2014-08-04 PPS School Board Business Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2014-08-04
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Event 1: Board of Education - Business Meeting - August 04, 2014

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where are you guys okay we get a layer to check good afternoon this meeting of the board of education for August 4 2014 is called to order I'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being streamed live on our PPS TV services website and replays of today's meeting will not be available on Channel 28 until August 12th when it will be posted on TV services website School Board video archive co-chair Adkins is joining us on the phone and student representative Josh well is absent today this board meeting was rescheduled in order to accommodate the vacation schedules of several board members and to ensure that we were able to have all voices at this meeting even if director Atkins is only able to join us by telephone we completed and approved the superintendent's evaluation in May our agenda day is the superintendent's contract which we approve on an annual basis so at this time we'll have public comment Miss hewson do we I know we have people signed up we have three our first two speakers Donna Cohen and Dave Porter okay while you're both coming up I'll go ahead and 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 and Reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board lies in actively listening and reflecting on the thoughts and opinions of others guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration when referring to board members staff and other presenters the board will not respond to any comments or questions at this time but the board or staff will follow up on various issues that are raised please make sure that you've left your contact information either a phone or an email on the sign up sheet with Miss Houston okay pursuant to board policy 1.78.012 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 you have a total of three minutes to share your comments please Begin by stating your name spelling your last name during the first two minutes some testimony you'll see a green light there in front of you when you have one minute remaining the yellow light will come on and when your time is up the red light will go on in a buzzer sounds and we ask that you wrap up your comments at that time again we sincerely appreciate you being here today and giving us your input and thank you very much for your cooperation so either you can go ahead good afternoon my name is Dave Porter p-o-r-t-e-r chair Noel superintendent Smith members of the board members of the public this afternoon I wish to speak about the need for a second Japanese dual language immersion program in PPS the board should instruct PPS Administration to develop a proposal for board consideration as to when to open and where to locate such a new Japanese immersion program first there is now sufficient parental interest in Lottery demand for an additional Japanese immersion program here's the data from the last four years of the PPS transfer Lottery Uh current last year is not yet available note the bottom line over the four-year school years 2010 to 2014 246 applicants met the criteria for admission probably including attending an orientation meeting but we're either wait listed or denied no space ppa's PPS failed each of those 246 applicants their parents wanted them to learn Japanese and PBS let them down they lost their best perhaps only opportunity to become bilingual in Japanese PPS cares a lot about community and parental engagement that may suggest that parents are rarely more engaged than when they make a kindergarten or Pre-K selection for their child they are often required to make school visits and school meetings and to fill out applications their preferences as reflected in the lottery should be given substantial weight in the development of PPS programs Richmond admits most of its students at both Pre-K and kindergarten level in 2013-14 the Richmond Japanese immersion program had 113 students in its kindergarten I assume 51 of the 52 students admitted to the pre-kindergarten program in 2012-13 the prior year carried over into kidney kindergarten and were joined by 62 selected in the 2013-14 Lottery to yield the 113 kindergartens I do not
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know how many of these were siblings note that 112 kindergarten students can be distributed into four classes of 28 each the last three years had enough students each turned away each year 56 or more to fill two additional Japanese immersion classrooms those are the points I wanted to make put some more data in the written material on the aspects of the Richmond program thank you thank you very much Donna Cohen c-o-h-e-n um I'm going to refer to a couple of pts documents I'll give you the references afterwards I'm going to read something first minimum standards for dedicated spaces requirement number one each neighborhood High School will have sufficient dedicated space to accommodate the following core electives 3D CAD Design Lab wood and metal manufacturing Robotics and stem these spaces will be located in close proximity to enhance the interdisciplinary and iterative nature of Hands-On project-based learning and this is of course what we've been asking for you're telling us now that our two stem spaces one that's almost 2500 feet one that's almost 3 500 feet are now going to be equipped with everything that was in both of the spaces which is clearly impossible had even one of the spaces had the larger space been able to fit all of that equipment we would never have had a problem and I wouldn't be here now so that solution is not a solution from the PPS Ed specs Pages 36 and 37 the requirements square footage for CTE space requirements and stem space requirements clearly when you look at them the square footage that has been allotted to Roosevelt combined on between fifty five hundred and six thousand isn't it inadequate according to your own Ed specs in other words everything we've been asking for is already in your own guidelines we're asking you to fulfill your guidelines and I've added here information about a 300 page dissertation done by a graduate student in technology education which is totally focused on tech ed facilities in terms of size in terms of equipment it's very helpful it's it was partly done to help architects you guys need to resolve this according to what the community has said and your own guidelines more and more people in the community are upset about this we are not going away until this is fixed thank you lastly we have Dominic Lafave hi there my name is Dominic Lafave l-e-f-a-v-e and I'm a special education teacher at Wilson High School and um I um I'm just between summer conferences and doing a bunch of professional development and I'm kind of a little bit annoyed that I have to I feel like I have to come here today I'm going to talk about special ed but really what motivates me to come here is the prospect of giving a huge raise to the superintendent we need to put that money into our schools directly into our classrooms I work in special education and I've seen our uh I'm just going to give you a couple of examples in case you're out of ideas um our motor team's been gutted we we this is our motor team works with special education students that's ape teachers physical therapists occupational therapists they do a fantastic job they've been stretched beyond their limits they cannot handle the amount of kids that they are supposedly working with which means they're not doing their jobs and frankly I just think it's horribly irresponsible for you to you know around us this enormous um you know raise for the superintendent when our schools are in this shape we need more para Educators we need more special education teachers I've watched the case loads of of learnings Center teachers to Skyrocket they become IEP Mills they're not working with the kids the way they're supposed to the way they're mandated by federal law to do um you need to fix this and you need to act responsibly and I have just gotten to the point where it feels like I don't
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trust you to be responsible with this stuff so I've come down here I really don't want to be here but we need to put these resources into our classrooms please be responsible and consider this thank you thank you for coming okay at this time we're going to go ahead and talk about the or review the superintendent contact contract accept extension um on May 19th the board adopted the superintendent's performance appraisal and since that time we've been in negotiation with the superintendent regarding salary and benefits we've not had such a discussion since the superintendent joined the district seven years ago because while we were in a recession and experiencing severe cuts to our budget the superintendent refused to accept any raise in fact because of furlough days her salary decreased in years the staff took furloughs today the board will vote on superintendent's contract extension not all board members are in agreement with the package that we have negotiated and all board members will have an opportunity to speak about why they do or do not agree before we get to that I want to share with the public what we considered during the contract negotiations so we have a PowerPoint for that nope hi okay as you all know superintendent Smith has led the Portland Public Schools for the past seven years and during that time there have been significant achievements that indicate the district is moving in a positive direction we're not all the way there we know that as a board but we are making positive moves so I'm going to go through a few of those today we have a 14 percentage Point gain in high school graduation rate from 53 percent to 67 percent the graduation rate in our comprehensive and focus option high schools is 80 percent and the achievement gap between white students and students of color is narrowing at Key milestones the graduation gap between white students and Latino students is narrowed by nine percentage points as an example we've been growing the internal leadership capacity within the district's administrative offices we've developed a racial educational Equity policy that has been developed and implemented differentiating resources for students with fewer supports and I might add as a nationally recognized Equity policy that is copied by districts across the country the superintendent-led contract negotiations with the pat that among other things resulted in more school days for students and Provisions that allowed the district to hire sooner and ensure that we have the best teacher in front of our students I know that our human resources people are across the country looking for new teachers for us early we passed a 482 million dollar bond with successful completion of the first round of construction and Improvement product projects last summer and we have 12 more projects this summer and we're moving ahead with both Roosevelt and Franklin in their redesign May the passage of a local option Levy that provided more funding for our schools during a recession that eliminated 40 million dollars in The District budget affecting our efforts to educate children we've had operational cost Savings of over three million dollars that are redirected into Educational Services for example are boiler burners and despite significant budget reductions in years of cuts the district educational Milestones have continued to be met among large and medium-sized school districts PPS has the second smallest Elementary class size in the distance in the metro area we strengthen Partnerships throughout the district State and county for example the superintendent participates in cradled her career a Consortium of City County Business Community nonprofits and higher ed Partnerships with Multnomah districts focused on educational milestones and we have one of the longest school years of any of the large districts so our rationale for salary increase and a benefit adjustment was based on these achievements in other words performance and market indicators so the market indicators that we reviewed showed us that the average superintendent tenure amongst Council of great City school districts is three years and superintendent Smith has been with us for seven National comparisons of urban school districts with similar student
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populations show the superintendent has the longest tenure in the seven years more than double this the cgcs average many of the district's accomplishments are the result of her steady long term leadership the council great City Schools average superintendent's salary is 243 thousand dollars with over 50 percent of the superintendents earning 250 000 and above again the council's average salary for a tenure of five years or more is two hundred and forty seven thousand dollars the Council of great City Schools survey notes that the average benefit package for urban superintendent is approximately fifty eight thousand dollars superintendent Smith's proposed benefit package is 50 566 which includes a twenty five hundred dollar monthly annuity it's important for us that superintendent's missed contract be transparent with no hidden benefits that increase the compensation what you see in the contract is what you get this is not necessarily true with other superintendent contracts Across the Nation or even in our region for example other contracts include payment of the employee's purse contribution which we don't do in Portland Public Schools access to a car or travel car expenses additional vacation that can then be bought out and moving expenses there are other benefits included in other contracts as well this contract has none of these for example the superintendent pays her six percent purrs contribution which under this contract would be about 14 820 making her adjusted salary compared to the districts that do pay purse 232 180. so this is a national comparison of where our superintendent is in comparison to other districts across the country you can see that it's just about or just about in the middle I think it's below the median the district's on there if you can't read them uh in the audience or Anchorage Minneapolis PPS where the superintendent is currently Indianapolis St Paul Wichita Kansas Columbus Ohio the proposed number Boston Omaha Nebraska Norfolk Virginia Seattle Washington Oakland California Campus Capistrano California Santa Ana and Atlanta Georgia we also used Seattle as one of our comparisons at the superintendent there was making 269 999 dollars and when I went to check to see how long he had been in the Seattle District I clicked on the webpage to discover that he had written a note to the public that he was leaving for Sacramento California to be the superintendent there where he's going to make 290 thousand dollars foreign and this is the superintendent's salary if she had received the same kinds of increases that Pat received including steps and cola's average steps and colas across the years that she has been with the district so we're looking at the 200 2014 2015 year is 256 853. so this is the proposed contract it's a salary of 247 thousand dollars below the national median a monthly annuity of twenty five hundred dollars which still results in her benefits being below the average of superintendents benefits consistent with other PPS administrators no special deals for the superintendent and she'll continue to pick up her six percent purrs like the rest of our employees so the rationale of salary and benefit adjustments were achievements the superintendent's performance and market indicators where we use similar demographics and time in the position I'm confident in our convictions about the accomplishments of our superintendent the benefits to our students of maintaining strong competitive school district and in the depth and the in-depth analysis of superintendent's compensation at comparable schools I believe that these adjustments acknowledge superintendent's leadership over the past seven years honor her tenacity and continuing to work for the betterment of students through tough budget times and support our vision important public schools that all children can achieve so that's what we went through when we were trying to determine how to compensate our superintendent
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so at this time I'm going to go ahead and ask that we have a motion in a second and then we'll have more discussion well now consider resolution 4949 extension of employment contract with Carol Smith superintendent of Portland Public Schools do I have a motion in a second director Morton moves and director belisle's seconds the adoption of the resolution 4949 news Houston is their public comment yes we have six okay our first two speakers Kim stockstad and Greg Burrell I want to start off for apologizing for my nervousness I'm not used to speaking in front of grown-ups I'm as a classroom teacher I'm more used to eight-year-olds my name is Kim stocksted s-t-o-c-k-s-t-a-d and I'm a second grade teacher at Dunaway Elementary in Southeast Portland during this afternoon meeting during a district summer break I'm here to speak about the unwise vote today to give our superintendent a double-digit raise to be honest when I heard that suggestion while watching a meeting from home this spring I let out a Yelp so loud my dogs jumped off my lap and gave me a dirty look a raisin itself is not what I and most of the Portland Community are objecting to but it's the amount that is so grossly offensive many of my colleagues are topped out on the salary schedule with 13 plus years teaching a master's degree and 45 or more additional graduate credits they have only received a total of four percent cost of living from the 0809 to the 12 13 school years yes this step was added in the 1213 school year but to save teachers and avoid furlough days teachers voted to give up half of that step again going above and beyond the job the call of our jobs to the benefit of our students by keeping class sizes and kids in school in my case I'm only three years and 25 credits away from hitting this limit I am 35 I live in a classically old apartment in inner Southeast yet to help make ends meet I have a roommate I love my roommate she's wonderful but still it's terrifying to know that my district salary here as a teacher with over a decade of experience plus continuing graduate level education to keep my Knowledge and Skills up today it will leave me not being able to afford my home let alone afford to purchase a house in my area that was just added to a top 10 list of up-and-coming neighborhoods in the nation these are my thoughts when I read The Oregonian article quoting the current salary of Carol Smith 193 000 the proposed increase of 33 percent to um increase of 66 percent to her annuity and all of that makes me sick to my stomach I am sick thinking about all of the teachers currently topped out the ones who reach that very quickly like me and I wonder as a school board do you even understand what it's like to be in our position do you understand what it's like to be 35 to have to live with a roommate to afford your modest Department do you understand what it's like for teachers who are single parents trying to pay for school supplies extracurricular activities and family outings do you understand how difficult it is for teachers trying to put their kids through college do you understand what it's like for teachers trying to take care of ailing family members this is our reality I'm not even going to bring up the amount of money we put into our classrooms and students on a yearly basis so imagine what a double-digit salary increase sounds like to us who are working in the schools and to the public I understand that Carol's salary has risen only three thousand dollars in seven years but an increase of 20 to 30 percent it would make more sense in this day and age to give the superintendent the same rate of salary increases other District employees that would demonstrate you understand how District employees are in this together give the superintendent the same modest increase you give to your employees with the training and Trust to actually work directly with students each and every day would also like to continue let's talk good afternoon I feel like I'm in a movie Greg Burrell b-u-r-r-i-l-l and I wanted to take the opportunity to say as much positive as I can because I know you have a really difficult job superintendent Smith and I've I've worked really hard to understand what it is that all of you board members do and I thought it was really important that I have my voice heard and um what I want to say is I think I
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didn't hear what the other people said but I think what makes the most sense and feels the most Fair is that superintendent Smith get a modest salary increase much as teachers have gotten in fact most teachers have suffered a decrease in their annual salary um and that's not even considering additional workload issues but uh I want to take this moment again to say that big things are going on in the district and I think it's really important that we figure out the there are thorny truths and things going on with boundary reassessment and enrollment and transfer and I love coming to the board when I think I know what you should do I don't know what you should do about all these issues I'm learning right along with you but I wanted to make sure that I went on record saying that I support superintendent Smith and I support a modest salary increase because I know it is a high pressure job and a difficult job and what I would ask in return I have heard lots of commentary here on the board about developing better and new relationships with the community better and new relationships um with teachers and um to do something about the way Administration is growing compared to the way teachers um uh teacher Cadre is growing so in other words we want more teachers and less people in the central office so thank you so much for giving me your ear next we have Lisa Zuniga and Nancy Newell Lisa Zuniga z-u-n-i-g-a a parent of a Franklin senior and an incoming freshman it's timely that you're considering today a contract extension for superintendent Smith when the needs of high school students remain unmet in just three weeks our high schools will open to students and families who are under the impression that the course catalogs they reviewed last spring represented real classes many of these students took PPS up on the offer to attend school for the bare minimum of hours required by state law and forecasted for a full day a decision that better prepares them for College and Career by increasing their access to instruction what I am wondering is whether these offers will fall apart come August registration when high school Staffing is shown to be inadequate promises to add teachers in October will ring Hollow to parents and students last spring during the budget process I spoke here on behalf of the parents Coalition asking superintendent Smith to follow through on her agreement with our group to create a framework and Staffing plan that allowed all high school students genuine access to a full school day other parents repeated that request and yet here we are days away from year four of part-time high school and we have incomplete forecasting data no assurances that enough teachers were added for the Comprehensive High Schools to offer students access to the bare minimum and little to no follow-through on the superintendent's May 2013 commitment to build a framework for Staffing high school sufficiently the high school teachers that have been added are more likely to go toward reducing workload a good thing but not one that will allow students access to a full day of instruction I'm here to ask you to postpone this vote and instead hold a public briefing on the status of our District's Comprehensive High Schools show that PPS is in compliance with the letter and spirit of the law and confirm high schools have been staffed to offer every student access to a full day of instruction during the 2012 school year only 17 percent of Portland Students had a full day that inched up to 30 percent last year will 2014 perpetuate the culture of early release late arrival non-instructional study halls and extended lunch the parents Coalition has asked for forecasting and Staffing information since before summer began only yesterday after multiple follow-up requests did we finally receive data albeit incomplete this is a red flag at best and a sign of broken commitments at worst given that the Department of Education chastised PPS is out of compliance in spirit if not in practice in terms of their legal obligations I have to ask where is the sense of urgency what data is driving Staffing decisions and is there a
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strategy the parents Coalition is committed to unearthing what the district fails to provide willingly we shouldn't have to act as registration Watchdogs but we strongly suspect that PPS is not fulfilling its commitment to students before you vote Yes on a contract extension and pay increase ask yourself whether the unethical practice of short of short-changing students has been resolved to your satisfaction and superintendent Smith we would ask the same of you to demonstrate your commitment to students I urge you to say out loud before you vote that you're confident every high schooler in Portland has unadulterated access to a full school day and that our high schools are currently staffed to support that thank you very much I've got some time I don't know if you're familiar with the Enron merger can you give us your name and Nancy spell your last name please and my address just need your first name and last name is your last name thank you so uh I was part of the uh fighting the Enron merger the Enron merger came directly into the school board and um I stopped a good portion of it to save the school district money and as we found out there were Crooks involved in working in our city that are now in jail so to reflect on that I would like to say that the ethics and quality of this board I would hope is at a much higher standard I understand Carol Smith's tremendous accomplishments I would expect that that would be part of the job also I respect the fact that yes people do get rewards for the good work that they do however we have people working two jobs just to reach poverty levels we have people that are without homes we have a record number of homeless in our city we have conditions that exist because we're separating the poor from the rich and there's nothing in between and that kind of atmosphere I ask you what is my value I close two nuclear plants including the Trojan nuclear plant how many lives have I saved I'm in the process of closing the the plant on the Columbia river which is a focus human design which people are watching and if we have any kind of minor earthquake that thing will blow and we won't even have the Northwest left of this on the Hanford reservation how much you want to pay me for that if you're looking at values you look at this is a public school education my daughter benefited from a tremendous staff tremendous teachers tremendous advisors some good Administration some good school board and she's doing very well however she has no pensions she has no guarantee of retirement she has no guarantee of job security and this is the norm for our people that we're graduating and we're not addressing this and I think it would be a more respectable answer to these students that have succeeded and anybody that's going through this education that someone like Carol Smith respects the fact that the community has to have some place to find this money I'm on fixed income now and I think there is a level of concern that should sit right in the classrooms today because these kids are being deprived left and right they're being filled with huge debts they can't even get a start and we're sitting here deciding on thousands of dollars on performance I don't understand why administrators and the superintendents is not expected today I just don't understand why there's a rollover guarantee when most of the population is just trying to get by and this city is losing its quality of life so I don't want to see that enhanced by this increase I think that Carol is terrific at her job I compliment her highly for the accomplishments but I disagree with the amount of the increase thank you could you please spell your last name for us n-e-w-e-l-l thank you very much our last two speakers are young runan and Tom Kane I'm a high school teacher at um social studies teacher at Wilson High School and I just want to First could you please spell your last name yeah non-n-am thank you and I want to just first say that I'm just shocked that we're even here talking about this and how horrible this is going to look for us and hurt um the entire State we're looking at a time when the right wing is attacking Public Funding Public Schools everything saying that we're all overpaid and everything we this is the first year where we're not suffering under huge cuts and they are just waiting for the opportunity to find more um things they could use to say how overpaid people are how we're wasting people's taxpayer money and this will become a major thing that they will use that will hurt us for our long-term goal of having adequate funding for schools and I want you to also think about the fact I mean you know first of all we should not be talking about markets if anyone's here to make money please get
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out of here we're here for public education to do a service to students and to the community not to make money you're in the wrong place this is not a business we should not be talking about markets however if you want to compare ourselves to other people I mean I think people's salaries do reflect kind of a value that we give consider the fact that we have one out of four students in Portland that live in poverty do you want to say that you were that much more important than them and their families that are paying taxes I think it's extremely embarrassing that we're even considering this or the fact that I have to teach half time because of our new schedule that increases our workload even though our class sizes are reduced when you get high school teachers to teach an extra class that's a huge workload issue and because of that I actually had to beg to be able to teach halftime they were trying to force me to teach five classes and I can't handle that and do justice to my students so I'm making a half time salary where I won't even get benefits for help for dental or Vision I'm getting a root canal tomorrow and I have to rush to get it done because or else it'll be thousands of dollars out of my pocket and I can't afford to do that do you really want to say say that you are that much more important than me and everyone else including our students and their families that your salary should be that much higher and also I would even say we shouldn't even have a percentage you know if I got two percent increase two percent increase of my salary just do some math right look at the numbers two percent of that number compared to two percent of a hundred and almost two hundred thousand dollars is a huge difference I'm curious I mean what do people do with that kind of money I just don't know I will show you what my personal budget is and how I live and I live a modest life I'm not here to get rich and in fact I'm taking a major salary cut and I will maybe even do this permanently um and that will affect my retirement not having dental and vision benefits for the rest of my life and that's what I'm prepared to do to serve my students thank you hi Tom Kane k-a-n-e I'm not here to evaluate the superintendent Pro or con it's really not in my capacity I admire her long-term commitment to Portland Public Schools I myself have been teaching for over 20 years and no one had to offer me another eighty thousand dollars to do it um but someone is responsible for hiring uh Yvonne Deckard at fifteen thousand dollars a month um and spending 360 000 to get a contract that teachers likely would have settled without any participation from Miss Deckard so I sometimes imagine uh and I would apologize for the non-linear nature of this uh because uh this is a bit hasty but I sometimes imagine I'm going to play the lottery and if I win the lottery I'll buy myself a new Tesla and apparently the superintendent won the lottery because that's the kind of money we're talking about it's a question of proportion teachers had to spend thousands of their own hours their own time including a 24-hour bargaining session so that we could eke out a 2.3 percent raise we've had a five percent raise of the last five years and what is it what does this kind of array say to our District's parents as young pointed out a quarter of whom are living below the poverty line um about our commitment to equity these people who make two who work two jobs to make ends meet um I I get it that the super you're comparing the superintendent to other and superintendents um but as far as I'm concerned they're all overpaid as well um so again I have a similar question to hyung what is it that someone can't afford at a hundred and ninety thousand dollars a year and um finally um as a last note if the superintendent would refer her bargaining negotiator to the union we would greatly appreciate it okay that's it great thank you very much to everyone for your testimony um is there is there any board discussion um so and I will have more discussion on the contract so who would like to start Steve all right this is not my discussion on the topic I'll do that I have a question on the presentation because I'm talking all the time about Ford the Quorum and how we work well somebody had to put together the presentation was that done by you personally and then you asked the people to do the presentation for you in the school district to put together and do that or did you do that and then tell them to
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put that together so you could show that up I mean can I do that can I because I can ask the people to put together a big presentation for me on some topic and yeah let me answer your question I'm sorry I thought you said sure no the uh what I did was put together all the information and I asked staff to put it into PowerPoint because I am not that computer savvy yeah I do that and I can put in PowerPoint and open the PowerPoint for me and I can show that if it has something to do with the district sure what we're doing okay great just wanted to make sure we know what you're doing and then I can give it before we do the can I give that before we actually have a a motion a resolution can I just kind of do that that was done before the resolution was made yes it was so in this case because I was the one who was leading the negotiations with a superintendent I wanted the public to be aware of all of the things that we had looked at um and the process that we went through so I it's almost like having a staff person almost like a staff person coming up and explaining um what the district went through and how we reached our decision and I will have some comments to make as a board member also so okay I'd just like to suggest that next time we have the resolution first then we do the presentation which is the proper order to do things thank you do you have comments on the contract yeah sure I'm supporting the position that and and I want to make sure that it's clear that this has nothing to do with any personal thing with the superintendent who I have many times said I think is a very nice person and has treated me very well and I appreciated that the whole time I do think that we should be offering the superintendent the ideal 2.3 percent that we gave teachers I think that it's fair that we have pretty much every person in the District Administrative and so forth it's fairly equal to that I and so that's the position that I'm supporting and anything beyond that I'm voting against but there's another there's a reason for that also and I just kind of want to State how I feel about it I think if if I was in the four count because I think it was Matt profit the first time I heard this said as an old superintendent he said the most important thing for a superintendent is to be able to count to four and I thought it was a pretty good statement and he said he was a pretty smart man and I think that we have a superintendent who can clearly count to four and I think I'm about number 23 on the count but that's not the point the point is that then why uh yeah I know you picked up on that didn't you that's good that's good you got the account yeah you guys Mass picking up up here uh I grew up in a small I grew up in a small town in Oregon and in a small town in Oregon we used to have a Fix-It guys and they sometimes even had the name Mr fix it and so you would call if you had a problem with your refrigerator and it was leaking you would call in Mr Fixit guy and if you had problems again you'd need your front steps uh fix you would call in Mr Fix It guys well that's kind of how I believe we should be as a school district we should have Fix-It people out there that's the job of the administration to be to fix it people and so you come in with a problem and they fix that problem actually fix the problem and what I think's happened and this is why I'm kind of a little non-supportive of some of the things that we do corporations get the idea that they have fixers they have people who come in who are fixers they come in and they smooth over the problem and they make it look better and they do public relations for it and they don't really fix the problems they fix what it looks like and I think we've become to a huge degree a District of fixers instead of Fix-It people and it's hard for me to support that because you don't really get the problems taken care of so when you are when you have graduation rates that you're trying to get up I mean that's a hard problem a kid's in our system for 12 years theoretically as you go through for 12 years you should be able to at the end graduate from high school if you've got a good good education it's not something you fix in a year it's not something you fix in two years you fix it over 12 years and you that's how you
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fix it but we have a tendency instead of instead of taking those graduation problems and making them work we manipulate we are manipulating them to some degree sure sometimes they work but basically we're manipulating each other the fixtures are manipulating things it's the same to a certain degree you can do the same thing with testing I've I've begged the superintendent to have the testing committee and said please the one that she promised that we would have please have the testing committee so we can actually get down and look and see what's happening in those schools but instead we're doing the fixture things so we have all these fixer administrators instead of Fix-It people and that's where I'm having a hard trouble saying okay we have this success let's kick it up and let's in we're having this great success I don't see the great success I see the fixer stuff not to fix it and so that's why I'm not overly supportive of this huge contract for the superintendent as much as I think she's a very nice person thank you very much thank you another board member should ask Ruth Ruth do you want to talk do you want to do you want to go next okay let me see if I can let's see how this works okay go ahead whoops um so it's one of the three Warrior number two helped hire Carol Smith back in 2007. um I take my share of accountability we're not um salary increases over the last seven years and has abortion so we would not be independent um because it's a large kind of one-time increase but we do need to recognize the alternating performance of superintendent Smith not just for universally acknowledged wonderful personal qualities your professional accomplishments and her truly outstanding leadership and performance for this District over the past seven years as Jam reviewed including the increase in our graduation rate and then what momentum that we're seeing in that direction are nationally recognized Equity policy Furniture stewardship of public dollars during state budget cuts over the last several years passage of the capital Bond and local option Levy and on and on um and we do need to be in the market range for a district of our size I like it or not Urban School superintendents are the highly competitive high pressure and therefore highly compensated positions that's just the reality we live in in our world um we need to we need to be it compensate her according to her performance and in line with similar districts similar school districts and really for me most importantly we have we must not underestimate value to our district and really the entire Community to have the long-term leadership of Carol's caliber in other words for the seven years every additional year financially when you don't have the churn and the chaos that comes with Constitution I'm very very fortunate here in Portland to have her long-term study leadership and that is of incalculable value so so I appreciate um um some long work and researching and negotiating and working through this to come to this final package obviously I deeply appreciate Carol's leadership and hope she'll be with the district for many years to come and I'm supporting the resolution thank you thank you Ruth Victor Regan so when superintendent Carol Smith was first hired seven years ago she was given a salary that was less than the former superintendent and less than Market comparables because she lacked two key ingredients experience as a superintendent and experience running a large and complex Urban School District seven years later the superintendent resumes now includes these key ingredients yet her salary is essentially the same so an adjustment is more intent as we started this process I had two priorities the first was to get our superintendent salary to a point that is Market competitive and the second was to assure that the superintendent's contract remains simple and transparent no hidden payouts no add-ons so how you define Market competition is important comparisons to Seattle and
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California are interesting but to me not necessarily appropriate as Portland is a very different Market comparing Portland to Beaverton OR Salem is not Apples to Apples either we are the only Urban School District in the state our student demographics are challenging in unique ways our cost of living is higher we have a strong and engaged business community and unique partnership opportunities and we are the media hub for the state so for Market comparables I looked at several different factors first what do superintendents and comparably sized urban districts make and for districts with 30 to 60 000 students the range is anywhere between 224 000 and 300 000. second what do Urban superintendents for five or more years experience make the average is 247. male superintendents of course make more female superintendents make less that's a sad statement but it is the reality so male superintendents with five years experience on average make 257 female superintendents on average make 238. third I looked at the races the Portland Public School teachers have gotten during the same year a seven year time frame that analysis is interesting if superintendent Smith had made the raises or cost of living increases that teachers got without seniority steps her salary would be about two hundred and ten thousand if she had received the same reasons his teachers get during the first 13 years of service meaning cost of living increase plus steps her salary would be closer to 250 000. so finally if superintendent Smith had received a raise of 3.5 percent for each of the past seven years her salary would be about 245 000. so looking at all of these factors it's reasonable if the superintendent salary should be in the mid 240s somewhere which is a significant increase and I acknowledge that but it's likely where we would need to be if we were out in the market today recruiting for a new superintendent so a clean and transparent contract is actually a higher priority for me than the raise itself when I was elected to the Portland School Board in 2003 we made several intentional changes to our administrative contracts the board before us had done two six figure contract buyouts one for a former superintendent and one for an assistant superintendent we had to do a third the community was outraged and we were mortified so we changed our policies and practices to ensure this didn't happen again and in fact the legislature responding to this faster Bill to ensure the districts were not allowed to pay employees for time they don't actually work so since that time we have no golden parachutes or bonuses or other extras in our administrative contracts no housing allowances no cars we have no special health insurance payouts and in fact our senior administrators received the exact same health insurance as all of our other administrators so as we started this discussion I wanted to be sure that we didn't lock future school boards into overly generous contract terms or raises they would have to pay out I specifically wanted to be sure we were never again in a situation where we might have to do a six-figure contract buyout our current superintendent contract today includes salary and an annuity otherwise it is a clean and transparent contract I'm pleased that after prolonged negotiations the contract we're voting on today also includes salary and annuity with no extras hidden Within if we hadn't gotten there my colleagues knew that I would be a no vote and while the salary we're offering is higher than I'd like it's in the ballpark of where I believe we need to be to be Market competitive so my vote today is based on where we should be in the market and where we would need to be if we were launching a superintendent search tomorrow but I would like to take the opportunity to comment a little bit on the superintendent's performance during the superintendent seven years we have dealt with significant annual budget cuts that have hampered our ability to invest fully where we need to invest yet even in these times we have significantly increased language immersion opportunities every Portland Public School now has counseling support for students we have summer intervention sessions targeted to students needing extra support or those in key transitional periods we started a successful middle college program at Jefferson High School we're finalizing turf fields at all of our high schools we rebuilt Marysville school after a tragic fire we converted all of our furnaces to Natural Gas saving millions of dollars in utilities and we've significantly increased professional development around cultural competency in addition we successfully passed a local teacher Levy in 2011 with our 2011 with our current Levy paying for about 600 teaching positions
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we passed a nearly 500 million dollar facilities bond in 2012 allowing us to start the much needed renovation of our schools starting with three high schools plus seismic roof accessibility and science lab upgrades and we settled a highly contentious teacher contract in a way that supports both students and staff adding 180 teachers and lowering our student teacher ratio adding two days to our school calendar and allowing us at long last to get out early in the market to hire the best and the brightest new teacher talent each year in a previous contract negotiation we fully revised our teacher evaluation process most importantly we're seeing a steady increase in our graduation rate up 14 points in the last four years so is there more to do absolutely our graduation rate is still a hair lower than the state average and way lower than what any of us would view as excessive as acceptable we're still working to provide a full class schedule and to meet minimum instructional hours for our high school students our administrative support for school principals must be beefed up we're in the process of improving our parent complaint process which has left too many caring parents in bureaucratic limbo we continue to work on strategies to address our unacceptable achievement gap between white students and students of color although we are making progress we need to continue to strengthen our Partnerships with labor and trades especially to support Career Technical education opportunities for our students and our relationship with Portland Association of teachers must evolve into a healthier partnership generally so my vote today should not be interpreted as a statement that all is well it is a statement however that says we're making steady progress we should be paying our superintendent a competitive salary and we have urgent work to do to better support our students staff and Families John thank you um I only have comments uh but I I think generally hiring and retaining a superintendent is probably one of the most challenging and also most public things that a and responsibilities that a board has I think the Oregon educational investment board for example learned their lesson when they hired Rudy crew um is to see how difficult it is to to bring in a quality education leader um I think uh you have an opportunity to invest in rhetoric or you have an opportunity to invest in stability and I I think the stability that superintendent Smith has offered this District over a number of years is too important of a commodity for us to sacrifice and uh and I will be a yes Vote for This resolution tough sure um okay I have a couple comments uh to make starting with process we had about uh I don't know somebody can Greg you've probably counted but 12 14 15 20 Executive sessions when we were dealing with the contract for the labor for our teachers um I thought it was important as a board to have an executive session to discuss the employment contract of our superintendent and um I was told by the chairs that no that was not legal I then asked an opinion of our attorney who um said no that's not appropriate and it it just defies for me it just defied common sense had I been the chairs I probably would have just called an executive session regardless of the of the legal advice but um what I would what I'd like to do um and our our attorney uh suggested there might be a way of running this off the flagpole I'd like to do that because in the future we ought to have and I know it would save you a lot of time Pam uh you did an amazing amount of work on this uh and so I wanted to thank you for that uh calling people and emailing and you know and then you get into the phone tag and he said she says it's just it's
01h 00m 00s
a lot of work um in terms of a doing things correctly I think I think we ought to have had an executive session when we talk about the employment of our super so um so I plan to follow through and counselor if you could help what the next steps are on that but I think we need to get clarity on that um second uh to me this isn't it it's a it's an easy vote I'm going to vote no um and it's uh and it's an easy vote for this reason is um as as board members we have lots of different constituents and um all the way from you know the kids uh to the parents to the teachers to each other and to the taxpayer and every decision we make um one or one of those constituents I mean it might be more appropriate and this is a decision today where uh I think as a board um we the the foremost in front of my mind is uh constituent is a taxpayer is uh what as what kind of contract can we negotiate that is uh that is both fair to our superintendent but also is fair to the taxpayer um and is the best deal that we can get and I I feel like we didn't um that this deal doesn't represent the best deal that we can negotiate on behalf of our taxpayers um I want to acknowledge Carol you not taking raises I want to acknowledge your your good work and your longevity and your leadership um I think that this uh that the proposed increase is just is just too big and you know we're in that we're in this that situation but it's just it's too big of an increase given where we're at um and um and I I don't think it's appropriate to um it's certainly a valid methodology and everybody and their mother's Uncle uses it to go out and look at you know different cities and uh and what everybody else is paying and what as from a taxpayer standpoint what that happens is it's just a spiral on up and it's a it's a Chase to who can be the highest um I don't I don't think we need I don't think we need to do that I think here in Oregon uh you know we're constantly voted one of the best states one of the best cities to come to um and that has value that has monetary value so I don't I don't buy going out and comparing us to other uh other cities across the country um I do think it's important that um that we are that we have a relative pay scale towards other Oregon districts um and so Bobby and I uh appreciate also your work in this whole negotiations and as you said to make it totally clear and easy and transparent but I disagree with you on the and and others I mean I actually think Beaverton Salem um are are relative districts that we can compare ourselves to we're about 20 percent larger they um pretty similar demographics uh in terms of free and reduced lunch uh and so in my mind where I where my it was an easy vote to say yes to a 20 uh compared to um the second largest District that we're 20 bigger of but um so moving forward I hope we can have uh executive sessions when we talk about this uh as well as talking about it in the public and I'll be voting no today so I don't have anything eloquent prepared um but just a couple of thoughts so people understand my thought process going through this one if the superintendent was underperforming then I wouldn't be considering this but she's been performing in this people have pointed out we have been making steady consistent growth which is actually better than spiked and dropping dropping growth because as happens in testing big spikes large spikes usually indicate some anomaly and that's not what we've been doing we've been growing steadily um I appreciate the the public comment about be careful about markets right because people shouldn't be in this business for for money um
01h 05m 00s
as a non-profit employee I just want to let you know that our our industry our sector also goes through market rate adjustments knowing that nobody is in non-profit work for a few people are in non-profit work problem I'll move it over there sorry phone technicality um market rate adjustment is just looking at other people doing the work and seeing whether or not you're compensated adequately or similarly and unlike director curler's experience where it's a spiral up I've been part of many adjustments where actually things have gone down depending on what the market is ahead of time and so I think it's reasonable for any industry any business any organization that's looking at keeping and retaining people to do market rate adjustments and as I think about the priorities that I've seen come from this board when we were in contract negotiations with all of our partners our consistent philosophy was we want to hire great people we want to keep good people and we want to be able to compensate them to keep them around and we want parity because there isn't the custodian is not necessarily more important than the teacher is not necessarily more important than the superintendent all of these people have functions and they affect our kids and how we move and they're all important so so it's important that we do consider it in the context of our system and you've seen Graphics that while if you look at the actual increase in a one time it is an extraordinary amount yes but it is because it has been artificially depressed partly because of State funding over the past seven years and again to superintendent Smith's credit she has not been willing to take that understanding the sacrifices that everybody has been making at the same time what that does is with superintendent's salary pegged at a certain amount it affects the rest of the organization meaning we cannot raise somebody below her to a competitive level or the person below them at some point they wind up bumping into each other and we begin losing people to either States or other districts because we cannot hire the type of quality people that we want so if I think of various positions in our organization whether it's our executive level they're not all education positions some of them are transferable Financial people human relations people whatever the case may be folks have the choice of going to City have the choice to going to County have the choice to go into large private organizations now we can sit as a philosophy and say well if that's what they're here for then we don't want them the reality is people doing the same exact job will look at what their options are and just like all of us that are trying to make ends meet and trying to figure out how to be the best for our family they may or will make other choices so it's important that we be aware of it not that we Chase it but that we be aware of it so I'll be voting yes for this understanding that for me this large of an increase is a one-time thing and I will be even in next years depending on what the budget is advocating for the superintendent to continue to take those regular step increases whether it's 2.3 whatever it is so that in another five years we don't find ourselves having to do this large of an adjustment Ruth any more comments no thank you um okay I think most of the my most of what I thought about while I was trying to cover this decision was included included earlier but I do want to say uh that I value very much the work that superintendent Smith has done for us over the past seven years and particularly the things that we can see so easily the increase in our graduation rate the narrowing of our achievement Gap passing of a bomb passing of a levy putting more money into schools putting more teachers into schools our Equity policy these are all things that that make Portland Public Schools the great District that it is and I think that it's her longevity and her willingness to stick with it through really tough times these have been really tough budget times in in Oregon her longevity and her laser-like focus on making sure that our students achieve all students achieve not not just those who always will but all students achieve to me has been a tremendous benefit for this district and I really do appreciate and I I also want to comment briefly on the fact that we do want to hire and retain the best people we possibly can I think Greg said it very well because the upheaval that's caused by people coming
01h 10m 00s
and going like Portland Public Schools suffered through for many many years those of you in the audience probably remember every two years a new superintendent uh very difficult and is why the one of the reasons why the district was in the state that it was in when Carol came on board and so I want to thank her again for her longevity and for her laser-like focus on making sure all of our students achieve and I'm also a yes phone so the board will now vote on resolution number 4949 all in favor please no voice okay all those in favor Miss Houston will you call the role director Atkins economically director Atkins can vote but it's I'm not going to make a big deal out of it but let's check out that we should check that because we'd be going from if it's not in our policy we'd be going for Robert Rule's order and I don't think in under Robert's Rules she can vote there is it's either a policy or there one or the other but it's I won't make a big stink out of it because there's obviously already four votes right to pass it so but let's check and make sure next time thank you thank you we'll look into that yes director Regan yes director Buell no director Morton yes director Curley no chair Knowles yes Okay resolution 4949 is approved by a vote of five to two five to two thank you very much everybody so Pam can I just say Carol you of course so um number one I just wanted to express appreciation to the board for the amount of research and due diligence of what was really a complex set of considerations in figuring out what was both how we're bringing our whole system into Market including the superintendent's salary and all of the other factors that you weighed and voices that you listen to in arriving at what came forward today and it was over a series of months so this was clearly not a straightforward process as people understood and other factors got raised by members who came and testified today but my appreciation for you for the thoughtful work that you did to get to what we got to today and then just my um both feeling like we've got a strong Foundation that we're building from right now and I'm really excited about what we have in front of us and I appreciate looking at another three years we've got really clear focus on the things that we are working to accomplish for kids in the next three years and I look forward to doing that with all of you so I'll just say I'm excited about the go forward and building on our momentum thank you thank you very much okay we'll move forward with agenda the board now consider remaining items on the business agenda having already voted on resolution 4949 Miss Houston are there any changes to the business agenda there's not there are not enough do I have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda director Morton moves and director Regan seconds the adoption of the business agenda Miss Houston do we have public comment no we don't is there any board discussion on the business agenda director Buell it'd be nice to have a some sort of a report from the superintendent on what's taking place with these legal matters that keep coming forward and they keep giving people money and so it just seems I don't mean now but I mean it'd be nice to have some sort of discussion because there's a lot of discussion out like we keep giving people money well we do based on obviously we're making errors or maybe we're just giving him money because we're not making errors I can't figure it all out so I'd love to have some edification around how come we keep giving all these people money are we making mistakes out there of some sort that we could correct or something it's not a lot of money it's 170 000 or something that's you know that's a chunky yeah it's a couple that's four of my uh halftime Librarians in the elementary schools that we're handing to people because we're making some sort of mistake so I don't know exactly how it works but I'd love to know what's taking place we can prepare some kind of a review for you Steve that's nice thank you any other comments director I just I just want a clarification so I understand um so when I saw these on the agenda it also was accompanied by our attorney saying that she is willing to go through those um and discuss the the situations in each of those with any of us is that apparently isn't to your satisfaction
01h 15m 00s
there's a pattern it's it's happened over a period of time and so the individual ones are are so suppose they say well we we did this and made a mistake here is that part of a pattern can we correct that in some way by the superintendent taking some action so we don't end up paying this money that's what I'm interested in is is looking at it as a pattern not as just individual thing and the offer of sitting down for those so that you could discern a pattern potentially as in doesn't suffice uh yeah I could sit down with people they're welcome my have a nice little area out there by my condo they can come and sit right on the deck and we can talk about it that would be great that has possibilities okay any other discussion on the business agenda okay the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes uh call the pose please indicate by saying no uh the bin excuse me the business agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero the next meeting of the board will be held on Tuesday August 12 2014 and this meeting is adjourned that meeting on August 12th is at is that going to be at six at six o'clock


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