2014-06-16 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2014-06-16
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - June 16, 2014

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the fund symbolizes the founders belief in the importance of Education to our society and to the teaching of Education this year's award of $2,042 will be sent to Tan's College of choice so Tan's at the speaker table uh why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about your college choice and your plans for study okay um oh sorry um hello my name is chandai I'm a student at Madison um four year ago I came to America with my parent and I didn't know how to speak English however I never gave up and I always triy really hard in my education now I'm a valorian at Madison High School for the lab of 2014 after thank you after graduation from high school my plan include at attend attending Portland State University and majoring in education in the four year I will in turn continue as well as work with the venam school to help changen my teaching skill and expand what I have learned in college I also plan to be active both on campus and off campus on campus I want to participate in many different Student Activity to build strong connection with other student and staff when I am off campus I want to be a volunteer math tutor with the madicon high school or any Portland Public School to gain more experience in the field in the future I will be a good teacher well tan it sounds like you have a lot of determination so I don't have any doubt and I don't think my colleagues do either that you're going to be a very good teacher someday I hope you'll come back to uh Portland Public Schools and be a teacher with us uh we would love to have you I guess is that an employment offer it might be it's okay so tan if you would like to come up to the front we'll get together we'll have a picture okay ready you're welcome okay what a wonderful way to start our meeting today yay one more time go okay moving on to our next agenda item at this time we'll have public comment Miss Houston do we have anyone signed up for public comment yes we have four okay our first two Greg Burl and mor Mar Kenny while those people are coming up I will go ahead and there read the instructions for public comment 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 boorder staff will follow up with various issues that are raised please make sure that you've left your contact information with Miss Houston pursuant to board policy 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 to the superintendent's office and will not be heard in this form you have a total of three minutes to share your comments please Begin by stating your name spelling your last name for the first two minutes there'll be a green light on the uh in front of you there when you have 1 minute remaining a yellow light will come on and when your time is up a red light will go on and a buzzer will sound and we respectfully ask that you wrap up your comments at that time so thank you very much for being here this evening um my name is Moren Kenny k nny y you can go ahead okay superintendent
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Smith and members of the school board I am a parent of two students enrolled at Chief Joseph Oley green tonight I will tell you why my son will not be attending sixth grade there this fall we moved into our house 11 years ago with hopes of being a part of the upswing of the north Portland schools when our son was diagnosed on the autism spectrum at age4 he ended up attending a special program at Alam for kindergarten that year was magical and he was able to return to our neighborhood School Chief Joseph for first grade both academically and socially prepared the warm community of students principal teach and parents at Chief Joe further nurtured him to the extent that his autism became virtually invisible PPS is timely support changed our lives I will always be grateful for that but everything changed this year when he moved over to Oley green for fifth grade from the beginning he was a target for bowling he loves to play soccer but had to modify his play at recess to be less competitive than certain other kids or he would be physically punished by them during PE the bowling students were particularly rough and on one occasion my son ended up with numerous bruises on his torso from being smashed into the walls but perhaps even worse than the physical bullying is the constant verbal aggressions both micro and macro towards my son and his friends he will not tell classmates that he has two moms because he regularly hears homophobic comments and he fears being teased even more my partner and I communicated with the administration as these issues came up and my son and his friends even composed a letter to the vice principle none of this seemed to make any difference and my once happy son became hopeless and depressed about school like other students on the autism spectrum he is at risk for negative behaviors when he is under stress the problem came to a head during spring break when my son said to me all you adults act like you care about this bowling but nothing is changing for me I have gotten more used to it but it is still there just as much if not more at this point my partner and I gave him the option of being homeschooled for the rest of the year and he took it we had to advocate for our son we first tried the lottery and failed to get placement our son's First Choice was Da Vinci partly because its emphasis on the Arts means that personal uniqueness is celebrated we wrote an extensive hardship application citing the ostracism and bullying and sent it off to the transfer office after seven weeks of waiting we were told that our case didn't qualify for a hardship our placement is oiy good luck to our son I know D Vin is popular so transfers are limited I also know that kids on the autism spectrum especially benefit from the Arts and education because it provides the sometimes incommunicative with a way of being heard we realize that the district may not be able to find room for our Senate Vinci this year but we need to know that he will as law guarantees be in the least restrictive environment for our son this is clearly not a place where he has been marginalized and bullied we have been told that we can reapply for a hardship elsewhere or wait for openings in September we cannot afford for our fragile son's sake to spend the another two months hoping for the help we have been denied we are asking for an expedited answer to his needs if you could see an experience the anxiety and worry my son does you would know why a delayed response is a cruel one he cannot explain what it is like to carry his challenges within to be a child with an invisible disability but I can a little and I am here so that my son can be seen thank you thank you Miss Kenny Mr Burl you want to go ahead since we I saw you arrive yes I apologize I've been playing with the traffic so anyway my name is Greg Burl bu r r i l l and I'm continuing cuz I realized after I talked to you last time and Ed the word racism right I've gotten some interesting feedback so today I want to talk about racism through the lens of my big three questions first of all you've heard me say before that raising and educating the next generation of human beings is our most important job as Educators um you've heard me say that when you come right down to it educating children is about the relationships between each child and the network of Education professionals surrounding him or her and if you'll remember after our um contract was settled or the the teacher contract was settled I said we need some forgiveness right and the reason I'm back is because the last time I addressed you some people thought that I was accusing you of being racist and I wanted to make sure that you understood that either we're all racists or none of us are we live in where visual beings that organize our world by the way things look and people look different right so um what happens is that uh um I want to I I want to make sure that we remember forgiveness and I want to make sure that we understand just how deep and difficult this is there um the fact is that it's at the local level it's at the school board it's the city
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council the only place where we get to be people to people face to face not blacks and whites and reds and greens so what I want to say is courageous conversations aren't the problem it's that they don't go far enough right you have to listen to White parents explain why they fight boundary changes and enrollment and transfer policy but you have to watch them sitting across from black parents and brown parents figuring out how their children are going to move forward together we're not going to get anywhere by factionalized and so on and so forth right um but the one thing that I want to remind you of is I've gotten the feeling the one what I meant to say when I was talking about racism there is no greater racism than lowering the bar either of discipline or of academic achievement right uh school expulsions or exclusions aren't going to go away if we don't exclude kids whose Behavior warrants it right we're not going to save children by refusing to fail them if they don't Master the material all right fixing our boundaries and enrollment transfer policies will take parents students and teachers coming to the agreement that PPS implements I believe that anything else besides that is doomed to failure thanks for your attention thank you our last two speakers shaa Justice and Jessica Thompson greetings superintendent Smith and board members my name is Jessica Thompson J SS I ca t h o m PS o n I'm the PTA president at chief Joseph Oley green I'm here to tell you a story a true story a story about an injustice a problem about institutional racism a story without an ending and a story that allows you to craft the conclusion imagine it is 2008 your friends and family tell you about oy green Ka Arts and Technology Magnet School you visit meet a gifted welcoming principal named Joseph Malone he about the large Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grant the school received a grant that ven renovated the school auditorium into a 21st Century State ofth art um technology space maybe you or your cousins or your parents attended school there and you're looking forward to helping build the exciting next chapter in the life of that school you enroll your children you live in outer St John's and the only way you can make the school work is to have your child ride the PPS bus um provided to your from your neighborhood to OG then imagine the largely white gentrifying families moving into the homes surrounding o green choose not to enroll their students in this Magnet School imagine Joseph Malone leaves the grant drives up PPS closes one of the last K5 feeders Kenton that feeds into the a green Middle grades the only feeder left Chief Joseph K5 has little to no relationship with a green as a as a result very few Chief Joseph students roll up to sixth grade at Oley instead they take the bus to Robert gray sometimes called o green of the west or mlc sometimes called oy green of downtown or da Vinci o green of the East your family is left in an Arts and Technology school with an Ever shrinking enrollment and no art teacher after a few tumultuous months your children set oh then in uh February of 2013 the school board votes to merge your school with Chief Joseph forcing the Chief Joseph parents and children to attend Ole green after a few tumultuous months your CH children settle into a new routine in their dual campus schools your primary grades child child is happy to see their Oly Green teachers and friends at Chief Joseph your older children are enjoying a fully departmentalized middle school art classes with a top-notch arts teacher in the formerly mothballed art room they rise to the expectations of their new dance teacher a former Jefferson dancer in the gorgeous new dance studio they're taking Robotics and Engineering this you think or the Arts and Technology offerings you wish your child had at at oy green Ka Arts and Technology school and your private moments or when you and your family and friends are together you wonder why now when the Chief Joseph students are being forced to attend Ole green the school is getting the Arts and Technology programming you were promised when you enrolled your first child at o green 7 years ago still overall your child is happy they've always loved their teachers and friends before and after the merge you know children do better when there are no disruptions to their education you are optimistic and excited about the chance to help build CJ OG
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last week your children and other CJ A og students who are former Oley green magnet students and ride buses from out of neighborhood to Chief Joseph Oley green received a letter from the PPS Department of student transportation this letter was given to students by their bus drivers two days before school lets out for the year and four months after the lottery you learn that PPS will not be providing buses for your children anymore I'm afraid your time was up quite a while ago can you one more sentence please um right now buses are rolling from St John's to Richmond and mount Taber immersion programs you can imagine the demographics of the children on those buses and you can imagine the demographics on the children of the buses rolling from St John's to Oley green and I'm asking you to look at that decision through the racial Equity educational policy thank you very much hello my name is Shonda Justice um s sh NDA j s t i c please put yourself in my my shoes I have a young child with a slight autism happy to go to the same school her big brother is going to where he's been a part of the community since kindergarten the next year to understand that they have to be separated and go to a different School where color does matter where color makes people uncomfortable but she's adapted made new friends and added those friends to her community in her family we've been a part of Ole green for 10 years been through all the changes and now I have to put my child through another change I'm asking you to please understand that coming into our community and not really putting yourself inside of our shoes when there's active parents there to help make things be different and to be a part who really want change this is going to be detrimental to my child because now again she's going to have to find a different school to go to with new faces again the learning curve that she's had has changed and now it's going to set her back again I called to ask why the transfer change was being made I was told because our kids were part of the George area my children have never went to George the kids that are on the bus are from Oley green Chief Joseph area so it's it didn't make sense to me telling me that we were taking children from their boundaries or from their school so I'm asking you to please take a look at this again we've built a community unfortunately some are not working but the majority are this will break the bond that we've built this will tear up the communities that is driving together and the family that we've grown that we planted and now is growing is going to break so I'm asking you please to take a tick and look at this and really look at what lives are really going to be thank you thank you very much have your contact information with Miss houon okay on behalf of the board I'd like to extend our sincere our thanks to all of you who uh testified and to everyone please make sure you have your contact information with Miss Houston okay next on our uh agenda this evening is a Jefferson enrollment balancing uh per board resolution 4718 the board is to receive semiannual updates on Jefferson enrollment balancing superintendent Smith would you like to introduce this item um I would and Antonio Lopez regional administrator for the Jefferson cluster will um be presenting the report and introducing the other participants in the report thank you uh superintendent M Sher NS for actors student representative superintendent ladies and
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gentlemen my name is Antonio Lopez I am currently the regional administrator for the Jefferson and Franklin clusters it is indeed a great honor to be in front of you to give you an update on the Jefferson cluster enrollment balancing you have in front of you a packet that gives you a background a related policies alignment with Equity budget resources and next steps what I'm going to do for this presentation um it is to introduce you to the principles in the Jefferson clusters it is equally a great honor to present the people who are making all this uh possible I would like to start by introducing Richard Gilliam Richard Gillam came to us in the Jefferson cluster as a halftime Outreach coordinator Richard will'll start by talking about what what work he he's been doing in the cluster and the role for next year after richer is done you will hear from three schools that will be sharing with you what have been the successes this year what are the things that they're working on and the challenges and what would they like to accomplish for the next coming year these three schools uh were very excited because they're bringing with them the PTA president and a teacher to talk about those three things the first school after Richard uh finished his presentation will be boy Elliot followed by King and Then followed by ship Joseph after that we will open for questions and I will also address what we're doing in terms of the passing that we're looking into in terms of how to do the right thing so let me introduce Richard Gil thank you Mr Lopez uh good evening superintendent Smith uh board of directors uh uh student representative Davidson uh my name is Richard gilam g l l m I am the Outreach coordinator for the Jefferson cluster uh thank you for this opportunity to talk about my role uh in in this work here in the Jefferson cluster in support of the uh resolution uh of the same with respect to the Jefferson cluster uh my role principally has been as the Outreach coordinator working with uh all the cluster schools including Jefferson on the marketing uh of their schools and the promotion of their schools as neighborhood schools and what we've been able to do through a collective team effort and working with the Communications Department through the leadership of people like John Isaacs and Antonio Lopez and Dr Harry deir is to to uh use utilize our communication Department to create quality uh marketing materials for each of the schools what we've been able to do this year is for each School create a uh postcard that was used to Market to uh parents in the area to promote the schools as neighborhood schools uh and highlight some of the important uh programs in each respective School uh we've been able to as well create uh a high quality uh create high quality posters uh that could be used for the same purposes and Market them to the businesses uh big part of the in those areas a big part of our work that we've been trying to do is to make sure that the neighborhood is fully aware of just how great our schools are uh utilizing just a number of Partners it could be the community uh uh organizations in the area it could be the neighborhood business associations the neighborhood associations so we use these marketing materials and make sure that they are getting the word out just about how great our schools are um another role that I've been uh able to play that we've been able to play through this work is uh promotion of events uh there's various great events that uh really highlights the schools the great teachers the school-based leadership and just what they're doing uh such as their science fairs and their auctions uh just recently uh for instance at Woodline School uh it's you know it takes a Community event which is a great event concerning their you know fundraising their major fundraiser events such as those have been you know around the around the cluster we've been able to uh get the word out through our Communications Department and working with uh making sure those stories get out to the media so that we have a larger audience who may not um you know come to the school regularly C indeed may not even have children there but that's the whole point is making sure
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that the neighborhood is fully aware of just what a great how great these schools are um I I previously to to to doing this work was the director of community engagement for the bond program and if it's one thing I learned at that point was that our schools are much more than bricks and mortar our schools are our kids our schools are parents our schools our neighborhoods and that holistic uh perspective I think is very important for us to keep in mind as we go forward uh with this work in the cluster U another thing that we've been doing is working with parents to create uh affirmative strategies for uh engagement for and to get better parental involvement part of us making schools you know really uh community and neighborhood schools uh to a full extent that they can be is to have maximum uh involvement and participation of parents so we have some great leaders and you know of PTA leaders here around our cluster and working with those leaders to uh ensure that we have the maximum involvement and getting as many voices in the room of the you know of these schools and involved and speaking to other parents because one of the things that is important for us to note is that often times what affects our uh marketing posture of our schools is the the negativity sometimes that uh bad rumors that associated with the schools uh you know externally and so to combat that we've been able to you know get more folks into the schools and so that they understand what's really going on in the schools and another role that we've been able to play is to be a conduit for information uh to to the parents and for more importantly for the parents to you know be a listening uh kind of taking a listening posture of what's going going on with the parents and what the issues are around the cluster um that's been I think key because often times some parents have fa as though uh some folks around the cluster it felt as though the information flow uh may have completely been one-sided they hear you know different directors or they hear about things that's going on in the district but we don't hear enough about what's going on with them and so the work that we've been doing uh you know through the uh Outreach work that we've been doing in the in the cluster has been has been facilitating you know a better uh communication level with the respective schools um so what we've done here uh some good examples kind of the work that I was saying uh for instance at King the immersion Pro the management immersion program we've worked with Community Partners uh such as Albin head stars to ensure that we have the participation level um that we want you know and that we need in terms of uh the schools uh the community surrounding the schools and maybe those who may not have known about programs being able to Market this great program and great opportunity to those uh to those parents uh we've worked with you know Community Partners such as as I mentioned ALB headart and Mr hearen uh We've also worked with for instance PTA presidents around uh around the cluster to uh facilitate uh a greater kind of communication with their respective you know constituencies at their schools uh one of the things that we've uh done that we're going to do on an oncoming uh ongoing basis is having a uh PTA a listening session on a quarterly basis with the respective PTA presidents you know around the cluster and this we just had had one recently that uh went fairly well and uh was very important information that had come out uh during that time and we also this summer for instance going forward other than the corly meetings we're going to be doing EXT extensive Outreach continuing our extensive Outreach concerning the king uh Mandarin uh immersion program we're also going to be doing uh working with the boy Elliott Humbolt uh community and school to um to fulfill the administrative directive relative to community outreach involving their name their proposed name change name changing process so we'll be doing community uh organizing and and as well as uh engagement of those respective community working with uh parents there at Boise Elliot humbo uh this summer to ensure that you know all the voices of those respective communities are heard uh about their name changing process uh as well as working with Vernon for instance on their early Karden transition so uh we just want to be able to I think uh with the work that we've been able to do uh We've made uh I think some progress as I'm being told anodally uh but we do
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realize that uh we can go much further we can get many more uh voices uh heard in the room we're working very very closely with uh as I mentioned the PTA uh presidents around the cluster and working with parents and uh although we you know not exactly where we want to be we think we've made some tremendous progress uh however we have a lot of work to go and uh we have we certainly uh the the the tenor uh of the discussions have changed so we're very very happy about that so I want to talk at nauseum I just wanted to kind of give a brief uh discussion about about what's going on um and one of the things that we also I'm so quick to try to try to get on with the other part of the presentation uh one of the things that came out during the uh listening session that we had uh with the PTA presidents is to uh one school had uh suggested that we utilize the Realtors uh in in the area to better promote and Market our schools uh so what we're going to be doing this summer uh we've spoken to all the respective principles is to uh create marketing videos uh for each school so that we can Market those videos to for instance Realtors and to the neighborhood associations uh to individuals so utilizing you know our technical capability and and just all the great things that's going on around this summer uh and and more important ly uh not just highlighting the schools but highlighting the the the great principles and great teachers that's around uh our cluster uh and that's what you know when parents are looking at schools like I said at at the outset it's not about bricks just about bricks and Mort it's about people and it's about they want to know about the great teachers and the great programs and great individuals and the great kids is there so uh so we'll be doing that uh as well here this summer working on those working on that project thank you thank you Richard and with your permission let me introduce the first team boy Alia humbled School Antonio did you want us to just uh hear this entire presentation and then have questions or do you want to have uh questions in the middle like if somebody has questions of just Richard everybody okay with just going through the whole first okay great thank you he this good evening and I hope you're excited like we're excited you know at our building that's what it's all about so I'm seeing some smiles and you're still alive and well I like it this is a good thing um I will be reading um from our principal who is not here this evening so forgive me if it doesn't look right but good evening even superintendent Smith and board members my name is Kevin Bacon and I am the principal at boyy Elliot humble and thank you for everyone that continues to include Boise Elliot humble under your direction we were able to make this merger happen that was incredible with a lot of energy um and I'm also going to segue before I continue with Kevin's presentation that this was not done in isolation you have tonight Molly Chun who is here who was incredibly um in charge of helping the merger happen we are continuing it to happen in such in-depth and delightful ways so here we go back to Mr bacon I am here tonight with my assistant principal Evelyn flowers my steam coordinator kylen parks and our PTA president Miss Angie Harris as we discussed among ourselves what we would like tonight's presentation to look like we decided was upon a nonlinear Focus that represented the wait a minute did I skip oh nonliteral Focus that represents the integrated road we are on to prepare be students for their Futures as leaders in the community the brief video that we have prepared is centered around steam steam is integration of science technology engineering arts and math in every grade level with the support of our critical business partners steam is the core and is our Hub you will hear mention of restorative justice right brain initiatives PBIS courageous conversations care and past teams and the common course standards with steam as our Hub those initiatives are our
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spokes for us this brief video captures what's going well what we're currently working on and what we hope to continue to accomplish next year thank you and we will be available for questions afterwards at Boise Elliot humble school we are committed to creating an environment where students engage in rigorous learning opportunities that challenge them to think critically about their place in the world becoming a steam School in partnership with the Portland metro stem partnership has helped us make that happen as we grow our programs and solidify our identity during year two of this transformation we have chosen to not isolate our initiatives and instead look to steam as the uniting force for our students teachers and the Greater Community be has long been known for its work around Equity as a beacon Equity school we have focused on culturally competent teaching pedagogy and been intentional about examining race in our practice infusing steam into this work has helped us increase the motivation for our students an integral part of our Equity care practices we see our focus on Steam as a way to ignite a passion for Learning and heighten engagement for our students while also preparing them for college and 21st century careers steam education creates an integrated learning environment that encourages problem solving and persistence iCal thinking and teamwork across the subjects we want our students to see themselves as capable problem solvers that can adapt and strategize in the face of challenges both academic and personal our vision for be students is to have a passion for Learning and activism that extends beyond the classroom and to believe that they have the capacity to make change in their Community through Steam curriculum camps intentional Team Planning and focused professional development opportunities our teachers have shifted to using the Next Generation science standards as they integrate their Core Curriculum with steam subjects we continue to build on our prek through 8th grade curriculum map ensuring our students build upon experiences as they move across the grade levels and students at every grade are participating in multiple field experiences in partnership with Community organizations and environmental Educators we have written grants and established deep Partnerships with clean Rivers education Metro the US fish and wildlife service Intel omzi the business education Compact and many more we also work hard to demonstrate to our students that they are capable by being intentional about bringing in mentors and educators of color we have also added a middle school math team a robotics Club mock trial a student council as well as built our parent network with a past team and increased Family Outreach this year steam equity and PBIS have flowed seamlessly for our team teachers and students by uniting our initiatives the same successful impact we've seen happen with our students has happened with our staff the 5e instructional model is used for both student lesson delivery and teacher professional development and the intentional lesson planning and delivery that's used in teacher esteem classroom lesson is also used with PBIS coaching for teachers we are building on the student feedback CLP as we build in time for Teacher teams to reflect and plan together just as they do with their students we have a variety of tools to measure our success including student teacher and Community surveys supported by research-based measurement tools but we also measure our success with the antidotal stories from teachers classrooms the parental engagement at field experiences and steam night and the pure excitement in a room when students see the daily schedule reflect steam Pals or a visit to Intel we also see the impact as we analyze our student suspension data and see the decrease in in overall suspensions and suspensions for our African-American students as we look to the further expansion of our steam program in year three we are excited to know that the academic rigor and relevance for our students will continue to grow we are also excited to see how the new addition of restorative justice can further support our Learners we see restorative justice fitting seamlessly with the constructive coping skills steam addresses by providing a support system to get below the line with student concerns it will also help give increased structure to dialogues between students much like talk moves has in our academic settings and it will continue to demonstrate for our students that problem solving skills and persistence are essential to seeing both academic and personal growth did you guys enjoy that good evening superintendent Smith
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board members Jefferson clusters principals and other PTA presidents my name is Angie Harris and I am a parent and the PTA president at Boise Elliot humbl school I am here today to talk to you a little bit about um the stem program the steam program and um my current views on it change it for one the first thing is change in students attitudes I've noticed a drastic change in student attitudes in the school um um regarding uh more excitement about the school eager to learn exciting things more willing to work with others and also the shy ones watching them just burst out and it's kind of nice to see student stories um walking around talking to kids and just asking them how they're doing how is school and they're more excited about school now and just to see an excitement of the face is saying oh we get ready to go on a field trip Miss Harris or we getting ready to do this Miss Harris actually I've been continuing Miss Harris and it's just exciting to see them um excited about things and going hiking and um learning about fish and wildlife services it's just I just enjoy watching kids and listening to their stories and how this has really changed them and impacted them especially things that they never done before um really exciting um steam night um we just had recently had steam night at at our school and and on my way to the school I was walking down the street and I saw kids running with their parents in hand and they're like and the parents is telling them to hold up and they like no no Mom we got to get in there we got to get in there we're going to miss something but getting going into the school and seeing all the tables lined up with different activities and watching the parents engaged sitting there with their child and the child is teaching their parents how this is what we learned today or this is what we learned this month in in the classroom and the parents is really looking at it and trying to help them build something out of a little model like a little piece of a a a uh uh sorry about this like little stick um you use like kebabs with gumdrops and little cups you stack up on top of each other see how fast you can do that and watching the Parents try to do it as fast as their student is it's it was really fun and to watch going around the different classrooms and seeing how um they dissect salmon on a computer on a laptop and I'm like wow and this one student said let me show you how to do this Miss Harris and I sat down with them and they actually showed me how to go in there lifos scopically and try to take out you know the little eggs and stuff and the salmon so it was kind of fun to watch um just watching the kids be able to explain themselves in the classroom so it's really exciting on that um PTA support what we do in PTA is we do fundraisers um and with those fundraisers we're able to um uh fulfill teachers wish lists by different projects using bus transportation to and from wherever they're going for their field trips um we also pay for kids that can't afford to go on the field trips and so we able to offset some of the cost of that um we use that in special projects when the kid when the the teachers need money for their special projects in the classrooms we able to help them do that like some of the fish they have we have fish located all around the school and the PTA help pay for that so it's a lot of different things the PTA supports we also volunteer and we're there as a sounding block so they can come to us if they need help and anything like that so um Boise Elliott humbled is a really excellent School I've been a part of that school since my son who was now 24 years old believe it or not is in there and now I have a daughter that's in um the eighth grade now and it's changed her tremendously um she's a talker she's a go-getter she's outgo like I am and sometimes we had to rechannel her energy and that's why I had to tell the teachers to rechannel her energy and put something exciting in place so these kids can stay engaged and that's one of the things they have been doing so um I appreciate Boise ellot humble for doing that I appreciate me as being a PTA parent and I mean PTA um parent yeah that right parent president and stepping up to the plate to want to help the school out thank so officially that's the end of our presentation um if it's time for questions we're available or we can certainly wait until later be happy to entertain questions Steve m flowers told me I needed to go easy on her oh come on which which is interesting to me because I'm always easy on everybody the uh the Common Core State Standards that you're now pushing how did those I mean all the stuff on your movie was all Steam and was wonderful the type of thing that we should be doing in each school but the Common Core State Standards are they pushing on you in some manner to to detract do they detract in any way from from your program do you think so the wonderful
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thing that you're going to get this evening is when I don't have the best answer I defer to who does so miss Parks will take that um no that's really easy on you so as an instructional specialist I help all of our teachers with their planning and curriculum mapping and I would say that the state standards at this point have helped just guide us and channel us um in really narrowing in what we're going to do so we're using the Next Generation science standards and matching that with Common Core and making sure that everything we're doing in the classroom has the highest impact possible so we're really focused and intentional when we're reading we're reading about science and math so everything is integrated and I think the standards at this point have helped us with that we have a lot of way to go with professional development for our teachers but we take every opportunity um to make sure when we're talking about steam that we're also talking about our standards um so that we're getting the most being for our back there's a lot of work involved in the program the things that I saw by your teachers do they what are you doing to DET to subtract other things for instance do you have your teachers all write out their lesson plans which in my opinion is not necessary but I mean it takes up all this extra time for them do you do that or do you we've been really intentional about how we plan and what initiatives we take on and like you saw um with kind of that Circle we make sure that everything fits together so when we are talking about Equity we're talking about steam when we're writing lesson plans we all have a universal lesson plan template we also do a curriculum camp where our teachers come on their own time during the summer um and we support them with writing curriculum um and then I have the luxury of having a full-time position to support our teachers which I think makes a big impact on what they're able to do and the amount of time it takes to plan these field experiences for kids um and make sure that they're aligned with a pre- and a post activity in the classroom so that it's really connected so our teachers are taking on a lot but we are also intentional about making sure that we don't add in things that don't have a high impact thank you other questions I'll make a quick comment Matt go ahead when I saw the video start I was hoping it was going to be the Khaki Pants dance khaki dance yeah um for those of you who don't know uh it is it is available to watch on YouTube and may maybe you're not in the video but I know you two are in the video including principal bacon I recommend taking a look at it because it's a really fun way to uh to address the the uh uniform issue at the school and uh and I got a kick out of it when I saw it so it's on our the khaki pants the Khaki danant you could we could probably yeah get it on it did you have something I'll just add that just who in the comment of what a thrill it is is to see the um the Hands-On projects and the variety of enrichments and opportunities outdoors and and that you're providing for students going up to the Bull Run going down to the coast going to the river is just fabulous and instructor B said of course we want that for every child in our district but the way that you're your team is really focusing around the steam piece and integrating it um it's just fantastic so thank you so much and thank you to all your leadership parent leadership past leadership of principal Chen that sort of laid the groundwork and now the leadership of principal bacon and his entire staff so just really thrilled sure oh sorry before you leave just wanted wanted to say my own my own positive thoughts um I'll first start with principal Molly Chun um who worked really really hard to make that transition um and now you've moved on to make another transition happen but I just want to say thank you because I know it really laid the foundation and a huge thank you to you and your team for understanding what was required and how to step in and continue that momentum and I also want to say is what a great example of how we often hear of a lot of initiatives we know that a lot of things are being thrust on Educators so I really appreciate how you've been intentional and kind of shown a path on how we can in fact support our staff um and why these are still important initiatives to move forward because they really do raise a bar I mean that just looks so exciting um I want to go canoeing I want to go do these field things I mean it's it's so engaging and so relevant to them so thank you and thank you for being 24 years 2 years thank you very much for stepping in and um and leading our parents and helping support in that way thank you thank you to all of you so the next theme that I want introduce his King uh but I want to let you know that um uh principal bacon wanted to be here unfortunately he had
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an emergency last night he's fine he's a home resting so Kevin uh your team was just excellent and I know he's watching us who's who's next king hi good evening it's great to see you guys again so I'm Aaron Berg I'm the principal of King this is my first year as the principal of King and I brought a great crowd here this is Miss Melody Hill Adams she's a first second grade teacher she's been at King seven years this is Nick ma he is my incoming PTA president for next year and then Kenny Butler has been my PTA president pres this year but on and off for how many years Lots so I wanted to bring this team because they can truly speak to where King has been and where King is going and I think that the thing that I wanted to start with is today as I I looked out my window and I saw a group of about 25 middle schoolers get off the bus because they're spending the week at Louis and Clark Law camp and just the way that it made me feel to watch the kids get off the bus their parents greet them and to know that a lot of the hard work that we've done this year in really establishing our Partnerships is paying off and I will say that the biggest payoff that I received this year was about a month ago when I shook President Obama's hand and he said thanks for what you do and it's not really what I do it's what these people do it's what the kids do it's what my teachers do and we've been really privileged to be part of uh the turnaround Arts Grant and to receive that status and and as we think about what's going well to really have the chance to be part of this programming um the turnaround Arts the IB programming and then to have been chosen as a mandarin immersion school going into next year I feel that we're really lucky to get this opportunity and what's going well is the enthusiasm and support that I have from my teachers from my parents from my staff I mean it's really the most positive place that I've ever worked in and the teachers are really hardworking and dedicated to both the standards and the kids and the high expectations that we have and so I wanted to speak a little bit to some of the programs that we had and then talk about some of the directions we're going I wanted Miss Melody to speak about the IB implementation and the implementation of the turnaround Arts because she was there at the Forefront of that good evening um Miss Smith and board members this is the first time I've ever been before the board so it's a little intimidating but I'm planning on going into leadership someday so I better get used to it um we're glad you're here so thank you thank you I um I have the pleasure of working um at King this is going on my seventh year um I had started out at third grade and now I'm a onew blend and then transitioning back into a straight second grade next year and we when I got there uh six years ago seven years ago um I found out it was an IB School I didn't know much about it and it has been a journey it's taken a long time for um teachers in general to get byy in but once you start getting um the training and seeing how IB is rolled out it's really exciting because it's a it's a student Le um implementation of of curriculum and what students want to learn and so finding out how to um have students inquire about their learning and how the process um comes about with kids was a bit challenging because we're so used to setting everything out and following a curriculum but so it takes a while to get into the motion of things but it's really been a a really nice experience to um have children wonder and bring back that sense of wonder and be able to kind of guide the children into um learning things that they want to learn uh so that's been a successful thing something that's been really um working for us at King and the the second thing that I feel like has been working since we received our turnaround Arts Grant um and our partnership with right brain has been phenomenal um I'm glad to see that we're going to continue on with it the kids are um performing um in front of large groups
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of people we have children who have um joined Thea memories um band uh who he gets National you know recognition and it's just been a really delightful thing to see with our students um we have our Dance Program African dance and we have also started um African drumming and the kids have been showcasing their talents we've had theater um obviously the performance with Sarah Jessica Parker at the White House um it's just been a really great partnership and with right brain also partnering with our turnaround Arts Grant it's nice to have um Arts come into our school and the kids are exposed to um sculpture and photography um in addition to you know drama and music and things like that so that's what's been been up at King and I'm looking really forward to keep uh you know getting into to arts and with the kids in the coming years and seeing how that all plays out and I wanted to bring Kenny because Kenny can truly speak to parent involvement over time and the work that parents have done both to increase parent engagement and involvement but also our Equity work and I wanted to ask him to come tonight to kind of talk about the path that has led us here and where we're going hi my name is Ken Butler and like you like you said I've been PTA President also been on the state PTA and so and I volunteer like 27 hours a day but actually um my thing is being at U my thing is being at King's school I mean you know it's like the parenting engagement part for us has been very difficult it's been very dis difficult in the past but lately we've been we've found some things that work for us like our Latinos moms mothers day thing brings in people and this year actually with the IB uh exibition and a lot of our parents it really can't make it or starting to come out and make it and I think and this year we had something different with our turnabout arts program during our auction we had um kids draw a lion head and so we had the opportunity of one of our third graders to create our new mascot and we put on a T-shirt and we were sponsored by the Portland Observer so all the kids in the school got a t-shirt this year with our new mascot that one of their fellow you know classmates did and just seeing them all wear their t-shirt and just seeing how proud he was that he created that and I mean those are some of the things and coming in with our new program that we're going to have coming next year being a little more bicultural you know so reaching out and doing different things and I want to reach out to the Jefferson cluster and also this year I got the opportunity four years ago are graduating eighth grade class I got to chaper on them at their graduating party at Jeff so and those are things that you like to see because from four years to four years now just to see how they grow and you know and it's just to make me feel that how important it is for them to know that me being a parent you know I have kids there my kid's 29 you know and they went to King and I I went to King myself and now I have grandkids to go there so you know so I have a lot invested there and I mean there's been a lot of wonderful things that happened there and I'm and I know that this year with me being on some other the Committees and getting out and networking with Alberta Street and make them know that we're there because a lot of people never knew the king even exists there but we have a lot to offer and our kids have a lot to offer and we have the biggest group of families at Blazer game nights yes and that's another thing no and I just want to take this opportunity to thank Kenny I mean he really does volunteer every single day day at King school and is someone who's counted on by the kids and the parents and the teachers and me um and I will tell you a couple weeks ago one of the kids said I saw the butler at the grocery store the butler Kenny Butler so so thank you Kenny yeah and so Nick is our incoming PTA president and I wanted him to come number one to meet you but also number two to talk about the efforts that we've had this year with some new parent engagement with our kindergarten group and then also the work that we did really hand inand with the teachers in the PTA for our recruiting for our manderin immersion program thank you Aon and uh thank you superintendent Smith and and board we're we're certainly glad to be here and I'm happy to tell you a little bit about what we're doing at King schools the folks that I'm sitting with know much more I'm really a brand new parent I'm uh the parent of a rising first grader
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so um I've you only been with the school for a year but I we've had a great experience so far our family's been very happy there and we've been um very happy to have opportunities to be engaged and um I'll I'll start by just saying um that your work is having an impact and I think that we are one of the families that your work has been specifically targeted to we we certainly were a family that you know looked at our full range of options when we are getting ready to send our daughter to kindergarten and we are very glad to be at king um and I will say that in part our initial interest and attraction had to do with the Investments that have been made the the IB programming the turnaround Arts Grant you know these were certainly things that that got us excited and made us feel like there was there was really a good home for our daughter to be to be there so that's something we're excited about and I will also say that coming into this I knew that you know those Investments don't last forever and with the last year of the Sig Grant this year you know we had some concerns but I will say that the additional support the district has provided and the additional support that Aaron has been soliciting um to bring continue to bring an increased Personnel at the school has felt great and so you know I don't think that any of us feel like there's a cliff coming at the end of the Sig Grant which is something that frankly some of us were concerned about so I want to thank you for that I think that that that does do exactly what it's intended to do which is um speak to parents who might otherwise opt out of the neighborhood and might look for schools elsewhere um that we are actively opting in and and I'm hopeful that you know more families and actually we're seeing this that more families are doing this the Mandarin program is bringing even more neighborhood families who might have otherwise looked elsewhere um to to give King a second look and that's been exciting uh our PTA meeting last week we had um you know you know twice as many folks as we usually have and I wondered who are all these new families and their new kindergarten families who are already um looking to to be involved and so we know that parent engagement is increasing and it's something we're very excited about and we're um frankly um you know very proud to to be king families and to be a part of the the work that's happening there but we also know that that means that there's challenges and there's a lot of programming and a lot of um you know things that could be potentially you know very diverse programming happening and so as a as a family group we really want to be um doing what we can to support the school Community to create a unified um School cultural community and and that's something that that we're working really hard on at the PTA um we've we've made a commitment to make sure that as the Mandarin immersion program begins that the families who who come who are specifically attracted to that program are are brought into to the larger School Community um and and that all of the other work that's been that's been happening for several years is incorporated into this this new energy at the school so that's something that's very important to us um we want to just as parent volunteers be supportive in what ways we can to the good work that the school leadership and the teachers um you know are really taking the lead on and and we're glad to just be at the table and we're very appreciative of the continued investment in the king Community thank you thank you thank you is that is that the end well I think just the only thing that I would speak to was what Nick mentioned is as we move forward knowing that our Sig funds have ended and we're looking at sustainability so every partnership that comes to the table with us I ask how are we going to continue this on when there aren't funds to seed it and so we've developed a partnership with there memory and his band I've developed a partnership with right brain that will continue without our funds I have a local business that we're trying to make it sustainable so the kids are is sold there which then funds their work at King School PSU we have a partnership with and so every opportunity that we have to have this continue forward is we really grab on to those opportunities and that speaks to both um Kenny's work out in the community of getting the Alberta Arts Community involved in ways that feed into the school and don't just drop in and drop out so that's what we're really looking at as we head forward with our programming so thank you for your support thank you questions board members Matt Steve I have the same question about where you've got all these activities in your school going on and next year be tougher yet what what have you subtracted from your teachers workload have you subtracted anything from those from that workload in the last year I don't give them lunch anymore no I'm just kidding well what we're really looking at is how this programming supports the best practices and the high standards and so you know you asked a really good
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question about common core we're in the lucky position that IB supports the Common Core the common core standards have been a part of the IB inquiry so as we're moving into the future our IB planners already reflects this are refs that high level of student engagement and the student inquiry and so what I really try to do is support my teachers with opportunities to lesson plan to work together I've embedded planning into their day long before it was requirement because our teachers need that time and so we use our specials time and we use some of our added benefits to take the load off of the teachers and to give them more time to work together to plan to have that curriculum mapping opportunity and then one thing that I was lucky to do with my Sig F funds is support my teachers in professional development opportunities so I actually pay for them to attend the workshops for example we're all going like six of us are going to Austin this summer to do IB training and that's paid for out of some continued Sig funds and so I really try to support their professional development like taking some of that monetary burden off as a teacher incentive that's how we do it than um I'm recalling that we have four IB elementary schools uh K8 schools um and it's King Vernon sa and it's Skyline I believe um and the programs have been around long enough that these students are starting to transition into high school and uh regardless of whether there's a high school program I understand that it's a incredibly beneficial program um for the K8 students and it will prepare them well for high school but um I'm also curious to know if we are looking at whether or not they can continue on in an IB Program through high school or where we're at with that conversation we had um Madison High School actually considering whether or not they would apply to become an IB School and they were in the process of just looking at that I don't know that they've decided to move forward with that or not at this point but I know um it was the school that Mo most recently was actively engaged in uh studying that for themselves what grade what grade level are the kids out who have started from kindergarten up at this point I mean do we have do we have a little time still to figure this piece out or we have you do already at options okay yeah I would agree I mean I think I agree that we should we need to look at this because we have the um two other Cleveland and Lincoln are only High School IB options at this point right so um that yeah that was on my my list of questions too not necessarily just for you to answer but just to raise it and to put that on the on the list of questions because it really does seem that we're missing an opportunity for the students to not allow them to continue to articulate to an IB high school program and it is something that as a parent Community teacher community that that we have asked that question and there's a a want for that in our community absolutely I also had a question in terms of the um Mandarin program and do you have any sense yet of what the mix of students uh will be in terms of native Heritage speakers or we have very low numbers of native Mandarin speakers I mean our program is mainly a oneway um we do have at this point in time about five native speakers of Mandarin that are in disperse between the two grades both kindergarten and first grade the department of the Dual language department has been actively recruiting Mandarin speaking families to become part of our program but because the program is really a one way there's less of a need for that as a base to start us off and more of the interest base and we are uh also having a summer Institute for two weeks for our families that are coming into both kindergarten and first grade to do some frontloading and some work and getting them a little more exercise with the language and an introduction to the language sounds great and I just also just want to comment on how amazing the parent engagement has been and thank you for all of your um Support over the years you've been around for a long long time and we all noticed that so and thanks for stepping up too actually a good segue um I'm really curious about the the community engagement one of the things that we talked about during the Jefferson enrollment balancing was the need to increase Community engagement around King and other schools too within the cluster and it sounds like that is that has really happened and you're seeing some of the fruits of that labor I'm curious to know and I know not you know it's June not everyone knows uh where they're going to be going in the fall but you mentioned uh a number of new parents of incoming
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kindergarteners do you have a sense of what that incoming class might look like or uh or are you capturing perhaps other students within other grades too in the school well we have all almost completely filled our Mandarin program for kindergarten and then almost filled it for first grade so incoming next year we have um at least two classes of the Mandarin program and then we right now currently have a full class of kindergarteners that have registered and then over the next few months as you know parents like me don't always register their students June 1st for kindergarten um but this year we had three kindergartens that were all neighborhood so I'm looking at my forecasting numbers are 100 kindergarteners right now I have four first grades going into next year that's awesome that's great fantastic thank you follow so sort of a comment or question I mean so just so people I me there was the through the school Improvement gr Grant there was a huge infusion of funds huge opportunities very high per student funding and fantastic and then as as you have been working so hard and we've all been concerned about the cliff that was coming so it sounds as if between um additional and also as we know with more students we have bring more funding and you had a pretty R low enrollment during those years when there was this huge Grant so I'm it's sounding like and I'm hoping that we're reaching that that balancing point where you have enough new kids coming and the funding that comes with them as well as all the hard work that you and your staff and parents are doing to bring in the Partnerships and new opportunities are you feeling like you're I am very very much feeling like that and I think a lot of it is the um number one it's the pursuit of more students King does need to be a full and vital school and you know adding Mandarin immersion while it does add students I think what it also speaks to as an investment in our school and having our neighborhood students I we have a very strong neighborhood program and we want to remain King with mandarin emersion program in King because we are King's school and it is all one school and I think also with you know the really careful eye that we all have towards when a partner approaches us of how is this going to sustain over time how is this going to live in the kids right because what it really needs to be is the kids who think of themselves as artists as drummers as singers as dancers and so the more it lives within the kids the more sustainable it is so I do believe with the balancing of both those things that we're looking a very bright future of with a school full of kids awesome thank you so much I was also just going to say what a difference uh teacher and principal leadership makes um for any school community so I want to thank you for your longevity at the school um I also want to acknowledge Kim Patterson for setting a foundation um as the principal um at King for so long and thank you for the energy you're bringing to it it's awesome yeah go ahead I just I wanted to hear first of all I also want to start out with Mr Butler the first time I came to visited visit King's School you were there to greet me so it's good to see you again and thank you for your commitment um I also um we've heard as we begin immersion programs or as immersion programs you just articulated really clearly we are King School MH first and foremost and then we have a man Mandarin immersion program we are an entire school we want our kids to be infused with this I'd be curious to hear if anybody wants to share what their perspective is is that's such a hard dynamic because you'll have what could be seen as three separate programs right you have people that chose because of the Arts you have people that are choosing because it's their neighborhood and you have people who are choosing because of the emersion program and occasionally those can come in could could potentially conflict so I'd be curious to hear what you all are working on to to help that not come into conflict well actually in reality our last PTA meeting we did invite some of the incoming Mandarin parents and a few of them came like at our Mother's Day event and I mean they said that they wanted to have their own group and right there it's not you know that's not what we're about so I showed her how we work with the Latino moms and we work as a team so anything we do we unite together so but actually so far so good and a few of the parents had some good feedback with and been working with them and we're going to work over the summer so we can come up with a you know a nicer PTA and a nice environment in our school I I would second that and say that I I think that many of the families who are actively opting in are looking for a community to be a part of and so while there are certainly um folks who want to make sure that you know as many resources as possible are are brought to bear for the program the academic program that their young people are enrolled in uh they also understand that having the entire Community wrapped around them is really a critical piece
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of their education and so I I think that that that is something that we can achieve it's certainly one of our challenges that we're facing going forward but you know something that that many of us as parents are are looking to actively um get in front of and and really help to coordinate and I'll just add to that that um you know we were encouraged by a certain level of optimism that we observe in the school and I don't know if youve um had a chance to see this but the a survey came out a couple of weeks ago um that I think reflected very well on the on the school climate specifically so there the tell survey you know specifically um you know talks to um Educators in the school and the the responses from King School were well above average both for other elementary schools in the state as well as for um other elementary schools um or be other schools in Portland Public and so I'm well we're certainly certain you know certainly glad for all the good things happening across Portland Public I think that the the high level of regard that the staff have for what they see happening in the school is something that reflects I think optimism that then um many of us as parents are are happy to reflect back that's that's really great to hear so IAD sorry go ahead someone may have already answered this so forgive me if you have but just in terms of the Albin Head Start do you have a off the top of your head a sense of the um enrollment from Albina Head Start into the New Mandarin program because that was one of the the reasons for placing it there because those students had not had access to our existing Mandarin and we've really worked with Richard Gillam on the we worked as a partnership I went over to Albin Head Start a couple of times and then he's been working with the director um I I can let him speak to that specifically because really what I concentrated on is my recruitment of King school kids and filled all my splots um but but Richard and I did a lot of fellowshipping with the Albin Head Start and currently have a a really solid number of kindergarten families and I know that he's continued to work with them on having some more coming into the first grade which is a little trickier just because of the age but Richard do you mind speaking to that a little bit sure sorry to oh thank you you were done yeah I just wanted to make sure that we have a diverse enrollment using the racial Equity lens on who is getting access to the new program right so just quickly uh with respect to the Albin Head Start we've been as uh principal Berg mentioned we've been working together uh with uh Rony hearnen uh and the Albina uh uh Head Start uh groups and parents we uh it's a for the first grade for the kitty gardeners mentioned uh the slots we I think we're we're were exactly where we want to be we hope to be a little bit further on the first grade however we're doing extensive community outreach as we speak we have a ongoing uh phone calls to parents that we've been making uh an Outreach we we're being uh we're we're developing uh we're actually meeting here in a couple of days to come up with even some more strategies in terms of the Outreach here we right now about uh uh there's about uh 10 15 more slots that we would like to see uh but it's not unusual my understanding and speaking with uh Debbie aradin and and Michael uh bacon in terms of uh these programs as we move into September that uh those numbers normally through the summer um you know would fulfill themselves you know to where we want them to be at so so we we certainly have a plan um and but it's not unusual to be at this point with a new immersion program that's my understanding and one of the pieces that we had to take into consideration is because we were able to go over and meet with the current prek class at albine Head Start we were able to give them applications and have them they came and they toured King and they had meetings at King but because there's sort of a recapture that has to happen for the kids that have already left and gone into kindergarten another school that's been a lot of work on the street for Richard who's been doing a lot of like backtracking where are those students and and how can we sort of bring them back in knowing that now there is a program that they can take advantage of and that was something that they said over at Albin Head Start is being sort of frustrated with that here's my kids who are learning Mandarin and they don't have anywhere to go so there's definitely a lot of work that Richard has been doing to kind of come back and find those kids and invite them great and if I could just said in closing also uh another big factor with those particular parents uh in our discussions with them has been the issue of Transportation uh which we've just just recently crystallized here in the last a couple of weeks that we you know have been able to uh come up with working with the transportation department has have been able to come up with a a strategy to toward uh the transportation issues for those uh Albina had star appearance which was a very big issue for
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them thank you I I find that usually I'm always the last one to ask a question and usually by the time it gets to me my question has been answered and that is exactly what Richard just did because my question was how are you collaborating and coordinating so thank you very much Richard appreciated that don't have to ask my question now um any other questions from the board on no thank you all very much for being here and thank you your hard work oy green Chief Joseph I bet right there we go good evening everyone Hi um so tonight I'm Molly Chun principal at Chief Joseph Oley green um we have kind of a larger group on my left is Kristen Moon she is our new instructional specialist um she will be heading up the steamwork at Chief Joseph Ole green this year she was eighth grade science seventh and eighth grade science um on my right immediate right is going to be Amber Gerber who is the assistant principal on our K3 campus and next to her is Jess Thompson she is our PTA president and next to her is Shonda Justice who is our PTA vice president on the Oley campus right so um to say the least um this year has been a challenge um it's been a challenge in many positive ways as well well as um some real challenging trying ways um this year started last spring um when our consolidation was announced um it was March February March um when things really started rolling and we started you know really coming um to some decision about what the buildings would look like um grade configurations just all kinds of things I like to say that um this year has been um either learning to drive going 80 M an hour or building an airplane Learning to Fly um a lot of the strategies that we used um in creating the consolidation with boy Elliott humble um we tried to replicate but with a it was very different outcome um um it was um challenging again to say the least to really um consolidate two schools with very different demographics and very different needs and wants um being in the Jefferson cluster for as long as I have been um it was my goal and vision that um we created space for children that really gave them um everything they deserve and created high expectations for all kids um the summer really was about um the buildings the facilities um the movement of two different teaching staffs um a lot of hiring my assistant principles were hired um actually came uh we formed a team August 12th so we started working together as of August 12th um the buildings themselves needed a lot of cleaning a lot of organiz izing uh we shifted the two campuses so the staffs were um combined with a combined seniority list and then uh grade levels were staffed with K3 on the Chief Joe campus and 48 on the Oley campus um and that meant a tremendous amount of movement of materials of Technology of teachers um um both campuses required a lot of cleaning out old stuff to make room for new um really and truly that was about probably 75% of our summer um on the 48 campus we were able to um remodel the upstairs so that there was a safe uh traffic pattern for middle school kids during the years when there were close to 800 kids on the Oley campus um the main hallway had been divided into three um closed off office spaces and so middle school students had to go downstairs and up to get from one side of the upstairs to the other and so that was
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something facilities agreed to and was great because now we have this wonderful passageway huge hallway between the two sections of the upstairs um and then we had an industrial Arts room that really just kind of became a collecting place for lots of stuff and um that room was completely gutted uh the all the built-ins were removed and and we were able to create a beautiful dance studio with am Marley floor um mirrors and um and now we have a dance program so again that's kind of what summer was and as we were able to form as a team and hiring was you know finally finished uh we began to establish systems and programs that we needed to make sure articulated across across both campuses uh the first thing that we really needed to work on was community building and communication that's been a challenge um all year long due to two different schedules we have uh a different schedule for each school so K3 starts earlier gets out earlier and uh 48 obviously has a later start and a later um dismissal so that really impacts the professional development time and time that teachers can actually meet and work together and develop community it was a challenge for our Mondays it was a challenge for our late openings um those those times really were um about an hour an hour and a half for each for each of our uh Mondays and uh late openings but with all that said uh we were able to establish positive behavior um PBIS system across both campuses the staff um was able to train uh once a month together with Drew Lawrence our PB PB coach so we established um the PBIS um strategies and systems and interventions and um in addition to that sit teams or sit which is student intervention teams uh on both campuses so with everything that we did as a K8 in all of my experiences as a ka8 principal um now it's a K8 on two campuses so um it is it still feels like two schools in a lot of ways um but I think we're getting there and really getting to a point where we're feeling like one school two campuses um uh and then again in um I forgot to mention this small Point um in August we were um informed that we were indeed a priority school with the state of waron it's not funny but it just kind of just kind of how our year has been um and so we found out in August H that it was a strong possibility and it was I believe October 23rd that the final announcement was in fact made that we were a priority school and um for all of my colleagues who uh were creating their caps with the comprehensive uh achievement plan over last the year before we had from October 23rd to November 15th to actually do a self assessment create a leadership priority team and um write a cap plan that was implemented uh November 16th so yeah it's it I it we were flying but we were building the plane as we went um but what we did and we took advantage of that actually a great resource um so in our cap we created um not only systems and uh programs that supported foundational uh needs of our kids F foundational skills but we wanted to include in um in our plan those programs that really create self-efficacy and help kids really learn to persevere um so my my connections um that I had with the Steam and stem work at Boise we were able to bring over um to Oley um to both Oley and Chief Joseph see I still do this to the uh K3 campus and 48 campus um so in addition to PBIS we wrote into our cap um the steamwork we have a steam leadership team of about I think 10 folks um we have a right brain initiative team again of about 10 folks and um our Equity team is uh we we have 12 people and on that team there are four uh members of our care team so we were trying to really create uh teacher leadership and establish some programming and make sure that we were
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implementing RTI uh response to intervention to really address those foundational needs that our um students have um it it was kind of crazy at first I will be the first to admit um but as we made it through the year we began to see some real rewards um the Department of Fish and Wildlife brought the salmon project to both of our campuses um they brought the uh I'm going to let Kristen talk about it in a minute they brought the lamp freeze and they brought the Muscle Pro they're bringing the muscle program next year uh next year we will have schoolyard habitat established on the 48 campus and a birding program uh where data will be collected and um processed through the aabon society um Christen was uh wrote a grant last summer with um with student Jordan uh Project Lead the Way that brought Robotics and Engineering to our middle school and um that will be extended so that we will have actually robotics one and Robotics 2 engineering one and Engineering two um for sixth 7th and eth graders our right brain initiative um program it's it's been really exciting we had our first buddy uh buddy classrooms of third grade and eighth grade they um had photography with Judy uh um J sorry Judy Julie Keefe um and did uh a buddy back and forth photography project um Beth Bundy who we hired this summer is our Visual Arts um teacher and she was a right brain Artisan residence so she brings um an amazing wealth of um information and experience um she was part of the dchool design school from Stanford she and Kristen are working together to Vis to to really bring design thinking through Steam uh for next year our media specialist is pretty amazing and she began with inquiry this um year on the 48 campus she will be on both campuses next year uh along with our art teacher um our dance teacher was an artisan resident until we could get him certified as a licensed teacher and that was um December Damon Keller um was a Jefferson dancer himself and um is now our official dance teacher on both campuses so we're really like I said earlier we're trying very hard to bring um to create you know a school where kids we Improvement is really important we all know that foundational skills but that we provide a balance and kids have um ways other ways to uh develop self-efficacy and perseverance um so so I'm kind of I guess I'm exchanging um the challenges with the positives as we go into next year um Chris Ron will be our steam instructional specialist we have a reading um instructional specialist Mary Peak they both will be on both campuses our dance will be on both campuses art on both campuses um our uh media specialist she will be on both campuses as well um we wrote the peak which is the PE for um kindergarten through 8th grade Grant through OD so we have full-time PE on both campuses um I I believe we have one of the most robust enrichment programs maybe even in the district um and it's been it's been great for our kids um I'm GNA turn it over to um Kristen so she can talk about more of the steam um Partnerships and then we will talk about um the parent Partnerships go ahead okay hi everybody how are you guys good um so our steam Partnerships one of the challenges that we've had this year is that um we've had to create them from the ground up and so luckily Molly brought some Partnerships with us one of them uh one of them has been with the Department of Fish and Wildlife we had the salmon project at our school and um they've been really great in working with us because one of the challenges has been the Dual campus whatever we do on one campus we want to offer the same opportunity on the other campus so we had to convince them to find us two salmon tanks and give us 200 eggs and um figure help us figure out how do we do lessons because we do lessons from kindergarten through 8th grade even though it's targeted at fourth grade and through that we did a buddy project called Stuff the fish not a live fish just a pretend one um and uh classes got together the older kids walk over to the uh K3 campus it's a little easier to walk older kids over we've figured that out this year that was one of the fun things and um they had a great time creating this piece of art and they created with their Buddy each
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doing a side of a uh paper fish and then stuffing it with paper and we hung them all around our campus and stuff like that and it was really neat when they went to different campuses the kids could be like that was my fish so so that was a really nice connection from that partnership um we have started piloting the uh lamp pre project which um for sixth seventh and eighth grade they are working on raising and learning about lamp pra um there isn't a lot known about L pre so it's kind of fun um it's that's been a little bit of a challenge also next year they are bringing the freshwater muscle Academy which is not the muscles this but it's the muscles in the water um and uh that will be with our seventh and eighth grade as well learning about um water quality and all of those kinds of things uh they'll also be bringing the um biring program so our sixth grade will be doing the biring program and then partnering with our third grade to teach our third grade about biring as well uh um we have a partnership with the University of Colorado in Boulder we are going to be working on their ozone monitoring project we've been the school selected for the Pacific Northwest to um for students to wear personal ozone meters and go on these tracks and add to a National Database of which then um they get to collaborate with the other kids in the other states around these databases and with uh professionals around this real um live research it's pretty amazing uh I don't know if you've worked with middle school kids but they think that everything's been discovered in science and nothing's left for them so these are really important opportunities for them to find out that actually there's still a ton of science we don't know and that there really are jobs in science that they could do uh we are wow um we are working on what the box the Boxx partnership oh okay she has a little nicknames for things so sometimes I have to figure out what they are um we're working on a partnership with a company called adx um this year I was lucky enough to write a grant through donor's choose and um was able to get a 3D printer for my classroom and my uh Mesa students and then as well as our engineering and Robotics students have been learning um Autodesk Inventor which is the current um like standard that is used uh around 3D printing and um with that partnership with adx is they've made um like a maker space if you don't know a maker space for people who are inventors and creators to come and they can rent time there or purchase time there and they're um working on a partnership for us we're talking uh a long-term partnership they're very interested in being deeply invested with schools and teachers as well as bringing um design thinking uh um as Molly talked about our art teacher has gone through uh dchool with Stanford and uh I have also gone through it at different times we didn't know that about each other so it's really been nice but um we're starting a class for kids to do in the spring around design thinking and working at adx around being creators and inventors around uh design for the other 90% so taking what they know and not about making our lives easier but about making lives easier for other people um and our big Focus for the following years is about teaching our kids how to how to successfully fail what we have found this year is their students do not know how to have something not work and keep going in that perseverance and so we're talking about how do we build that program from kindergarten through 8th grade so that our students come to high school and then onto college with those skills about how do you successfully fail and keep working on that thanks thanks we have about five more minutes maximum even for questions so oh but we weren't done well okay parents go fast I'm not I'm not paid I'm not um I'm not paid by the school district uh me neither um oh um I will say uh that um this is I you know you've heard me say it before I was an educator for 12 years in a district that operated much differently than PPS does um um the school that I was a middle school teacher at for many years um there were were straight feeder schools and there was identity within the community so our kids felt really strongly that they were going to rule up to a certain high school and that there was a community built into that identity starting in kindergarten that our kids um have not had so much uh I I understand the work that you're doing now to build that and being really um conscious about the racial Equity um educational policy is the lens for helping you build that so I really appreciate the work that you're doing
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and I understand that that merge is part of that and I really appreciate that um that work uh I will also say that we've inherited a really really bitter time um and it's been really painful for a lot of our community members um and uh and it has been handled I think with as much grace and um and strength uh from Molly and her leadership um and from our staff uh as possible but it's it's been tough on parents I think you've you've heard from from some parents I as a um Middle School Parent have uh you know I've you know I think Middle School is different because um you kind of let them go more and they're they have more Independence and so my child's experience um has been much much um has just been overwhelmingly positive and his friends experiences have been overwhelmingly positive so when you hear from so as a PTA president uh speaking to you I can speak only from the people that come to the PTA meetings and you know from my own personal experience which which has been overwhelmingly positive but I I know from talking to other people that the merge has been really hard both for Oley parents and students and for Chief Joseph Oley parents and students and um there's no way through it except through it and so um so really appreciate the work of of your staff and of Molly and um it's it's good work but it it has been difficult um we were just gonna come from the PTA board side of it um I work with volunteers and um it was nice seeing both campuses get parents together and come together and um just enjoy one another and see all the kids being happy and um we have a really strong um backpack Club going um we have parent Volunteers in that we started a Clothes Closet um we have paren and volunteers with that so we have a lot of things that are growing um and uh getting a lot of family support from both sides thank you thank you okay so questions from the board comments Steve the reading instructional Specialists that you have do does that person work with children or we have a a reading specialist who works with children for next year on The K3 campus and then our instructional specialist who is Mary Peak she works with teachers coaching and supporting our data teamwork and assessment work do you have people on your student intervention team that goes out into the homes no this is uh the student intervention team is part of the PBIS and it's a team of um teacher Administration counselor and um what happens is that the embedded during embedded PD time teachers bring up uh students they may have concerns about and then those students are brought to the sit team and it's uh it's it's really a way of supporting students with interv itions before students are moved on to any program on your PBIS when you read the PBIS literature which is which I fairly extensive I guess they talk about getting rid of all your they talk about getting rid of all your committees and bringing everybody in the community together around certain the PBIS program you don't do that do you we are trying really hard to integrate our um our teams and really and truly the equity work and PB s Lead everything that we do in our building so we're really looking at how to provide um interventions for students that need it how to look at data and um really with with a very clear lens on Equity did they uh would you explain the busting situation that Miss Justice uh was talking um I know about as much as um everyone else does we received a letter last week from uh Transportation the same letter that students uh received and it was I didn't have any heads up um and basically it's the nclb bus that was established years ago is um no longer going to be in service for our kids and that bus used to take which kids to school um students from around the Rosa Parks area brought them to Chief Joe and Oley so actually do you estimate that some of those children now I won't go to Arley green I'm I'm relatively sure that some children will not be able to attend but
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I know that um Antonio is looking into it and that it's not I I think there's more work to be done thank you okay others Matt I remember the board's conversation last year about Transportation so I was really surprised to hear the testimony today so thank you for bringing that to our attention um real quick the uh not that you need another partner because I know you've lined up a lot but I think when you mentioned lamery a light went on in my head and um the the Columbia River inter treble Fish Commission uh is an organization in town who uh do works with the five Columbia River treaty tribes there are uh there's a lampy harvest actually that that local tribal communities do every year and uh by the way one of the treaty tribes of uh the Columbia river is nesp and we know who is nesp Chief Joe right so I think it's a it' be a nice symbiotic uh opportunity to uh to bring in CCF and and I could help get you in contact with them too and they do a lot of education for for young ones as well so uh it could be a possibility but thank you all for the presentation that be great Bobby great so had um two questions I wanted to ask one is um we heard some parent testimony about some bullying situation and it sounds like you guys are so involved in so many different things and you we're going to have some of those situations at times is this a an area where our new EMB busman will be able to support parents in these situations and support principles and teachers is that one of the areas um yes in terms of being the point of contact not necessarily who will actually be the individual who solves the problem but we'll figure out how to address the problem but a single point of contact for parents with any kind of an issue yes and believe that that help is on the way parents well and we were just notified a couple weeks ago that we will have restora of Justice on atar 48 campus and just found out two days ago that we will finally get play works on our K3 campus so those programs both really support that will really help so the other the other thing I wanted to ask about is when I hear your presentation and the other presentations and I hear so much about the the art and the steam and all of these other programs David Williams if you're out there listening from our legislative policy group um I I keep uh thinking that we need to be looking ahead at what the impact is going to be on our middle school kids in particular of the PE mandate that is coming um I don't know what you offer now to students in terms of physical education um I think there's a general sense that it's incredibly important um but the Mandate is going to require you know something like 50 to 60 minutes a day of PE and I have to think that that time is going to have to come from somewhere else and it worries me so um any sense of how we're going to deal with that as we yeah so we have a full-time PE teacher on both campuses one for K3 and 1448 in addition to dance on both campuses so Susan Jordan and I just finished the the peak uh Grant and our students have between 210 to 240 minutes of uh movement a a week so dance would be considered part of the PE M absolutely good that's helpful okay thank you any else some really than I did hear a rumor that that you might be considering a an eighth grade Constitution team oh yeah we are actually we are um and Jason Trombley who is uh the he heads the Constitution team for Lincoln he's on our site Council so he's kind of our direct contact I'm not saying who I where the rumor from we are we are actually yes that's fantastic I also want to mention the uh I was really incredibly excited when uh last summer I heard about the conversion to the dance studio and I thought what an amazing uh magnet into uh into Jefferson uh into that program and I'm curious uh have you seen I mean students who are interested in dance or and at that level have been doing it for a long time are have you seen students check out Oley green because of that dance program not not I haven't we haven't seen new students coming in but we've seen students um existing for eight students especially that are excited about going to Jefferson and want to be Jefferson dancers so that's I want to say something about our um we had a carnival a couple weeks ago
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and we have a great Sun program that's um the SEI runs for us it's phenomenal run by Coya Goodman and um they had the music blasting and all of the kids were out there I mean it was just like a magnet and they were all doing these dances that they had learned in dance class um from Mr Keller and it was like a be just there were there been magical moments along the way and that is a magical moment that I'm going to carry with me and my son's you know a s income or he's going into seventh grade and I he's he's demo all the way I mean and that is that's what he wants and my husband's like well what about a comprehensive high school what about Roosevelt and I mean we've got two great options but but he's demo all the way okay Steve did you have a question I had the same question that I asked earlier that I planning to ask of probably every principal shows up here in the next year uh you've got all these things going what are you taking off your teachers plates well I I guess our strategy is to integrate and so um to interconnect all of our programs is really our goal um actually Wednesday we are um I'm paying teachers to come Wednesday Thursday Friday for a curriculum camp where teachers will be um really looking at the math St standards K8 and determining some high power standards um and aligning those with key lessons and then we're looking for assessments both um uh interim informative assessments so um teachers I always put it out there teachers volunteer but they are always paid extended hours anytime I ask teachers to do something I do pay them I have priority money from the state to do that um I can use Title One money I've used Equity money from Equity grants um so it and it but the I I think the key to it is to integrate and interconnect your program so it's not you know a program on top of each other but more an integration and that's really how we want to see how we want kids to see their education as well okay others okay um I just want to say thank you very much to all of um you for being here to the presenters and principles from uh Boyce Elliot Humbolt uh Chief Joe oy green and from King thank you very much for bringing all this information to us thank you Richard and thank you Antonio do either of you have anything else you'd like to share with us tonight I just recognize the other principles that absolutely absolutely and and I will do it very briefly but there is also a lot of good things that are happening in the other schools so let me uh uh Tina Aker and Melissa shner from uh Verner they're here and they were just certified IB for the middle grade so this is the school that is certified K IB where where's we also know about the great work that is going at Fabian 32 PhD we also have H Rebecca Torres from Beach and we also have uh Robin Morrison from wolon and as you know wolan we just gra uh got a sick grand for $ 1.3 million so and thank you thank you for giving us the time to present about what's going on in the Jefferson cluster I know we took a lot of your time but I think it was worthwhile no I appreciate it very very very good thank you so much what did you need a break she did he did okay so we'll move on to the next there we go our next agenda item um our local um local option referral superintendent Smith do you want to um I would this off so I'm gonna ask John ISAC who is our chief of communications and public affairs and David Williams who is a director of government relations to come on up and talk about our opportunity um to put a local option before the voters okay thank you superintendent Smith uh chair nolles members of the board uh John Isaacs chief of communications and public affairs and uh we're very pleased to be here with you tonight to make our formal recommendation that the board refer the local option uh back to voters for this Falls election uh this recommendation has been a long time in the work since the legislature acted in 2013 uh to make some changes that allow us to honor the the full will of the voters uh who voted to for communities like Portland who voted to approve uh
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local funding for schools um with either little or no knowledge that a portion of those funds actually do not go to the school district that they voted to fund but go are directed away to urban renewal so first I'm going to turn it over to David Williams our director of government relations who's going to talk about the legislation and the efforts that went into passing it and then I'll talk more about the draft ballot title and and um and explanation thank you um board memb David Williams director of government relations um I won't belabor this but uh this is a bit of a recap of a piece of legislation that we brought forth on your behalf in 2013 you should have in your packet a nice little handout that looks like this that's got the bill number on it House Bill 2632 so this was um a bit of a quirk in State Statute that came to our attention um following U pretty pretty broad sweeping urban renewal reform in 2007 that uh made sure that local option levies uh would not be diverted for new urban renewal districts which was a positive change in ' 07 but what it didn't capture was existing urban renewal districts and of course existing levies well as you know Port the city of Portland has um quite a number of older pre-existing urban newal districts that were siphoning a portion of our local option Levy uh for that purposes of course urban renewal siphons off as portion of all property taxes um but we felt that this was a a policy choice of the legislature could be um could consider that a voter approved Levy should obviously fund the things it's approved for so we brought forth in 2013 a bill to fix that so for all levies approved after the effective date of the ACT which was January of 2013 the no funds would be diverted for urban urban renewal whether old or new urban renewal districts now the upshot for us of course is our Levy is diverting about $7.5 million to Portland's urban renewal districts which is a obviously not an insignificant amount um the bill passed should the voters approve a new Levy at the same rate we're at now that would bring back to the district about $4.5 million obviously it's hard to predict and the loss the difference between the 4 and a half and 7 half is lost uh due to compression and um we can probably spend the next three hours talking about what compression is and how it impacts property by property what your taxes are and what you pay but uh Les uh let it be known obviously the school side of the property tax Leisure is in Greater compression than the local government side and therein is your loss of about $3 million so um in an attempt to be sort of uh fiscally responsible to the taxpayers and really respect their will we brought that bill I want to give a lot of credit to representative Margaret Dy and then representative Jules Bailey who uh uh co-sponsored the bill and really championed it the legislature um of course it wasn't without um uh without its uh friends the bill passed 59 to zero in the house and 29 to zero in the Senate um with all due intent that uh for all levies and this doesn't affect just local option School levies it affects all local option voter approved levies the intent is when the voters vote on something the money should go to the things they vote on it shouldn't be diverted for other purposes so um we're really happy about that I also want to give credit to the city and um uh then candidate mayor hailes and and now mayor hailes who Al they all supported that idea and we worked with the city to make sure that they could manage this in their process as well with the county to make sure that they actually do the math from the assessor side and actually divert the money for its intended purpose uh so you have before you today is the upshot of that the ability to send uh the levy back out to voters to then comply with the house bill 2632 are there any questions for David questions the thing that I've heard David from a lot of uh people is they want to know where's that money going to come from now that they had before great question so the the beauty of the legislation or the way it works obviously is it doesn't change any individual taxpayers rate um or I should say it doesn't increase any individual taxpayers rate so in 2011 the voters approved a $1.99 per thousand of assessed value Levy rate what happened was the assessor would collect what would be that $199,000 for that um that homeowner and some portion of that based on the overall Citywide urban renewal District some portion of that would be diverted to um urban renewal uh the Portland development commission and then the rest would be uh sent to the school district based on the local option Levy this just means that all of that amount comes to the school district of course the The Quirk is in compression and compression is a household by household um um formula that that you you deal with so some voters will actually see a uh decrease in their tax rate if they're
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already under um a certain amounts of compression on the school side again that's the going from about 7 and a. half million that PDC gets from this now to where we would only be able to capture about 4 and a half million um when it comes over the school side of the $5 and $10 ballot measure five limits so it's actually the Portland development commission that gets less money overall is that correct thank correct mat so the the this option ly is funds primarily I don't hear my my but funds primarily teachers in classrooms right there you go so is there a is there a reason why in your mind is it what's the risk involved in going out other than it not passing because we didn't deliver the right message or for whatever reason so I think great question I think we'll put put that on the park for just a moment because I think that gets to the ballot title and looking at the November election all those sorts of things absolutely question before you start are there other current levies that would be impacted in a similar way like the children's Levy anything like that if they if they were to go out again would they also get more money for the actual intended purpose right so um both the children's Levy and the Metro Levy have been renewed subsequent to the passage of this law so they both are benefiting they already getting that redirection for theend purp absolutely I don't know of other school districts or other local governments around the state Beyond those two in the metro area but obviously there are any number that would benefit from this others John okay so what you have in your packets is a draft ballot title and summary statement um this ballot title and summary statement has been approved by our Attorneys at Miller Nash and it was written collaboratively with members of the citizens budget Review Committee that's important because uh the 2011 Levy that was approved um stated that independent citizen oversight would review expenditures to verify funds are used as approved by voters uh that committee that that was empowered to play that role as cbrc and as you've heard in a two um their report that they give to this board annually their last two reports they expressed some concerns with some previous language so we worked with them to improve the language to satisfy the concerns they've raised with you and um I can say that actually about 80% of this is language that was provided to us by some members of cbrc so um we have this here for your feedback and um if the board um gives us positive feedback on this next week we'll come with a resolution and a full U measure summary along with it I do want to say also that we have in your packet a memo that you've seen before but last year when we did our survey with Davis hibbits midall research the annual survey we do of uh just the community's views of how Portland Public scho Schools is doing and educational priorities we asked a question about this and you can see that um just under 80% of Voters said they would approve of this it's not every day you get to put a question to voters where you say hey would you like to approve the same thing you've already approved but just have more of your money go to the source you intended it to go to so this is a um it's very popular concept but the memo does also note that um once you make the referral that the board will need to work to make sure voters are aware that this is a just a renewal of a levy that was already approved and isn't adding money on a levy on top of what they've already approved so um there will be a little bit of work that the board will need to do to make sure the community is aware of what the referral means it is standard practice for the board to refer the new Levy to replace the old Levy before the old Levy expires so this is not an unprecedented referral in that sense either and that's our presentation today and we're happy to answer any more questions so I also just wanted to do one clarification which is that um if for some reason we went out in November and the measure failed we would just simply have the current Levy in place and correct the Portland development commission would simply get all that money right right the choice effectively is do you want to keep paying what you're paying and have S and a half million of that go to urban renewal or do you want to replace it pay the same amount and have more of those funds go to fund teachers and educator programs in schools right so I wanted to um do a little shout out to Sarah Carin Ames um who used to be in our Communications Department because I think she's the one that really initially kind of caught this and got the ball moving in terms of us going to the legislature and then legislature really doing the right thing and making sure that when voters pass money saying we want to pay for teachers that the money actually goes to pay for teachers so uh just a shout out to her real quick and then to everyone else who kind of helped along the way and and especially to the legislature for making this um needed change which again I don't think most of us even understood that the money wasn't going to exactly where it was supposed to be going to
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until she kind of called that to our attention so I guess I look back at the this past year when we were in teacher contract negotiations and all of the discussion that we heard in the community for months and months and months and it almost went to a strike was the fact that we have in Oregon some of the highest class sizes in the nation some of the heaviest teacher workload some of the shortest uh days in terms of school days the kids are in session um we had a compar complain complain about hours I mean to me I look at this opportunity as just a golden opportunity for us to go back out to taxpayers and say if we end up passing this and we have another $4 and A5 million dollars going to Portland Public Schools we're talking about potentially another 40 to 50 teachers that we can hire the following year I mean it's it's such exciting incredible news so um it would also be helpful to I think share with folks how much our current Levy total brings in so people understand David how this this is a big part of our budget so if you could do that please no thank you director ran and and uh thank you for calling out Miss Ames I I did mean she's on my list here too and one other I I do a a really big shout out as well to the Portland Association of teachers who we had our initial meetings with representative do already at their office offices in germinating this bill and they really helped encourage the representative to be a chief Ally in getting this drafted um and uh Sarah AMS actually found this little Quirk by reading the annual report of the mold County tax supervising and Conservation Commission so lest you think that there's nothing useful in that report I can assure you it's a pretty scintilating read um by all means do read it um so in so put that in perspective the 7 and half or the 4 and a half million that we would um retain by this the the current Levy is is is um collecting a a roughly and and I know um David we is here and can give us more precise numbers that need be but around 5758 million so it's 4 and a. half million on that is certainly not insignificant and I think as director Regan pointed out 40 uh plus um teachers or other uh folks in our buildings makes a huge difference to kids every day and we're talking about 20 to 22 million more dollars over the life of the 5-year Levy and you can see in the local option the draft ballot title and summary statement we have the estimated amounts based on the information we have now but as uh David we would tell you it's very hard to make these predictions exact given our very complicated tax system with compression but these are the best estimates we can give that will be in this referral so that kind of leads to a question that I have I'm I'm a little concerned about putting the um 40 a number for the teaching positions into this because of of the difficulty with predictions and we don't really know I think that the language that says primarily fun teaching positions is adequate um and I would hate for us to be in a position where we are obligated to do 40 positions when we actually only get three million dollars if that would happen so it's that's my concern okay on the other hand it's helpful to put it into to translate that into what the number means so I hear what you're saying though too I think you can do that without putting it and because this is the language we're going to be held to so if we collect if we only collect 3 million we're still going to have to do 40 teaching positions so I'm just I think the the intention here is to give voters a context for what four million is equivalent to but we could change this language to be um to to reflect that we're giving you context but it's not a commitment to a specific number in fact what you're saying director nolles is that is a consistent with the spirit of the recommendations from the citizens budget Review Committee is to have language that provides the primary use of the funds puts it in context but doesn't make these super specific commitments that we just can't say 100% we're following through on well it also says in here we're going to reduce class sizes and support educational programs so again if we only have three million not only are we not able to do the 40 teachers we're not able to do the other things in this as well so let's I just don't want to limit us in we able to do okay we can look at an edit to that yeah it's for the whole op yeah it's not saying that the additional it's the entire L I got it yeah um thanks for the presentation um and I just want to reiterate a couple of things one I think actually a number of our public did understand how much of this money was we were not receiving whether it's because compression whether they understand that or not I think folks understand that there are things things in place that divert money into places they didn't intend to um but I think people saw that I think our community saw that as the cost of doing business that they knew that they
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saw the amount that cevy was going to to add to what we needed um and they were willing to do that and so I'm looking forward I feel like one of our biggest challenges and you allude to it was saying we are going to need to run some kind of campaign board's going to have to run some kind of campaign because I was taught that if it looks too good to be true if it sounds too good to be true it's probably not true and to tell our voters to say you can pay the exact same thing that you are paying today and four more million three and a half more million four and a half more million will go to the school district five more um will go to the school district and it won't change your rate significantly meaning some people might depending on which side of the Ledger because a compression might see a reduction in their what they pay but it's not going to change the rate I feel like people are going to be really cautious about believing that message and so it's going to be really important that we get out ahead of that message and at the same time I feel like this solution is a great example of being proactive that for so long our community has set it so hard to work at the state level what can we do what can we do we have given as much as we can we are we are trying to support you in every way we can is there another option and I just really appreciate Sarah Sarah car Carla ases car ases staff P working to find this there are other options there are there is a way to do this um and again I I I think it's I hold firmly to the belief that this is something that our our community would expect us to do and is exactly the kind of advocacy and proactive action I think they're going to expect from us so thanks for all the work um that it's taken um and thanks to um representative dhy and Bailey um for for their work on it as well so I am actually noticing for the first time and I apologize um when you look at the language from our last Levy it actually said fund 600 teaching positions and when I'm looking at this replacement it actually to me should say primarily fund about 600 teaching positions including the equivalent of you know 40 resulting from the result of urban renewal so if this is a replacement we're not talking about 40 we're talking about 640 and I'm not sure that this actually says that anymore so we probably should look at that a little bit okay I think that's a good point because otherwise you might be confused into thinking it's an incremental piece that you're approving rather than a newly improved original so yeah I would agree with that others and I saw one typo I can share with you Steve the question itself 20 words limit question what does redirect from urban renewal mean I it should be clear I think I'm not sure if where you should start or how you actually word these I'm sure they're experts in doing this it's not me but I know redirect from urban renewal says nothing to me I have no idea what that is and and without some background and Sh District support schools programs uh that doesn't have much I mean so this a it's bad English maybe they're trying to push it down there if I change the whole thing around if I change the whole thing around it would be Levy I mean if it was in these in English I guess it'd be levia shell District Levi $1.99 per thousand assess value for five years beginning 2015 to support schools and programs and redirect money from urban renewal you're over 20 words but that would at least which is a problem make it but that would at least make sense this redirect from urban renewal doesn't make any sense in about title this is the main thing what I'm sure they have some figures for what percentage of people just read the question and they're going to just read the question and I don't know what this question says redir renewal to me he doesn't say anything yeah I I mean it's a I'm just saying that's the first thing that caught my eye the second thing that caught my eye was down in the road can we go back and redo the budget and make sure the 600 no here went the 600 teachers or so or whatever went to that instead of uh the consultants and uh and and the uh uh other things that money got cred away on uh I guess not didn't the cbrc just do a report for us and acknowledge that we had in fact met all the requirements of this prior Levy correct yeah that's what I thought and they worked on a yeah they worked on an accounting solution to that yes and this is sort of addressing the last making these improvements to the language based
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on their input is the other thing I think is I I'm not that 40 the 40 teacher that's the only thing in there that really told me what the levy was the extra I mean the what the uh urban renewal part was that was what told me oh yeah okay that urban renewal is that the rest of it doesn't I'm not sure I mean it's a complicated thing I'm not sure it makes sense do you have to have the re the urban renewal thing up in the ballot title I mean in the question well I think director bu I think it's a great question 11 I just point out there's a 20-word limit 11 of those words are required by Statute that's everything starting with Levy $1.99 to the end of that sentence is required by Statute the sentence after that this measure renews current local option levies uh Levy local option taxes is also required it's not included in the 20w limit however um that's also another great example of the legislature acting to make things clear on the ballot because previous required language had us saying that this measure may increase property taxes by more than 3% even though it was a renewal but so we left with nine words to work with to try to describe to voters what this is paying for and the change versus the previous Levy so we're trying to get in both District Operations as as well as pulling money back from urban renewal in nine words it is certain you have to put have the urban renewal in there the advice we advice we received from Davis hiits midall was that within legally approved language uh make sure you are directly communicating to um voters that you are redirect this is a replacement that will direct funds from urban renewal to schools and so this was our best attempt to follow that advice within language that our legal council would approve oh how about uh you would save the same number with something like redirect urban renewal funds instead of the if we added funds we would need that we just would have to you take the from out word that we would you take the from out and you'd have the exact same number redirect urban renewal funds makes sense to me when we're redirecting urban renewal funds as opposed redirect from urban renewal okay no charge for the no consulting fee on that good suggestion other questions anyone okay I guess when uh you guys are excused okay so next week we'll be yeah we'll bring a resolution and the full uh ballot explanation so thank you thank you than you I didn't okay make sure okay let's move on to I think yeah uh the presentation for the Roosevelt High School schematic design at our June 2nd meeting the board was excited to adopt the Franklin High School schematic design and we are um looking forward tonight to receive the Roosevelt High School schematic design superintendent Smith you want to would you like to introduce this item further I would so Jim Owens is the executive director of The Office of school modernization and Michelle platter who's the Project Director um and Lauren our architect um will be up here to do the presentation on Roosevelt schematic design and just the one other thing I'd like to mention before they do this presentation is last um week as part of the uh Franklin schematic design resolution we had a conversation about directing staff to go back and re revisit the educational specifications which two things will be happening this summer one is that we'll be um reviewing the Ed specs for our K8 schools uh preparing to bring that to the board so that one's been um under development but we are then will also go back given the conversations we've had um as part of uh looking at the first couple of high schools we'll go back and do the uh revisit the high school Ed specs and those will uh with the idea that we'll bring them back to the board for review in September and Matt Morton was the board member who was the liazon for the edpc process so he'll be the person but others who are interested in participating in that process can indicate that to us as well so just to say that Steve wasn't w we also talking about borrowing money and you were going to make a recommendation on that yes we have and that later or no yeah we'll bring bringing that back to you at the the 23rd or 24th whatever the next board meeting is um so we have gone back to investigate the possibility of doing um another borrowing in order to enable us to do um what we what we've been talking
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about so yes under review thank you Jim Owens take it away thank you superintendent Smith and good evening board we've reached another milestone in a very significant very exciting project the full modernization of roselt High School uh pleased to be here tonight with our team to uh present the schematic design which represents a very significant uh Milestone on our schedule to complete the work uh last December you may recall that um staff presented and you approved the master plan for the Roosevelt High School site since that time much has changed and we are now ready to present a schematic design that staff is cautiously optimistic can be built within scope budget and schedule I'd like to introduce the team that has been working very very hard on this project seated to my right Michelle platter osm Project Director next to her Lauren mccan is the principal with betti Architects uh they're going to walk us through the uh documents and provide some insight into the work i' also like to recognize that we have our amazing principal from Rosevelt here with us tonight Charlene Williams behind me and her uh vice principal Greg Newman uh we also have our Builder team here with u Lee Crutcher Lewis who have been working very closely with our team as well so we have the whole gang here today and uh after we complete our presentation we'd like to be able to answer any questions or any concerns you may have but before I do the handoff we'd like to show a quick video which uh depicts some of the work that's been going on at Roosevelt over the last several months Auto you think this is going to work there's so much diversity here we have over 29 countries represented and we have such a diverse Dynamic talented teaching staff and others who are really committed to the success of every child so it's really exciting that we're going to have a a new and welcoming 21st century design building that will inspire learning I think that connective tissue that we're working on within the school is what's really exciting to me we're we're kind of healing some of this school that's been that's been disperate and spread for a long time and we are bringing it together and saying okay we're in this we're going to know you well we're going to work collaboratively toward a process we're getting teachers and administrators excited about their place again certainly the community the parents are are focused and giving us lots of feedback I really like the whole Commons idea that was like one of the first things that I advocated for at at the dag meetings I was like we need to have a Commons isn't our job as a community school to bring people from the community into the school so um I'm really excited about us having a common I think it really does give Roosevelt like a central place like a heart of the school although we may have wanted a lot more space what we needed was this space and so as the as the project team um and bti has been amazing at it they go back to the drawing board time and time and time and time again and we've probably made 20 Renditions of this plan and it's and it's still evolving but they're giving us they're finding space they're going in and they're they're hearing the community as far as like we need stem space we need CTE space and they're being very very creative in how they how they put these spaces together so they're definitely listening they're definitely hearing us and being a part of this group being a part of this team has been absolutely amazing to see the process people will begin thinking outside of the box of how they can use their space because they'll have clusters where they are um cooperating in classrooms but there'll also be various other learning spaces distributed throughout the building well have a maker space and and wouldn't it be wonderful to see the language arts teacher taking students down to the maker space and making the curriculum come alive working with teachers in that area so I'm excited about inspiration by us not just building a new facility but literally looking at the programs we're telling our students we're telling our families we're telling our community that you're known that you matter and you have impact and that we care about you and of course I'm excited because we're going to have a brand new state-of-the-art theater as well as blackbox and supporting space and then of course having the maker lab right there they're able to then get their hands on and actually make and do right
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there in the space and not just talk about it in theory but actually design it build it use it now we're getting somewhere why do we do this I think we just value kids we recognize that our future is about our children and you know if I can take my gifts as a designer and apply them to something that helps our kids out then it's a win-win as far as I'm concerned for all of us as um voters and members of the community here in Portland this is just an exciting thing to get the opportunity to rebuild our schools we have a sense of care um of community and support uh support from the people of St John support from the people of Portland that they want to do something better for us as students you are worthy as a student and you do matter and you're not going to be the last and we're going to start with you and that to me is a huge step for for our district for our community and all the process that's come back has said you do matter Roosevelt you do matter North Portland and we got you and we're going to show it and you're number one right now everyone needs to be excited about what's happening on the Roosevelt campus this is uh your school as much as it is ours and the the way that we're going to really continue to take new Roosevelt to the next level is to rise together and our facility is just going to be a crowning Jewel for for the St John's Community what that shows the kids and the ones that are going to be partaking in this is that all these people care about us all these people are thinking about us all these people are planning for us and they all look differently they all come from different places and they're all doing this for us that's an investment in my tomorrow that's an investment in my future so we're empowering our kids we're empowering our community just simply by coming together when we're divided we're weak but when we come together our voice is strong and it's heard so we're showing our kids that we care about you and we're all coming together for you so I just have to thank everybody who was able to put that together there for us because it really marks the sentiment that we all feel in coming to this project and doing the work that we're doing um I'd like to thank the board for this opportunity to present the schematic design for the Rosevelt High School um I'd also like to thank the Roosevelt staff and communic Community for their participation in this effort I think we can all agree that while some of the conversations have been quite spirited everyone who's participated has done so based on an intense desire that we all share to create powerful new learning opportunities for our students we've received valuable feedback as a result of these discussions since the start of our schematic design process both bti Architects and leee cretcher Lewis our cmgc contractor um have participated in the staff and Community discussions when the time came to begin reconciling the project to our budget they had firsthand knowledge of both the needs of the program and the needs and desires of our stakeholders while budget reconciliation is never an easy process their teams brought considerable knowledge in the form of their own staff as well as outside Consultants to provide thoughtful insight and a balanced end result I know that many in the community as well as the Roosevelt administration stand with us in support of this plan we're presenting this evening a plan that meets the conceptual goals of the long range facilities plan it meets the program goals of our educational specification the project budget and while we're still in progress on this next item we're developing a schedule that will allow us to meet the final completion and occupancy of the fully modernized facility in September of 2017 I'll now turn the presentation over to Lauren mccon principal of bti Architects good evening thank you for inviting us Roosevelt High School Is On The Rise we have increased enrollment increased graduation rates increased test scores decreased suspensions and expulsions the restor ations and additions that we're working on are about uniting the community both the school and the neighborhood personalizing education for all kids as was as was said very well just a m moment ago and balancing some of these disperate program needs that are part of any big high school design some of the design parameters that we've been working with you'll see here on the slide we basically have an approved educational specification focusing on a core capacity of 1,700 with an immediate 1,350 student capacity we are targeting 100% classroom usage we during the process added 10
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additional classrooms in order to ensure that we have alignment with the roselt high school um uh master schedule and we've had as Michelle just said very spirited uh discussion around career and Technology education trying to find that balance between the community input as well as the needs and directions of the uh the administrative team at Roosevelt we have had intense Community engagement and really wonderful feedback from um folks all over the neighborhood the school and um as well as teachers District staff as well of course as the design Advisory Group I was counting up numbers we have had over 70 meetings during the master planning phase and over 100 meetings in the schematic design phase listening talking sharing getting good feedback these guiding principles really um serve as the consolidation of long range goals by the district a vision by the district they range from uh being focused on learning for every child to respecting the history and context of the beautiful place that U we're fortunate to work on during the process of that engagement we've had great Community priorities emerge and and change some of the things that we thought about um Community Access has been hugely important and I'll Show a slide in just a moment talking about the after hours use the weekend's use as well as just the day-to-day use of of the Rosevelt campus security of course is unfortunately we're all way too aware of is a huge issue and has been made very clear throughout the design process uh the notion of central Gathering and both indoor and outdoor is another one of these key components that just keeps arising as we talk to folks about a place for kids a place for the community to come together it's one of the challenges of the current Roosevelt plan which is really quite separated separated and desperate and as I touched on a moment ago the Career and Technical education both the dedicated spaces as well as the ancillary or support spaces are have been hugely important in terms of the community expressing their priorities this is a slide that overviews some of these Career and Technical education um uh programs we started out with roughly 6,000 square fet in the program we're currently around 7,400 Square fet dedicated to Career Technical education and that you'll see here in bold um we have the stem maker lab one is what we're calling it and the some of the ancillary spaces that support that are six science classrooms numerous math classrooms we also have a stem makers lab 2 is what we're calling it and this is directly associated with the Performing and the visual art so you'll see there adjacent spaces include uh 3D Arts classroom blackbox theater in addition there's a wonderful writing program that is become part of um the the core of what Roosevelt is offering its students we're looking at dedicated space for writing and publishing as well as adjacent journalism classrooms and a social justice lab is also another very important aspect of of what we've heard about as we've worked with the Roosevelt Community um to ensure that kids are understanding how they fit within the bigger cultural milu last because of the wonderful uh Community wraparound spaces there's discussion about looking at career pathways through the Health and Social Services that are being uh provided at the school though at present those are nent and there aren't specific spaces for that I'd like to now jump into um the plans of Roosevelt the little faded in this one but hopefully we can uh keep up with it basically North is up in all of these the central the main entry to the school will always be from the uh South lawn at the uh South Edge or bottom edge of the of the slide um these are just a quick overview of some of the structures at Roosevelt the blue represents the original academic building as well as the 1930 Auditorium off to the east side of the of the campus the red uh dashed lines represent project or uh structures that will be removed through the course of construction including the cafeteria and media center to the east and west on the near the front lawn the gymnasium building and Boiler Room immediately behind the blue original buildings and lastly the auto shop at the northeast corner one thing that I want to mention though is that Roosevelt will be fully occupied and phased throughout his construction as you well know so all of these buildings will be will be supporting the swing space the phasing the movement of students in a safe and orderly way around the campus so that
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we're maintaining emergency access fire egress and critical things about kids safety as well as keeping contractor and student body separated throughout a a multiphase construction process some of the primary interior spaces organizing the new Roosevelt include um and again you'll see the main entry under the tower here at the South there is a central Commons we call it a distributed Commons because it's really about linking this school together and making sure there are a wide variety of social spaces both large and small supporting academic needs as well as social needs new gymnasiums off to the West here and I'll touch on those a little more in a minute a new theater at the northeast corner of the site the media center will be located in the old Auditorium and then around a uh Community Commons the Community Health Service and Social Services as well as a teen parenting program as primary interior spaces some of the new and I think very exciting exterior Gathering spaces begins with uh revitalization of the South lawn it's it's long been primary space at Roosevelt High School as I touched on a moment ago a new community Plaza encompassing uh student Gardens Community Gathering space as well as a Playard for the uh Child Care Center a new Performing Arts Plaza on the Eastern Edge um adjoining the theater also opening into a gallery um again showing off the wonderful work that undoubtedly will be coming from the art students at Roosevelt um a secure uh Courtyard at the center uh an indoor outdoor space opening off the student Commons uh very very uh almost cloistered in in the kind of character of of how it fits into the building and lastly kind of a late arrival but I think a very exciting space is the Athletics Plaza this um is a it's doing double duty as a service Drive fire fire access those kinds of things but what it really is is doing is connecting the gym and the entry foyer for the gym to the whole um foot field um track area what we're trying to do is create a a shared indoor outdoor access for concessions for toileting so we're trying to be very efficient and as well as sort of bring people together on Big G Big G big game days um regularly we touch on future additions we've uh identified the northeast corner of the site as a as a location where we would anticipate a future addition and I have written down here um these specific spaces that I've forgotten eight classrooms two labs and some of the ancillary support spaces teacher planning toileting things of that nature what we're trying to really do is make sure that as we enhance the entry and the front uh presence of Roosevelt that we have room behind the building for some of these additions to just to maintain that that historic presence uh within the community another one of the key issues that came out through the community feedback was how do we access our building after hours as a community as a neighborhood as kids um some of the spaces that are are critical and have been discussed um at Great length include the weight aerobics room on the West End the new gymnasium which already gets a the old gymnasium gets a great deal of use I'm sure the new one will as well uh stem makers lab adjacent to the theater as a as a community shop if you will and then of course some of the uh Health Clinic Social Services as well as a a dedicated family room for uh alumni and the community in the Rosevelt area now I'd like to jump into the specific floor plans this is a little blown up version of the uh school plans that you've been just looking at as I'm sure you recall Roosevelt slopes from south to North so when we talk about a ground floor plan it's actually sort of the back of the school and it's a ground floor lower than where the main entry is which would be right here under the tower so at that ground floor you can see a new gymnasium this is actually a main gym with capacity to seat the entire student body at an assembly or some of those kinds of gatherings as well as an auxiliary gym we heard very clearly from some of the advocates for uh Sports and as well as physical education we needed to have the capacity for two games at one time um in addition this is that new entry Lobby that I touched on with shared concessions and toilet toileting for both field and the main gym also on this floor level is the lower level of the commons here in purple that again is that distributed
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Commons uniting the disperate functions of the school a new 500 seat capacity theater as well as on the ground floor level some of the Arts programs uh that you see uh beneath the existing old Auditorium I'm not going to go into great length I know you many of you have seen this and it's very similar to what we showed at the master plan and I'm really trying to touch on the changes that have occurred rather than uh go through every uh space in the school up on the first floor plan uh you'll see aerobics and weights room at the West End above locker rooms again very accessible to the community for after hours use uh the media center or Library will be occupying the the the body or the the the the great room of the old Auditorium filled with great light we're looking at um restoring the pr March and making sure that historic character is maintained also here I'm sorry I should have mentioned the main entry beneath the Tower with the light blue is uh primarily administrative space here on the first floor welcoming the community making sure there's good supervision as uh people come in and out of the school on the second floor is really dedicated to learning communities uh many of these all of these within the school are are are broken into an integrated model where we're looking at including science um English math history kinds of uh integration of of courses around a teacher planning area and a breakout learning space last I wanted to just touch on some of the images of the school um this from the southeast Corner um what's interesting about this it's actually a reductive uh image we're by removing some of the buildings in front of Roosevelt now we are now able to sort of restore that that wonderful presence of this Neo Colonial building you can see the main entry um here and of course what is now actually a fairly buried Auditorium entry behind the old cafeteria will reemerge as a as a primary streetcape from the southwest you see the um the historic building to the right and the new additions what we're looking at is really trying to create additions that are at the same scale as the old building have similar fenestration relationships and context to the old building but trying to make them much more open and transparent and of the 21st century we have heard clearly from the community that they don't want to replicate these historic buildings but but look forward and create spaces that are about kids and um looking looking into the future swinging around to the east side of the building you see the um the new uh theater as the as the the blank box if you will with this very glassy transparent entry leading into the gallery and uh entry foer for the theater space and last um back in the uh student Courtyard looking basically on axes with the old Tower uh peeking out above the cor the uh Commons here's that very transparent space that opens indoor outdoor it it will be a gated space so kids can be very safe and secure in all kinds of weather in this um lovely new Courtyard so that's a very fast overview of the design um and I know Michelle was going to wrap it up thank you Lauren um what we wanted to do is just let you know uh once we do receive the schematic design approval our next steps will be to move heavily into the design development process and what that means is that we're going to be working with the building users on specific spatial needs for the the different spaces we're going to be talking about construction phasing and we'll be working with both staff and the community on how that phase works so that people understand where the vehicular access is how students will be protected how we're going to maintain our safety and how people students are going to move through the school as the different phases of the project are developed we'll have separate individual occupancies through the next two years of construction um so we have to put that together and we have to make sure that everybody is on board with that process um the other thing we'll be doing is further resp M of the design including the building exteriors the mechanical systems the interior finishes furnishings and fixtures once designed development is complete and we anticipate that happening around November of this year we'll be moving into construction documents and that's when we really put the final drawings together um plans and specifications so that the contractors are able to build what we have designed so while design development really still works on a design process once you get into construction documents you're no longer designing you are just drawing to make sure that it can be built appropriately we anticipate completing that work and getting permits so that we can start construction in Spring of
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2015 um and we will be doing phased occupancies which people will know about once we get to that stage um but we do still anticipate construction completion we're cautiously optimistic that we can get there by Spring of 2017 and that we will still maintain our occupancy of fall 2017 now we'll open it up to questions thank you questions from board members Steve thank you very much that was a great presentation you guys the drawings are fabulous wanted to go first go ahead did you were popping out there Bobby uh okay I want to just get all this stuff straight in my head if I could please I have seven things the you talk about about adding 10 classrooms that was the and then are we talking about another 10 classrooms what what we've done um early in our process we looked to how um education was being taught in the Roosevelt High School and recognized that as a part of the existing master schedule that they were using additional classrooms were going to be necessary so in our process we added classrooms um there's been additional criteria that's been addressed and as we look at that additional criteria to meet that requirement we needed another three classrooms and I believe we're talking about that now in terms of what might be added to Roosevelt High School so we added the 10 that they were talking about as the 10 as we went along we're 10 short everybody said we're 10 short the chain that took place over a couple years um and we added those I thought we were talking still with the superintendent about adding 10 classrooms and we needed 33 million or something last time we talked about that could maybe somebody straighten that out Franklin that was at Franklin but I thought we were totaling down it's two different processes at each one of the sites and part of what Roosevelt did on as they were going is they were working to like both both bu projects went through a different process and so what they what Roosevelt did as they were going through was trying to match the master schedule to the design in terms of how program was currently being offered so they did some of the correction that where we are now trying to reflect with additional criteria so the adjustment that would be made at Roosevelt would be three classrooms that let us meet the additional criteria was that the million something they're talking about in here yes it we're coming back to you with the additional criteria so the 10 is already there was a million dollars that they talked about adding on in the in the material that you gave me what was that million dollars about so is an additional 2 million for additional criteria for roselt and it was for the additional three classrooms that would allow it to accommodate the criteria that we had described to you previously in terms of the shared use of classrooms and the uh the constraints in terms of no more than uh teachers being in two classrooms per day that that criteria that's still needed to bring Rosevelt up to that full amount however based on what you're seeing tonight this actually accommodates uh 1350 students which has been our Target uh enrollment for so wait wait wait but the million that Steve's talking about in the resolution was a million of the 10 million sorry right so look at the resolution G so in your resolution the million 45 is the amount allocated from the program Reserve board Reserve if you will you already did for the uh for the master plan work that you saw back back in December so that that brings Rosevelt up to what the master plan approval was so where we are right now is if we add three more classrooms then we will meet the 1350 criteria and that cost of those three more classrooms Beyond this million 71 is 2 million 2 million correct okay all right second question but you're not addressing that in this resolution not but that's the 3 million is going to be what we're talking about exactly 2 million this resolution classrooms I me this resolution brings Rosevelt High School to the master plan criteria that was approving and minus yes but we still want to put in three more classrooms I think all right thees CTE 7,500 I think 7 7400 okay and that and it's not together it is no it is not contiguous space space it's two different programs and uh auxiliary Jim has seating in it of some short do yes it does all good going on now the Early Childhood which you referred to now as the teen
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parenting yes how much space is that um I don't at Franklin it was 2100 yeah 2100 square feet does that include the preschool yes well the outs Sor preschool that have nothing to do with the teen parents at Ros we don't we don't really have a preschool that is separate we have the teen Parenting Center which has room for infants and toddlers but it's not a preschool program so 2100 square feet is necessary for the Toddlers and the infants it's like a lot of it's two and a half classrooms that's how much it takes for toddlers And so how come at Franklin then do they have 2100 sare F feet and they talked about putting in a preschool on top of the infants and toddlers I couldn't speak to Frankin I'm sorry CTE program around it and they were looking at doing the CTE program around it so if they're thinking of putting in a preschool at Franklin and they got on top of the Toddlers and infants and they got 2100 square feet then why at Roosevelt would we need 2100 Square F feet to do the Toddlers and infants are that infants and toddlers bigger at Roosevelt than at Franklin or something I mean I that does not make sense to me in any shape Central form yeah the programs are actually very similar in the space that is allocated for Franklin and Rosevelt is is very very similar I we would have to get back to you regarding additional questions over how the program will be set up I think we had mentioned previously that staff's going to be evaluating the teen parenting concept as far as our EDP process and we haven't completed that evaluation so so and no offense Mr RS but the answer is you really can't answer that question right now we could get a answer later or something well I think it's difficult to answer um from the perspective of what's happening at Frank I personally as the Project Director for Roosevelt I know what we're doing for Roosevelt and we've met with the um administrators of the program for the teen Parenting Center and made sure that we were fulfilling their needs and requirements because there is already a teen Parenting Center at Roosevelt and we're continuing that program how big is the one now it is virtually the same size what we yeah we were looking at not reducing the space that they have so it doesn't the 2100 with both it does compute uh what you're saying computes and what they said computes but if you put them together they don't comp I think what we'd have to look at is um how many students are using the spaces and what the capacities are within those spaces and that's information that we can gather so there's more teen parents at Roosevelt than there would it be at Franklin I couldn't say specifically because I don't know what they have at Franklin but but we can look at that so if you're looking for a comparison between the two why don't you let us bring that back to you cuz these guys are speaking specifically to Roosevelt and you're looking for a comparison compar we'll get it's not a fair question but we'll get you the comparison of but it is a good question even if it's not fair uh so Steve the uh the we're tearing down the auto shop yes we are and the reason we're tearing down the autoshop instead of having Autos shop at Roosevelt is um a it is not a seismically improved building and the cost of improving it would be significant it doesn't have um a setup that would be um designed in the way that you would do autoshop if you were doing it in today's environment and so it made sense to demolish that building in favor of supporting other programs and newer technologies that are going to be incorporated into the newer design I I would also add it's separate from the campus and part of the whole security overlay of the design has been to bring all of buildings together so that kids don't have to walk indoor outdoor as it's mostly her answer right yes but I'm I'm also yeah I appreciate you adding in there uh and the last question I have pretty nice huh only seven the breakout learning space I don't know what that I taught 40 years I don't know what a breakout learning space is can we get a definition of that I mean how would a teacher use a breakout learning space I mean you send the kids outside the door if you're shutting the door then they're in out there by themselves or what I mean how what are we talking about I sure I can speak to that um breakout spaces are um actually they probably weren't around in the last 20 30 years of teaching what we're seeing is there's a lot of individual small group in mentoring kind of learning that's occurring within our schools right now and sometimes that that small group might be disruptive to an ongoing class but working outside within uh earshot and ey shot of what's going on in the class allows them to focus on a presentation or moving ahead or catching
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up I know when I do a lot of mentoring in schools I'm often uh assigned to some of these spaces as as someone coming in to help a student with their reading or with their math or whatever I might be working on so it's breakout learning space in terms of some kid who might be more advanced or maybe a little slower in in in the the coursework um it is uh in our digital age uh number of kids are finding very individual Pathways toward learning that they can work in proximity to their General class but not necessarily part of the ongoing direct instruction thank you other questions Bobby so first of all I think the design is beautiful as you've laid it out and it's going to be really exciting to see the front of the school in particular when you take off the other two sides how how it's going to just open up that whole campus it's going to be pretty spectacular I think um so one thing I would say is that when you um Just for future especially as we look at the grant um design process I think one of the things that's been hard in this particular process being um a member of the design advisory um group has been the whole discussion around CTE and so I think that uh bti did a really good job of trying to listen to The Community Voices who were there um what was missing from the discussion was actual CTE teachers who were advocating for their space and so what we saw was a lot of we saw the the art teachers advocating for their spaces and the sports folks advocating for their spaces and what we didn't really have was the CTE folks advocating for their spaces at least the CTE teacher voice and it's not really a voice we have in the District too much yet um but I think in the future as we go to the next design what we probably need to do is maybe even contract or bring in a couple of CTE teachers to really be that advocate for students and for that um space so I guess I would kind of put that on the agenda for Lessons Learned um in what we need to do because what we ended up having was a lot of community folks who were coming in and trying to Advocate um and that was really helpful but it's not the same as having the teacher who can kind of really talk about you know the actual students in the room and what you need and why you need and the adjacencies and all of that part so I I want to do a shout out to our community members who tried to fill in that role for us but I would also ask that as we go forward we make sure that that voice is in the discussion from the start and and it really be a teacher voice would be really helpful but I think you did a great job as you went along you kind of shifted the spaces around and you tried to you know add some space here and a little bit less here and do whatever adjacencies you could um so I I think it's uh and one of the other things um Steve I would mention is I think one of the things that was different about this design is that Roosevelt early on decided they wanted more classrooms and when you make that decision you you are going to put pressure on other more common areas or other spaces and so that was something that I think was really different than the Franklin decision which was more to kind of keep the program and you know and you know at some point the space is all the same but you got to kind of figure out where your pressure points are but roselt early on decided the the value was on more classroom spaces um rather than some of the other areas I think that's the way I would interpret is I look at both deal and we do we spend $2 million on Roosevelt and 10 million more on Franklin once we got to the design spec ends I think that's I mean you think that's to it that in terms of the actuales and'll they'll be coming back with yeah they'll be coming back with that they don't need to go anymore right and then um I just wanted to do a general um statement in terms of the Teen centers and the uh I know you had mentioned that we you may come back in terms of um a discussion about borrowing money one of the things I think in the in the Roosevelt community that having the teen center and the child care was a pretty high value right from the start and part of that is probably because the current have one also um whereas I think at Franklin that was a little bit of a different discussion and it was more of a given that we had to have it and not really the the passion around it um I guess what I worry about superintendent is if you come back to us talking about borrowing money without having opened up the Ed specs and figuring out what we do it seems like we're we're not going to be having a full discussion so I worry about us having the discussion about borrowing money before we've actually opened up the Ed ects and looked at what we need in terms of the 10 te centuries which I think is why we passed a an amendment last week to say take a look at that so I'm I'm concerned about the timing so just want to say that so
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anyway um congratulations to the Roosevelt team um you know I think there's been some angst in the community especially around the CTE space I think it's time to move forward and acknowledge and thank those folks and know that in the future that's a place that we need to just kind of make a note to ourselves to do it a little differently thank you just a couple of quick comments um I want to mention I I I would Pro I mean based on the resolution that was presented to us I would I would be voting yes um on this but I want to say it truly this look at it is an inspiring design uh congratulations on that it does not surprise me though um with the input I'm certain that was gathered from the community around Roosevelt and the staff and the students and the families and that that really uh like I said doesn't surprise me but looking at the uh looking at the renderings looking at the the plan and the strategy that went behind that the idea that there's a um you know this this draw um for the community to come in in a community space it's it's really phenomenal so I'm excited about that I'm excited to see it um happen and I'm also really really excited and I remember one of the reasons among many uh that Roosevelt was one of the three high schools selected was the school size as it is right now and the ability to keep students there while this transformation takes place and uh and that being a a cost savings and and um for a number of different reasons but uh but I'm also really excited at as a possibility is when construction starts happening how do we incorporate that into the uh the educational opportunities for the students who are there and the families who are there to really be engaged so I would encourage you to continue to think about that um as you move forward with this but excellent excellent job and congratulations to the to the staff who uh I know played a big role in this uh Roosevelt so thank you thank you I would just like to say congratulations I think director Morton stole most of my comments but I mean really this is a beautiful beautiful campus you should be really proud of what you've done and I really like how it looks and I like director Morton said I think the learning opportunities for students and their families here will be incredible using it as the transition side as well and I'm really excited by the designs how they truly look like they were designed by the community I can really see their you know ideals reflected within the design so I'm really pleased and I'm looking forward to to how it develops so thank you you great I just also want to say thanks thanks for that video at that time what I what I really appreciated is I remember when we were developing the bond should we go for a dollar A110 per thousand like how do we land on this where do we where do we find ourselves and what was really heartening to hear in that video is people to say we recognize this is an investment in us this is saying to us and our community that we believe in you and we are rising um and so I it was just really touching for me to hear that and um that's exactly what this is this is an investment in North Portland um we know our students and our families deserve the best of the facilities and thank you for all the hard work um you you characterize the input as intense um and lots of dialogue and um I I know that that's been really true and I appreciate your willingness to continue to be open to figure out how do we build this this best school because it is an investment in our community so thank you um and I can't wait to see this um take this take take shape and I also hear staff cautiously saying we are cautiously optimistic that we can deliver this on time so I just want to point out there's a caution there that um we are not positive we can deliver this on time at this point um as we've gone through this process um but I have faith that uh if it's possible we will do it um and I appreciate your commitment to still getting it on time and on budget thank you Ruth uh did everything been said I am absolutely thrilled it is just fantastic so I just I couldn't be more happy and just thank you so much for all your hard work I know it's been a long a long hard process and there's more lots more work to come and that you know we've we've played our own role in kind of creating some of those delays and uncertainties so um I just now is the time for us as Bobby said to move forward and and um just support continue to support this and it's absolutely thrilling so thank you so much Tom thank you likewise and I'll just I I'll shout
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out to it's been mentioned but you know all the the community input um and for those who who have felt really passionate about it and maybe this design isn't exactly how um they want it but there's no question about that that input has made us a better District um has informed us how we're going to go forward from a from a teaching standpoint um so I I'm uh I really appreciate the input the community input that has happened and your all's flexibilities um to incorporate as much as you could thank you so I also want to of course say thank you and how excited I am for this and I'm I'm just kind of curious I know that this was a really intense prog uh process as everybody has said Lauren how many how long have you been an architect 30 some years yeah and how many schools have you designed oh you're asking me tough questions um maybe 50 or 60 okay I just um want to thank you and I feel that we as a district are very fortunate to have someone with your skill um working with us uh and so thank you very much to you and and to everybody else who's been on the team and so we're really looking forward to seeing what this looks like and also to the staff up here thank you okay thank you very much everybody thank you okay the board will be voting on a resolution around Ro uh Roosevelt schematic design on at had our meeting on June 23rd so for our last agenda item tonight I think yes our last agenda item um we'll be talking about the corrective action plan and I believe Amanda our senior adviser the superintendent is going to provide that report for us do you want anything else that we had a complaint that was filed with OD by the parents Coalition and that Amanda whan um will be presenting our corrective action plan to the board to one above maybe all right thank you board of directors um so I just want to give you a brief update over the corrective action plan plan that we've presented to you that um we have sent a draft already to the Oregon Department of Education um this is coming to you now for approval so as part as part of the finding by deputy director Saxton that we received back in March it was found that our high school course requirements did not meet the 130 course hour requirement um so I'm doing a brief overview our corrective action plan for that is that we've already submitted a revised schedule to the Oregon Department of Education where High School courses are all over 130 hours and you had um the um schedule included in your packet and that was also sent to the Oregon Department of Education the second finding was that our complaint policy was out of compliance and this was um primarily around the fact that there are certain parts there are certain complaints that can be appealed to the state our complaint policy does not make that clear so our corrective action is that we have now hired an ombudsman to assist families and schools with complaints and that we are also revising our complaint policy and we'll be bringing a draft of that to the Board of Education in July as part of his order director um deputy director Saxton also required that we submit to a follow-up audit to ensure implementation with the corrective action plan and that that audit must be developed and agreed upon in collaboration with the parents Coalition and that is due to the Oregon Department of Education by August 15th of 2014 so when we're thinking about our audit we're looking at the um future planning around it what we were looked back to is the high school strategic framework that was part of our May 2013 um agreement with the parents Coalition and I'm identified here for you a couple of specific questions that we would be looking at the first is forecasting which is how do we continue to improve our forecasting process as you know this year for the first time what we had was students who were um forecasting for eight classes and in order to opt out of forecasting for eight classes they needed parent and guardian signatures in order to to do that also communication how do we better communicate with families about preparation for College and Career when they are determining courses and at the end of semesters um timing questions how do we SE sequence forecasting and Staffing processes and finally our
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staffing formula do we continue to use a ratio for determining FTE um additionally this the agreement said that we would continue to support development of effective study halls so again here's the timeline the board votes on the corrective plan on June 23rd once it's approved PPS staff will collaborate with the parents Coalition on the audit process we'll bring you a revised complaint policy in July and our audit process is due to OD on August 15 yep board members have any questions Steve what's what do they Define as an effective study hall um so one of the questions has been sort of the supervision of study halls how academic are study halls um one of the questions previously had been is attendance taken in study halls so really looking at what we're doing around the supervision and the work that happens also another thing that we've used in our study halls this year is really how do we support online learning are there other opportunities such as that that can be taken place in schools was that their language or ours effective study halls theirs it's part it's part of the um okay did they send us they send us a list and by they do you mean Oregon Department of Education no so this is an agreement with the parents Coalition from May of 2013 all right the uh on the UDS person yes now is that ud's person going to go out into the into the schools with children who are having difficulty and work with the school per se is that one of the things that we're looking at for the ud's person and if it looks like we're not wh why why why are we not looking at that I I mean one of the major problems that we've seen over and over again and I get them all the time I've told you guys that I always have people write me which is fine I like to get them and but one of the major problem is how are they responding with my child and you can't do that down here in the BC office you got to actually go out to the school and sit down with the people who are responding negatively with the child and the parent and work that problem through but we're not we're not thinking in those terms from the on on buge person so the so John Isaacs can come and tell me if I'm wrong I mean our thinking with the UT's person is that's a point of contact within the district where parents can go our policy and our procedures have always been that we try and resolve issues in schools like at the lowest level possible so it's always been that Regional administrators or whomever are working with teachers and principles in order to resolve conf conflicts that occur in the schools are we retraining our administ our so we've had so many are we re doing retraining of our principles and our regional administrators on how to work through these types of problems so once we have a revised complaint policy and the procedures around that we will be providing support to U principles and Regional administrators and that's going to be part of the role of the umus person and who's going to support the parent in the complaint process so the UT's person will be the point of contact the point of contact but no there won't really be any real support for the parent there's still the parent walking out into that that school and trying to advocate for their child against a principal and a maybe regional administrator who are highly educated and highly skilled in all this stuff who have all the information themselves together and it's like shooting ducks in a pawn I mean in a barrel the I mean you don't have a prayer if you're a parent going out into the school against that stuff why are not why are not why aren't we adding supports for those parents to work through the problems with their children I mean is that something we could look at maybe I'm going to say so the when we're saying it's the point of contact it may be that that person get it has like we have a person who actually is an advocate for special education parents we have a number of people in our um our um Family engagement family engagement um Department that act as individual advocates for parents but the UT's person will be the point of contact for anybody with a complaint who then May figure out who would be an appropriate support person to work with a particular family or and it could be the UT person themselves it could be that they they get one of these other support people who become The Advocate in that situation I mean these will be such so the ud the UDS person is supposed to be the advocate for the child and the parent and working through the problem but they're the one they're the one point of contact they may be the person
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that sees something all the way through or they may but they we'll have specific information about where they can farm that out so they might say uh uh Dr Jones on our staff is going to go out and work with this child and this parent that that would be new right to a certain degree where we have a person who actually says you're the person that goes out and works with this child and this parent and you you work this s you work this problem through I mean that's new we don't have that now where we have a person that points and says that's your job we don't have the UDS person so position correct so we can the ombuds person that will be part of their job to say you're the one who's advocating for this parent and this child out in this school with this problem and they'll tackle each problem like in whatever um way that is uh specific and appropriate to that problem like they're going to get a whole lot of different kinds of issues that come up and they will work to figure out what resources are needed to address that problem or to support a family or to support a student whatever the nature of the problem is so the answer is yes yes my concern is that the UDS person feels something that I don't get I don't feel much in this District which is that you can that you can actually take an advocacy position for a teacher which we're not talking about that because that's contractual but for a teacher or or a parent or a child and end up being fine I I don't see where we're able to do that now we just kind of seem to back up whatever the staff member member the administrative staff member says and that's kind of the way that it seems to go over and over again it's what got us in this position in the first place so what I'd love to see personally is how do we get that om buds person the independence where he can go out or she can go out whomever it is and say to the regional administrator I'm sorry budy but you're screwing up here this is how we should be doing it are we do we have a way that we're going to guarantee that type of Independence so because we don't have that within the school district now we don't have I'm sorry we don't have that be nice if we did but I mean maybe you can get back to me later if you want and we can talk about it if you'd like I'd be more than happy to do that I have one more question too so you want to do that later or you want to what do you think it's a brand new position and we're creating the position right now okay well there's my input on I hear I hear your in and the uh can I just can I just add something sure okay by me turn here Bobby well my sense is that the udman is going to be heavily involved I hope in uh the rewrite of our complaint policy and that part of what their job will be is to kind of help a parent understand their rights and the process and the procedures and where you go and how you go and who you go to next so I think there is that piece that's going to be a really important piece and I assume that's the reason and that we are going to be rewriting our complaint policy so but there's the other piece Bobby which is when you get out to the school and that's an unfair system where you can't it's an unfair system because the the school district has all the power and they have all the information and all the thing at the school level and as the as those processes work through what happens in my opinion is that you've got there you it's the adjustment you need to have somebody to right there with you when you're making adjustments well this is the way it is well you need to have somebody there that says no that's not the way it is so actually I'm ask um John Isaac who will be supervising the UT's person to come on up and give a little more specific going do that out of the communication St come on come on up all right John community community involvement in public affairs yeah thank you superintendent Smith and um I'll just say that uh I called it the umds personman for a while until I uh read the official National Society of Ombudsman we sites where I was informed we should call it an on budsman it has a very long history in why that term on budsman anyway uh I'm happy to inform you that we've offered the on budsman position it's been accepted and we'll be hiring a really great person for this position here in the next couple of weeks um I think director bu what I'd like to do is send you the job posting because when we drafted the job posting many of the concerns you are uh raising were um written into the job posting so that it was there from the very beginning we wrote the job uh Des description with uh based on feedback we got from the last um on budsman and also with input from both the Coalition of communities of color and um our Portland our schools we included parents on the interview committee so that's not that's a unique thing we don't do that very
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often but we did in the hiring process and there's um language in the job posting that uh describes it's it's a very detailed job posting and um there's a language that I can't tell you off the top of my head and I don't have the posting with me but I'll send it to you that does empower the Ombudsman to um take to manage complaints parent concerns and complaints through to completion to resolution and when necessary um inform members of the PPS an employee of PPS if they must do something in order to comply with PPS policies so that we wanted to write from the beginning that the Ombudsman does have is empowered when it's appropriate depending on the situation and the complaint to to inform and at times even direct a another PPS employee whether it would be a administrator or a principal or whatever that they must do something in order for them to be in compliance with PPS policies if they are acting outside of those policies who were the parents who were on the interview committee uh the our Portland our schools representative was Scott Bailey the um Coalition of communities of color uh representative was Lita Elliot the uh are there on the the rewriting of the policy do we have parents involved with the rewriting of the policy so the yes so the the person who we have who has accepted the position we um we've already talked through the sort of priorities for what she will be working on when she starts and she's aware that her first priority will be working with the team here on um updating the parent complaint policy so that it's um responsive to the State's findings and that um that should be a collaborative process to include parent input yes could we also include some board member input that as well we we have we're required to do that because it will be a policy update yes which are we including some of those parents who brought complaints on that committee we have some of those parents who brought complaints and they're the ones who brought the complaint I would think we'd want to include those parents who brought the complaints to some degree into the writing rewriting of the complaint so as part of our audit as part of our audit process here we're required to include the parents Coalition so that is the group of parents who filed the complaint with the state um so they're required to be a part of the audit process but they're not the ones that did the the complaint process right the parents Coalition did the other stuff no it's one it was a single did they do the they did thatb also and some of those people are going to be required they're required from the order to be a part of it thank you very much for answering I would also say that generally I agree that it's a best practice when you're reviewing a policy and going to change it to improve it you would consult get the input of folks who have an experience with that process to get their experience um when drafting a new policy so thank you question Tom um so Amanda you mentioned the um the forecasting for full day do we have that information is it available CU I know is unfortunately that's not available yet we're still what what's the status of that we're expecting it in the next week or so and then it will become available then yes okay others Bobby I just wanted to do a shout out to the parents who were involved in the parents Coalition and thank them for basically fining the complaint because we were out of compliance as we all know in terms of our high school credit hours and um I think that this is uh as a result of this ruling it's not only going to help Portland Public School students but it's going to help high school students across the state in terms of getting to minimum credit hours and so we have much to be thankful to them for and um I think we also uh I I am grateful that we're looking at a uh a relook at or rewrite at the parent complaint policy because I think there have been concerns and the fact that we're hiring an udman is already a a great step in the right direction so I'm grateful to them for bringing this to attention others Ruth just want to thank staff for all their um incredibly hard work in responding to this complaint and the other issues um this is really great plan of action and response um appreciate it appreciate it very much do we have any updates from the state I know uh just in terms of their followup with other districts than many other districts that are out of compliance um so my understanding is that a number of districts who are remaining on an8 period day have filed for a waiver for the 20145 school year um and be over the 130 course hour requirement um as you can see from ours it's a it's um using an eight period day it's a real challenge um and as you know what we did was really prioritize the benefits of that a period day um in terms of keeping it and you know the great work that we did as part of contract negotiations and
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the additional instructional days allowed us to be able to have the 130 course hour requirement met exactly thank you so much for all your hard work Matt so I have a first of all I'm really excited to hear that the edsman position has been hired that was that was one of the things I was going to ask and excited to have that start in July um second it's a technical question it sounded as though uh for students who do not take eight eight credits there needs to be a parent signed waiver so our forecasting form this year allowed um had it that when parent when yes when students did not um forecast for eight courses their parents were acknowledging that they were not for casting for eight courses okay and what happens I guess I don't know if you can answer this question but what happens when the student doesn't take eight credits doesn't forecast for eight credits and there's no signature you know I don't know how that's been handled at a school by school basis but I I understanding as that it was a requirement as part of the forecasting sheet okay either a parent or Guardian okay other questions okay thank you very much for your hard work okay the next meeting of the board will be held on Monday June 23rd and this meeting is now

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2013-2014, https://www.pps.net/Page/2224 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:54.073648Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2014-06-16 PPS School Board Study Session

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Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - June 16, 2014

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