of 521 with student representative Davidson voting yes so thank you very much everybody one more round of applause so the uh Employment contract for the superintendent was also originally on this agenda but it has uh been pulled for tonight and let me uh give a little bit of an explanation for that so over the past uh seven years Carol has been our superintendent we've seen as I said earlier a 14-point gain in the high school graduation rate and narrowing in the achievement gap between white students and students of color passage of a capital bond to begin the long road to modernizing our schools um passage of a local option Levy that provided funding for our schools as we were fighting the effects of a recession that was crippling our efforts to educate every child and most recently the superintendent led the contract negotiations as director uh rean was speaking about with P that among other things resulted in more school days for students and Provisions that allow the district to hire sooner and place more competent teachers in front of our students Provisions that the district had sought for many years some would say that these accomplishments are the result of of steady long-term leadership and it's it's true that superintendent has Smith has been with PPS for seven years more than double the national average of urban superintendents across the country and and Longevity does make a difference is there if there is a strong leader in place but it is leadership with a laser-like focus on what is best for our children that is the real determining Factor superintendent Smith has provided that LE leadership and she is nationally recognized for her leadership in this District in the seven years that superintendent Smith has been at PPS her salary has increased. 2% in 2007 she started at a significantly lower salary than her predecessor Vicky Phillips because of her inexperience as a superintendent in a major School District during the ensuing recession the superintendent refused to take any increase while the district was making Cuts elsewhere although teachers and other employees received steps in colas albeit irregularly it was only in 2013 that she received her first and only raid a cost of living raise shared by all administrators in trying to reset the superintendent compensation to a level that is fair that reflects her accomplishments and that makes PPS competitive in the market to attract and retain superintendence and allows for recalibration for our other employees the board is considering many things among these are the change in the position of the district during her leadership the experience and longevity of the superintendent the compensation of other superintendents and their experience levels across the country and the size and situation of their districts and the current market we have reviewed many of these things we're pulling the um consideration of the contract off of the agenda day so that we have time as a board we're going to form a small task force made up of directors Atkins and Regan who have been our most long serving board members um to review the information that we're able to find about superintendent compensation across this country country and in in the region and in at the same time considering all the other things that I mentioned and we'll we'll be reporting back to the public um we hope by our next board meeting uh if not that the meeting after that with where we are landing on the superintendent's compensation and at that time we will um vote on her contract so thank you very much for your patience uh as we uh consider this okay now we will we'll move to our next um agenda item which is inter District transfers the board has previously discussed this item at our May 12th meeting superintendent Smith would you like to provide any additional comments no you had an extensive discussion about this at our last meeting um Judy Brennan who's the director of enrollment and transfer um Services did the presentation last time it is available for questions if people have questions okay we will now consider resolution 4916 2014 inter District student transfers do I have a motion so moveed and a second second director Atkins moves and director curler seconds
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the motion to adopt resolution 4916 Miss Houston is there any citizen comment on this no there is not no and is there any additional board discussion from what we did last meeting can I just make a couple coms director B um I just want to make a couple comments I'm not going to rehash my comments from last time but I just want to let folks know that I will not be supporting this resolution um primarily because um of some of the issues I discussed the last last week um primarily at Kelly Elementary where I feel like we are prioritizing students outside the district over some of our neighborhood schools so thank you other comments Dr Atkins I'll just briefly want to appreciate again um staff for folks who weren't able to be at the previous discussion where they laid out kind of the complexities and the challenges with a law that had some unclear provisions and even contradictory pieces to it and um where the state is still trying to make itself clear about how districts are supposed to carry out this law and we'll probably have to come back to it so anyway just to say thank you to the staff for the hard work in making sense of this and coming up with a workable solution and one that's going to have to be flexible just by necessity um and one that's really focused on what's best for for all the the families that we serve and how we could best move forward so thanks again to staff okay any other comments all right the board will now vote on resolution 4916 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no any extensions no 4916 I you're abstaining okay comment 4916 does not have let's see one two three yes four okay 4916 is approved by a vote of four to one with and with one exstension with student representative Davidson voting yes yes thank you okay at this time we move on to our next agenda item which is the additional criteria for high school ad specs again the board previously discussed this item at its May 12th meeting um I'm I'm guessing given the earlier comments we will have some other discussion super Smith would you like to provide any other comments um yes I think we actually sort of began the discussion during the um Bond advisory committee and I'm GNA ask Jim Owens to come on up and um basically continue the conversation and the dialogue and respond to questions that board members have that may have been generated by that earlier discussion Jim Owens thank you Smith and good evening okay first let's get our resolution on the table before we start a discussion okay we now consider resolution 4917 directing amendments to the longrange facility plan student capacity model and related comprehensive high school education specifications to include additional criteria do I have a motion that's a that's a mouthful some second a second director B moves and director Atkin seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4917 Miss Houston any citizen comment we have one Scott Bailey okay Mr Bailey you were here and I'm sure you know the rules about public comment so I'm not going to give them again thank you um 12 12 minutes there was there was actually supposed to be two of us and one of us is sick so no six minutes either just just a tiny bit of understanding so I'm here on uh behalf tonight of our Portland our schools my name is Scott Bailey um our Portland our school schs as you know as a staunch supporter of the bond we strongly feel the need for this bond to be successful and for 30 years of bond work so that all our schools are safe for kids and are uh modernized for 21st century education um we have questions about the proposed 37 million shift in funds many of them were raised by Kevin Spellman earlier we we don't know uh what the money exactly is going to we don't know how the dollar amount was calculated we um we're unsure of what Ed specs are going to be changed what's involved in that there's just a lot of specifics that aren't out there until the board booked tonight apparently there's a little bit of detail about the money but that's the first that's been out there and I haven't even seen the board book um the use of value engineering in seems to be misused as Mr Spelman said so it's there's just seems to be no transparency at this point about where those dollars are
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going um and it's been suggested publicly that the increasing cost was due to community and teacher push back well maybe some but I'm wondering if if some of it was just that the initial estimates were too low and that once we got into down into the detail that we found out was going to cost more and if that's the case just come out and say it you know we know this District hasn't done a high school in what 25 30 years 40 years something like that we know that this is complex it's a it's it's challenging task just be outfront with it these questions also raise some other questions and it comes back to we have no educational vision driving this like we need we have no CTE e Vision we're having to kind of invent it as we go along in these high schools the planning timeline appears to be too short um it seems like the education side of the house has not been engaged and that's a huge it hasn't helped and and frankly some of these are your responsibility and some of these are your responsibility uh there seems to be no structured teacher participation in the bond work um and finally um the the bond accountability committee is only getting its information from staff it it needs to reach out more to the rest of the community to get more information um I'd like 30 more seconds just to hit one or two more points if I could please um 30 some details on how the rest of the bond will be impacted are really important and I want to say for example everybody goes back and looks at seismic the seismic strengthening in terms of the individual schoolwork that's in the bond frankly from from our point of view are of marginal value they don't bring a school up to full protection they they help with some uh making exit of the building easier but they're not a guarantee um so we should look carefully at whether that's part that should be kept or not uh Mr Bailey your your 30 seconds in fact it's 45 so thank you so much for being here tonight and providing the comments appreciate that okay now we're to board discussion of the resolution thank you Mr Owens and maybe just for staff I mean maybe Jim could start by just kind of taking us through what the staff recommendation is and the information that would be great right um thank you I'm prepared to do that um last Monday May 12th CJ Sylvester Chief School monitorization presented a staff report recommending additional criteria for Franklin Grant and Roosevelt High School schematic designs and related fiscal impacts she described the logic the pros and the cons including risk factors several of which have been highlighted tonight by our bond accountability committee a resolution is included in tonight's agenda directing staff to develop and bring forward for board adoption amendments to the longrange facilities plan student capacity model or methodology and related Comprehensive High School head specs to include the additional High School criteria furthermore she asked that the Board of Education concurrence uh staff shall proceed I should say with Board of Education concurrence staff shall proceed with the modified schematic designs for Franklin Grant and Rosevelt high schools along with related budget increases as were outlined so at this time I'd like to um answer any questions that you may have regarding the resolution in terms of the scope and content of it and any additional questions you may have regarding the uh the projects themselves director B so I'm I'm just repeating some of what was started how about we start with um the extra scope what what's the change in scope specifically what are we buying um and then um whether or not um my experience of this has been that uh as we looked at improved teacher ratios as we looked at more classes students taking which is has been um feedback from our community um that we've changed some of that scope so how did we get to where we are um how about we start with okay great question uh thank you for the uh trying to get to the essence of what this change is about um I like to think
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in terms of the projects in terms of three parameters uh scope budget and schedule and all three of those as you know are interconnected to one another when you change one element you impact the others in in varying ways uh when the bond was developed uh prior to the November um election uh the size of the schools were planned for a certain student capacity that was based on a student capacity methodology that was developed as part of our longrange school facilities plan um the metric that we used for student capacity was based on square feet per student and was actually aligned with different types of educational spaces so the planning targets that were developed um assume that we would have a capacity of, 1500 students core for the uh roselt High School 1,200 uh classroom capacity and then 1,500 student capacity classroom and core for for Franklin and for Grant uh with those numbers um we had certain size expectations for the schools and we made assumptions for how much of it would be new construction how much of it would be uh historic Rehabilitation uh since that time the scope of the high schools has increased you may recall last year the size of the schools for Franklin and for Grant increased to 1,700 students and for Rosevelt it increased to 1350 students classroom 1700 core uh that was a significant increase in size uh we subsequently examined criteria around uh greater student access to to credits uh for graduation and that resulted in being able to address reducing the student to teacher ratio and it looked like it made um it makes a lot of sense in terms of criteria to be applied but that was a second scope increase so all told Franklin has increased in size from what originally was envisioned by about 20% in terms of overall square footage uh with size comes comes cost and so as the cost estimates were developed particularly since we've been able to move into the uh schematic design phase and we have both our design team and our uh Builders uh recall that we selected our construction manager general contractors for both the Rosevelt and the Franklin project in collaboration with staff uh they updated the budget estimates and so what was presented in CJ's report last week is what the additional cost was uh was uh providing um I can summarize by saying um in addition to the uh additional 4 $6 million uh it's broken out in terms of where it would be identified in the program uh as I think Kevin Spelman mentioned the bond program is a uh is a fixed face value amount and so as we look at moving uh as we look at project Scopes we have to align budgets with them so we were looking at uh identifying additional funds for uh future projects uh specifically the uh summer Improvement projects uh and really it was presented as a postponement uh because the uh funding was uh specifically identified to be uh somewhat offset by other items that may uh provide us an opportunity later such as the uh Bond premium which is an additional amount that we don't currently have access to but it could be potentially brought to bear uh we'll know more uh about that in in a year from now uh we're also looking at a a different approach to how the escalation uh component component which is another contingency line item in the bond program might be allocated for scope increase and then finally as we had discussed previously $10 million from the uh program Reserve uh 10 million of the 20 million that's that's identified that as you know is uh is allocated based on board discretion and so an argument was made that half of that would be used to identify this the scope increase uh schedule impacts at this point um have uh not are being impacted um as you'll hear when uh staff presents the quarterly update at the May 27th meeting we'll identify what what this does to our balance scorecard effectively it puts our schedules very much a risk for the Franklin project and the Rosevelt project so that's a long way around explaining in part what what is obtained with the additional funding and the impact that it has on scop schedule thank you a I hope a quick followup I don't know if it's quick or not but my part will be quick um so they the bond accountability committee reminded us
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Kevin reminded us that um the long range facility plan really said that building your way out of a capacity issue is the most expensive way that we would that the longrange facility plan would just say try to use other lovers such as boundary review or something like that um to do that and so I'm sure staff has done some um we couldn't take 200 students out of Franklin that's not enough to open another high school but they could be re reassigned perhaps to another high school was that considered and um can you talk to me a little bit about the trade-offs or what was the thinking about that we not evaluated the office of school modernization staff has not uh studied that uh operational aspect because we could be at this point right looking at this and value engineering saying wow we're really out of budget it looks like we have to bring this back down to 1500 to fit within the budget we have if we don't go with a larger scope in budget that would be something that staff would need to evaluate okay questions director Atkins could you speak um give little more detail about the value engineering piece and what that includes what that entails value engineering is a industry term that uh involves a uh design team and Builder uh team effort to look at the work scope and uh connect the contractor means and methods and uh identify how the designer and tends to to do the design itself and to identify areas where price reductions can be achieved uh ve goes value engineering for short goes in both directions ve can result in increased cost uh also in uh decrease cost in the case of both uh Roosevelt and Franklin uh the ve netted out as an increase however there was a significant effort initially the teams found that the cost was sign signicantly higher and so they actually were able to bring it down from what it might have been to the numbers that we're we're presenting now the only numbers you've seen of course is the combination of the three high schools Les we not forget Grant High School is being included in this as well so the effort that the Roosevelt and the Franklin teams went through was to look at the full scope look at uh Building Systems and try to uh make it as efficient as possible again based on input from the general contractor based on input from the designer and the owner uh we did make an effort to try to stay on the program that had been approved in the uh educational specifications for comprehensive high schools and so with that the team primarily focused on what we would call fit and finish changes building envelope materials uh mechanical electrical Plumbing Systems uh a comprehensive look at all of the scope in the work uh but we we worked very hard to maintain the program as it's identified in the educational specifications um one of the potential uh one additional area of analysis would be to start reducing program because reducing program will also result in reducing cost and reducing program examples are uh eliminating the auxiliary gym for example uh reducing the size of cafeterias uh narrowing the corridors uh reducing the size of classrooms those are program type issues that we certainly would be able to look at more more fully so just a follow on that so was the net um proposed increase for the volum engineering is that mainly related to the change in the scope and the increase of classrooms and the size or a separate discussion just about the fit and finishes and Longevity and the quality that that the designers and and Architects felt we needed or is it a combination of the two it was actually a combination it was um the the chronology of these changes for have occurred over a relatively short period of time and really I'm going back to the master plan approvals from December of 2013 so with the uh with the planning that went into identifying the scope and the budget changes to go to the larger sizes for the 1700 student capacity for example uh very quickly then we also started to study the impact for additional uh classrooms and so all of that was taken on together so where we are currently in terms of the financial information that was presented last week is that's that's the cumulation for all of it if we were to go back to the reduced size then obviously that would have an impact on the on the budgets but there's also a component of it that is just around further study of the of the finishes and materials as well we pretty much have run that U as tightly as possible like there's very very little opportunity to drive that further and of course each school is is different um we're uh we're about to present the schematic design recommendations for Franklin High School which is about a month ahead of Roosevelt High School right now uh Rosevelt High School is currently going
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through extensive value engineering and although have a certain amount of confidence in hitting the targets that we've established we we still have several weeks to go before we can have uh have more Comfort um I don't feel comfortable as the executive director of osm coming forward with a schematic design Rec recommendation uh to you unless I have a sense of confidence that we can build it on time on budget and per the schedule and so right now the schedule uh component is is putting enormous amount of pressure on being able to make be able to make these changes and then still stay on our schedule which for both high schools as as we know is for the fall of 2017 others director B the bond account accountability people say they don't know where $36 million is going is that because you haven't told them or because you don't know too I I do know I have not briefed the bond accountability committee you haven't told them where is it where is it going planning to brief them on on the individual projects this Friday when we go over the schematic design review for Franklin and then they'll know whether the $36 million is going and have a deal on it where where is the $36 million going they'll have understanding of of how it's being allocated and what the Scopes are specifically that relate to it so we'll be going into detail with them relative to the uh the programmatic elements in terms of what the dollars per square feet costs are for the building hard costs and site costs we'll do a a fairly Deep dive so that they can have an understanding of of how the funds are being being allocated I think what um what Kevin Spelman presented tonight was um questioning the the use of some of the bond funds that weren't intended for scope changes for example the use of escalation uh as a bond program category was intended for escalation uh inflation purposes not for scope changes we also identified use of uh borrowing if you will from future uh Bond projects the summer work to be used for the high schools that also was not originally envisioned so part of the conversation that needs to T take place with the bond accountability committee is is more uh more visibility in terms of how staff develop these these numbers so we have the uh we have an increase in the in the uh square foot costs is that a huge chunk of that 36 million we do have an increase we didn't figure that out or that's new or we actually show the information that led to uh how that how that changed over time since since the bond uh passed in in the fall fall of 2012 of course we've seen uh inflation occur we've seen increase in costs of construction materials and so we're trying to account for that by allocating escalation to these projects we didn't account for that in the beginning I mean I could have told you probably and I'm stupid on this stuff but I could have told you that the costs of materials are going to increase guess what they're going to increase and two years down the line too we did do that we did take that into account we didn't do it enough or no again that was intended for not for scope changes that was intended for cost changes in terms of materials cost of Labor and the like we had a program level component uh escalation that we uh identified $45 million uh to spread across the bond projects over an eight-year period so we've been allocating the escalation to the summer projects uh to our other projects like Fab and like the two high schools currently and doing it in a way that allows us to keep track of the changes in the in the square footage costs so so we didn't estimate enough for the changes in the square footage costs we we we in my opinion we estimated enough for escalation what we didn't estimate for was scope increase so scope increase in terms of how large we uh we build these schools was not assumed to be larger than what in the bond meas so you got a little so when you build the Escalade the you build the new stuff then you've got an increase there too in other words the you've got you're now building the the changes in the scope with a higher right so we so Franklin High School for example has grown by 20% in terms of the total square footage of the building of the buildings of the of the site so with that comes added cost because because it's it's bigger than it was intended and with cost they build in escalation so that what they're asking for us to do they're they're saying yes to build Franklin it will continue to increase so what we need to build Franklin has both
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the cost to build and the anticipated increase which then further reduces what we have available is that what you're asking I think director bu probably not but it's thank you for the explanation the uh I think it's important to note that the changes in scope have been changes in scope that the board has approved so that's it's it's it's on us right so did we if we're adding things classes class and we we have not yeah classroom several classroom we have not looked to see what we should decrease yet is that what you're saying that's what I got out of what you said in other words you got these huge foyers and when I've looked at those I'm going it's pretty big foyer so if we cut fourer down we haven't thought about that yet or we if we've got we're adding 12 classrooms we no longer need as many uh teacher uh stations outside of the classroom maybe no we we have identified where we have opportunities to uh to resize to reshape to to make smaller in some instances fundamentally though when we add the number of classrooms that we're adding and with additional classrooms comes Extended Learning areas teacher uh workstation areas uh increase in common spaces at all proportionately increases so theet effect on the project is uh increased uh increased space total square footage if you will and with that comes increased cost but we haven't really subtracted figured out have we figured out a a some sort of a proposal to decrease the space in other places we've we've looked at decreasing and have done quite a bit of that in the case of Franklin and in the case of Rosevelt we're still in the process of that doesn't show up in this resolution or is it going to show up when we make the resolution this resolution is actually independent of the budgets for the for the projects the this resolution specifically identifies uh looking at the student capacity methodology that was in our long-range facilities plan and also uh modifying the Comprehensive High School Educational specifications to resize the program and by program I'm referring to the educational spaces um their their sizes their configurations the different features to the spaces for example what is a classro look like in a Portland Public School Comprehensive High School there's certain physical characteristics to it that we're accounting for and and this plan that we have allows us to u to construct to to meet the requirements of the educational specification and the grant the the Grant High School money that's part of this kind of resolution are we adding classrooms to Grant too we are we actually are using the Franklin Model for Grant because they're very similar so we replicated the planning around Franklin to to the grant uh site so Grant though is several years out and so we'll continue to monitor that but we're very deliberate to ensure that all three of the high schools are being accounted for in terms of the increased Scopes go ahead somebody else thank you Steve director kler uh too long yeah so um uh so the the bond accountability committee had a host of things that they were concerned about some of it was just not understanding and they were just didn't understand um so kind of the maybe the definition of value engineering because I was confused too so I was thought value engineering means cost going to go down um but but I have I have a process question because you're going to brief them on Friday I'm uncomfortable um we we're counting on the bond accountability committee uh in a lot of ways um and so I there's some uncomfort even though I I actually think what we're going to do in the high schools I'm supportive of I think it's the right thing to do um from a process standpoint I want to have before you come before we do a resolution to have the bond accountability committee be fully briefed and they might raise issues um that neither you nor ourselves have thought about um do you have a problem with um waiting until they're fully brief before coming to us the next um time that staff was coming before you was to present the schematic design for Franklin High School um I'm hesitant I certainly agree certainly from a transparency standpoint we intend we want to brief the bond accountability committee on the details of it but we um we also have these
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schedules um that we're on and um however as as a board you you choose if you want to delay that um I guess uh I would caution that our ability to deliver Franklin on our current schedule um is already jeopardized and that may be okay I just I feel a responsibility to indicate what the impacts are if if it takes uh more more time to to go through this and so in the case of uh briefing the bond accountability committee absolutely we're doing that this Friday and if you would prefer for me to come back again to talk about what what they learned from the briefings I'm happy to do that so I mean I don't when's our next board meeting well let's get all of our comments down before we make those kinds of decision okay well it was a it's a question that I have right when's our next meeting yeah uh next 27th 27th which is the which is when the Franklin recommendation is is coming forward so so is seven days significant in your in your view in significant in terms of being able to brief the bond accountability committee no we we can significant for us to not wait for that to happen Okay what what's significant is um the way it's currently configured and the way the schematic design is laid out if we're going to change that that's significant if we're going to reduce the size of it back to what it was in the bond for example as a 1500 student capacity uh high school that that's a very significant change if we go to the middle uh the middle uh plan it's a 1700 uh student capacity high school so we have the ability to make those changes it's just as we get as we get further into June and perhaps into July it starts to put pressure on our ability to proceed with the balance of the design remember this is just the very early part of the design and then plan the construction and already our schedules are telling us that we're extremely tight in being able to have that work completed I'm not sure if that answered your question capil but it's okay Dr ains yeah thank you so much I mean I think um last week I I was feeling um heartburn but was willing to proceed based on the staff's recommendation and knowing that this is um this is where we were and the fact that um the board has already made the decision and voted to increase the size to 1700 I mean I think it's important that we recognize that and that we not um further contribute to the the delays and and um prolonging of this before before we can move forward by us then deciding to change our mind and undo something we've already done that said it gives me a lot of pause when our B Bond accountability committee does not have the information and it's not in support so that's that that that escalates my heartburn to a new level speaking of escalation so um um I'm you know again it's the continual it just feels like this board has has done more than its fair share of contributing to this delay and I'm really really concerned about that um um and it's hard for me to I think the SE to me the 1700 decision has has been made and given the growth in the district and what we've learned over this period of time I think we need to stick with that that would be my opinion at this point um in terms of the extended scope in the additional classroom spaces and all that piece I'm still um you know again based on the staff recommendation willing to support that because if we are learning through this and we are finding out what what is needed in order to build high schools the way we need them to be built um um but again it just gives me significant pause when our experts are saying they don't support that and that we can't afford to do that um and as as Carol was mentioning does that mean that we end up doing something less than for these first two schools and then have a revised estimate going forward for the future ones um so I'm just interested in hearing what other folks have to say because this is a this is a real dilemma but the the most important thing to me is that we keep moving forward on this and that we not create additional um create add DeLay So I'm not sure if the additional you know you you would need the certainty that the decision next week right you came with a schematic design would support the schematic design you've been directed to create so that puts you in a uh very difficult you already are in a difficult position makes it more difficult um so I'm not sure you know where that where that leaves us again I just feel like we need to take account accountability as a board for the decisions we've already made that's sort of set this in motion just have a quick question uh Jim we're still the 17 the increase of the 1700 student capacity was the first
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change this change has to do with program and it's still for 1700 students isn't that correct same number of students it's just programming changes actually the answer to that is is somewhat complicated um by by by adding by adding classroom adding space um you're increasing student capacity um however you're also providing more opportunities with having additional classrooms for students and you're reducing the student to teacher ratio so there's a there's a a cost benefit uh analysis if you will associated with that so um although notionally the 1700 student capacity and again it's using the model that's in our long range plan that this resolution before you will actually have staff go back and reevaluate and change and change the capacity methodology again our our method is is a function of number of square feet per student in different types of educational space so what we are planning to do is to go back and look at that U and ultimately 1700 would be what I think the the U modified methodology would need to would need to reflect so it's not our intention to have the schools be more than 7 00 students is that a fair statement under our current model they are larger than 1700 pardon me under our current model with this additional with these additional classrooms they actually deliver more than 1,700 students but what we're considering the change is what I'm asking you we back at the end of the change if we adopted what we have in front of us today then we're still talking about 1700 students is that a fair statement yes um the the document the resolution before you uh ask staff to go back and re-evaluate the capacity methodology one and two it's asking staff to go and modify the Comprehensive High School Educational specifications specifically the area program part that addresses how many uh classrooms how many square feet per different types of educational space so we we have to go back and and do that uh Kevin Spelman mentioned having the source documents precede the the programmatic changes in the bond so it's really going back to align those documents with the work that we're doing but it's u i I can't give you a clear answer in terms of what what that will do in terms of student capacity U if it's if it's indeed a function of space but staff is already doing that work I mean you're pretty far down the road on that work so what's the answer is it 1,700 students is it 18 is it 16 with with the additional criteria that is presented here addition crer increasing um it's um it's CL it's closer to 1800 in in terms of that and part of what we need to do what we intend to do is to go back and reevaluate that um but it does in in a part the methodology doesn't account for a change in student teacher ratios currently our model um accounts for the size of the spaces and the educational facilities and so if you triple the number of teachers in a school after it was built it wouldn't change student capacity similarly if you if you have the number of teachers that were in school that wouldn't change the capacity you see the difference it's one is a one's a function of teacher FTE the other is a function of of space right that's that's the difference and that's that's the the difficulty in going back and reevaluating this thank you others T Rican so I had asked early on whether or not um we could wait on this until board members could get a more full briefing and I would pose the same question um I'm looking at two Community groups who I absolutely respect um both the bond accountability committee which is experts in the field who are raising way too many questions uh and good questions and I'm looking at uh our Portland our schools which is the strongest Advocate we could possibly have in support of continuing this bond for the next 30 Years raising questions so I'm I'm going to be a no vote if we're going to go forward with this tonight there are too many questions out there I think we need to make sure that that these groups get their questions answered and I would like to be part of of some of those discussions as well you asked a question about whether we've looked at other options boundary changes schedule changes is whatever it might be and it's the first I'm hearing that we're building to 1800 I'm going to go back and clarify that one too because the number is for 1700 students and the the um considerations I'm going to read to you
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what the because it was programming considerations that and what Jim's referring to in terms of um number of courses students have access to and number of teachers in the building changes the number of classrooms and also so what we said considerations were students taking an average of 7.6 credits a year so a larger n so an average of 30 credits over their High School career rather than the required 24 so if we just assume every student only takes 24 credits and you and you build it from there you end up with something different than they have access to more classes than just the required number of credits um assuming teacher an increased teacher Workforce so that we've got um as we continue to build back teaching capacity it it adds numbers of teachers to the building even even though they're serving the same number of students was reducing class sizes and then some of the considerations that have come up in the course of the process um have been to try and accomplish teachers working in no more than two classrooms teachers sh if they're sharing classrooms having them be related subjects so that you've got Math teachers sharing with math math teachers science teachers sharing with science teachers and that that became a more scheduling uh complexity in terms of what kind of rooms you need then to do it um having appropriate teacher planning periods that are linked which then is like when you're looking at maximizing use of classrooms but then having teachers who want to be able to do um compatible planning periods it adds more complexity to what classrooms need to be available and then there were additional scheduling variables in including unique equipment requirements for various subject areas so I think part of what's emerged in the dialogue about specific School planning has been just more complexity in the scheduling so so it's not number of kids it's number of classrooms to serve the number of kids in fact Ser makes a great point when I mentioned under our current capacity methodology by revising it it would be revised such that 1700 would be the number supported still 17 and we're using I'm hearing capacity being used with in different ways I think in part of the descriptor but the 1700 is still the the number of kids are planning for does it give you then different flexibility given different schedules over time probably but that's the thinking that's gone into the additional criteria and the other one I would say so your next meeting is on the 27th you've got a a bond accountability committee between here and there the attempt was to try and separate this resolution from the moment you were doing schematic design on Franklin you could have them be at the same moment and if it's doesn't line up that what you decide on this doesn't line up with the schematic design it but just pushes that ahead if it does line up they can be compatible in the same meeting so I mean I think you are are in the exact tension of trying to keep you know Integrity around the decisions being made and keep to the timelines but but is that possible yes well it to me it C it seems like we are having the opportunity to ask the questions tonight that the bond accountability committee is asking as well yes um so I'd like to just continue the questioning if that's if the uh my colleagues all agree that that's how we should move forward and we'll see where we end up on the motion if we decide um to wait there's also uh I would entertain a motion to um postpone for a definite period of time which would be the next one but let's go ahead and finish our debate or our discussion now and see where we end up at the end of that do that work with everybody okay no Dr I'm G to be on no vote that's table I I'm not I am not voting today well we we're just having discussion so and Ruth has the floor can we let her talk thank you so I just had a um I guess another process question so maybe I'm just sort of missing something I think if so if the schematic design that you're planning to bring forward on the for Franklin on the 27th would reflect this proposed expanded scope and the costs and all the other things so in terms of I mean and that's where staff with the input of um The Architects and engineers and community and teachers and everybody else has landed as this is the best way you feel we should proceed even with unbalanced all the risks that you've outlined and that have been raised is that correct in in terms of this being uh an alternative yes this is an alternative to to do that but there's there's again I'm hesitating because there's there's consequences there's tradeoffs there there's risk aspects both to the program as well as to the project and so by by constructing these larger there's more there's more cost associated with so there has to be a tradeoff somewhere to accommodate the the extra cost what we currently have in the schematic design
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recommendation for Franklin is to construct to the larger size with the additional classrooms if you will the additional High School criteria that was outlined in the staff report from last last Monday evening so that's that's what we currently have drawn what the architect is prepared to present with our uh Project Director and we have the budget delineated for what what that will cost so um I mean I think what we generally hear from staff after they have worked there uh through all the details of the challenges before them is the tradeoffs and on balance we the recommendation being this is how we should move forward so that's what I'm that's what I'm looking for that's what I'm looking for is this the best given that there are trade-offs and risks associated with either approach I mean that's and you know and then the other piece too is trying to understand if to me again the 1700 is a decision we've already made the expanded scope is one that sort of has evolved over the last few months and so to I'm still not entirely clear on the consequences just in terms even of just moving this project forward I get that if we were to go back to 1500 that would be a significant complete upheaval so you're talking about you're talking about the additional criteria that just right so I guess I'm trying to understand understand a little bit better what the impact in other words are the were there um how far down the path did the team go to where they could pretty quickly get back to that if we were to say we didn't want the expanded scope or is that really what the team has decided this is what we need to do risks and all and we need to move forward I'm trying to get a better sense of that and then what the impact would be if we did decide to scale back on the ex um expanded scope right well well the risks are in scope in schedule in budget and so the budget is the one that usually gets the most attention and in order to fund The increased scope we have to reach into future Bond projects uh the IP projects there's certain amount that's needed for Franklin for that we also have to uh let's we not forget the $10 million that was identified for staff to bring forward when the schematic design was presented that allocated amount for Franklin will be identified and then thirdly the uh the use of escalation dollars uh the program component for scope not just for escalation so those risk elements manifest across the program across all the projects that we're doing and so it essentially reduces um reduces our contingency base to to do this work over the eight-year timeline so while we are able to construct Franklin at this increased size and I think we've indicated with staff concurrence we would do that we we can do that from a constructibility standpoint we can build Franklin to that larger size but the impacts are again on the budget side it does stress the the schedule although pretty confident we can we can hit Franklin's schedule and then the scope of course it's a it's a larger facility so I guess I'm still not getting a clear sense of how strong if we did not do what's in this um resolution and if we just moved ahead as we have been my question is what's the so no change in the scope right no but and no probable is there a change in the budget if we there would still be a change in the budget but not nearly to degree that's been identified now so it would be considerably less it wouldn't require uh use of the IP the Improvement project uh funds for for future projects um so we we could easily go back to that to that size standard if you will and what about schedule Jim tradeoff is you don't you don't have the same flexibility again for the lowering the student teacher ratio you don't have the same opportunity for the credits you you reduce the student driven value component that is really what's driving the recommendation I mean we're not recommending building the school larger because we want larger schools we're we're doing it because you know the impact for for the students so that's that's another trade-off aspect of going back to the smaller size I I I understand all that I'm just interested in what the difference would be in the budget and the schedule if we did not adopt this resolution so if if we don't adopt this resolution then which means we're not making any of those programmatic we're we're not accounting for the programmatic changes I don't have that information uh handy right now well we would I would go back and I I can get it very very quickly because I I know I anticipated that if we fall back to a smaller scope what that does budget wise for Franklin Rosevelt and Grant so how far down the road is the staff in doing the schematic design would this mean
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that we would have to pause and allow them more time so that the schedule becomes even more stretched if we decided not to approve this resolution it's it's actually easier to go to to take out scope than it is to add scope in so uh in terms of the design teams um we we would be able to in my opinion in the case of Franklin in particular to go back and adjust it downward uh similarly for Roosevelt we we could do the same there okay in terms of it so I can produce that information thank you just just to follow up on that do you have any estimate of how how long it would take to if you put a pause on the expanded scope piece for the schematic design and went back to the 1700 um as it was before how much what it kind of impact how long it would take before you were ready to come forward with the schematic design just approximately so wouldn't wouldn't be able to come forward on the 27th next next Tuesday but probably the the next board meeting after that the direction to the design team would would they would have to redraw their elevations and they would have to reshape um their structural implication implications because we were adding an additional floor for some of the classrooms so they would have to go back and and do that I confident they could do it within two weeks and there'd be an additional cost of course for that I mean again it's yeah that's why I'm asking right yeah Dr B 22 million for earthquake retrofitting out temporarily we would use funds that are currently identified for the seismic the Ada the roofing um and depending on if other fund sources become available to us I mentioned the bond premium then some of that would be offset with with those funds funds just it's premature uh to indicate that we would have those funds so we we have accomplished quite a bit already in the way of sizmic improvement and and Roofing but it would have an impact ultimately if we weren't able to to refund those I would be very interested in what that impact actually would be when you come back if if we're not able to refund it you mean no if we're not able to is there is school y not going to get an upgrade and so we kill a few extra kids because we don't give them upgrade or something like that I wanted to kind of I wanted to kind of make sure I understand Prov what that impact is I have it by school and by work scope thank you that would be helpful appreciate it hello student representative Davidson thank you so if one of our considerations is that students Tak an average of 6 7.6 credits what were we what was the number we were assuming that were taking before now now if it wasn't 7.6 has that changed or is this just to be able to give those 1700 students it's less now I don't actually know what the number is right now I know there's an average acct done on graduation requirements so but I'm saying 24 was is graduation requirements was I think part of the number that was used at the Ed specs and in fact our students take significantly more classes and that in order to get to the 24 so okay or some students do not all students but a lot of students well and we're in a position where we need to provide that opportunity so and we're able to now much of our successful strategy in raising our graduation rate is by having significantly more course offerings that students have opportunity to take so right okay so uh just to give you guys an idea of where I'm at uh I feel like we're really setting a precedent here on the unofficial precedent because not only for staff but for you know future dags as well um and I'm really uncomfortable right now because I feel like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place where we either we approve without the bond accountability committee's approval or recommendations sorry or we push the project farther off track and that really makes me uncomfortable um I see some of the concerns that I have being that I I still feel like there needs to be more specificity and I feel like if we approve this we risk not only the future projects of this Bond but future bonds as well you know voters will not be pleased if we if we can't finish some of our projects because we spent too much at the beginning you I'm really concerned about this um I mean but I'm also really appreciative of what this tries to do so I understand that we're I want to see schools be as equal as possible I realize there's a learning curve and we we should be factoring in that learning curve but also I don't want to be able to look at the schools that were built at the beginning of the bond cycle and afterwards and see major differences in the opportunities available to those students so I have those concerns but I would just like to you know say to you all if we vote no when if at all will we be adding these criteria will it be later in this Bond at the next Bond after that I mean I think we need to be thinking about that when these issues
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come up when will be we be addressing them so so I think you know generally we review the long range facilities plan every 10 years and and specs and my guess is that the last high schools that we do are going to be very different from the first high schools we do because of the number of years in between but I totally appreciate your comments Andrew and and agree that we want to be as um we want to we want to build the best high schools possible for the students right now so you're absolutely right about the Rock and the hard place other uh director rean so superintendent Smith you went through the considerations in terms of students taking average of 7.6 credits and U trying to reduce a student student teacher ratio which I think we all want to do those to me are kind of Givens especially since we had the parent complaint and we've kind of worked out where we're going next my question is on the next page to the maximum extent feasible teachers work in no more than two classrooms related subjects share classrooms appropriate teacher pointing periods are linked additional VAR for schedule including unique unique equipment requirements full-time instructors part-time instructors so my question on that on those is are those nice to haves or those must haves they're ones that reflect current practice in buildings and we actually had um building staff in both Franklin and Roosevelt work on schedules and and operationalize the designs um and look at what's current practice around where you want teachers with common planning periods where so I mean this is really truly operationalizing but I guess I'm just looking at if a nice to to have is going to cost us $18 million then we need to know what's a nice to have and what's a must have um and I guess I'm also curious to know whether we have an opportunity during the student work day to have um you know we had at one point talked about teachers having a staggered schedule where some would come in a little bit earlier and some would stay a little bit later and then all of a sudden you extend you know all of a sudden you're using classes more efficiently and I don't know if that's even an option so I don't know if those things have been looked at so that you're not spending money on building you're just so there are a number of other levers that we could be using at this point so we could be doing things that are staggering schedules we could be looking we can't could be looking at boundaries so we could go back to the 1500 capacity instead of the 1700 and just know that we're as we have um changes that we're assuming that we will be doing boundary changes as part of this and so assume that so we could be yes we could be doing some of some other mitigation kinds of strategies and I think um so yes so I'm not just to follow up I'm not interested in having us go back to 1500 I think the larger the high school the more opportunities for kids and I certainly want kids to be able to take as many credits as possible during their High School careers so I'm just trying to understand what is the flexibility outside of that that wouldn't require us to spend another $18 million on expanding even even with these recommendations we're still looking at 100% classroom utilization for general education classrooms and science classrooms so there's a portion of the educational spaces that already will be challenging us as a district in terms of the teaching pedagogy so as as we went through uh I'm glad mention was made that we did work with a building level leadership to to Really drill into the schedules and to see how they would operationalize the the teaching in these in these spaces so the feedback that we received is this would be more palatable than what we had been looking at previously so hopefully that came across but that's an important component to this follow on that but I mean but the even additional cost would have been one classroom per teacher which we know we we just we could not do that so that that truly would be nice to have um and that's that's not possible so I mean I think the work that was done that again I mean we we have received we had said okay you know it's just it's when you get down to it for me it's it's hearing our bound accountability committee saying they're um they're concerned they don't know they don't have the information that's that's what's really escalating this for me but we did hear all along the way the work that the principles did to really um figure out how to make this how to make this work and what would make sense on the ground and again it is part of that learning curve I think it's totally fair to say as Scott pointed out you know there's there's a learning curve involved in this and um we're we're finding out more as we go along I guess the other concern for me just maybe I'm misinterpreting but it feels like I'm I'm hearing an ambivalence from staff around this recommendation um given the the risks that come with it and again usually I feel like there's a tradeoff we understand the the pros and the cons but on balance this is what we think should
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happen and I'm not quite hearing that I'm hearing kind of like we can do it if you say we should and I'm not can I jump in answer what I think that is um I think staff is trying to deliver what we've asked them to deliver and so they understand their rks but whether or not they say this is the best solution that's really us or whether or not we decide we want to go as Bobby said is that a nice to have or is that a want to have they're not taking an opinion they're they're working with the design advisory groups they're trying to deliver what they're asking for and it's they're asking us they're saying best This concerns us we're we're going over budget or we're going over scope we're increasing scope we're going over schedule but they're being very careful I feel like not to put put themselves as the decision makers because they're not they're delivering a building that or buildings and a program that we're asking them to do as you've pointed out these are decisions that we've asked them to go rework we've listened to community members we've said well can you go find a little bit more space here can we do this we need to figure out how many classes have you really worked with teachers and so that's how I'm making sense of the ambivalence it's not that they're really ambivalent it's we keep coming back and forth and they're trying to deliver something that meets what we're asking and there are risks either way so I mean I think part of our discussion has really been more similar to um director Davidson um in terms of looking at here are the things like you start with a long range facility it's you start with very broad conversations and Visionary conversations and really General and as you get more specific different things emerge that are being considerations we now have more things that are informing okay do these I mean it is when you're saying it's backwards it is backwards but it's also iterative so you end up with a very you know broad Vision that now is being informed by very specific conversations that we want to go back and inform the broad Vision with and it could be that we learn these lessons and we apply them going forward and move just keep moving right now so our sense making was we want to be able to benefit these high schools from what we've been learning um and the group has been doing the work and here are the tradeoffs and they're tough trade-offs so it's not a no-brainer that you make the trade tradeoffs but that was been our call of these high schools are the home the Cornerstone of the work that we're doing and wanting to see that see them benefit yeah and I appreciate that and I appreciate your your point is really well taken um director BL as well I think it's for me not I'm feeling like I there hasn't been as much information about the educational side of this in terms of what would mean on the on the ground what exactly do we mean by the um you know the increased scope how the classrooms would be used and I think there was some discussion about that and we asked if there could be additional information you know sort of from the principles and the teachers about how that would work so I think that's that may be part of it I mean absolutely it's our accountability and our our role to do this but I think that's part of where I you know I'm hearing I'm hearing the information but I'm I'm still not seeing haven't I don't feel as if I've had as much in depth from the educational side is it would make me more comfortable with this other comments Dr K I wanted to make a motion motion to table till next week so I I move to table this till next week that be to postpone definitely there's no such thing as a motion the table I know that's hard to believe but to postpone definitely is what you would postpone definitely there we go I second just to be clear so the intent is we'll we'll deal with this we will have a vote next week on this issue and that's the language that gets that done that's the language that gets it there okay okay um just following those Robert's Rules thank you um so um we can have limited debate on that motion it's been moved and seconded that we postpone definitely as there I I just want to make sure that we're clear on what we need so that we can make a decision next week because I'm not clear what what's going to be different next week other than the bond accountability will come back and say now we have answers and we still have the same concerns well that would be good to know that could be that could be what happens but then what do we do what information are we needing so that we can make a decision is it the educational piece like like I'm looking for specific things that you're looking for that well for for for me it's it's a um uh emerging of of process and schedule uh so uh having the bond accountability committee uh fully brief um is what I need and they're not fully brief now uh
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and I'll be ready to make a decision uh when that is done and I just want to highlight for our sake that if the bond accountability committee comes back next week and is fully briefed and we all decide that um we in fact want to go back to the 1700 original scope not original scope cuz that was 1500 but 1700 original size um that we understand that that will um that will delay our schedule by at least 14 days if not at least 21 days which will put us then at 110 days delayed which is where Roosevelt is I just want to make sure that we all you're presupposing what a vote might be I'm just right I'm just saying that there are two choices we say yes or we say no and it has a consequence on budget and I'm I'm not denying or saying that's a bad choice I'm just want to make sure that we're aware other comments so to me I think we have all of the information in front of us I think we all have gone through this a couple of times we know what the staff is asking for with regard to um the increase in the programmatic pieces and we know why and we know how much it's going to cost to do that um I'm not opposed to having the bond accountability come in and committee come in and tell us what they think about those expenses and that schedule and that scope um but in the end we're back to student representative Davidson's comment that we're in between a rock and a hard place because it's always going to be a difference in the scope and the budget and um and so I'm fine with the tbling this uh or post or uh postponing it definitely definitely um but I I don't think it's going to make a difference in how we're going to be able to make a decision I think we have everything we need right now to make that so Dr Regan I would definitely like to understand what projects are going to be taken off the table if we go forward with this because I do not feel like I have that information it's very important to me that our buildings be seismically sound and we have good roofs on them and the rest and I do not understand what this vote would mean in terms of that so I would like that information I have those details that's great I agree but I also want to again highlight the fact that staff can't give us that definitively because let's say that we issue the next Bond I know but they can give us a I just want to make sure that we that it's C we could end up doing all the projects we just don't know fewer I mean really what's happening is cost is increasing um our econom is improving which means we could get a lower Bond premium like it we could actually wind up we just don't know at this point but that would certainly mitigate some of it but what I'll share with you is what we know now in terms of moving the dollars postponing the projects and which projects which schools specifically and what the work Scopes are each of those you'll have you'll have complete visibility and I do feel like I mean again it's it's you have provided us with that information I mean we have been briefed about this um I think it's just continually facing up to these tradeoffs and the difficulty of it so I guess you know that's right I'm I'm obviously wrestling with this and um experiencing the the heartburn but I I Feel Like We Do what's and hearing um staff and and superintendent and my colleagues I mean I think we we have to just we need to move this forward based on the direction that we've given and the information that staff has has come to us so if we don't have enough support to be able to move forward with having the schematic design for Franklin come next week um so be it but I guess I'm kind of come full circle after having heard um Mr Spelman earlier kind of um threw me back a little bit but I'm I've come full circle to where I was before when I came into this meeting which was was reluctantly and with a lot of concerns and worries and full um agitation about the risks feeling like I'm bance this is what we needed to do to move forward to build the high school's um right given the information that we have now so that's where I am finally at the at 9:23 we're only 20 minutes behind believe it or not okay any other discussion on the motion all right there's a motion to postpone definitely the motion to well the motion the very the resolution we at 4917 that's good enough for the additional criteria for High School Educational specifications um all those in favor of the motion yes all
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right all those opposed no no no no Ruth are you a yes or no I was a no I just said no okay well we're right Stuck in the Middle then we need four and student representative Davidson you can't give us that fourth vote motion fails so the motion fails for uh postp postpone and so now we vote on it so so it's gonna go down anyway okay that's a very good point so I don't know this probably doesn't makes no sense whatsoever but I mean I think if I guess part of this is that the the resolution is very VAR is around just is the piece of the overall modification of the scope and going back to the long range facilities planning so and so forth um so is it that we absolutely have to make that decision and set that in motion even though we've already given approval to the schematic design and the and the scope and so forth so that that piece has to come first without without you moving forward with Franklin and coming forward with a schematic design based on our Direction it's actually Ed in the in the staff report for upon board concurrence for the scope the resolution itself is actually separate from that it uh directs staff to go back and reevaluate the student capacity methodology and evaluate the Comprehensive High School aspect so it's a it's difficult one to respond to it's um can I well I I I mean just listening to my colleagues my guest is that this motion is going to fail as well and we will be back next week I'm sure with you to answer the same questions that we have so why don't we if unless I hear objection why don't we go ahead and vote and on the motion and and I'm sure he'll be back can I can I make a suggestion sure could we potentially revote on the motion to table if we know it's going to fail and we don't want it to fail because we want to have more discussion it would be better for folks to just vote to table it for a week and then take a vote so I what you need to do for that is to do it again move toid so I'm going to move to I'm going to move all you have to do is move to postpone definitely again you know do I just do that or move to reconsider you can't do it do you can't do it because you voted oh I can't do that has to be one of the three people voted no right i' like to move to there you go um postpone definitely motion or excuse me resolution 49 97 I'll second I don't know if you can second we have one of I'll second it let's okay so all those in favor yes yes yes yes although I'm still not entirely clear on where this leaves us at the end leav us next okay all is opposed it's uh the motion passes with a vote of 6 to Zer with student representative Davidson voting yes yes okay no I get that Mr Owens is there anything else you need from us tonight no no okay thank you very much for um answering as many of those questions as you could we really appreciate you doing that time and we're going to take a two-minute break great and we're gonna get
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oh
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h okay back on thank you okay now we'll move to our next um agenda item which I'm sure will move very quickly uh the approval of the 200 14 2015 budget um I'll ask for uh first I'll ask for a motion to recess the board from its regular meeting and reconvene as the budget committee do I have a motion in a second second uh director Regan moves and uh director kler seconds a motion to recess the board into uh the budget committee all those in favor please say yes yes any opposed no okay we will now recess the board from its regular meeting and convene as a budget committee the board is a budget committee has held several study sessions on budget topics and two public hearings the board will now consider the superintendent's proposed 2014 2015 budget superintendent Smith would you like to make any comments about the budget um actually no at this time I'm really oh it's over to you okay um right okay we'll now consider resolution 4918 budget committee approval of the 2 F fiscal year 20145 budget and imposition of property taxes M Houston is there any citizen comment there is not okay is there board discussion on this resolution down here for this it'll be down here no it's in the wrong place okay this is really odd excuse me just a second this is different okay all right just said there any citizen comment I've got that no yeah I have a motion a second that okay so do I have a motion in a second so move second okay director bile moves and director adkin seconds a motion to adopt resolution 4918 this is not so is there Bo so I did citizen coming is there any any uh board discussion on the resolution director bu I'm going to read a statement sure I'm not going to be able to vote for the budget not because it isn't a halfway decent budget after all we have added a fairly large number of teachers and I have great trust in Neil Sullivan he and David win and Sarah bottomley answered every question I had about the budget and spent adequate time with me going through the entire budget document I appreciated their attitude and their help immensely but the problem is twofold first we the school board have not fulfilled once again Our obligation to the community to act responsibly according to policy which states the board publicly deliberates and adopts an annual budget in compliance with budget laws and statutes to ensure the legal expenditure of funds we have been working with the superintendent since September on the budget setting priorities organizing the work in our employees and ident identifying themes of the budget which we might want to include the superintendent's recommended budget for close to a half billion dollars was finalized and published on March 31st that is the budget before its finalization it is all guesswork a board member can't truly and fully respond until he or she can actually see the results then there is a tight timetable for Community input and board deliv liberations this is where we botched it we didn't produce a parallel understandable budget which would have allowed the community to give an adequate response and our public hearings were a joke board members weren't even allowed to ask clarifying questions of people who testified the few that did but what would they have testified about since the state designated form of the budget document is pretty much incomprehensible to the average citizen we have a budget Review Committee but we officially received their budget message last Monday and I guarantee no one is going to be willing to make changes this evening based on their message so in effect their fine work might as well not have been done but worst of all since March 31st we scheduled one hour of budget deliberations part of which was taken up
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by another presentation and all of which was run undertime duress in fact director Atkins even commented that she felt that it was too late for actual deliberations 1 hour to deliberate the actual budget it is too late during that hour to publicly deliberate so in essence the school board is elected to oversee the almost half billion dollars of taxes which people in Portland have paid to run the schools and this is not a pittance many many people pay property taxes in the thousands of dollars and pay income taxes often much higher than their property taxes they then elect people to make sure this money is well spent on practically the most important action a community can take that of educating their children and how did we handle our responsibility we scheduled less than 8 seconds in public discussion for every million dollars of tax money we spent once again we Short change the electorate and our own District's children the second problem problem I have is that we didn't discuss and deliberate some of the most important budget decisions we have here are some of them we still have around $14 million in outside contracts dealing just with education matters we have another 12 M million or so dealing with additional tech people over and above the 45 we have as regular employees $14 million would pay for around 150 more teachers in our schools we needed to discuss this I made a motion to spend a million dollars of this money on Social Service coordinators in each of our high schools it didn't even get a second yet we have around a thousand kids who are homeless and lots of children in poverty we need people who can help children bring Bri their secular world with their school world people used to call these children throwaway kids not very PC today but we needed to discuss our wraparound programs and how the budget approached them we we struggle with kids not reading yet we can't find money to hire Librarians in our elementary schools maybe we should have spent some of the money we found in October on Librarians instead of educational assistant we didn't discuss this the Middle grades and Portland Public Schools continue to language in many of our schools plagued by a lack of engaging electives in activities as well as underand in the area of reading where are the discussions that connect this to the budget we are increasing the amount of testing we are asking of schools not even counting the coming espc disaster many people believe this is an educational air we needed to discuss how the budget addresses this and where we could better spend the money we are spending Millions on our Equity programs but some people believe it focuses too heavily on the adults in our system instead of more directly benefiting our students we needed to discuss this and see if this was correct and make important adjustments if needed the English as a second language instruction is on a very wobbly Foundation we needed to discuss the the role and expansion of the newcomers program and how we might within the budget better address the needs of children in the program and the needs of our teachers instructing these students I am not an expert in Special Ed but many people have described much of what we do as a district as a mess how did we address this in the budget and we had an obligation to look seriously at concern citizens of brought forward in the past month concerning budget matters such as at regler D viny lellan Chapman and Lincoln High School I could go on and on but I think you all get the point we didn't fulfill our obligations or our respons responsibilities budget by back room instead of budget by public deliberation I can't support it I'm now going to make an amendment I move we amend the budget to fund the $40,000 for the early development of a health clinic at Benson High School if the grant Benson has applied for does not materialize the source of this money will be left to the discretion of the superintendent is there a second second discuss question director bu this isn't really a large amount of money and it's a huge problem and I think that $4,000 out of a55 million million doll budget we can figure out where to get this we generally have this that type of money around it's the I'm not I didn't purposely bring forward any other motions which I had 25 or 30 but this one just seems like we could actually do this and then those people can go ahead and start planning for for a health clinic if they if they have that money assured to them dor I was just curious director our student representative Davidson thank you I was just curious is this one of the molom county health clinics that we have what this is though this is the one
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we don't have at Benson right so would we be partnering with Mom County for this one or eventually yeah that's the de development money at Benson is to set that to begin to set that up and make the plans for a health clinic at okay they they they've applied for a grant if they get the grant they would go forward with that if they don't get the grant they can still go forward with that with that I just think we should support that a lot of kids out there and they should sure you other discussion director Regan I guess my general sense is as of tomorrow we will know who our new County Commissioner chair is going to be um and um I mean this strikes me as an amazing partnership opportunity um I guess I'm not sure that this is an area that I I mean I I'm Steve I'm totally supportive of trying to figure out early warning systems and having social workers and and the rest to help us in our high schools and with our own populations in terms of actually doing a health clinic I think it's beyond the scope of what a K12 school system caner caner should be doing I think it's a partner it's a perfect opportunity to partner with the county who's driving is to do that so um you know I I appreciate the sentiment I'm not sure I can I I would say that I want us to get into actually operating mental health clinics in our school this sets up the development for the uh County to go for yeah again I think we can it's not a lot of money I think that's something that we could I I would much rather have something where we direct the superintendent to talk with the county and kind of see what the opportunities are rather than committing budget dollarss to it at this time I guess I want to see what the opportunities are Dr Atkins yeah I me I think again I totally support the spirit behind this but I think in terms of process and responsible um budgeting and governance um to bring forward sort of very micro additions um at this stage in the process um is not responsible because there's any number of similar suggestions that any all of us could be making at this point and all of them have implications and all of them need to be considered in the full context of um the staff's charge from us to come up with a budget that meets the needs of our kids and we've got um so that's it I'm just not going to support additional um you know micro targeted suggestions at this point to the superintendent director Regan I guess my I would disagree that this is exactly I I would disagree this is exactly the time that we're supposed to be looking at that and in fact I'll be bringing forward an amendment in a second I don't know when else we would bring it forward this is our this is our time I just think that this one is uh a little bit outside of the scope of what we're supposed to be doing as as a K12 school system but it's absolutely something I would love to see as partner with the county any other comments okay all those in favor of the amendment please say yes yes yes all those oppose say no no no the amendment fails any other comment uh comments on the budget director rean yeah um so if I if if I follow Steve's lead I think I want to make some comments on the budget and then I have an amendment that I wanted to offer okay if that's how you'd like to do it that's so first of all um Carol I think you actually did an amazing job listening to um staff and board members and um the community um in all of the various listening sessions and I think we all um need to be be incredibly grateful to our legislators um for allocating more money to K12 finally and start increasing the share of the pie that goes to take k12 and to thank our voters as well for supporting us with a local option that provides just tens of millions of dollars every year for us to pay for teaching positions so um as I look at the budget in general the things that I am just so excited about after 11 years on the board and um kind of seeing where we're we are doing ads um just a couple of them I just wrote down as I was sitting here the fact that we're expanding language immersion programs the fact that you're talking about having CTE career coordinators in our high schools is something we've talked about for a long time I am personally thrilled that you uh are going to ensure that we have counseling support in every single Portland Public School a parent knows when they're send their kid to a Portland Public School that there will be some level of counseling support there so I'm really thrilled with that um adding a couple and I think you kind of heard me on that one I think you are adding a couple of groundskeepers so that we can be proud more proud of how our buildings and Facilities look and that was one that certainly Steve I think can feel good about um the expansion of Eary Ed the fact that we're adding more days um more teachers 70 Ka
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teachers 50 High School teachers 30 special aded teachers and more um the fact that we're lowering our student teacher ratio I mean I don't know that I knew that that would happen when I was on the board I mean it's always something you dream about you you don't know whether we'll actually get there it's just so exciting I can't stand it the fact that we're lowering the high school student teacher student counselor ratio that's something that we set out to do five years ago and it was something we haven't gotten to I think the high school system design plan said the council ratio would be 1 to 300 it's now 1 to 400 you're setting it at 1 to 350 I mean that's huge progress um and I'm hoping that in the next year or two we actually hit that Target so um just amazing um fact that you're putting some work into restorative justice I mean there's just so many there's so many ways that this budget is a a great great budget for our kids and for our staff um so I'm really excited I appreciate cbrc the uh um the budget Review Committee citizen budget Review Committee and the comments that they had um I agree that we haven't had nearly enough opportunity for the public to weigh in on it just so you know so there were two things that I um specifically had concerns about in the budget one is that I had hoped that we would do more of an investment in our early Warning Systems maybe a care team type approach like Hillsboro which was the social worker idea um I had been told by staff afterwards um that we actually are doing more than what is visible in the budget um and I'm so I'm satisfied with that at this point in time it's something I will continue to ask about um but the uh area of schoolwide supports is the area where I do want to offer an amendment um so I'd like to read the amendment first and then maybe I could talk about it and hopefully some second but then you can talk about it after that exactly so the budget amendment would be uh the board of education for Portland Public Schools requests a budget adjustment to the superintendent 2014 proposed budget to include 4.5 FTE to be added to the high school schoolwide report table as follows point5 FTE to each large community comprehensive with a thousand or more students those would include Cleveland Franklin Grant Lincoln Madison and Wilson plus an additional 0.5 FTE to Madison and an additional one FTE to Franklin acknowledging their need to support significant populations of high poverty and historically underserved students so that would be my Amendment would be to add 4.5 FTE to the high school schoolwide support table that's I would go with that is there a second I'll second it okay thank you discussion discussion so a few months ago this superintendent and this school board settled a contract with our teachers union in which we made a strong and public statement about workload we acknowledge that workload matters we put in writing that most high school teachers will not have a workload that exceeds 180 students we've also acknowledged in this budget that workload matters when it comes to our high school counselors this budget includes significant funding to hire more counselors bringing our student to counselor ratio from 401 to 350 And1 we hope to get to 300 to1 or better in future budgets and in our recently passed contract with our teachers we established a workload committee that will make recommendations to address specific workload concerns from teachers next year we set aside a million dollars to fund needed adjustment based on recommendations from this group so pretty strong statements about workload tonight I'm asking this superintendent and this board to acknowledge that workload matters for other employee groups too including our principls vice principls Librarians and classified staff including campus monitors career coordinators study hall monitors bookkeepers it support staff Etc superintendent's Miss budget indicates that schoolwide Staffing is a combination of four factors including schoolwide support today we have some huge disparities in schoolwide support at the high school level and these disparities impact our class classified staff and we actually heard from Belinda today on this and our students in significant and unacceptable ways a career coordinator at one high school has a workload supporting 250 students yet across town a career coordinator is expected to support nearly 750 students it's three times more at our larger high schools this workload is a setup for failure or at a minimum mediocrity similarly while a campus monitor in one school has a workload of about 250 students across town another campus monitor has a workload that covers 750 this is the case even in one large High School our only high school that does not have a designated school resource officer or school police presence on campus at one high school
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the study hall monitor supports a student population of 500 plus students while at another the study hall monitor is expect to support 1,500 likewise our technology staff supports a need of 500 or so students at one school and 1,500 students at another anyone looking at our school-based staffing table can recognize that the workload issue is unacceptable the students in schools where this disparity is most striking include our community comprehensive high schools with over a thousand students Cleveland Franklin Grant Lincoln Madison and Wilson I don't expect that we have the capacity to fix these disparities tonight in the budget but we can acknowledge the disparity by taking some token action and putting some preliminary budget dollars behind it tonight I'm offering a friendly Amendment because I do think this is an awesome budget I'm offering a friendly Amendment amendment that adds one half of a full-time equivalent position or FTE as we say to the discretionary support line of our administrative School support table for all high schools with a thousand students or more a05 FTE equates to one full-time classified position while that doesn't come close to making things as we'd like it is a start going farther I'd like us to acknowledge that two of our community Comprehensive High Schools Madison and Franklin Franklin serve a large number of high poverty and historically underserved students as such I propose adding another 05 FTE at Madison and another full FTE at Franklin in total I'm only asking us to add 4.5 classified FTE to better support our large community comprehensives and the students they serve and we can keep in mind that that compares to the fact that we added 68 classified staff positions in our elementary schools this year recognizing that it is already late in our staffing process and Ruth you've acknowledged that several times I suggest that we simply add these few FTE to the discretionary line of our high school schoolwide support tables allowing principles to fill in where the need is greatest I am most excited that this ad will allow our high school principal and vice principles to manage their buildings in a more safe and appropriate way while allowing them more time to be the instructional leaders coaches and mentors that we expect them to be this investment would cost $371,000 for next year which is a minuscule adjustment when looking at an overall budget of more than 500 million the funding to support this amendment could come from reserves while still allowing a robust operating contingency or I'm open to the superintendent making a suggestion of a small tightening somewhere else that won't impact current supports to students or schools I hope and expect that we would attempt to maintain these staff positions going forward and make additional administrative adjustments supporting K12 students schools and students in our budget as our budget situation allows when our superintendent put forth this budget she attempted to incorporate feedback from board memb staff and community members and I really do believe you did a good job the amendment I'm offering aligns fully to the priority she and we have identified in this budget so I ask for your support other comments director B Robie was that um is that on there s last meeting when we talked about we had that discretionary stuff at the bottom so right now 16 discretionary FD at the bottom right now if you're a small school like 500 you get a 7 if you have a thousand students you get uh 1.4 and if you are U over 1500 you would get 2.1 I believe is the numbers that's the right across the so this is on top of that discretionary yeah okay yeah I don't I'm not looking to take away from anybody in this I think we're I mean it's on top of the discretionary at the bottom it would just add it so that there's a little and why the floor I'm going I ask the superintendent woman who spoke earlier tonight about the educational assistance said that some of those how many educational assistant was that 68 so last year we added class 68 classified sta determined by each School how they use where they were going to use they weren't and and I thought those were pretty that were those were back in the budget she had talked about that the are disappearing she and you know what is Sean up back there that's you can see where I was I totally did and it has to do with whether or how sean to come up and give you specifics on this one because it's not the same it's not the same yeah not the same 68 and he can give more
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specific so so Sean 68 FD are we're not talking 68 we're talking 68 real people but so I'm going just detail what this muray our Chief Human Resources officer officer and did you hear the question that was being asked about that um the Linda's comments earlier about the um unassigned classified staff yes so essentially um we don't know how many will be as a result will be laid off essentially there are 70 unassigned PFS P members uh EAS comprise most of the list the reason are the results for the layoffs if any uh is due to Title One funds also Foundation money uh being uh T taken away and also student enrollment going down so student enrollment changes yes so the so the 68 FTE we added will those be the first taken away because they're the they have the least seniority and we move some people from other places into where those 68 people now are let's say we got one you understand my question well as it stands right now we have 70 unassigned and so essentially we'll be me meeting next week hopefully to review the unassigned positions and determine if we can place them elsewhere within uh other vacant positions all those all 68 unassigned are those 68 people we put on in October uh I'm not 70 if you got 68 we put on and they're the least priority they would be the least tenard and then so and we had 70 of them I would think you'd have wiped out all 68 of those people it depends on the positions I mean essentially there are 70 most of them are EA positions which we did add so essentially we wiped out those 68 people not necessarily not exactly perfectly but pretty darn close well we still have until next week to look at the positions that are available and then determine where we can place those unassigned folks so essentially we're not looking at layoffs yet until we're act until we're actually able to see what positions we have available to place those positions within the budget so you got the budget positions and you got this this group of 70 teachers over here and then we budgeted for a certain number and some of those are going to still be blank and we're going to take some of the 70 and put them over there and we don't know how many that's going to be we don't know yet until we review do we have any estimates about what that's going to me I mean I mean essentially we're early in terms of the hiring process and so essentially next week we're going to be taking a look at the unassigned positions and determine what vacancies we have available that we can place those positions into or those employees into Sean what does it mean when you said Title One are lot of these are are many of these e EAS title one from my understanding uh Title One funds have gone away and um certain areas and so also Foundation money as well and then also uh student enrollment has gone down within specific schools which has resulted in on assignments I understand student enrollment but I'm curious about um Foundation funding in title one especially since we we used funds I I I'm recalling we used just State funds to hire all those people so why all of a sudden are they in different budget areas I think they're not necessarily the same was ad that we did in this year's budget was general fund was a general fund ad it was not specifically just EAS people could have added secretarial support in their schools so they were classified staff and you were it was up to the school to determine what kind of and what we're talking Sean's talking about now is again across a different band of funding um funding streams it's now impacted yeah but it's the same people it's not necess the same people I mean same group of it's the same group of employees do they come rules and stuff that we have for them lay offu can we lay off anybody we want in well and and we're talking unassigned not laid off so like that's the other distinction being made right now is the unassigned like a position may have gone away I understand the teaching stuff but the the is there a bumping process there is a bumping process there's multiple categories of employees right but we're looking at where the UN assignments occur and then we're also looking at where new vacancies have
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occurred as well and so we will be looking at placing those employees where be placed back oh I'm sorry some of those people would be placed some of Bobby's people here would be placed into those positions if she got seven potentially have four and a half FTE Bobby so that's nine people so we would have that would take care of nine of those people we were laying off potentially potentially yeah right yes potentially depends on whether they have be licensed staff or not yeah I mean they'd have to be lied staff or not well the one position she would have would the the screw up would only be if you need somebody maybe who does secretarial work and you end up with an EA who doesn't do secretarial work and her stuff might be Cho so you might have some of those conflicts but in yeah campus monitor but in general that might happen it could happen so the the category that Bobby that um director rean is proposing is discretionary support which covers a wide variety of potential places you could apply some of which are classified and some of which are licensed so it it would depend on again on each individual school and how they applied it exactly you got it thank you but like bookkeeper could potentially be one of the classified staff if it was or secretary could potentially be one of those people yes other comments board members director K uh yes just I'm I'm G I'm going to vote Yes I appreciate father your leadership on this I think it's uh it's um makes a rationale it's a more rational approach um in terms of of the uh uh populations in the in the high schools so I'm a yes vote other comments I also will be voting yes Dr b um I'm going to be a no vote but not because I don't um agree that this uh is an important thing um what I hear is superintendent Smith saying this is the next step that we take when we look at reinvestment I'm hopeful actually that our tax revenue will continue to increase and that we'll actually be here in the fall um I had an opportunity to talk to some high schoolers on uh last week um and it was just really really clear actually how much this kind of support um would mean um so I I don't want my unwillingness to support this tonight to seem like I don't understand that um and I appreciate you bringing it Forward um but I guess part of what has me has the tension in me for voting no is that I have the conversations of the people that wanted more restorative justice um I have the folks from Scott who said we need additional support I have the folks from Rigler in my head who say we're losing some really valuable people folks from lell and who say we cannot have a second grade with our first graders who have been 31 in their classrooms the folks from Chavez who were clear about what they needed um I director bule wants Librarians in every every Elementary School I think that's I think that's really really valuable we heard from folks in Maplewood we hear from folks in high schools about various needs um talented and gifted hasn't even come up but I know that we I don't think that we're serving them as well as we could um I think of adaptive PE which we've cut over the years I think of qualified Mental Health Professions which you again we've added some of those in this budget um but it's not to the level that we need so again it's this place where thank goodness we're in a reinvestment budget in superintendent Smith I think you've done a great job of being responsive to our conversations um as far as I can tell the the most behind door conversations about budget has been with director with um our Deputy Chief Financial Officer and director bule talking about budgets because the rest of the conversations I've heard here in that the budget really did reflect what our conversations were and at the same time knowing that while we're in a reinvestment which is thankful for the legislature we're not to the place where we can do all of these things that we know that our students need and again having just met with high school students it's very real that we are losing students um because we cannot fund the support that they need um or not serving them as well as as we need to be so I I appreciate the amendment um but I I won't be voting yes other comments I agree with everything director B just said um same reason I really appreciate you know in the um in your March 31st um eight page detailed budget message superintendent Smith where you where you lay out where you are the priorities and what you have heard from us and from the community and where you landed um um with in your recommendation as well as the the citizen Bud citizens budget review committees um support and um their response to your budget as well so again exactly the the needs continue at every level in our district and we're not funding everything that that the need is
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out there I appreciate um the spirit of what Bobby brought forth but um I'm going to vote as well anybody else okay so I'm also going to be a no vote on this for all of the reasons that uh I think Greg covered everything and given the time and whatnot I'm not going to go into those in detail but I also am thankful that Bobby brought this forward and continues to shine light on it and in the fall when we knock on wood have some more and we're looking at more reinvestments this one is at the top of my list so okay all those in favor of the motion please say yes yes all those opposed say no no the motion fails for fails other comments about the budget we haven't heard from everybody yet no okay well then I will go ahead and um hang on I'll get there um I'm going to go ahead and make a couple of comments one um I have been very pleased with the budget process that we went through this year um eight months of discussing all of the different programs many of the different programs that are included in this budget um including deep dives into things like Equity uh dual language immersion elll uh the fact that we're adding more teachers we discuss that counselors Early Childhood High School early response restorative justice Career Technical education um I think that the board did a lot of really really hard work over over the year to make sure that we informed the superintendent about the priorities that this board has and the kind of funding that we were interested um in seeing on those things we did a lot of public uh we have public comment after every single one of those uh items have come up um we I know superintendent Smith because I was reviewing just the other day the your listening sessions that you did with the public on the budget and those were very helpful to see those comments that were made by people we had our own two listening sessions in addition one of those being in Spanish which I thought was great that we were able to um do that for the Spanish speaking people in our community um and I also want to say that I I've never been in a back room with anybody uh all of my discussions that I have about the budget are right here in front of everybody um uh so I'm not sure where director bule's seen the back room but I've never been in one so with that we'll go ahead and vote on resolution 4918 all those in favor please indicate this is the budget bud this is the budget yeah okay thank you 4918 roll call in please so just to clarify we have made absolutely no changes to what the superintendent brought forward as a board right no not that I know of are you there was the list that that that Mr W sent us about the changes that were different do you did you see that director wine would you like to come forward and list the changes that we've made in the budget for us did you need that we did not make those changes right we were told they came from they were being made right which is very frustrating well this is the budget that we have been talking about for nine months so I would expect there were some changes sent to us yesterday which I think the public should know about so so director would you like to come forward and this board did not discuss those they were just we were just told they were here's your opportunity thank you for bringing it up me of the board superent Smith David Wine Deputy CFO and budget director so as part of your packet for this meeting there was a memo confirming a few changes from the proposed budget document couple of those are technical adjustments as the budget team is finalizing the um the approved budget uh checking on various things there were two things that came to light that were not uh included in the proposed budget one of those was um the decision to use uh take advantage of the provision in the contract with the teachers to have an extended school year for next year um the application of those two additional days for employees who work 200 days as an oversight that was not included in the proposed budget it's in the approved budget and then when it came to Athletics the uh decision in October to add money $900,000 to the budget for the current year was part of a full year U 1.5 million cost for doing those things and in the proposed budget we added 500,000 we really needed to add 600,000 to fulfill that full year commitment so those two things are changed in the approved budget from the proposed budget
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in addition the superintendent also adjusted the proposed budget to provide additional support in two uh key areas one is Provide support mentoring coaching and supervision of principles so there's an additional regional administrator position in the approved budget and there's also an additional position in in human resources to further support new hires and training districtwide so those four things together um change the total expenditures in the approved budget from the proposed budget by $604,000 and they're funded by a reduction in operating contingency so in the approved budget contingency is at 3.9% of total expenditures in comparison to 4 % in the proposed budget director rean so for my colleagues who didn't want to add anything because this is just the way it was um it just seems a little hypocritical so I just want to point that out well I saw that those changes Bobby so I don't feel I'm being a hypocrite at all director B um I'm sorry if I was on unclear about why I wasn't supporting the amendment um I I don't recall my saying that I didn't want to change anything just because I I thought that there were competing interests right um and so I felt like the budget that was submitted um was actually a good balancing act so it wasn't because I thought it was too late it wasn't because I just think the budget is what it is um it's it's because there are many competing interests and I think the strikes a balance and I think we'll have an opportunity to do a budget amendment similar that we did this fall with tax um tax revenues increase well I'm just saying we're adding we're adding at the last minute two positions which we really didn't have any discussion about um and apparently that's okay so there's a contradiction director bu do you have a comment one of the positions uh superintendent Smith is that is one of a a a new Regional director that's over the that's over the uh supervisor supervises principles could you just explain what's happening there I my assumption is see if this assumption is correct is that that's some sort of response to Mr Ker's comments in the past year it's a response to much of the dialogue we've been having about um how are we providing principal's maximum support so right now our regional administrators uh support anywhere from I'm going to say it's 14 to 22 or 23 principles each depending on how many clusters you supervise um what at the addition of one more regional administrator does is it brings it down to I think it's 14 to 177 so the range is much as smaller and my hope is that by next year we actually have a single regional administrator to a single cluster so that you really have uh a regional administrator who's ident prek-12 so it is yeah so we prek-12 so they've they're supervising all so one of the things we're doing this next year is we'll have it um the high schools won't be a separate um regional administrator each one of the regional administrators will have a geographic cluster prek K12 uh and they'll have between 14 and 17 schools so it's it allows us to give more um intentional support to our principles which has been the one of the concerns and conversations this year I'm smiling because intentional was the word they used about 500 times at the o last week and I'm going more in and I wrote a whole piece on it that goes out to oreg school intentional laugh about what my I'm going to just yeah share a concern about adding that person we am Marvel we have just a lot of really marvelous principles but I also get story after story after Story of ones who are jerks and who are nasty to their teachers and I hope I and I get story after story after Story I'm not talking a little bit I'm getting a I get a lot I had one last night had one the day before I had one in the email the day before too and and if we're going to have somebody go out in this Regional way and supervise them that's like the first thing we should tell them you know we don't want you being a jerk and we don't want you being a bully with the teachers that you have we want you to work with them because we've got principles out there that I keep getting report after report after report of them bullying teachers and acting like jerks I I get it all the time all the time and so I just like said if we're going to add somebody it doesn't do any good to add somebody unless we have somebody who begins to change those particular principles attitudes because we have
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lots of wonderful principles but we also have I think an awful lot of stories Beyond anywhere what we should have thank you thank you okay any other comments Dr car I have a question well first the comment of U organizing in clusters I think makes total sense I'm very supportive of that um your St and uh but um last meeting we we talked about the 360 and you were going to come back and say whe whether that's there's room in the budget to get that done or not and so I'm curious to know what the answer to that is and I just actually gave you the answer last time that there was not a specific funding of like a 360 process beyond the indar that we're looking at you said you're going to come back come back and tell you what's in the industar no well anyway so now you're telling me that it's not there's not well there's not a specific funding for the for a 360 beyond what the school improvement tool is that we're using which is the indar that has an element of a 360 in it um that still would be ours to create a school climate survey or something like that no and there is not something in the budget at this moment so we so okay because I mean we we did make that a priority as a board yes and so how are we going to get that done it's a good question yeah no and it's not there's not something in the budget at this moment for that other comments and I would just I just suggest I mean that that that again every year and every summer as we we consider our goals and parties for the coming year there's always the unfinished what did we not accomplish what what were we not able to fund so we just need to revisit that and and and keep looking at it yeah so I mean I guess I'll be looking at at coming back and visiting this issue PRI prior to our next budget because I I think there's yeah yeah any other comments okay the board will now vote on resolution 4918 which is the budget all in favor please indicate remember right I know I know we going to all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please say no no are there any extensions okay we'll now do a roll call director Atkins yes director Regan yes director bile yes director bule I just want to make sure that they know that we're rubber stamping this up here today and now I think the reasons I that's what I'm yeah I'm voting no that was mine there you go I like it yes thank you and student representative Davidson yes okay we have a vote of five five to one with student representative Davidson voting yes as well okay I'll now entertain a motion to adjourn the board as the budget committee and call the board back into its regular session so moved and a second second second all those in favor please say yes yes yes all those opposed okay back into regular session the board will now consider the remaining items on the business agenda having already voted on 4914 4916 4917 and 4918 Miss Houston are there any changes to the business agenda no there's not okay do I have a motion and second to adopt the business agenda so moved so moved a second please second director Atkins moves and director excuse me director bile seconds the adoption of the business agenda Miss Houston any public comment no no is there any board discussion director bule on the new contracts under me to read this small under districtwide 750 750 Chromebook computers now I'm not familiar with Chromebook like a laptop is it a laptop computer and these are for what and what use are these what use are we going to make of the 750 are we uh are these ones to do uh to to do testing within the within a school and you have a cart and you running around or these ones for teachers or who are the 7504 sir well well my name is I'm R I'm director of technical operations um so in a nutshell a Chromebook is a like a netbook net computer so it's a small device similar to this one that uh runs on What's called the chromium operating system which is Google's ecosystem so it's aligned with um if you've heard of Google Apps for Education that kind of an environment uh it's basically a a
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laptop fully-fledged laptop computer that's capable of running um pretty much anything that is browser based or app based within the Google ecosystem itself it's something that we've seen quite a bit of adoption uh at our in like the K through six K through 8 space for uh sbac compliance for um one: one initiatives so you have uh some some schools out here in our district right now that are already using that device you describe as one: one initiative what could you give me an example one: one or one to two 1: three 1: four patterns where you take a device put it with a group of students and they use that device for let's say research or consuming media or working on a presentation or in some cases completing assessment material so what this uh item is is a purchase of 750 those to add to our district Fleet uh this this is coming out of it funds to um prepare for our refresh next year of student uh and staff technology and student and staff what student and staff technology so these these devices would be purchased into it and then they would be part of a districtwide refresh policy that we're working on developing so you these are being used to put back in place of ones that AR are no longer working correct in places where we don't have a student to student to computer ratio sufficient for let's say smarter balanced assessment testing now do you take them out so if I had how what what's what's the metrics you would use on where you would put them well this particular set of Chromebook you see what I'm saying I mean how how do you decide where they would go well there's a variety of metrics that you would use um this particular set is intended for Teacher use at this time so this would be an augment of a larger refresh strategy to provide teachers with the same tool that the students are using in working on let's say the sback assessment or in a student device based education scenario the metrics that we've been using for um technology dispersement the district at this point have been a combination of combined underserved and student to computer ratio so we're basically taking the combined underserved percentile lining that up and then looking at what our uh Student Computing lab resources look like and then building a um basically a matrix off of that that that work is still in Flight we're still in the process of Designing that plan as we've been awaiting the budget approval uh for to understand what our refresh Cycles going to look like next year but what's the the relationship of this in our computer labs because like we CL we Clos down the computer labs for weeks on end in in many many schools for testing so what's the relationship between this and the computer lab so if I'm a teacher and I get this can I is there are there other would I be in a school maybe where there's all the children in my class would have one and we're not using those for testing in other words could do you get a full 180 days out of this so to speak not this particular line item but this as a concept yes te these are going to teachers I guess I these are going to the teachers but theoretically so other the teacher might have this but the kids may not well I think part of our strategy is to to answer that with a no the teacher would have this and the kids would have devices very similar as we move forward with our technology so what's the relationship between those devices the kids have and the closing of the of the uh computer labs it really depends so if are you speaking directly to esac and like assessment so I think it's going to be up to the buildings and the individual administrators so as an example we're currently going through a field test of the esac assessment where we're looking at what does it mean to do that assessment in a classroom setting as opposed to a lab setting in order to enable that classroom setting you're right you need devices like this in the hands of students so we're thinking about enabling that us to do that in a classroom setting versus a lab setting yes on the ESC is that because we're short of labs or because we're it it partially I think has to do the pedagogy behind it I mean it's I'm not an assessment expert by any means um but the conversations that we've been having have been focused around the the pedagogy behind delivering that assessment in a classroom setting where the student is familiar as opposed to taking them out and occupying a lab for a very extended period of time which is a limited use environment it's also an environment that you know to be quite honest has other instructional use whereas those kids are already in that classroom and perhaps we find a way to empower them and their teacher at the same time a great idea thank you very much for sharing that by the way 70% of them are going to fail anyhow so I'm not sure we have any pedagogical worries about trying to get them in some sort of better setting because they're going
04h 25m 00s
under anyway I mean it's happened all over the country so so thank you any other discussion on the business agenda no board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any extensions the business agenda is approved by a vote of 6 to Zer with student representative Davidson voting yes yes thank you very much thank you very much to um oops director bile before we adjourn I just wanted to acknowledge that today was a historic day um in our state state of Oregon um and I just want to I just want to congratulate um the fact that equality has finally come to those people who are in love regardless of people's philosophical or religious beliefs um I appreciate that the courts have finally decided that um marriage is a civil right and to all of our staff to all of our families to all of our community members um congratulations and um I celebrate with you today and I I'm sure that we do this a board as well absolutely okay the next meeting of the board will be on Tuesday uh this says may but I may 27th but at 7:30 p.m. this meeting is adjourned all right thank


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