2014-11-10 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2014-11-10
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - November 10, 2014

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good evening everyone this study session of the board of education for november 10 2014 is called to order and i'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to all of our television viewers while our study sessions are generally limited to our receipt of information from staff and discussion of that information review of resolutions prior to a vote at times we conduct votes during study sessions as we will tonight any item that has been voted on this evening has been posted as required by state law this meeting was televised and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our pbs tv services website so i'd like to start out this evening with a rousing thank you to the voters of portland for the passage of our levy by 70 percent thank you this is great news for us it adds 40 or more teachers to our our classrooms next fall when we start receiving that money from property taxes so thank you thank you thank you so at this time we'll go ahead and do public comment miss houston i know we have many people signed up okay so well those two are coming up i'll go ahead and run through the instructions for public comment for everybody else who's speaking tonight thank you for taking the time to attend the meeting and provide your comments to the board we 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 your comments and the board will not respond to any comments or questions during public comment time but we've asked the board manager roseanne pell to follow up on issues raised during public testimony roseanne is available right here in the front of the room and sometimes is wandering around in the back um we also ask well she you know she's trying to find people all the time it's purposefully wandering that's right not just wandering we also asked that if you have written materials you'd like us to review that you give them to ms houston unless they have charts or graphs or something that you're going to be referring to during your discussion and then we'll go ahead and have those here just so we can keep all the information available to us guidelines for public comment emphasize respect and consideration of others complaints about individual employees should be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter you have a total of three minutes uh please begin by stating your name and spelling your last name during the first two minutes you'll see a green light in front of you when you have one minute left the yellow light will come on and when your time is up the red light will come on and a buzzer will sound and we ask that you please wrap up your comments at that particular time and we sincerely appreciate your input and thank you very much for your cooperation dave uh chair knowles superintendent smith members of the board members of the public my name is dave porter p-o-r-t-e-r i've given stuff over there and their charts on it but i don't really refer to them in the text thank you the second recommendations are on the board agenda tonight i am disappointed in their recommendations relating to dual language immersion programs am disappointed in the recommendation four which reads expand access to dual language immersion programs unfortunately the saka definition of new language immersion programs does not include immersion programs for english native students what i would call one way do language immersion programs let me put forward three reasons why such programs are important new language and program the language immersion programs are better for students both one-way and two-way do language immersion programs are better for most students than english-only schools students in immersion programs learn everything students in english-only schools do score as well as better over time on standardized tests and show other cognitive benefits over english-only students excuse me and they master a second language an increasingly important skill parents want more dual language immersion programs in the 2013-14 pps kindergarten lottery there were 370 more applicants than slots for dual language immersion programs most were english native students i proposed a five-year dual language emerging expansion plan that would provide an additional 350 kindergarten one-way slots ppa s should be responsive to what parents want it should have as a core value and goal that every kindergartner whose parents want their student to attend a dual language immersion program should find a slot in the dual language immersion program three dual language immersion programs are important for economic growth and national security today's kindergarteners will live in a very different world our communities our state our country increasingly needs more bilingual citizens in a global
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economy our economic well-being is increasingly dependent on the ability of our workforce to sell our goods and services abroad second the second in defining the emergent programs that richmond and ainsworth as focus option programs rather than dual language immersion programs recommends that a significant number of their slots be evenly distributed by a high school region this would take the geographic enrollment in these programs in the wrong direction by scattering students from each one-way immersion program all over the district as dual language immersion programs proliferate pps should seek to minimize travel distances and maximize the number of students coming from the neighborhood and able to walk to school parents who want into a specific immersion program should be able to buy or rent a home in the neighborhood and know that their child can get into the neighborhood dual language immersion program neighborhood applicants to dual language immersion programs should get admission priority over out of neighborhood applicants so that do language immersion programs are neighborhood friendly thank you thank you our next two speakers kenneth waineau and yoji matsushima so sarah tam was not here we'll keep trying until we finish public comments if she shows mr a person i believe there was a little bit of confusion as far as times so i think some of the speakers were anticipating speaking closer to 7 or 745 so i just wanna be let everyone be aware of that my name is kenneth waynio last name is w-a-i-n-e-o and this is uh with regards to the second recommendations our family chose to apply to the richmond lottery because it is a school rich in diversity with 40 of the student population and 50 of the faculty being non-caucasian the choice to accept the lottery for our first child was a family decision a decision based on current pps sibling policy that keeps families together academic research has confirmed that families are necessary and critical for sex for success in their immersion programs sackett's proposed policy for focus schools will separate families by removing protections relating to sibling preference however sackett is inconsistent on this point as sackett also proposes strengthening the petition process because quote many families seek transfers between neighborhood schools for compelling reasons including to keep siblings together sackett is for keeping families together except when these families are part of a focus or immersion school sacc's process for developing these recommendations has not been inclusive parents of targeted schools were not invited to provide input principles were not involved and their recommendations are being fast tracked for implementation without prior vetting sacat states in the report that they do not know whether their recommendations will actually affect the changes they seek to achieve we urge pps to carefully consider the upheaval that the sackett proposals will cause in our schools and family for unvetted policies that have no guarantee of success the richmond japanese immersion program and the japanese american community have been singled out by sackett we take issue with the separation of richmond from other immersion programs the japanese immersion program is being treated differently than chinese russian vietnamese and most spanish immersion programs we urge you to slow down the process and take time to talk to affected families in schools we want to be part of forming equity policy as it relates to immersion programs and believe that the first natural step should be to change the current rule that prohibits the school from informing and educating underserved communities about their lottery options we also urge that pps align the lottery and transfer changes with boundary review so that all changes happen simultaneously thereby allowing time to continue to understand best practices and impacts at 25 years old richmond is the oldest japanese immersion program in the united states we invite the school board to visit our school see who we are understand what we are about and learn how the sackett proposal would impact the japanese immersion program thank you very much thank you our next two speakers sarah deluca and tamberly tarver neither one of those they may be thinking that it's an action item all right might be you can just go ahead okay start with your were you here for the instructions no okay so start uh by stating your name spelling your last name and you have about three minutes there'll be a green light that goes on when you start when you have one minute left there'll be a yellow light and when there's a red light then we ask you to wrap up okay thank you very much for
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being here okay my name is tamberly tarver last name is t-a-r-v-e-r and um i am here actually to speak about our student safety within our schools um i don't know how many of you guys know but i'm the parent the parent of the child that came up missing from woodlawn um october 6th of this year and ended up being found at wendy's after traveling along i-5 and whoever knows you know we still i don't know everywhere he's been that particular day so that's what brought me here today i am very concerned at the district's lack of response to this situation it took me two weeks to get a very vague statement from the school as to what took place that day here we are a little bit over a month and i still do not have staff accounts of what happened i feel like i'm being not really taken seriously about what could have happened to my child this is the second time in four years that pps has has a student come up missing from a pps school where the staff does not know how they left who they left with what time they left with no information or no evidence the first one was chiron the second one is my son camron so it's i take this very seriously i take it very seriously um i don't feel that the school is working with me we've discussed trying to come up with a safety policy a missing child active uh effective missing child protocol with no response putting more cameras in the schools putting bills on the doors putting some type of alarm system to where if somebody leaves out it alarms the staff lockdown procedures how many of our staff know the lockdown procedure the lockdown procedure was not initiated until the police were bringing my son back to the school it's a little bit late it's like two three hours late so those are things that i'm concerned with this is not the only time a child has come up missing it's just the only time it's made the news i ran into so many families who have been through the same things it's just not been publicized this is a very big concern when we drop our kids off at the schools we expect our kids to be there we expect them to be there nice and safe and taken care of until three o'clock when we come to get them um that's not being done last year i was at the school every single day i was basically my son's personal assistant unpaid mind you and i saw other kids in distress this year there's plenty of kids that have been under distress and it's not being addressed we need to figure out what's making these kids being triggered to where they feel like they need to get out of that environment we need to have each building assessed and even a risk assessment of how many different ways our kids can leave without being seen thank you thank you very much have you gone all the way through the list will you run it again see if anybody has sarah tam and yoji matsushima no and sarah deluca i'm guessing this that many of these people are like we thought thinking they they needed to come at the time that we're actually reviewing the sackett recommendations so as long as my colleagues all agree i think we should just set aside a little bit of time right then and see if any of them come at that time so let's go ahead and do that okay thank you very much to everyone who provided testimony and again roseanne is right over here if you have any questions or concerns you want to talk to her about that she will fill us in on so thank you now it's time for the quarterly update from the bond account ability committee i'll ask kevin spellman the chair of the committee to come forward along with steve marsh thank you very much to both of you for being here tonight and i know that we've had a little switch up on our board members who are now attending um bac as well so that's director belial director curler and director buell so look forward to having them join you guys thank you um co-chair knowles members of the board superintendent smith um i'm kevin spellman chair of the bond accountability committee with me is steve march who is multnomah county auditor and esteemed member of our committee we met um on october 15 director belial was there at concordia
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university where we got a more detailed um summary of the of the work that uh fabian and concordia are involved in and it's well i guess to in a nutshell we're all really excited to see something uh developing there and and intrigued by what's gonna come out of this um it's been a good quarter i think for the bond program uh the highlight i think the project teams at all 12 schools for the summer work should be congratulated 19.2 million dollars value of work was put in place in 63 calendar days that's not quite true because the elevator work is continuing but nevertheless that's quite an achievement um on top of that only about a half of the project contingencies were spent which is also a tribute to the project teams because that ref that's a reflection of the quality of the design work that was done and i think also the quality of the construction contractors design teams talking of that are hard at work on ip15 which is next summer eight schools with a budget of 12.5 million along with science classrooms ada upgrades another 2.6 million at 19 locations for next summer i think staff has done another lessons learned exercise and we'll be taking those lessons into summer 2015 and beyond um staff also reported on the progress of recommendations from the performance auditors and lots of that work has been completed more is ongoing and the next round of performance audit is underway and we will be meeting with those auditors next week in preparation for that the key issues for us no surprise it's kind of the same again but we can give you updates and let you know what's going on schedules continue to be something of a concern with regard to the high schools although progress has been made in both cases the baseline schedule was not met for the schematic design as you know so that shows red on the on the report but there's nothing can be done with that now that's passed and so we're working on recovery uh franklin's design development phase is complete first construction bid package will be end of january or so the mobilization of the contractor has slipped from march and is now planned in june that's not really the end of the world because only really preliminary work could be done before the students move out in any event we will continue to to watch the detailed construction schedule as that gets developed design development of roosevelt is further behind further behind the franklin not further behind than it was before um first bid package is set for early march there will be a phase committing process planned for the for roosevelt and the phasing has changed somewhat partly because of city input concern they had concern over some of the work being done since the students occupying the facility so we're going to have to have temporary facilities out at roosevelt which was not part of the original plan but in some ways not really a surprise uh this schedule for the work remains the same with this slight uh addition site work and demolition will continue into the fall of 2017 after all the new facilities are completed um and if that's not enough we'll have another major project uh starting shortly selection for the design team for grant high school will take place second quarter of 2015 and again i think there will be lots of lessons learned from franklin and roosevelt taken into that process um budget we'll know well well the total budget is now 522 million dollars it's been increased by the 8 million that you approved a couple of months ago although we're all hopeful that we'll be able to recoup
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that from other sources plus the 15 million commitment from concordia we'll know a lot more about budget um very shortly next time we meet the guaranteed maximum prices for franklin and roosevelt are pending uh coming up very shortly and this is these are real key times this is a real uh transfer of risk from the district to the contract uh contractors and that's really going to tell us an awful lot about some of the concerns we've had about market adjustments etc escalation etc ip14 is instructive in that regard good news and bad news there one the bad news was there does seem to be some upward market pressure um causing price increases so we we have concerns about that on the other hand as i mentioned the contingencies held up really well and if we can replicate that that would go a long way to offsetting the um the market adjustments equity is another key element as you know we've been struggling um since the beginning in in trying to measure uh this the extent of student involvement and i think now staff has settled on reporting that on a year by year basis rather than a project-by-project basis and that seems to make sense because lots of those activities are not project related so we're looking forward to following that mwesb minority women owned businesses emerging small businesses uh now represent nine percent of the total payments to date uh which is still obviously not um where it needs to be um contractors still lag behind because of the low bid basis of the work that's been done today we continue to expect that to increase time will tell consultants on the other hand in total are meeting the 18 goal uh which is great except when you drill down into some of the projects there's certainly room for improvement there um on some of the ip work the prime design firm uh qualified so that kind of bumps that which is great but that uh maybe skews those numbers a little bit other issues we have been focused very much i think because of the stage of the jobs on schedule budget scope quality all those key elements and we need to get back to some of the other criteria that we were charged with following like sustainability etc so we're going to work with staff and get specific reports on those excuse me on those elements in general it's been another good quarter for the bond program and once more we remain impressed by the quality and professionalism of staff and the design and construction teams steve um well that you pretty well said it in detail i just uh kind of sum it up i'd say that you know we've had two real successful summer iv project uh years now under our belt and that's that's really uh uh is a hopeful sign as long as the the big projects are coming up now so uh the real proof is going to be in the in the bigger projects and um i think folks have got a good start on it learned a lot from the initial ones and uh uh we're still cautiously optimistic have questions or comments from board members go ahead guys pick director belial there we go thank you i was just going to mention that i really appreciated the conversation at the last um accountability committee meeting where there was a really good discussion and um and engagement around how do we meet these equity goals um that it can be challenging in certain ways bids are allowed or as you said you know it depending on who's getting the bill it can skew the numbers a little bit but i really appreciated their input they came up with some really good ideas having had experience a couple of the members going through this process about what you can do to make sure that everybody's getting a to getting a shot at things at these um and that's i know it was a priority for our board when we put this out is that we wanted to make sure that our community benefited from it and that
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everybody was benefiting from it that was qualified to do it and still saving money as best we can since we're spending tax payers dollars so i just wanted to say thank you and just really appreciated that conversation and the staff was really open to hearing and engaging about about how we work our do our work sure great thank you great uh director keller um yes i i was curious so now with the roosevelt situation there's a lawsuit or a complaint and has there been a risk assessment asked from from your committee or have you looked at that and what the um just what the timing is and what the potential implications are uh curious to know you're thinking you know that at least i don't i don't know the timing of that complaint but i i didn't i don't think our committee heard about it until after a subsequent to our last meeting i'm not aware of any what that process really means as far as we're concerned until we hear otherwise that project is continuing forward right like any other right i think that uh maybe we could have jolly patterson our legal counsel give us a brief on that that would yeah you know she'd be a better person to figure that out okay but i just from a risk standpoint since you guys are in the business it'd be great to hear from java we did that should be on your radar is what i'm saying i'm hoping that you delve into it no no question yeah the the schedule at roosevelt remains a challenge yeah irrespective of any outside influence like that yes so i just had one question um i noticed in your memo to us that you mentioned um some concerns about the design advisory committees and i was curious about what your concerns were there a few well that issue uh that issue came up from public comment it didn't come it didn't wasn't generated from the committee although in previous meetings we've expressed some concerns about uh the way the committees were operating and in primarily in terms our concern primarily was the time it was taking and the effect on schedule i don't think the committee has expressed an opinion one way or the other about the the um makeup of the of the the dags uh our concern is more what do they bring to the process how do they improve the process without being a drag on schedule and and budget that's that would be our concern i think we we likely will mention this to the performance auditors because we now really we have two experiences to well three including fabian right and maybe they can pull out the good parts and recommend changes to the parts that didn't work so well and we'd certainly be in favor of that it'd be interesting okay okay well thank you both for being here appreciate all your volunteer time that you're putting into this project thank you so much i know thank you okay um according to our contract with the portland association of teachers we um offer comments uh them an opportunity to give comments to the board on occasion and they have requested time on our agenda tonight so i'd like to welcome pat president gwen sullivan to the podium thank you thank you for your patience no it's interesting placement uh considering i'm i'm really here to talk about the achievement complex that you will be taking and maybe taking a position on well you know those are at the end of the agenda when so we if you want to wait i was thinking i was going to go have dinner with my family oh i might come back okay well next time let's figure that out a little better yeah so um basically why i'm here is um to kind of give the history lesson that you all are aware of which is you have already made a decision about supporting the achievement compact committee in their decision not to put targets into the compact and so the history lesson really is in the summer that this board took i think a very powerful and really well thought out position around the use of the smarter balance assessment
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for our students our teachers and our schools basically outlining that until such time that the test was valid reliable and free from cultural linguistic and economic bias that you didn't think it was right to to have students and and teachers and schools be evaluated in that way so then the next phase was the achievement compact committee that of course you know is made up of five administrators five teachers and the community and parents that also come to those meetings and at that time the committee decided it doesn't make any sense to set targets because we haven't really looked at we don't have any baseline data it we haven't even seen is it valid is it reliable is it free from cultural bias and so on and so at that point the committee didn't set the targets and then it came back to you and you unanimously agreed that it didn't make sense so i i give you that history lesson because then i found out that um nancy golden sent you a letter saying that they are denying the request or denying the achievement compact and that now at this meeting you have to make some sort of percentages um for a test that we still agree hasn't been proven to be valid reliable or free from cultural linguistic or economic bias so knowing that history um i will also bring up to you your equity the equity policy that this board had uh brought forward uh i think it started in was it 2010 the equity policy uh uh began but um i think it finished not last year year before but there are things in the equity policy that really go to this issue which has to do with making sure that the district provides every student with equitable access to high quality and culturally relevant curriculum instruction support facilities and other educational resources even when it means differentiating resources to accomplish this goal so i would argue that the state coming in and saying that you have to set targets actually violates our own equity policy so um knowing this i know you're in a conundrum of sorts but um i think that when you have strong values about things and you know when things are right and things are not right i would argue that you've already made a decision and if they want to make a decision over this board's decision and the the achievement complex decision i say let them because if they want to violate our our equity policy they want to violate the things that we know has doesn't make any educational doesn't make educational sense or have merit then let them it's not on you it's on them so that is the message that i bring to you and i hope i know it's a hard decision but i hope that you make the right one so thank you thank you for taking the time to be here okay now um we'll have the quarterly update on the capital improvement bond lieutenant smith you want to go ahead jim owens the senior director for our office of school modernization will present our quarterly update on the capital improvement fund yeah i was so excited that i misfired well thank you sir dan smith and good evening board tonight i'd like to briefly provide a quarterly update from office school modernization on the status of our bond program i would like to say thank you to kevin spellman and steve march for their uh for their report this evening i think it's an excellent reflection of the program's status and it's aligned with the material that staff provides to the bond accountability committee on a continuing basis i think it also continues to convey an appropriate level of community oversight on the bond program that we're moving into year three on actually on our eight year program in your bond package uh is the november update of the balanced scorecard which of course is the reporting tool that we use monthly with you and what i'd like to do tonight is quickly summarize the balanced scorecard perspectives and then provide a quick
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a couple of quick photos around the work that was done this summer as was mentioned by kevin and steve i think the work that we bit off this summer at the 12 schools was pretty ambitious and the outcome really turned out to be very beneficial to us so in our balance scorecard we have those perspectives there we go in terms of the overall perspective of program status i would echo is is in the green on our scorecard it's on time it's on budget and it's visible to the community those are the three primary objectives as i mentioned uh we're 25 through the eight year program moving into year three and we're achieving our objectives in a very effective manner this summer we completed the very ambitious ip or improvement project 2014. phase two work phase two represented the work that was needed to get the schools ready for opening in september we're now on phase three for the elevator work at three of the schools and so it represented another very successful summer construction season the work that we're doing currently at beech james john and hosford is our first opportunity to put elevator towers in these schools to provide important accessibility access to upper level floors and that works going on very much on schedule we're expecting to have that completed in the spring i also like to highlight that this work is going on while students are in session and the work has been done on a not to interfere basis with learning and feedback we've received from the building level has been very positive so we're really pleased with that without outcome we've also been fortunate to learn quite a bit from the previous summers again as kevin mentioned a lot of the lessons learned we're building upon and as we take work on over each consecutive summer we're getting better at it we're getting more effective i think the outcomes that we're seeing at the schools are are better as well of course we also benefited from excellent design teams from builders and of course the weather again was very cooperative and allowed the work to particularly the re-roofing work to complete and really really great to see that another item i'd like to highlight tonight is the importance of some of the safety outcomes although we don't often talk of it i think it's important for the board to recognize that the safety outcomes on these projects is is a key objective and relative to students relative to staff relative to the contractors community members that the work that we've done thus far has been done in a very safe fashion and we've only had very minor injuries to contractor personnel and have not had reportable incidents as a result so we want to continue that particularly as we get into the heavier construction when we do the full modernizations at the high schools finally i wanted to mention the construction industry environment here in portland is uh is evolving we're seeing that over the last two years contractors are getting much busier there are other local school districts in the portland metro area that have bond programs beaverton for example has a very large ambitious program and our contractor base that we're using for this work particularly the contractors have experience in k-12 is really being stretched so we're going to watch that closely and it's important to ensure that we continue to have excellent competition that the pricing that we're seeing on our on our competitive bidding is in line with what our budget estimates are but it does bear bear watching in terms of our budget perspective what i'd like to highlight is a slide that i know is pretty hard to read but you have in your packets that describe the overall program and you can see on that second column the program started at 482 million and as we've gone through various additions to the program the 8 million for example an additional borrow the nearly 14 million in the in the bond premium that's not currently being used for project planning purpose and several other uh sources were actually up at 507 million and with the addition of the 15 million from concordia that we're anticipating for the fabian replacement project that should bring us up to about 522. so the program is is is getting larger and to manage all this work together it's important that you know that we're integrating all these fun sources together
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the high schools of course are getting center stage attention currently and as we move through the design phase we'll be soon starting the negotiation of our guaranteed maximum prices and the gmts as they're called are important precursors to getting started with the construction this spring and as was mentioned it's important that these gmps are fully in line with the scope that we're going to be accomplishing so we have another effort to go through as we take the design work that's been completed thus far and align it with our scopes and with our construction contracts and as we start bidding the trade work that it all comes in line as kevin mentioned it does represent a certain amount of risk transfer and so the contractor is going to be watching this very very closely the fabian project was the highlight of the last fun accountability committee meeting we actually met at concordia university and the work at fabian that we did place on hold temporarily while concordia was doing fundraising we've now moved forward with again to take it to full design and anticipating the contribution from concordia through some documents that you'll be seeing in the near future will allow us to begin construction and have this school fully replaced by the for ready for students by the fall of 2017. so a lot of work going on there the project from the bond standpoint is a little under 30 million and with concordia's contribution this is actually a 44 million dollar construction project so between the two high schools fabian and the next summer round we've got a significant amount of work on our plate that needs to be executed on time on budget and visible to community finally on the budget perspective the summer 2014 project costs came in under expectations as was mentioned again we didn't use as much of the contingency as we expected that's good news however the bid prices came in a little higher than we expected but it's it's balancing out nicely and we're able to use these contingency funds for other other purposes as we go through the program scheduled perspective again around the high schools is one that is demanding a lot of attention at roosevelt high school the phasing plan which is an important document which will describe how we'll be moving students and staff during the course of the two years of construction is currently being developed we do expect to issue a memorandum to you that will describe the phasing in a narrative format so you can get a sense of how the work's being accomplished and how the kids are being moved around as the as the work progresses however we're very confident that our makeup plan is is being achieved the work will be phased there in a way that portions of the campus will be delivered early and then other portions will be delivered in time for the fall of 2017 school year so good news there and the team continues to work very hard on that the franklin high school project is aligned with the work that we're doing at the marshall campus the marshall campus is coming along very nicely as that work completes this winter we'll be offering a number of community showcases both the franklin community as well as the grant community to see what improvements were made and to see how that campus will support the franklin students and then of course subsequently the grant students so very excited about how that work is progressing we also have a solid schedule on franklin that is assuring that we'll have completion there in the fall of 2017. the fabian schedule as i mentioned is is turned back on again we're currently in the schematic design phase which we'll be completing at the end of november and then rapidly moving into into design development and then into construction like the franklin project we are using a swing site and we recently announced the use of tubman for the students at fabian and they'll be residing there for two school years while the demolition abatement and construction of the fabian project progresses and then lastly on the schedule front the grant high school project is is emerging now and we are going through the process of selecting the team that will be managing that project and we'll be beginning master planning this summer actually so prior to starting the master planning we go through a process to select the design team and then begin the work at grant we'll you will have learned a substantial amount about how to do master planning and how to manage the design work from the roosevelt and the franklin project so
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really looking forward to grant coming online stakeholder perspective continue to receive very positive feedback from the building level leadership we've had an extensive amount of stakeholder review from the internal staff here at the district for the two high schools and for the next summer round the projects a really important process to ensure that we're getting that and then i'd like to touch on the outreach sessions that we continue to conduct in our neighborhoods we did a number of back to school nights not only at the project sites but at the feeder schools and it's been very positive in terms of messaging to the community what we're doing and what the impacts are on people finally the equity perspective as was mentioned the bond program is embracing our equity and public purchasing and contracting policy and again we have three tiers to it our payment to mwesb firms is dropped a bit from several months ago we were running around eleven and a half percent running just under 10 percent at this time against an aspirational goal of 18. this represents approximately three million dollars though paid out to mwsb owned firms on our projects which is actually a significant amount our contractor workforce equity component is one that we're measuring for the first time this summer and we actually exceeded the goal this is where we're measuring apprentices by trades as a percentage of total hours so we landed on about 24 overall on the work against a goal of 20 and finally on the student engagement front i think we're seeing we're really seeing some nice trends involving student participation in the work our internship work this summer was quite a success we're doing a lot of different activities with the students this slide depicts the number of students that have been involved in the bond program career learning opportunities that we've had some of the firms involved in some of the hours that have been not contributed to the work this is the tool that we're using to track this on a regular basis okay and lastly i'd like to close with a couple of photos showing before during and after these might be a little tough to pick out some of the details but highlighting the work at these three schools uh beach vernon and boise elliott gives you a sense of the accessibility improvements the seismic work the roof tear off and replacements and the science classrooms and it really provides a sense of all the disruption that occurs while the kids are gone over the over the course of the summer some work on interior seismic retrofit which is extremely disruptive but this work really enhances the safety of the schools whether it's on interior shear walls or on roof diaphragm strengthening but it really enhances the the safety and then lastly vernon this is work that is representative of some of the science classroom upgrades not only does it include sinks and power drops but also some new lab tables so it brings the middle grade programs up to a higher standard that's more aligned with our other science classrooms at other at other levels so at this time i'd like to invite any questions or comments that the board may have director buell thank you for that thank you for that report uh the project management cost report so we're 65 million under but that's under from the project estimated com i mean from the current budget because that wouldn't be 65 under that would be 24 under from the original we actually measure the forecasted cost to complete the work which prior to beginning construction you don't assume that you're going to use the contingency so there's a lot of project level contingency that's embedded in there at the project level at the program level we also have contingency such as the program board reserve that resides so it's a reflection of where we are at this point in time and this gets updated monthly well like for instance if you go to franklin it's 10 million under budget correct but the project estimate of completion is 13 million over budget from the beginning so that 10 million under budget is from the current budget how we're looking at it okay thank you and the second the second question is uh you said that the the team managing the grant thing the grant is being put together
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what do you mean by that our plan is to have each of these full modernization projects led by a osm project director and so we're going through the recruiting process to select a project director for that team and then that project director will be involved in selecting the design team and the contractors that'll actually do that where where is the project where are the project directors drawn from project directors are professionals in the community that have experience with capital projects in capital programs in school districts they're primarily drawn from the from the oregon southwest washington area the let's go to marshall high school is everything going to be out of marshall high school that is not directly related to franklin high school would you say because well i mean everything for instance talking to franklin teachers have been told supposedly that they better be ready to share rooms and the second part is they better be ready to bring only one uh one uh filing cabinet with them and a phone and a desk and that's it that's what they're that's what it's gonna be like for them at marshall so my question really is is everything out of marshall then we're not leaving anything in marshall like we're not leaving uh uh something like where warehousing things or how does that is that there are a number of items that are being kept on the marshall campus i know the closed closet for example okay is being kept there uh removing a uh multnomah county student-based health clinic from franklin into marshall um there's furniture but that's part of franklin now correct that's it franklin now there are the furnitures fixtures and equipment as we refer to them the classroom furnishings are are mostly moving from franklin to marshall where they'll be used by the students for the duration there are items that are at marshall that'll be moved to other schools that we're coordinating on but when the school is fully ready for students over the summer over the summer of 2015 the school will be fully configured to be used the shared classroom concept that will apply to the newly modernized franklin will also be will also be used at the marshall campus but in a different in a different uh uh in a slightly different way but generally different numbers i mean different numbers because basically we were trying we put those ten extra classrooms in franklin didn't we so they didn't have to do that well now they the additional classrooms still gotta do something but additional capacity there but it was it was also because of how the classrooms the general ed classrooms are being used they wanted to be able to take advantage of the sharing concepts to start using teacher workspaces while at marshall so that when they return to franklin in the fall of 2017 that they'll have experience in teaching in that new uh so what what you're telling let me see if i can get this straight because i don't understand it yeah are you saying that at marshall we're purposely downsizing the teachers workspaces and we're purposely not putting teachers to uh i mean not giving teachers their own room so that they'll get used to not doing that at franklin when they come back that's kind of what you said to some extent the teachers will be exposed to that new teaching pedagogy at while they're at marshall not fully but partially so that they can start getting experience with it so this is very much aligned with what building level leadership and the teachers have been working out so it's very much of a joint effort to establish this geez i don't know how to handle this superintendent smith i mean i have information that's going to just go you want to you want to deal with me later on it or you want me to just ask it now which would you like really that's a real choice yeah really shorts can i just play you know i don't know where you're going to go with it so well if it i mean seriously if it feels like something that it is one that we want to go deal with later and then bring back once you've understood what it is yeah going forward i'd like to get a better understanding because i'm not getting it here then let's go let's do it i mean we have a significant agenda tonight yeah so i think that's a good job who was going to die who is going to let's set up who's going to deal with let's follow up with jim and if we if you'd like me in that conversation i'm happy to join it yeah okay all right let's do that later
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because i think there's a lot of questions around the franklin to marshall move that aren't coming out the same as we're talking about them here so okay thank you very much i'm in the uh if anyone in the audience would like to email me and ask me about those things i'd be more than happy to thank you if you go to steve buellcom a portland school board member has my email and it's a commercial yes thanks okay and that that'll be below the screen you'll see that yeah any anybody else have can i get that on below the screen yeah i think we should do that don't you other questions from the board or comments uh director um pam i just wanted to reiterate your notion of maybe getting briefed by jolly on this on the roosevelt yeah sure and that would be a memo or i mean not now tonight right i'm assuming uh well it's you know it's legal action so it'll be either an executive session yeah so i think we should do that and then i guess i would ask jim does this seem to be to your department um worthy of a risk management assessment i think it's important to recognize that i'll use the concept of form follows function that the spaces that have been laid out at roosevelt are very much consistent with what the expectations were in terms of the way programs can be delivered i think that the educator leaders in the district have been working very hard at how they're going to teach out of those spaces and that's still something of a work in progress in terms of the project proceeding we are very much proceeding as was approved by the board relative to the two adjacent maker spaces and the maker spaces will have a variety of features in terms of how they're outfitted for multiple multiple uses extending into the cte arena extending into stem applications that's all being developed as we speak in terms of the some of the comments that have been made about the space i'm not sure from a risk standpoint if you're referring to is the is the complaint that's been filed appropriate to be assessed for risk i suspect it would be and i don't know what the outcome would be on it yeah that's just my point is is that knocking brief and having no idea what the chances of success of that complaint is and what the results of success would be i would just from a board perspective like to understand that we have a lot of money online in the school so and i think that we can just go ahead and yeah be briefed on that and then if there are questions after that and yeah that's fine i'm not sure that it's jim's role to assess risk in a legal suit but i i understand where you're going so there's one is the legal and then one is the financial right yeah so okay anybody else dr bella i just wanted to say i had the chance this summer to go see some of this work going on and it's just so exciting whether you're on a roof and you get to see how it's transformed and it's interesting i was i got to talk to a parent who's at one of the schools that's undergoing this work and i said so how does it feel being back you know in your school they were like hmm kind of school is normal because primarily it was seismic outfitting right it's it's stuff that for the most part you can't see unless you're really trained or someone you can't see um and so we talked a little bit about that in the excitement and how exciting it is to finally have begin to build back in or to build in ada accessibility with our um with our elevators again there are a couple of schools that i parents who i've gotten to talk to and that works ongoing and it seems to be not destructive at all and so big kudos both to our project manager who you know every one of these projects always has anybody that's been in construction right there's anybody that's done a remodel knows there's always unforeseen things that come up um and the managing of that and the working with that to make sure that i mean i know that even one school had their fence down in time um for the community care day to to work on the grounds there's such a short window and i just wanted to say thank you and thanks to the project team and the contractors for both being safe but also bringing these in so well it's really exciting and i hope uh that as we continue to move forward with this 30-year plan that our community gets to be as excited i wish we could bring them all up onto a roof i don't know if they don't want that but it's just it's really exciting and it's really keeping our kids safe that the science classrooms it's all just it's exactly what we should be doing as we begin to update our infrastructure that's been um that hasn't had that update in hundreds of years hundreds well a hundred years
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fifty hundred years anyway thank you great thank you for watching thank you very much jim thank you okay at this time i think we're on to our second reading of the complaint policy at our september 23rd board meeting a first reading was held on the revised complaint policy after 21 days of being open for public comment the board is ready to vote on the proposed amendments so we'll now consider resolution 4985 resolution to adopt revised complaint policy 4.50.030 dash p and revocation of the city's complaint policy 7.20 points do i have a motion second okay director belial uh moves and director atkins seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4985 miss houston do we have any citizen comment we do not we do not is there a board discussion on the resolution we've seen this many many times so four nine eight five looking in the back four ninety five it's the page twenty five it's also fine okay i have all sorts of emotions let me do go through questions i have or and then make amendments or just make amendments as we go through and talk about i think um you see these orange things here is this yeah are they administered or did you want to be able to answer questions so i think we actually received a number of questions that we were going to have jolly go ahead and respond to because there were ones that were received between publishing pause so we may want to just start with jolly who can we address some of what steve says so if you have a presentation for us just questions answering some questions so i'm jolly patterson i'm the general counsel for the school district and um as as uh chair nola said the board had a work session on this policy on september 9th and then a first reading on september 23rd at which point there was lots of discussion from the board and we have received community feedback since the first reading of the policy which also included a review of the administrative directive a few things were clarified in the administrative directive those are reflected in the red line of the documents that you received so one we clarified the calendar days that days refer to calendar days throughout that was a helpful feedback from the public we also included the requirement um that the when the final decision from the superintendent has to include findings of fact conclusions of law and the legal basis for the decision when we talked at the first reading um we were awaiting some clarification from ode they provided the clarification that the referral to legal findings can refer to either statute administrative administrative rules or board policy so that's also included in the ad and then finally included some clarification about what happens with complaints when um when they're filed during board or during school breaks so um we did receive some questions from a few members of the public so i thought i would just run through quickly some of the general themes that we received so one question was whether the complainants are required to talk to teachers or principals before they can access the complaint process and the answer to that is no that we that was initial that wasn't your initial draft but we um we took out that requirement while it's well it's definitely encouraged they're not required to go through that process before starting the formal complaint process we've also received questions about whether the the complaint needs to be in writing and the answer to that is yes to start the formal complaint process it does need to be in writing but we have really limited the uh the scope of required topics so in order to make that more accessible and as always through this entire process the ombudsman's role is to assist people with the process we received some questions about whether the ombudsman was the maker at step one and we i think we've pretty clearly clarified in the administrative directive that the ombudsman is um not a decision maker that she is there to help uh help facilitate resolution amongst the parties that's why we used language that one of the things she will do is seek multiple perspectives not that she's going to be engaging in formal investigation or fact-finding so really trying to clarify those roles and the decision maker at step one will generally be either the senior director of schools the um the department manager or somebody else appointed through the superintendent's office you received some questions about the ombudsman's reporting structure so the ombudsman does report to the chief of community engagement and public affairs
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she has a dotted line to the superintendent which means that she has access to the superintendent whenever she um needs that access um and they meet regularly um we asked we had questions about whether pps also has a anti-harassment policy which is required by state law and we do and whether that policy allows for anonymous complaints and it does so that's a separate policy um people could go through the procedure outlined in that policy if they were unhappy with that they could then access the the complaint process but that is a separate um policy and and has all the requirements of state law just a few more um we had questions about what if the deadlines in the administrative directive are not met and one of the key functions of many key functions of the ombudsman's role is to track complaints and ensure that those timelines are met so if somebody had a concern that timelines weren't being met they could definitely contact the ombudsman or the superintendent's office but we're also affirmatively tracking those those timelines to make sure they're met there's a little bit of confusion about why some of our other policies also include complaint processes or appeal processes and i think in a organization of this complexity it's appropriate that there are that that's not just necessarily one size fits all people can always go through the complaint process and and if there's something else that's more appropriate to their complaint the ombudsman is there to help them find that but so for instance the example we use in the administrative directive is that there is an appeal process specifically around enrollment transfer decisions so there are a few places where we have um set out kind of an appeal process but the ombudsman is there to help if if people need help navigating that finally questions about the timeline for the complaint process and so we do have a one-year requirement that complaints are brought but within one year of of deter of of realizing the nature of the complaint so and and um that's very expanded from the initial draft which had 90 days so anyways that's just a quick overlay of where i think we've we've had some of the questions from the public and i'd be happy to answer any other questions that the board has i have a procedural question for you we um first saw this i think you said on the ninth is that right somewhere that was a work session on the ninth and then a first reading on the 23rd and then 21 days open for comment and now we have this in front of us our resolution is not actually the policy our resolution is the approval of the policy so at this time are we taking more um other than not changes from the board are we taking more changes that could be adopted by the board i think we'd have to then go i think then we'd have to go back for a third i mean we have them make those changes and bring them i guess i'm asking more about the process for taking those suggestions i know director buell has some things that he wants to change in the policy but not in the resolution um so i suppose that the board tonight could propose amendments to the policy but if those are significant changes then it would need to go out again for a public comment because that's what we do so we'll just go through the regular process of second reading any one of us making a suggestion for a change looking for a motion and a second and a um and then a vote on each one of those changes okay i think that i think that's that's a clarifying follow-up yeah sure but that so what you're basically saying is we have to re-extend the whole timeline for eventually having the new policy on the books because we'd have to go back out essentially so what our policies on policy says um uh and has been our practice is that when there are significant changes between the first and second reading that we go out again for a second first reading so that members of the public can can give us comment on what those changes are i think if the changes are relatively minor um and that's a little it's a little bit of a subjective call then we wouldn't need that but if they're like so the cat the calendar versus working day i wouldn't say that requires something like that wouldn't require a second first reading okay and then just another quick point is that the resolution um a very brief resolution the second piece of that is that the board will receive a report on the implementation of the revised policy within one year of the adoption and that was a very important piece that we talked about given we've done a number of revisions and wordsmithing and tweaks to this we it may not land exactly where we all
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want it to be word for word but that we are going to it's built into this that we will review it we'll hear on how it's going and could adjust as needed so that would be a perspective um just from my perspective wanting to have this on the books and implemented as as soon as possible okay director buhl you uh indicated a little earlier that you had some changes that you wanted to make the policy are these are these excuse me questions are these um so they're just questions they're not they're not and are they can i ask are they um suggestions that you've made in prior meetings or are there new suggestions now that you're coming up with at this remember all the meeting i made in the prior meetings okay go ahead with your questions director buehl go ahead why don't you go ahead and take a few and if we have somebody else we'll mix it up a little bit otherwise you can just keep going i just have a concern about the wordiness of this it's very very difficult to wade through it i waited through it but i've also read it several times and i'm on top of this i i think that the wordiness is beyond what it needs to be but i don't think anybody's going to change that this evening i do have a question about one of the things that wasn't that you didn't respond to was the missing deadlines there's nothing in here about if you if the school district misses a deadline we move to the next like if if we miss the first deadline in step one then do we automatically push them to step two they're now in step two that's what we talked about but i didn't see anything in the policy in the process that said that it's not stated any place in there i think that it would be difficult to move to step two without completing step one because step two is a review of the um decision that's made at step one so oh i'm sorry so i think that um so i think that if there's i mean so as i said earlier i think with the ombudsman affirmatively tracking these deadlines the expectation is that we're not going to have missed deadlines and if people are concerned that we're getting close to deadlines if there's confusion about deadlines then they should we should definitely work together to make sure that those are deeply expedited i don't think that something would work that if we missed that deadline it was um we could just jump i'm just repeating myself that we could just jump to the next stage because each stage depends on the resolution of the stage before so what you're saying is that for years we've missed deadline after deadline after deadline or a complaint procedure and since i've been here they've been we've missed them several times many times i've had all sorts of parents send me things saying they missed the deadline and were sitting around from us and so you're saying now we're not going to but we don't have but is that what you're saying we're not going to try we're going to try our hardest now to not miss the deadlines assistant so if we miss the deadlines for some parents i should bring back a resolution that we need to put in there that we missed the deadline if i'm still around i haven't been recalled or anything i think the part of the question i i lost the questions and questions and are we expected to now what what is the school district saying will happen if we miss deadlines like we have this long history of missing deadlines so and and the community is supposed to this is the question the community is supposed to just say okay on these deadlines if you missed it or what i mean how i don't understand how how if i'm a community member i would have any faith in an organization i mean in this deal they didn't have deadlines so that's the question so i think that in that we knew that there were many ways that we needed to improve improve our complaint process for the community and um and hiring the ombudsman was a was a key part of that updating this policy in the ad was a key part of that and part of the so now we have clear expectations about deadlines and and we also have the a person who is responsible for helping to manage those deadlines i believe that through those efforts we are going to do a much better job than we have occasionally in the past i don't think we've always missed no we haven't always missed all the deadlines but we've launched a whole lot of them so so i think that now we're going to have the clarity i think you know as director atkins said if it somehow if those efforts don't improve
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then maybe we come back in a year and we'll be able to to look at it in a different way but already with this year we've seen that those those efforts are the those resources are making a difference i also just want to speak briefly to the wordiness of the policy and the administrative directive so um the ombudsman is developing user-friendly documents and pamphlets that explain this better one of the things about procedural documents like this is they do have to include a lot of details so that it's cl all the things that everybody has asked about throughout this process are clear that requires a lot of words and sections and explanation but she is developing things that are going to make it that will be more accessible did the ode suggest that we should be done within 90 days state law requires that the pot that the um process take 90 days before people can then appeal to od so it wasn't a significant i count 132 days so that would be including the so what we what we did is we people um at their step one and then there's step two to the superintendent after the superintendent's uh issues the final decision of the district they called it the final decision then people can either choose to appeal to ode or they can which so those are the 90 days in step one and step two or they can um request an appeal to the board the board then decides whether they're going to accept the appeal if they accept the appeal they hear the appeal well the complaint procedure that we have includes an appeal to the board which it does it's right here on you know where it's in here and appeal to the board and that's within the complaint procedure and that by the time that's finished it's 132 days i wouldn't think our complaint procedure would be 90 days but the 90 days is before they can before complaints can go to ode so this is what we i'm sorry we covered this in the in the um the last two sessions with the board so i didn't i know that you tried to cover it but i don't think it really got covered the it appears to me in this particular document that the appeal to the board is part of the come that's right in their complaint process here's appeal to the board that comes out 132 days and it's supposed to be 90. except under before step three it says that the superintendent is final but it's not final because you can then appeal to the board which is in the same government body are the basically the supervisors of the of the uh superintendent so the final would be when you got through the board that would be the final and then you would go to the ode now calling it one thing you can call you can call a frog a cow but it doesn't make the frog the cow uh it only makes it a frog if it's an actual frog so if it's 132 days 132 days that's the way i look at it because it's part of the complaint procedure it's even in the complaint procedure then we need to pull the whole appeal thing out of the complaint procedure if it's not part of the complaint procedure if it's part of the complaint procedure then it needs to be within 90 days that's the way i look at it but maybe the state they do a lot of dumb stuff we're going to talk about their dumb stuff i think that uh i think that the other board members uh agree with our general counsel and probably that's the way forward steve members do okay continue on here then thank you i don't understand where it tells what goes through this complaint procedure and one is kicked to the hr department now i talked to sean who's the hr director and he gave me a pretty good explanation of what he believes it is i don't see it here i also don't see anything that talks about how you get into this complaint process in other words if if it's misconduct by the teacher is what that's the word that's used here is there a definition of what that is someplace because misconduct if that teacher is not is not giving homework and i'm a parent i see that as misconduct say uh if that teacher does a i see it as misconduct so does that mean everything that's seen as misconduct goes to the hr department in which case you this complaint procedure wouldn't have any anything to do with teachers you know i specifically remember going through this at the last one and the one before that but if you want to go through it again i would like to go through it again because i certainly wasn't satisfied with the question well but last time the last couple of times what i did i asked about it and
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said it's not correct and then it comes back and it's still not correct so it's not really going through it a third time it's just going through it so i think one of the things that we needed to achieve in this complaint process is balancing accessibility and transparency for people who who have complaints with the district with also the um processes that our employees are entitled to that include um privacy and and the processes that are laid out and in some cases in our collective bargaining agreements so it is a there is some balancing act between the two of those um and in the and last when we talked last time we used exactly the example of a teacher who um who so a parent who believes that their child is not getting adequate homework and so that that parent brings a complaint through this process and at some point and that's an appropriate complaint for this process if during that that the investigation of that it turns out that the teacher is in fact um engaged in some kind of what what hr would look at is misconduct and there's probably not a definition for that that's going to be crystal clear in every single circumstance you need to look at that but let's say you have a teacher who is refusing a directive to assign homework or is unfairly assigning homework to this one student that might then be resolved through an hr process that's not a process that should be that that teacher is entitled to certain privacy around that process it's not a process that would normally go through this the but the concern about the homework would still move forward under this that under this complaint process so the parent is still going to be able to have his or her concerns resolved it's a little complex it's a complex organization and and um and it's balancing what those rights what those those um you know those those processes are so we have tried to lay that out it's in number four and it's not it isn't designed to hide every single complaint behind an hr process it's designed to both be responsive to complaints and um and provide processes that are appropriate for our employees and if it goes to the hr department and i'm a parent let's say the parent the child comes home and complains that the teacher slapped my child then how does that and how that would automatically go to the hr department because that was genuinely misconduct supposedly how would i as a teacher i mean as a parent then find out that what what took place so i'm going to take the liberty of saying again that i'm not really comfortable with the example of a teacher slapping a child our teachers don't buy large children and i think that that's um so i'm going to use a different way we have teachers that have done things that are pretty bad well so but in any event there are certain there are certain um uh challenges for parents when they can't know all of the details about what either happens in a disciplinary function to either a teacher or we have the same thing with parents who are want to know the discipline that happens against students who might have hurt their student sometimes you don't get to know what we need to tell those parents is we have followed our processes and procedures but specifically what we did you know with with that teacher is is not information that that parents you know will always get to know so and and we understand that's frustrating we're all ready to vote on this oh okay i'll just continue on i think that the ombudsman should be directly under the superintendent and would have that a straight line to the superintendent whereas and then a dotted line to the head of the public affairs that's that's really not uh part of this policy part of this well well it is it talks about it right anyway but that's not yeah it talks about that who would report doing stuff well talks about who the ombudsman reports to here in des moines okay okay well i guess i'll have to make a motion on that one later then okay take me a second um
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if on section step 1d when applicable the ombudsman will consult the district legal council regarding pertinent district policy and relevant state and federal laws would that does that create a new complaint then that then goes back and starts over part of it would you then have two complaints oh no no that's just saying that all right i'm accessible to the ombudsman okay checking to see if i've asked all my questions okay i've asked all my questions i'll make them make a motion about why don't we just let me make a motion that has to do with this wait a second how's that just hang on okay the board will now vote on resolution 4985 i'm not quite sure where you wanna oh i guess i make an amendment okay move that the ombudsman that it be included in the policy that the ombudsman reports directly to the superintendent second i'll second down okay uh so question of clarification so um in the policy itself uh the fourth paragraph so it says the district has an ombudsman whose role is to assist in dispute resolution and help ensure the complaint process is accessible to the public the ombudsman also makes recommendations directly with the superintendent regarding areas of improvement for the district is there is there a specific um change to that wording or are you talking about well and maybe maybe this is not a forum to do this but it i think it was best practices to have the the the um woodsman report directly to the superintendent and instead we have a dotted line and my preference would be the straight line to the superintendent and the dotted line to the pr department i'm going to just correct community involvement in public affairs which just is substantively different than pr department so community involvement yeah public yeah the superintendent would be the supervisor not the public no no i'm just saying that yeah it's located in the office of community involvement in public affairs yes yeah and i guess i'm sorry go ahead and say for me i mean i think we've heard different perspectives on this i think i'm comfortable with the way it's written and again in the context of we're going to report report on implementation of this and all aspects of this so again if it comes out that the there's going to be an opportunity for us to be reviewing this and if it comes out that for whatever reason the ombudsman does not have that access to the superintendent that's going to come out and we can adjust that so that's that's why i would like after having reviewed this extensively and appreciate all the perspectives we've heard that i want to move forward with this as presented other comments all those in favor of the amendment to have the superintendent or have the ombudsman report directly to the superintendent say aye all right all those opposed all right no okay motion fails another amendment well you have to state that you have an amendment i just did it i said i have another amendment that's what i was saying go ahead no we're an amendment go ahead uh move that the one-year timeline for uh limitation for filing a complaint be changed to two years can you save state where that is in the policy so that we can follow along with
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i you it's under additional provisions on page five it's number two thank you and may i just well i'll say it so do we have a second okay the motion fails for lack of a second are we ready to vote i've got a couple more amendments move that the uh okay okay move that the entire process be redrawn to meet state law so that the whole process gets done in 90 days second is there a second the second path discussion so yeah so my entire records my understanding of this is that after the final decision of the superintendent at that point folks have the option either to um appeal to ode or to seek an appeal or repeal from the board so that's that's the timing as i understand it and then if the board did agree to hear and do an appeal and they still were not satisfied that then they would go to id but i think the ode piece is after that step two is that correct yes so it's written so that people have the choice to either exactly go to od after the superintendent's final decision or if the board took an appeal then after the board rendered a decision right because at that point as soon as the superintendent made a decision that you didn't you weren't satisfied with you could immediately go to the state it's a final decision right any other discussion all those in favor of the amendment to uh say it again steve your amendment if you haven't could you read the amendment force miss houston uh that the entire process be redrawn to meet state law so that the process can be completed in 90 days okay all those in favor aye all those opposed i know are i ready to vote i think so let me just for a second yeah yes that's enough thank you i don't think anything's gonna pass here thank you everybody for all that discussion uh the board will now vote on resolution 4985 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions resolution 4985 is approved by a vote of five to one with student representative jaswal boding thank you very much and thank you very much mrs patterson okay now we will have a presentation by the superintendent's advisory committee on enrollment and transfer and i'm going to turn to my colleagues and say are there people who shall we listen to the public comment ahead of time or three people have arrived okay later right i think before okay so let's do a public comment now and then we will have the presentation after that for the people who were signed up earlier so just briefly our rules around public comment is before you start would you please state your name and spell your last name for the record you have about three minutes to speak there's a green light that will go on in front of you when you start speaking when you have one minute left the yellow light will go on and when the red light goes on and you hear the buzzer sound that means your time is up and we ask that you wrap up whatever you're saying so thank you very much for being here to present to us tonight my name is yoji matsushima y-o-j-i last name matsushima m-a-t-s-u-s-h-i-m-a i spent more than three and a half years behind barbed wire along with 120 000 japanese who were singled out as a richmond grandparent please do not single out richmond for the changes in enrollment process lottery
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or sibling entrance preference out our one immersion school program is a case of profiling and lack of even-handed decisions my father was arrested december 11 1941 and jailed in portland by the fbi he was interned in montana louisiana and santa fe new mexico on february 19 1942 franklin delano roosevelt signed executive order 9066 that incarcerated 120 000 japanese my family had a number 15181 we were interned at the pacific international livestock exposition then six months later sent to minidoka idaho my family did not see my father for a year and a half until we were reunited at ellis island new york from there we were sent to crystal city family internment camp in texas until april the 3rd 1946 when we were released the government did not intern the germans or the italians only the japanese we were singled out like richmond's immersion program i would like to yield the floor to nick challen hey my name is my name is nick callan k-a-l-l-e-n americano i i'm class of 2018 i graduated from both richmond and mount table and i'm still learning japanese into high school i'm the youngest of three so i say that i am the youngest athlete because if sibling preference never existed at richmond i most likely would not have been able to share life-changing experiences with my brother and sister or gossip about the teachers when i went to hiroshima in eighth grade on a field trip the i we learned a lot about the horrific accident of not accident but the horrific bombing of hiroshima the american side of the bombing oh you can go ahead and finish your sentence thank you okay well one thing i ask is how are the japanese not counted as undersold when 60 years ago they were being bombed put into camps and relationally profiled by the village people who should be protecting them just think about that thank you thank you both hmm hi my name is sarah tam my last name is tam t am i want to thank you tonight for letting me speak and i wanted to begin with a little exercise by asking you if you if anyone has ever been asked or told the following you speak english really well what are you is english or native language is your son adopted the first three i just listed have been directed at me on numerous occasions over the years and i purposely left off the racial epithets that children taunted me with at recess the last question has been asked of my caucasian husband about our kids who look more like me than him and so i ask if these statements and questions made you cringe when you heard them think about how they might have made me feel as a native english-speaking japanese and chinese-american the second recommendations are noble they're trying to right the wrongs i truly believe that what needs to be recognized however is that richmond is an entry point for the japanese immersion program which spans k-12 it is not a focus option school richmond in the entire japanese program is an exemplar model of dual language immersion as defined on the pps website a dual language immersion dli program is a core educational language program that offers academic content in two languages english and a partner language pps has dli programs in four languages spanish japanese mandarin chinese and russian the goal is for all students to become bilingual and bi-literate while achieving at a high academic level and developing deeper cultural awareness if you take in all aspects of richmond you will see incredible learning and both academics and cultural awareness taking place when i applied to richmond and the japanese immersion program i wanted to for selfish reasons i wanted to be part of a community where i felt i belonged i wanted my half asian children to go to a
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school where they were not the only asians or even one of a small handful of multi-ethnic students in the classroom i wanted to learn more about and become involved in a community that i could relate to richmond and the japanese immersion program has offered that and more for me and my family i have finally found my community having never had an asian teacher growing up and many times being the only minority in the classroom i feel lucky and joy that my children are able to experience the diversity that richmond offers and which continues to become more diverse as the program moves on to mount tabor and grant now i ask a few more questions what other school or program in pps or the greater portland area celebrates japanese culture more than richmond and the japanese immersion program where else could i have met another parent whose father was in the same internment camp as my mother how can taking away sibling preference and breaking up families make a program especially a dli program stronger where is the educational model that states separating siblings is the best practice for any school and i wonder when the japanese immersion program will finally be fully accepted and supported and see seen for what it is truly what it truly is a diverse and culturally rich community of dedicated and passionate families so thank you hi my name is sarah deluca d-e-l-u-c-a i am the pta president at richmond and i'm joined here tonight by teachers families and parents that fill your foyer we believe in greater equity in our schools but we have several concerns when we read the sackett report we are asking you to slow down and fully assess if these recommendations are the most effective to address equity in our schools the district's stated goal for choice is to support students in achieving their very highest educational and personal potential to inspire them an enduring love for learning and prepare them to contribute as citizens of a diverse multicultural and international community this is the foundation richmond was built on the school accomplishes this goal through language and cultural curriculum that nurtures a global worldview and fosters a diversity of thought it's unrealistic to think that each school's diversity profile will look identical but it should be noted that richmond does serve a population that's approximately 60 percent white and 40 percent who identify as non-white at a time when the district wants to build trust particularly among diverse populations putting policies in place that would undermine a successful school program serving a population of which 40 percent identify as diverse or non-white seems counter-intuitive treating the immersion programs differently sends the message that the language and diversity at richmond school is less valued than other languages and other forms of diversity especially in a language program sibling preference is a critical aspect for language learning it's not just a logistical convenience for the families i'd like to read you a quote from the american council on immersion education younger siblings want to do what their older siblings do and their expectations of school are based on their siblings experiences when kindergartners bring home their homework and play their music cassettes their preschool siblings start learning the immersion language too as the siblings get older they practice their second language with each other in short immersion is a family experience a family commitment and a family investment sibling preference keeps families together and promotes program stability strength and success another concern for us especially in an immersion program is attrition if we lose kids in the upper grades because their younger siblings can't get in we cannot replace them it would limit richmond's ability to continue its teaching model that relies on team teaching and therefore full classrooms a quality program that was built over the last 25 years would be significantly diluted we respect the complexity of solving the problem before you that of greater equity in our schools we ask you to respect its complexity as well consult with the groups directly impacted by potential policy change do not discount the voice of japanese americans evaluate unintended negative consequences more thoroughly especially in a language immersion program thank you
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so thank you to all those who testified and i also want to thank all of you who have sent us emails and letters we're getting those many of those and so we appreciate hearing your thoughts and concerns through email as well superintendent smith you want to go ahead and introduce the sackett group um i do and many of you have been following both the charge given to sackett so the superintendent's advisory committee on enrollment and transfer which was given to this group in march of 2013. many of this committee have actually been together since 2008 and have taken um the group has become educated about how our enrollment and transfer policies work what the depth of them are how our lottery works enrollment patterns in the district and just looking at trends over time and the impact of like no child left behind layered on top of what was a choice system so they've actually spent a bunch of time actually delving deeply into understanding how our system works their charge in march of 2013 was to align our racial educational equity policy with our enrollment and transfer policies because policies that are created in one moment in time to solve one set of problems you then evolve them over time they have some unintended consequences sometimes you're achieving what you want to achieve we asked them to take a look at what was actually happening our system now and to to make some recommendations to me about how we do that alignment so they came in june and did a report to make visible just the work in progress this past week they came and did a presentation to me about their initial set of recommendations they also did a presentation to my direct reports and to the senior directors who supervise clusters so like i've had them in my possession for less than a week but i had the opportunity to hear deeply from the group of what their thought process had been as they went through they've also done a lot of listening to stakeholder groups and know that this is now in my court i will come back on the 18th with a timeline of how i respond many of these recommendations have resource implications they have complexity about how you would operationalize them so some of that is what i now have to take into account if in fact we have policy recommendations that emerge from this and particularly if we have ones that will end up impacting the next enrollment and transfer cycle what will happen is i will come back with an amended policy to the board that would be then go through the board's public process with a first reading opportunity for testimony so there you're not going to have a rush through of anything here this is part of the deliberation process so just know that you it would end up going through as you would see the amended recommendations of amended policy the board would have a first reading you'd end up with a a a period of time where you get to look at it and haggle over what it is come back testify before the board it would come back for a second so there's we're still in public process so just know that as we have this large audience of people here to hear this tonight what will happen tonight is sackett is doing their presentation now in front of the audience and publicly for the board to allow the board to ask clarifying questions and to hear some of the process that sackett went through directly but i am still the listening party because the recommendations are to me so this will be a basically opportunity for the board to get questions and for the public to hear the work of sackett so i'm going to introduce jason trombley who is one of the co-chairs of sackett but i'd also like to ask all of the members of the superintendent advisory committee on enrollment and transfer to please stand and let us just recognize you and say thank you for the work that you've just completed second members please stand uh and jason trombley who is one of the co-chairs is going to walk us through the recommendations tonight allison burnett who is not with us tonight was the other co-chair uh and i want to just say at the front end of this this group has been working really intensively to get their head around very complex issues they all came in i've watched all of them change their thinking and change each other's thinking as they've wrestled with these things and their real intent is how we're giving equity of access to kids to quality programming in our district regardless of where they live so with that i will turn it over to jason and let him read us through your recommendations point of order
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go ahead what is it if mr trumly gives his report to the board here that means that saga cannot close her board meetings under the open meetings law in the state of oregon and so i would assume that that's an agreement where the superintendent the sackett will never again close aboard me close one of their meetings we're under suit on this matter and i know this is a minor thing to a lot of people and people think oh this is crazy but having running according to the law is really a pretty good thing for a government body like us so i don't see it as a minor thing and i'm just going to make point of clarification again the recommendations of sackett are coming to the superintendent and part of tonight the purpose of tonight is to make publicly visible the work of this committee directly from the committee members and to allow the board to make ask clarifying questions so the recommendations are not being made to the board at this time um no recommendation is being made to the board at this time you are getting to hear the work of this committee who's making recommendations to the superintendent i'm going to excuse myself from the meeting until this is over because i believe that it's that it's created an illegal situation that we're not recognizing thank you thank you jason you want to go ahead thank you churn hills and superintendent smith i'm on behalf of sackett it's an honor to be here to provide you all with an update on the work that we've done since june in our preliminary report and to share with you the preliminary the official recommendations that we submitted to the superintendent last tuesday night before we go ahead and get started with the presentation i just wanted to quick quickly for the board and the general public at large to reintroduce the committee membership and our various affiliations that we bring to the table so again a number of our members are here tonight but some aren't for various reasons so i just wanted to acknowledge that first is scott bailey from the grant cluster second is talitha benjamin from the dual enrolled jefferson and madison cluster allison burnett who from the grant cluster and current psychic coacher who is also an education assistant at jackson middle school gabrielle mercedes bolivar who's who comes from the dual enrolled jefferson roosevelt cluster brenner herwitz from the wilson cluster who's also on staff at the learning center at west silva middle school and a former graduate education professor at lewis and clark college nicole markwell of the madison cluster shannon mcclure from the jefferson cluster who was a former teacher at sittin in james john schools who is now also on staff at mlc rita moore from the roosevelt cluster nisha saxena from the grant cluster cali thorne ladd from the roosevelt cluster both the parent and former educator myself jason trombley from the roosevelt cluster and neely wells from the franklin cluster who is also a current benson high school parent so with that i look forward to presenting the recommendations that we presented to the superintendent for consideration okay so the goals for tonight's presentation are threefold is that we are going to officially walk through the recommendations that we present presented to the superintendent and we'll be informing you the board tonight on we're also going to be hoping to explain the rationale and intent behind the recommendations and what we hope will achieve by the rationale that we have set forth and hopefully and continuing from tonight is to engage in a two-way dialogue between sacat members and the board around both the implementation implications and both the potential implementation of these recommendations so following our board presentation in june i just wanted to walk through uh the work that we have continued to do sac met an additional 13 times to complete this phase of work in addition to our listening session with api families in the asian pacific american network of oregon we convened three additional listening sessions with different families in historically underserved communities first was african-american families with support from the portland african-american leadership forum or polf and self-enhancement inc or sei latino families with support from latino network and third native american families with support from the native american youth and family center or neo in addition we made it a point to deepen our understanding of the current enrollment current system of enrollment and transfer through both data presentations and reviewed various data simulations that tested the recommendations that we potentially forwarded to the superintendent and fourth but equally important is that throughout our deliberation process we consciously applied all of the racial equity lens questions throughout all components of our work so hopefully that our recommendations are clearly incorporate the different impacts on various communities especially historically underserved communities so with that we'll go ahead and talk through what the potential recommendations are first is recommendations that are
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addressing neighborhood schools our proposed recommendation one is what we're calling ending neighborhood neighborhood lottery transfers we view this recommendation as a necessary first step to stabilize enrollment as well as financial resources at neighborhood schools this recommendation we think will also eliminate randomness of the applicant process also in addition to that an enhanced petition process which is which will become recommendation 2 provides the district an opportunity to understand the family's intent to transfer either into or out of a particular school and third over the past three years there's been a relative decrease in the number of applications throughout this mechanism but this mechanism has resulted in a disproportionate impact on schools serving historically underserved communities and as you'll see through each recommendation we did a vote to whether or not to approve or reject each recommendation and this recommendation as you see was was adopted 12-0 unanimous recommendation two is strengthening the petition process as previously noted above this will give the district an opportunity to understand the family's intent as to why they're choosing to leave or enter into a particular school we'd also contend that this is an opportunity as well that the process can be more responsive to correcting historic inequities and we also see this as a as a significant first step to not only strengthening this process but it can also be aligned with the office of the ombudsman and parent complaint procedure that can soon become a potential early warning system to identify hot spot schools and potentially implement relevant corrective action so next is our series of recommendations that address the variety in the portfolio focus option schools first and foremost that we have found throughout the course of our work is that portland public schools has not followed its own policy which is the education options policy regarding focus option schools so throughout the course of work we work to figure out what schools in this section that we're going to potentially address with the potential recommendations that we're presenting regional dual language arts immersion programs district schools that have a district-wide applicant pool which include richmond japanese immersion creative science school davinci arts odyssey and winterhaven and also schools that have unique learning opportunities within guaranteed neighborhood zone and limited transfer slots which are buckman arts and sunnyside environmental so just to clarify so for our proposed recommendations three four and five this kind of clarifies the scope as to which set of recommend which recommendation applies to which portfolio of schools within the focus option portfolio so with as i stated before that we recognized that the district hadn't followed significant components of the existing education options policy and there are a number of key points within there that we recognized as opportunities that we could solve through our proposed recommendations so as we currently understand the education options policy calls for the following items that it will quote meet the different learning needs and educational interests of all students the district shall facilitate the citing of educational options to maximize the potential for cooperation and sharing of resources among different educational options and for distribution of options throughout the district and third that focus options actively seek to create a sense of community in which racial economic and cultural isolation are reduced now given at least three of these components within the existing policy we think that our proposed recommendation three which is implementation of a quality review process for focus option schools will help put the district in alignment between its portfolio and the existing policy so the policy our proposed recommendation calls for three components one to establish a clear rationale and benchmarks for focus option schools two to to establish an evaluation and support system for focus option schools and third to review the focus option locations as part of the upcoming district-wide boundary review process and this recommendation three was adopted 12-0 unanimous recommendation 4 which is addressing access to dual language immersion programs the committee strongly recognizes the benefit of dual language immersion programs in that it's a significant education strategy that improves achievement outcomes at all levels for not only just mainstream students but especially students who are historically underserved or ell students so within that this particular recommendation we also adopted 12-0 unanimous in support that in addition to i just wanted to also quickly note that as part of this recommendation that in order for this recommendation to go through we suggested that effective outreach must occur to all students including historically underserved populations so that as these programs continue to grow recognizing that these programs are available to all students not just the students who have the ability to know about them next up is recommendation five so within the existing education options
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policy notes that quote promote equity and the diversity and the admission of students to educational options and minimize barriers to participation in educational options to effectively implement the education options policies is recommending recommendation five which is modifications to the focus option lottery system first that the lottery prioritizes to balance schools by income and geography and recognize the importance of co-enrolled siblings first that slots that there will be slots reserved for economically disadvantaged students equal to district numbers should there be more applicants than available slots a two-part mechanism will go into effect one equal numbers of students will be selected from the range of high school clusters replica represented in the applicant pool and two that the sibling preference will then change to a weight which will then be applied to each geographic grouping following that the remaining slots that are available will be evenly distributed by high school region again should there be additional applicants than slots available the following mechanism is implemented co-enrolled siblings will be selected first within each grouping of students by high school region two in the case that there are more co-enrolled siblings than slots available by high school region the applicant's lottery number will be used as a final tiebreaker should there be more non-sibling applicants than remaining slots by high school region so again this is after the siblings are taken in this part of the lottery structure the lottery number that is assigned to that particular student will be used as the final tiebreaker part two of this recommendation is student supports to improve equity of access to focus option schools this includes focusing on investments such as providing transportation for students that need these schools increasing the availability of the application in multiple languages languages both in paper and online and also leveraging community agents as well as its partnerships to facilitate outreach to historically underserved communities to increase the diversity of the application pool this recommendation was adopted 10-2 with two minority viewpoints one that focus option schools and the proposed lottery changes did not undergo the same scrutiny as other facets of the enrollment and transfer system and second there is no reason for families with multiple children to have privilege when applying for lottery slots over families with one child recommendation six is recommendations addressing students receiving special education services or supporting students receiving special education services part one of this recommendation is ensuring a continuity of students assigned away from their neighborhood schools for special education services to ensure that students placed can stay at their school through the highest grade offered as well as their siblings two move toward cluster based and eventually neighborhood school-based programming for all students receiving special education services and part three is to clarify the policy language around students as well as students having the ability of the right to remain to the highest grade in their neighborhood school this recommendation as well was adopted 12 to 0 unanimous support by the committee and so after looking through each recommendations the committee did one final vote to whether or not to adopt or reject the full recommendation package to submit to the superintendent and the full recommendation package was approved 12-0 unanimous and so with that superintendent thank you for allowing us a chance to present to the board and the board the committee looks forward to taking your questions so i will do my best to act as a traffic cop and recognizing that i've got a huge brain trust right over here so i'll try and talk to an extent but defer to my colleagues to answer a lot of the questions as well okay okay board members have questions no questions director curler sure during your research and great work did you to what extent have there been models out there that other districts have dealt um with these inequities that we could learn from them so off the top of my head there were two at least two districts that come to mind that we did a very brief look at one being the recent process done with the school district in washington d.c and the second one in chicago illinois one of the things that chicago has implemented over the years is that what they've done to balance access through their lottery and dealing with the increase in diversity in their student body both economics and by race and other historically underserved communities is that they have created four different sense of tiers that take into account a number of factors like families economic status families education level and they've done that overlaying with the way that the city is laid out
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demographically through the census data so what they've done every 10 years is leverage the census data determine one of four tiers that students and communities fall into as a way to balance issues around geography race and economic status and the way that students have the ability to access schools through the lottery mechanisms that chicago public schools has and it's and are remodeling the your recommendations are somewhat modeling that so i don't think that we tested that specific level of geographic what we what the modeling did is we pulled data from students who identified as either free and reduced meals or identified as students who were enrolling in head start for pre-kindergarten that's there's an opportunity where others districts like chicago have done that in fact when i was in my conversation with judy brennan this evening is that after this process is complete for a long-term systems approach that she was going to reach out to the folks over in chicago to see how what their implementation process has been so while our recommendations are a first step in recognizing that the diversity of our community is growing both economically and by race that there are other systems that have successfully incorporated this to best ensure that access for all students have the ability to access really strong programs so there are other schools and districts that are working on it so i think we have an opportunity to learn from others who have done some good work so um we also have to look beyond free and reduced lunch because we have a number of schools in the district about 20 schools where um all students are receiving free lunch and so people are not necessarily having to fill out the paperwork so it's no longer going to be a good measure of uh still what says dr martin i have more of a comment to make and you know my my process and i think the board process at this point will be to provide some feedback provide sort of some thinking on this and uh and also maybe offer some input to the superintendent as she prepares to make her recommendation to the board but i do want to provide a little bit of the historical context for why we're at the place where we're at right now and it wasn't too long ago that as we were looking at enrollment rebalancing essentially cluster by cluster and recognizing that in fact we were doing damage to certain portions of our city i see some hands waving they they are in those portions of the city that were being historically damaged um but uh we were doing that damage over and over again on a onesie twozy basis and we began to realize that in fact uh the policies or the practices we were putting forward were not consistent with the policies that we had most recently passed primarily the racial educational equity policy uh so we looked at this as a how do we take how do we take a district-wide approach to this and incorporate our racial educational equity policy in that process and that is no small task by the way and i want to thank those who have participated in this over a long period of time and done the leg work and done the sort of the laborious process of of diving deep into this so we have some work to do to ask some further questions and build build our own knowledge on what you all have have already learned but i wanted to recognize the reason why we ventured into this in the first place and uh and also thank you all for the work that you've done george bellow i i have a question maybe jason you can answer it or i'm hoping to hear from some other members of the committee um but first let me also thank the committee for spending the time and the energy putting into this and going over how many models we know of course it's not exhaustive but you guys have done yeoman's work over the past 18 months to figure out as many unintentional consequences or what would this look like and to get actual data to do this so thank you for that i'm interested right now we have a house full of folks from richmond who are concerned about um sibling sibling preference but i imagine as more word gets out about this we're going to hear a lot about our com from our community about neighborhood to neighborhood transfers and i'd like to hear um i've heard i've seen and heard a couple of different um statistics about how many of our families are not um attending their neighborhood school and i'm curious to hear um because my
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understanding is they're going to be some some schools will feel like they're winners and some schools will feel like they're losers um how do you see that playing out and can you talk to me a little bit about your thinking or what you've learned about why that's a recommendation i'm glad you asked that question uh because we did spend a good deal of time looking at that particular aspect but i want i want to say something before i answer your question i am very proud to be here tonight as a member of this committee making this presentation and the reason i can say that is because i've been here twice before and the last time i reminded you that i had been here and i didn't see any results so i feel fairness that i'm really appreciative of the fact that you have read this and you understand how much we put into coming to these recommendations um but one of the things in answer to your question that we did do is we looked at what could happen if all of the kids who transferred out of their neighborhood schools were returned to their neighborhood schools what that would look like and how that would affect the resources for those neighborhood schools to be able to offer quality of education in those schools to strengthen that that fell in with our general attitude that we believe that strengthening our neighborhood schools is the real solution okay and so when we looked at it in that way and you could see the difference for some schools it was a tremendous difference and i can't even remember what the exact percentage was jason do you recall for the schools that had the highest number of kids who were transported out that's what i thought about twenty percent twenty to over three and part part of what i wish that the board can do and that all these people here in this audience who have formed opinions would be able to accept and acknowledge is the depth of the work of this committee because we went back and we use history information to bring us to where we are and then to look at where we could go that's very important and it's truly going to be important to you as board members to be able to not be swayed by signs t-shirts uh applause or whatever comes as an attempt to sway your your decision because it's really important for us to get away from i and by for people wanting decisions to be made as to how they affect them or their families personally without considering we an hour that's what we have to do we have to be invested in this committee throughout its deliberation was invested in for the good of the district the total district and for everyone within the district and i'm not going to sit here and tell you about my history as a minority person because i grew up in the south and i was into that separate but unequal stuff i don't carry that baggage on my back anymore all i'm doing is looking forward to how we can make changes that will benefit everyone and we won't have any victims left thank you so i want to add an answer but it's always tough to follow talitha um for me as an alumnus of the school district i was a beneficiary of using the transfer system at the high school level i knew what the benefit was is i got a i got a world-class education at lincoln high school that i believed and learned that i wasn't going to get in roosevelt in the 90s that's what everyone in my neighborhood middle school told me so the benefit was i got a world-class education but i know what the emotional effect is which means as a person who's the first in the family to go to college and both parents work in two hours from at least four a.m to midnight that your job is to pull yourself up and this what is the sad reality is that i think what is fundamentally important here for the district is that you're in a real moment of pivoting is that from a decade of revenue decline enrollment dropping that we know things are starting to turn around what i think is also important is that it's important to really think about first and foremost that how you govern students at 47 000 students in capacity is an indicator of how you're going to govern at 56 15 to 20 years from now additionally you have a lot of programs that are working but not enough locations throughout the city so i think what's also important through our recommendations that equitable programming isn't happening and so one of the real tensions that we think about when families like myself use the transfer system was there was a program somewhere else and there's a lot of baggage would carry on with that so our core belief
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that we adopted throughout this process was what does it take to really have a strong belief in that the core of the system is strong and strategic neighborhood schools that serve the community so basing all of our recommendations around around that that kicks off a whole series of conversations around you know what are the programs that are working is it stem dual language immersion that we know is not only benefiting all students but it's closing the achievement gap so all of these recommendations kick off but kick off in a whole series of new conversations that you have to happen but you're also doing it in the context of enrollment growth you're doing it in the context of district-wide boundary view so you once and finally have all the systems that haven't talked to each other for a long time finally realizing they have to talk to each other so this is a moment for the board to really put all of that together to show the communities that when you say you're going to have 57 000 students of enrollment 15 years ago 15 years from now the assumption is all of those families are going to send their kids here to a school in this system not charter not send their kids to some place outside the district or private you're in a moment where you can really make the case and what it's going to take yeah um i just want to mention that we have experience at this point in the benefits of limiting neighborhood to neighborhood transfers in the high schools if you if you remember in well in 2010 the policy changed or the practice changed prior to that high schools roosevelt was hemorrhaging students um and by cutting off the neighborhood to neighborhood transfers at the high school level you've allowed madison and roosevelt to stabilize they roosevelt has now made up they lost something on the order of 20 of their enrollment they've now made that deficit up plus um they are you know roosevelt's rising and none of that would have been possible uh if the transfer system had remained in place the other thing i wanted to mention was we talked quite a lot in the committee about the importance of recognizing that um a lot of these changes especially the neighborhood to neighborhood transfer changes have to be predicated on the district-wide boundary review and because some school catchment areas are simply too small to support the kind of school enrollment that's necessary others are just huge and so you've got situations of over-enrollment and under-enrollment and so we're we're advocating that you look at our recommendations in tandem with the district-wide boundary one quick thing um you hear me yeah um so i was i sometimes differentiated with my peers in terms of feeling like there is there is something positive about a degree of choice in the system of education um and that i see a value of neighborhood schools i see a value with focus option schools and some of the other options and i think that's what makes the pps system strong what i saw though was data that showed us that when you look at who is transferring by lottery it's mostly white mostly middle class families and they're transferring out of schools that are most predominantly kids of color predominantly um often african-american latino schools so that's a problem to me and having a system that reinforces that really doesn't get to the equity policy that i think pps stands for so the idea of ensuring that those neighborhood schools are going to get more resources and be supported is very important i think one thing though that we did underscore in our report is that that's just part of the issue and that more work needs to be done to truly strengthen all schools to ensure that all students succeed in those schools because we do have some neighborhood schools um that have resources and all children are not succeeding so we recognize that this is one step but we think it's a very important step to getting us to where we need to be okay how about the board do we have board questions director curler uh is anybody here from the minority vote on recommendation five and i i'd love to hear um from you so i'm on the way other side of the continuum of that so this isn't such an awkward place to be i um i i uh i think that sibling preference for um
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unless it's tied to historically underserved families i don't see the sense of sibling preference because what it does is privilege some families over other families meaning families with one child have a different level of hope to get into a school than families with multiple children okay no i can't even walk out the door uh maybe this will help you walk out the door um safely so uh the um we have a room full of of people who feel like they've been singled out and um i i don't jason maybe you can um speak to that one way or the other they're they're here i think and i'd like to hear your response sure so can i add on to that just a little bit sure i was confused about why richmond was in this group rather than in the immersion program uh so uh yes the richmond folks are correct in terms of the district's definition of dual language immersion we defined a subset of that as a 50 50 dual language immersion program where half the participants are native speakers of the immersion language and half are english english native english speakers and it's those programs that have been shown to be so much more effective for kids who speak little or no english at home that the other esl approaches just don't cut the mustard for those kids so that's why we differentiated richmond from the other dual language immersion programs would that be ainsworth as well yes not sure do we have others just those two right yeah and it's working because the whole i mean i think the board has had a number of discussions and really prioritizing um that that 50 50 two-way model as being a really high leverage strategy for our underserved students can i add one thing to that the other piece is because it's not a neighborhood school and other immersion programs are co-located with the community side so this is a focus this is a focus only school and that the only entrance is based on a lottery application as opposed to neighborhood schools and with the targets we talked about there are set asides for students within those communities so that was a different um if uh if these recommendations are go through um do you have a position or have you as your committee talked about the notion of grandfathering in existing parents and families so that question i think has come up but we the committee didn't take dedicated time to address that question i think for the superintendent and the board considers that question i think you'd want to look at what the racial equity impacts of that particular recommendation would be others other questions from board members yes so what we're discussing over here is that we did talk about that and what we had talked about is again moving forward so this was applying the racial educational equity policy so this would impact future lotteries for students applying that racial equity lens so not past students that are already in but future enrollment of students so when you refer to grandfathering i think i hear two thoughts one is what about the students that are already in a program that's not what we're discussing we're only talking about future applicants so help clarify yeah there's also the siblings though that will be applying yeah so there's another nuance right and that's what i'm referencing is that the new weights would replace that preference so the weights would be in place and that would be for all new um applicants okay so just to be clear you're recommending that existing families
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families are not grandfathered in okay i'm gonna tell you what i told the reporter who tried to get me to say something the other day you're putting your you're putting your thing way ahead of the game because we haven't even gotten to the point of your accepting these recommendations and we haven't discussed the whole notion of implementation so when you ask us what are we going to do we don't have an answer for you we're saying that we don't want to see our recommendations die and nothing happens and i'm i'm not going to be around uh three more years to come back here and find that you didn't do anything with this we're saying to you that we're not aiming our selves to be uh you know taking on families to destroy them or to hurt them although some of what i heard tonight indicated that they weren't concerned about hurting other people so let's just leave it to the point that we want you to talk about the valid you know i'm not being disrespectful and i'd appreciate you're letting me complete what i have to say okay what i'm suggesting is that if you can value the work that we've done and the the recommendation the heart of the recommendations that we have made then we move on we've got district boundary to to deal with that's going to have some bearing on this but there are some other things and then when we talk about implementation then we can begin to talk about where we start but you know we i don't want to see us five years from now trying to figure out how do we get past a family that that keeps having children and wants them all to be in the same school that that's all i'm saying i don't have any bias one way or the other because if i if i were i would not have stayed involved with the school district for 33 years since 1981 i have been working on things with the district and in neighborhood schools and elsewhere that's all i'm saying stop being into the eye and my mindset and get into the wii and hour well i mean i'll just i'm i'm trying to be in the wii in the hour which is one of the reasons why i asked that question and i i appreciate it yeah thank you dr atkins so really just a comment more than a question um just an appreciation of this committee's work so um director regan who was unable to be here tonight because of a family emergency and i were the board liaisons committee so we had the opportunity to attend a number of sessions hear the deliberations and just really witness kind of the um the depth of the work and the dedication that you all have been putting in over these many many months so i just wanted to reiterate and highlight it i mean a couple of the key points of just around that this is a necessary but not sufficient step and making some of these changes to make sure that we um that our enrollment and transfer policies and practices are in alignment with our racial educational equity policy but i think that um the piece that was coming up over and over and you're all meetings and that is absolutely correct as eddie said it already again tonight is just but i think it's very very repeating it's just the the issue of um of equity of opportunity and quality across the entire district is is really huge and a key piece of that um to me is that transparency around um what is what is offered whether is the what is the school climate and so forth which gets back to what the psu team was saying in terms of what the district needs to do in in terms of having easily accessible transparent and complete information because there's a perception and a reality in terms there are multiple layers of perception and reality in terms of inequities and differences and we need to be upfront about what those are so that when we hear someone saying well of course i couldn't go to my neighborhood school that should never be the statement it should maybe there would be i visited my neighborhood school and i know that they offer xyz and i have the specifics and i've made a different decision but that's very different from saying i've heard it's or i know that it's anyway so i think um i'm really looking forward to hearing the superintendent's recommendations to us and then having a really good conversation amongst ourselves and with the public around these changes but to me this is really a test of our racial education liquidity policy in terms of our dedication and commitment to it and our implementation of it and making it real in a very important way throughout the district absolutely not the only thing that needs to happen lots of other things need to happen as well but again i really appreciate your work um and i know that we're all going to be deliberating very carefully about this and we take it very seriously but we
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also need to move forward as as you said we have a lot of work on our plate and a lot of important changes to make in this district for kids so thank you again for all your hard work really appreciate it appreciate everyone coming out here tonight and the folks who have shared their opinion i know there's going to be lots more as we go that's which is great and look forward to continuing to hear from everybody so thank you so much yeah i'd just like to thank you guys as well and then also point out that earlier we said there was 40 non-white students at richmond and that's really important and a huge part of diversity too is where the students economically are coming from so this focus option of the slots really coming from different backgrounds is so important because that is such a different important part of diversity in the classroom as well thank you thank you dr blau i just i'm not going to thank you again although i could um but i just want to say to our viewers and to our public tonight that one i appreciate having the difficult discussions there are going to be really strong disagreements about these issues and unless we can bring our whole selves about being passionate about being an advocate for our child as well as for our neighbors or for the person across town i just this is an opportunity for us i think many of us know that the system isn't currently fair and whatever that looks like at the same time it reminds me of a i was just in a workshop last week and i won't bore you the details about the exercise but it required us to assemble different puzzles in different pieces all aiming for the same goal but we couldn't talk and in order to achieve it one person would get theirs done and then they'd kind of sit back oftentimes and they'd be like look i'm done not realizing that actually they had pieces that somebody else needed and you had to break it apart switch it around so that all of a sudden eventually after 5 10 15 20 minutes went by you realized actually that every piece fit and every piece contributed to the puzzle but if four people or if two people would have signed out and said well mine's done i don't have to contribute again the exercise would have never been complete i believe we can build a system that works for all our families and it's just really important that we continue to show up and stay engaged bring our passion but also be respectful in this discussion and so i know that change brings a lot of tension there's a lot of tension whether it's through the decision makers or in our community change is hard i have two kids i know splitting them up would be very difficult it brings up a lot of tension in me how am i going to get them there so i just i just want to re reiterate a little bit what ruth was saying is that we're taking these decisions thoughtfully and intentionally at the same time please build with us the hope that we can create a system that works for all of our families that we don't have to live in a district that um that isolates somebody or leaves somebody behind so that's okay others tell me okay um i also have a couple of questions and i just would say to begin with that i'm the mother of three sons and we took full advantage of all the transfer opportunities and in the alameda beaumont grant neighborhood i could have very well sent my children to those schools very happily but instead took advantage of buckman and was a founding parent at da vinci to provide those opportunities for students and i think that's why we we need to think about our focus options and the value that they add to the district so i i really feel strongly that language immersion is a great opportunity for us to help with our emerging bilinguals and with our other children who unfortunately don't have the opportunity to learn a foreign language in our school district right now so so i think that all these options that we have developed over time and some of them as a result of economic times where we've had to cut great things like the arts and some science and those kinds of things out of our school so we've created options and our students are going to those and so anyway i think they're very valuable for us i had a question around the ending of the neighborhood lottery and the suggestion that we use a petition now i come to this question because well my son started in buckman probably 25 years ago so it's quite a while ago um where there wasn't a petition there wasn't um a lottery it was just you showed up at the school and said you wanted to go there and and you had an interview with the principal and we were in with the first one and the second one and the third one there was a
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lottery so we took our chances with everybody else um but now and and the reason that there was a lottery is because that was kind of unfair i mean we showed up we knew about it and we showed up but there were a lot of families who didn't know about it and even if they had known about it and they showed up maybe they wouldn't have gotten in so that didn't seem very fair and a lottery seemed like a much more fair way to let more people in in an unbiased way so my question really is around the use of a petition instead of a lottery which i'm not opposed to i just wondered what kind of criteria did you guys talk about that you would use in a petition um that we can use legally in a petition to make that determination and who makes that determination and how do you keep that objective so i see scott over there looks like he's got an answer for me yeah let's be clear we're not talking about replacing the lottery with the petition process we have a current hardship petition process for parents who face difficulties having their child in their neighborhood school maybe it's because they have to be at work over in a completely different direction and daycare is in the other direction things like this or maybe there's something substantial going on at that school that is what puts the child in danger a bullying situation that doesn't go something like that so we're in and our second recommendation we're not hearing you did you push the off button so let me let me ask a clarifying question while i'm trying to figure out how to get that on again you can come on up oh come on up here i thought that there was a specific recommendation in here that had to do with ending the neighborhood to neighborhood lottery yes there is okay yes so what if you're going to do a petition instead my specific question is what's a criteria in a petition so there are current criteria now that the district uses around some kind of hardship has to be recognized our recommendation recommendation too is to really clarify what those criteria are where they're strict where there's some flexibility and to mine that data in terms of who's applying for that transfer to see if you've got a flurry of folks who want to get out of school x to go somewhere else that's a red flag that you should be paying attention to to say hey things something's happening that's not good at the school we need to look into it so you're okay with the criteria that is currently there for petitioning for neighborhood to neighborhood transfer or do you want other criteria or that's that's really the question one thing that came up a lot we when we did our listening sessions over and over again we heard communities historically underserved communities say we know nothing about this system we don't understand what works um so the petition process there is hardship particularly from historically underserved communities in our schools when we have expansion expulsion rates that are four times more likely for african americans but i have two kids um like that's a hardship and do you want to send your child to a school where that child might be profiled so to speak so there i think we didn't dive deep into all of the different criteria but we recognize that there are criteria that we have to take into consideration until we get a system that's more equitable so i think that's exactly what i was that that's my next question so we have if if the current criteria is okay and then um there was another recommendation that had to do with evaluating the schools and all of that and then that that recommendation jumped to if you evaluate your schools more you'll have more students apply and i didn't really catch that jump but i am more concerned about the things that you're bringing up which are how do we actually get children of color or underserved children and their parents to know about these programs and apply for these programs that's the real issue here how do we get students to do that excuse me just a second i didn't see that in this report and i i know that you guys might have talked about it so ways to actually engage those families and get them to think about an option or a transfer would be really helpful i think for us
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you almost answered your question yourself when you talked about how you got how your child got into a school uh and that's part of what our discussion was about was there was nothing we have nothing that validates how people apply for the why they apply for the lottery and wind up where they go but the petition the hardship petition process does have some of information that comes with people sharing why they're making a request for that that's part of why we came to that conclusion that that would be a good way to go but the other value of it if we always have to look at the short and the long the other value of knowing why people make a request to go someplace else is a an opportunity for growth and strengthening of our schools because if you find that there is an issue of disparate uh disciplinary action of people not caring we had the mother tonight talk about how her child disappeared from the school and nobody knew how that happened if that were happening enough and it became a red flag you begin to work on how to resolve that how to to make your schools better and it wouldn't just be that one school it would be all of the schools and that's how we we waited that to think that having real knowledge of why people leave a school or choose to go to another school could be a growth opportunity for the district certainly certainly it could but i'm also interested in how you get people to have more knowledge about our options and what the process is to actually go there so i think we left a lot unrecommended in terms of implementation particularly uh we talked a lot about the importance of marketing and outreach right and the double-edged sword that that is because whenever you're marketing for kids you're taking them from somewhere right so we didn't solve that problem but we know that outreach and marketing are critical to um equalizing access to focus option schools so we also talked about issues about transportation after school before school care you know there are all kinds of issues that uh create barriers before an application ever happens so we talked about lots of those we didn't get into recommending implementation okay well thank you very much to all of you who answered my question can i just piggyback as well just to build on that in terms of the the piece around the petition um process the couple other pieces i heard in your discussions and and working with staff um the piece of the the feedback loop so that the enrollment and transfer isn't sort of working in a silo or a vacuum but there is that established as part of the district's culture and processes that you do have that because we don't have that right now and then also making sure that the enrollment and transfer staff is supported and has the capacity to work with a culturally response in a responsive way and really transform how they work with families so those were a couple of pieces that were really important you reminded me of my other question okay did anybody do any budget analysis on this at all no okay that's fine i think that's it's all right that's our job we understand well and this is part of when i'm saying um the 18th i'll come back with a timeline of how we tackle this because there are a huge number of um operations how do you operationalize all of these and some of the numbers of them will be things that become part of the budget process um like where do you need different people to and systems to implement some of these anyway so this is part of what the staff is now doing that will inform recommendations and um and sequencing of recommendations and not all of them are policy some of them are policy some are really how do we resource and over what period of time so that they're it's a combination of the package others others out there yep great well thank you all for your work i know it's been a long process and we appreciate the the work that you did and actually i'm going to say thank you again for your work and also you're you're getting a break but you're not done so i'm serious like so this has been there may be some other moment where in implementation we need to call you back together to do more dialogue about what this is and this is intentionally sequenced with the whole um boundary review um that this policy is first but it did it directly interacts with whatever how we're approaching the boundary review and we're looking at uh having members of sackett also be part of the district boundary review dbrac the district boundary review advisory committee so there will be a a combination of people who serve on that on that group so that we benefit
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from the expertise gained in the second process so you guys thank you so much and thanks for coming tonight to do the presentation and also say thank you to everybody from richmond and the other schools who showed up tonight to voice your opinions too so thank you to everybody okay our next uh agenda item is an update on our achievement compacts out of october 14th i wonder if i should wait a minute i'll just wait a few minutes to see at the crowd goes out we'll take we'll take a five minute break okay we'll call us back to order again and our next agenda item is an update on our achievement compacts uh as our viewers will probably remember at october 14th board meeting the board declined to set targets and three of the seven categories is achievement compact that utilizes smarter balanced testing we did this after considering the recommendation of our achievement compact advisory committee and until we had received baseline data and evidence that the assessment is reliable valid and free from cultural linguistic and socioeconomic bias as was in our board resolution 4943 after receiving a letter from the department of education and the chief education officer both of them stating that we must supply targets the board will consider an additional resolution tonight staff prepared a memo offering four options for setting targets the first that we use the oaks data to set targets and employ the methodology that we used in the past the second to set these three targets at a hundred percent to indicate our strong belief that all students can achieve the third deputy superintendent rob saxton has stated that he believes approximately 35 to 40 percent of oregon students will pass the smarter balanced assessment in this first year so we could use that as our target fourth we could continue to decline to set targets and ask that oeib just picked them for us staff has prepared an achievement compact to have a hundred percent a resolution for the achievement compact of 100 percent of each of the three targets third grade reading fifth grade math uh fifth grade math and eighth grade math so you have that resolution in front of you just to clarify the resolution actually just adopts the achievement contract that the achievement contract has the numbers which correct right sorry everybody clear on that no i missed that so the achieve the resolution actually just says we accept the achievement compact and the achievement compact that's in your packet yeah actually has 100 right now set as an aspirational goal um and following our belief that all students can achieve so the board will now consider resolution 4986 resolution to amend public schools achievement compact targets do i have a motion so moved second director atkins moves and director morton seconds the motion to adopt resolution 4986 ms houston do we have any public comment yes we have one margin great margie you're familiar with our rules about public comment correct yes i know you've been here many times thank you for being here tonight my name is margie brown b-r-o-w-n and uh so board chair uh mills the school board and superintendent smith i encourage you to set reasonable annual targets for the three smarter balance based benchmarks as recommended by the state by using the oak score as a temporary proxy we realize that that likely in inaccuracy from translating one test method to another that presents a difficulty in setting targets when baseline data is not available however we think presenting stretch targets shows the board once improvement this would not preclude you from voicing your concerns about technical hurdles related to student skill development and the district's computer infrastructure as well as the issue of tests being given only in english there is much to be done to prepare teachers and students for the smarter balanced transition but for the sake of our students i hope the district can work productively with the state to make the transition as smooth as possible realizing that none of this is going to be easy thank you thank you very much i have the same hope oops i also have to sneeze okay tissues okay so um is there board discussion on the resolution welcome back thank you
02h 50m 00s
it's nice to be back the uh there's been a lot of discussion surrounding our achievement combat committee recommending we put no percentages under where we expect to improve in third grade reading fifth grade math and eighth grade math both nancy golden the head of the governor's educational investment advisory board and the deputy superintendent of education and head of ode rob saxton have sent us letters saying we need to set those percentages to meet state law that's not necessary that's not the case for one thing nancy goldman has no authority whatsoever she's a head of an advisory committee for the for the governor she has no authority over our school system to come out and tell us to do anything and so that's one thing the other thing is if you read carefully which i've pulled up it says that we are to develop plans for achieving the outcomes measures of progress goals and targets expressed in an achievement compact including methods of assessing and reporting progress for the achievement of goals and targets they haven't kind of they haven't asked us for that second part but that's basically what it says and it didn't say anything about that you have to set percentages on each of the things the fact that we have some goals set in some things we met the law i believe we need i believe we should set the percentages in order to comply with not the law which is what i originally had written until i take a look at it to comply with the oregon department of education as assets set those targets so legits had some percentages for them just to comply with their their interpretation of the law it's not really the law we're complying with the law their interpretation is different i believe we need i believe that as a government body we should comply with what we're asked to do by the oregon department of education but i want to make some comments before recommending a path for us to follow first we need to review what our responsibilities are as a government body it is our responsibility to attempt to make sure children in our district receive the best education we can offer them all children no matter their circumstances their ethnicity their economic background or any other particulars in their lives all children it's this responsibility which doesn't mesh with the government actions taken recently by our state department of education they have set forth based on a national agenda a form of education which doesn't take into account all children but instead is based on the needs of particular adults whether they be economic career or status needs decisions which should be made based on children's needs have instead been made to further political and economic agendas their approach however has been implemented under the guise that is good for children and they wish to solve educational problems which usually revolve around teacher criticism or a lack of national will both are false narratives which benefit the adults and not children children who are behind who are behind need help to catch up children who are ahead need to have their horizons broadened and all children need to be in a solid school environment which creates a strong foundation in not just academics but other important values which include tolerance appreciation for the earth and appreciation for the arts and understanding of history present day and future skills which translate into success in both society and the workforce and a path to the pursuit of happiness in order to have faith in the people who are leading our education establishment we need to have them make decisions they can justify and connect to what is good for our children and our children's education that is a rub in this manner concerning our achievement compact where the state is asking asking for something which doesn't exist a number which we predict for a test which we have never seen which has no relevance to anything we have ever done which is at best a guess and at worst a lie by saying no we are standing up for the children whose education we have been entrusted and at the same time telling the state department that their role is critical to the best interests of oregon and its children and that we are not going to support them in a process which is built on a mirage creating fantasy numbers with no meaning and which deludes the citizens who have entrusted both us and them with this important responsibility so if we do need to set numbers i'm willing to put forth the process but i kind of like the 100 my process was that i brought and i thought we should have the same process in place as the other 196 uh districts did and i brought from home they a duck cup i brought them home yeah duck cup because college and career ready and i have some people don't know this i have a dice collection and this is a hundred sided die so i figured what we could do if we didn't come up with a better thing was i just shake it up and so third this is what the other districts did third grade reading would be a roll out it's hard to read these it would be geez 67 but i'm willing to go i i like the 100 i
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think it's fine i'm certainly willing to support it even though i kind of like the same as the other districts did just guess at it okay thank you steve well said dr blog first i want to thank director buell for showing me for the first time ever a hundred-sided die wow i didn't know they made it my favorite is actually 34-sided it's pretty good but i just i just want to note as we as we go through this this is more of a comment than a question um just um when we when we refused to set these there were lots of reasons why we refused to set these but in particular if we're looking to data to make informed decisions when we don't have data to do it as director buell just pointed out we're just really guessing and now we can we can we can guess and we will guess i'm guessing see how guessing gets but it's really just a guess and this sets actually the wrong tone i think that what we're trying to say what we're what i hear the message from our state department is saying is well when you don't know just make it up and we'll figure it out later and that to me is a message that for too long has gone on in education um about just saying well just keep doing what you're doing or keep making it up and we'll figure something out later um and that to me sets it not a well in some ways a dangerous precedent because these are students lives but what's interesting is i was in a discussion the other day about attendance chronic absence attendance and somebody made a comment saying well i think the state's published all the state attendance for chronic absence and somebody made the comment like well the state wouldn't publish the data if it wasn't accurate but it turns out the state has published inaccurate chronic attendance data and so it begins to draw into question the reliability both of our institution but also the institution of our state government which is unfortunate because our state's number one goal is the education of our children it's their number one responsibility dedicated to states and to begin to make this up or to put forth numbers as if they're accurate when we know for a fact that they are not accurate that is a that's a disappointment at least it's a disservice and perhaps it's it's larger than that so we'll go forth because there's no doubt that i believe a hundred percent of our students can will and should perform on these assessments not without the reinvestment in fact i think the oeib looked at some numbers today and they said to get 95 of our kids to 100 reading we'd have to invest this amount of money with something like 400 million dollars so that's not even 100 so the state itself is acknowledging that they are not investing nor do they plan to invest what it takes to get all of our students there and yet we play what i will consider a game to pick these numbers but i truly believe a hundred percent of our kids can should and will perform on this and it's our job to figure out how to get them there but it's our state's job to figure out the funding for it and to help us get there sorry yeah no i'm just um echoing that and just say you know i really want to focus our efforts not on this number or this this particular report but on helping make sure that all our children are reading and graduating and everything else that we want for our kids in the district so that's that's what my focus is i think the 100 is as you know because it does reflect our actual aspiration and our belief in all our students um is appropriate in this instance and um yeah and i think that the investment piece is the one that that's that's where the focus needs to be and um and just us getting back to the work of actually you know being in our schools and helping our teachers our students and their families make this challenging transition while we're really focusing on learning and the joy of learning for our kids and that's what we want amina yeah look i believe that we i believe that 100 of our students should can succeed but however like those tests aren't set up for 100 of students to succeed so what's going to happen is that they're not going to and then it's going to look like our students failed which it shouldn't look like that it's not their fault that they're not meeting 100 i personally think we should still stick from not having any just because that's showing like what we believed last month is still what we believe this month and i stand confirmed that that's a great thing to put out there and just say that like we don't believe in this and then i do understand that the government if they want to put numbers that's fine but as a district i think we should say that it isn't fair to put any numbers this when we just don't know yet so i hear what you're saying i think though that we don't know for them to make the
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decision for us doesn't feel right to me because based on the guidance that we've given been given that it should be key to the oaks or maybe not and that there actually won't be any consequences anyway i mean it's just to me it should be a decision that that we make but i totally hear what you're saying um and i feel like given the context we just go with the aspiration and state when our goal is for our kids and when i'm putting 100 percent i'm talking about the ultimate goal of learning and reading and graduating and succeeding not so much the test that's that's what i want to move on from this and focus on and again just to be clear as we've said all along we're not against assessment it just needs to be done appropriately and in the right way and in the in the right um right amount and we're working on that as a district and this is um a huge piece that's been laid on top that we need to grapple with the whole state needs to grapple with and as margie said we need to work together with the state to make this um transition as as smooth as possible but we need support and resources and recognition that it's a transition it's a huge one director morgan uh when i was a when i was a kid um my dad was a big boxing fan and i one of the things i remember from that time of watching these heavyweight fights was never leave it to a decision and never let someone else determine the outcome of your effort and although we don't know in this case i think we can we can make an important an important statement saying just what i've heard my colleagues say what i said several weeks ago when we looked at this initially is that we believe every student in our district can achieve and i and i hope that we have our community i hope that we have our teachers i hope that we have those within oeib with an ode who believe the same that in fact every student in our district can achieve i feel like being really aspirational right now anybody else no um well i i think i already said good job steve so i'm obviously i liked all the things that you said as um as i also appreciated uh director belial's comments um and like my colleagues i am not prepared to let the state do this for us and there have been many times when i've talked about different testing or other kinds of things that we've done with our students that require us meeting a goal and i think i slipped one time and said 95 percent of students are that was like in the very beginning but i don't think we can set any other goal for our students other than 100 and i just have to i have to go from the heart and i truly believe that 100 of our students can achieve and will achieve especially if we continue to work together the district our teachers our parents our community organizations um we we can make sure that all of our students achieve and so i am fully in support of um using 100 aspirational goal as our goal for the achievement compacts so any less yeah and i agree that 100 of students can succeed as well but just on this one test like i don't think that's what's going to happen because ultimately the power like of what's the numbers are going to be aren't isn't in our hands so we should just make a statement about it rather than try and play the guessing game and then assign some number and even saying 100 of students is just going to come back and look like make the students look like they didn't achieve something which they are achieving every day in the classroom so i just don't think that we should set that number thank you so far others anybody else okay i lost my sheet here i'm totally done the board will now vote on resolution 4986 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no no are there any abstentions resolution 4986 is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative jaswal voting no no okay thank you
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okay we'll move on to the business agenda um we'll now consider the remaining items on the business agenda having already voted on 4985 and 4986 ms houston are there any changes no do i have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda director belial moves and director buell seconds the adoption of the business agenda miss houston is there any public comment there is not okay is there any board discussion i have a couple questions okay what uh on are we all the way through 4984 is part of what we're looking at yes okay uh educational northwest provide support to principals in school teams to the development and implementation of comprehensive achievement plans of boise elliot humble roosevelt george james john kelly in harrison park what what does this look like i mean what is this buying actually so this is um the state does their assessment of folks and priority schools every four years this covers the schools that would have fallen in that category if they did that designation every year and it provides the same level of support for the comprehensive plan that we give to the schools that are designated as folks and priority schools and ed northwest is the entity that hires our coaches that that we utilize we contract with so this basically pays for coaches to come into these schools yes correct to re-segregate that please and then the second one is the center for intercultural organizing 1.7 million dollars to create infrastructure for gear up mobilizing for college development and implement building undergraduates through inclusive leadership development the build program could you explain what that is could i ask you to hold up just a minute steve what was the one you were uh this one right here and four nine eight four right there uh education northwest one six six yeah ps61308 and then the next one i'm going to probably have okay so let's let's do one at a time you kind of jumped ahead of me there so we need so this is a motion do you want to go ahead and make the motion for an amendment you mean to um set it apart for separate votes oh okay yes move to set aside ps61308 education northwest decide for a separate vote second okay so there's a motion in a second okay is there any discussion about that nope okay all those in favor of setting aside p p s six one three o eight say aye aye aye aye okay all opposed okay so we'll set that one aside okay go ahead thank you so that's going to college i appreciate you doing that and then the other one is to center for intercultural organizing i'm not sure what the build movement actually 1.7 million dollars is a lot of money i just kind of like to know where i'm going is this out of our funds you know it's part of a it's a seven year contract with this partner that's part of a gear up grant so so we're just spending grant money it's gear up grant money pop back to the last one then too then if you would the ps the one right above it is that grant money too no it's where we are adding okay services that yeah the 1.7 that doesn't come out of our budget it comes out of a grant grant okay thank you very much i appreciate that i don't need to set that aside then is that it okay the board will now vote on the business agenda all those in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes i'll oppose please indicate by saying no which part will be brought into just the vote everything else okay hang on one second on the um at northwest i'm getting clarity about whether that's actually grant funding the funding source at northwest it's not great it's general fund the ones that were designated and have the four-year designation we're getting money for the one these that have been added later we're adding because they would have qualified and we're giving them the same level of support and it's general fun title funds but it still is money we have discretion about how we use it okay yes but we're trying to provide consistent levels of support for schools in the same situation yes okay the vote will now vote excuse me i think we did we vote the board
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passed all right so sorry um now the board will consider for resolution or the 4988 which is education northwest personal services contract which has been set aside by director buell all those in favor of discussion um well we had discussion but none of them okay discussion board discussion anybody so this is stuff that we're this is basically what we're saying is that these used to be focused on priority schools no and now no the so the state identifies the the lower lowest five and the lowest 15 quickest priority but they give that designation for four years so these schools would have hit that same if if they identified and named focus and priority schools every year these schools would also be in that category so but they don't so we just have we have the group that was formally named but that they hold that designation for four years these schools because they have the same criteria fit we're providing them the same level of support that folks and priority schools get the same level of support of the same support this same the same coaching support that the others get okay and that makes the coaching support my problem is i'm more less coaches and more teachers so i'll vote against this thank you okay okay any other discussion of 4988 okay the board will now vote on resolution 4988 all those in favor yes yes all those opposed no 4988 is approved by a vote of 521 with student representative jasmal voting yes great thank you okay the next meeting of the board will be on tuesday november 18th and this meeting is adjourned thank you

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2014-2015, https://www.pps.net/Page/1893 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:53.371200Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2014-11-10 PPS School Board Study Session

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Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - November 10, 2014

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