2014-12-02 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2014-12-02
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - December 02, 2014

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welcome um co-chair NS will be joining us later I just wanted to open up this public hearing on the superintendent's recommendations on enrollment and transfer so we have half an hour allotted for this with um folks signed up for two minute slots each so we could have as hear from as many of you as possible um so shall we just go ahead and Karen you want to um read the first two names here's Betty isuma isumi and Amy Thomas great so while you're coming down I'll just read very quickly the um public comment instructions so thanks so much for coming tonight we really appreciate you coming to provide your thoughts we look forward to hearing from you and we're going to be actively listening and reflecting on your comments we're not going to respond to them during this hearing but we um will definitely be following up both us and board manager Rosanne Powell is also here if you want some additional information um so you're going to have two minutes to share your comments please Begin by stating your name and spelling your last name for the record and then are we still do we still have the yellow light when it's a two-minute uh yellow light when there's one minute okay so the yellow light will go off after 1 minute and then at the red light we ask you to wrap up at your at that time so thank you thanks again for coming and you may begin my name is Betty eumi bet TTY y i zi I am a parent of two children one who's currently a third grader at Richmond I'm also a faculty member at Portland State University where my research and teaching focus on nutrition and health Equity I understand the importance of the racial educational Equity policy and the need to close the achievement Gap in full disclosure I also have a three-year-old who I hope will attend Richmond with her older sister however I understand that policies are not meant to serve me and my needs but that they are meant to promote education for the common good I have read the superintendent report for all intents and purposes giving preference to students who qualify for free and reduced price meals at Focus option schools increases the number of low-income students who are enrolled at these schools whether or not they are given preference over siblings since this is true why not enroll siblings first and then enroll low-income students according to the simulations presented the end result would be nearly the same in addition given that the data presented at the last board meeting were based on data from the last 6 to9 years years I urg the board to request five and 10year projections on how the proposed changes will impact future sibling enrollment and share these data with constituents I suspect that over the long term this policy May reduce opportunities for families to have co-enrolled siblings and thus have a negative impact on students families schools and communities thank you thank you very much my name is Amy star Thomas t h m and I have three children in the Japanese emersion program two at Richmond and one at Mount tab Middle School it saddens me to hear Richmond community's outspoken advocacy for this program be interpreted by some as self-serving anti-e Equity anti-diversity nothing could be further from the truth Richmond wants to be part of the movement toward greater inclusion and equity in PPS we applaud and support efforts to increase the number of f RL students at Richmond but the immersion model must remain intact in order to offer the excellent program that has existed these many years to this new generation of Learners to do this we need to put all siblings first during enrollment sibling preference for emerging schools is about more than maintaining family convenience or even supporting Extended Learning in the home it is primarily about maintaining program viability emerging programs cannot sustain even small levels of attrition and Upper Grade for it is extremely difficult to fill those spots due to language limitations upper grade level attrition due to fragmenting families undermines the immersion model we can only continue to provide excellent immersion education if we retain all our families in the program regardless of their socioeconomic status we project that if Outreach is successful we can easily double our frl at Richmond next year and reach 45% within 3 to four years we can be both diverse and strong if we do it right you have the power to do this our parents need strong leaders to create solid policies that serve all our District's children our leaders need strong parents to support and Implement those policies at a Grassroots level by prioritizing sibling preference at emerging schools you Empower program Advocates to recruit new families with the credibility to look them in the eye and say we are here to welcome and support you all of you
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for the long run thank you next two Chris Anderson and Matt marjanovic no question can't ask question no this is just a hearing no question this is just a hearing ask no please begin thank you hello my name is Chris Anderson a and d r s o n I'm the father of two children at creative science school and I'm also the PTA president um I want to start off by thanking you guys for both the superintendent and the board for looking into creating a more diverse schools um and for looking to promote Equity within the schools um schools are a place where we not only educate our kids but it's a it's a place where kids first learn about community and how to belong to something larger than them um and I I I'm going to say something that probably you weren't expecting the PTA president of focus option school to say but I like a lot of what the superintendent is proposing and what sacka proposed I like the fact that you guys are asking us to be more accountable I like the fact that you're asking us to articulate how are we different from the local neighborhood schools um I like that you are increasing the diversity of focused option schools creative science school last year started getting together with poke um parent Focus option groups and teachers and we proposed increasing our kindergarten slots for 20% for Head Start students to kind of create a more diverse Community for us as well the one thing that I really don't like and it's I think a theme that you'll hear here is that um not prioritizing siblings first when you don't prioritize siblings first you you you mess with the school's Community you make it so it's not safe for parents to come in and be confident that they can engage in the community and that they can be sure that their siblings will come to the Community First I've looked at your projections as well and it looks like that you could have sibling preference first and then the um the lower income diversity as the second tier and still achieve your goal within the time frame you're looking for I ask that you please consider that and realize that when you change big bureaucracies when you make decisions and don't get feedback from everyone and you don't consider maybe some of the ramifications of what it might have to the communities and the focus option schools and other areas that we need to make sure that we're that we're providing the community and the educational opportunities for everyone thank you very much Matt marianovich m a r j a n o v i c I've got a script because I've only got two minutes and I'm going to limit my comments to the changes to the focus option Lottery the recommendations affecting the focus option Lottery are to demote the existing prevailing sibling preference rule introduce a mechanical bias to favor approval of families with free and reduced lunch status and improve Outreach to historically unded communities um two of these require board approval and only one of them is actually a necessary change first off as everyone here is going to say uh the preference for colonal siblings should be the prevailing preference for All Families all schools all programs and there are those in this room who say but we are preserving sibling sibling preference and that is simply not true sibling preference is being demoted behind a preference for free in roduced lunch applicants as soon as sibling preference is not at the Forefront the lottery system introduces Ani anxiety and doubt for every family that has more more than one child and that's about 80% of the families in Portland what remains unexplained in all this is why the superintendent and her staff continue to insist that demoting sibling preference is even necessary since their own prove otherwise uh last week Carol Smith and Judy Brennan presented simulating data to try to assuage the fears that the new Lottery scheme would affect families with siblings some board members looked at the charts and astutely noticed that it didn't seem to matter if the frl applicants came first in line or not um I found the complete simulation results online and annotated them to show that what would happen if we just kept the con siblings first and for for five out of seven schools it made absolutely no difference to just maintain the current prevailing sibling preference for the other two schools only one enrollment year for each school was was modified and overall 544 low-income applicants were approved even with siblings first versus 548 without so the frl preference appears to work just as well without having to demote The Sibling preference so why do it uh that brings us to point number two the specific preference for economically disadvantaged students note that yes between the current lottery and the proposed system the number of approvals with frl status has increased but the applicant pool has not changed at all uh the increased frl preference doesn't make the lottery system any more Equitable it just Cooks the books to make it look more Equitable gives the district a way to say look we've got more students of color in our focused schools without actually improving access to the underserved communities and that is why cut off but the third recommendation where we improve the Outreach um is I think the most important one and I was going to add one last step which is going to go further and recommend that we Implement a post enrollment survey um every October
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November have every enrolled family fill out a survey that asks which enrollment options they knew about which ones they used which ones they avoided so that we know what the problems with the enrollment system actually are great um and I'm surprised we don't do that already thank you very much next two please Jason L and Michelle Cocker yes thanks for coming go ahead talk I'm done kidding go ahead hi my name is Jason Le l a t hop thank you I want to pose one point of confusion that I have um and I think others have touched on it excuse me we've been told that under the proposed recommendation five only a few siblings over a number of years would be affected we've also been told that the sibling preference has to come behind the 45% frl or we won't make uh sufficient progress on the equity goals in a reasonable amount of time with respect I just don't know how both of those things can be true um the numbers don't work for me um I would love to have a better understanding of the numbers um I'm an analyst and I look at numbers all day but the algorithm is at this point blind to me and it's hard for me to really evaluate what would happen next because we see a lot of tables but we don't understand the order that these Lottery mechanisms operate if a frl sibling comes in does that retire some frl quota first or does that retire a sibling quota first um so with respect um we would love to know more if putting the siblings in front of the frl does not meaningfully change the numbers then doing it this way is merely symbolic and creates an awful lot of angst and opposition for perhaps no actual policy outcome um and with respect I'd urge you to reconsider that um I'm from the Richmond community and I know you guys have heard from us I just want to point out is because we see this as fundamental to our program and many of our most vocal parents I really want to stress this many of our most vocal prefer uh parents don't have a uh a younger sibling waiting in the wings they see this as fundamental to our program keeping the families together cultural and language immersion is what they're protecting not their own narrow self-interest and if there's one thing I hope you can feel that I'm saying it's it's that thank you thank you very much um I'm Michelle choska it's C cka I'm a little scattered with this guy um so I just wanted you to hear my experience we tried our neighborhood school which is on 82nd um we live out there we I tried it with all my heart like we I wrote grants I volunteered um I advocated for my child to get services and when I would advocate for special ed services they would say we don't do this extra thing which I know that they do and I would go at the right LAN anguage and um and I wouldn't get the services and I got failed from the school in that way I went in for Tag Services cuz my daughter tested for tag and they're like we don't really do anything for that either and so I so it wasn't the best fit for my kid because I went ask him for help and they said we can't help you and so when you look at the enrollment that's one narrow part of looking of like why are these schools failing like part of its parents moving out and part of its poor Administration and the administration there has changed and it's gotten a lot better in like two years um and the last point I want to make is we're at Buckman now and the art the language programs are great and you want to do more language programs and I appreciate that but the art Focus program is great because parents can come in at like third grade and your kid isn't like automatically behind or automatically in like the neighborhood portion of it not the special portion where people who have to be stable and stay in the same school for 5 eight years can be so I um why don't we take that program and take it to other parts of Portland as well because it's working so well because every kid should be expressed um another thing is the k38 model is great because you see like I like how Portland Public does k through eight it keeps kids younger keeps siblings together it supports a strong family unit and if you're switching that it just it just seems to go against that that that you're doing too um and like back to the art thing like Portland voted for art like funding like Portland likes the art program and so we should recognize that um the lot okay well it can be done thank you thank you so much next to next we have Jake Harris and Neil banman hi go ahead hi uh I'm Neil bman NE i l b a an
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M an um thanks for hearing ing us um I've read I'm a parent of a Richmond student my wife and I are both Japanese Americans and we are pinching ourselves with Glee that Portland Public Schools has a Japanese immersion program it's uh it's odd but but wonderful and I know I speak for many parents when we say that we get a lot out of it whether we come from a Japanese cultural background or not um I have read s's um uh report as well as the superintendent um I'm very uh glad and thankful to uh the superintendent for um not forwarding on the recommendation to uh introduce a geographical quota um which I think would have caused a lot of chaos um Without Really adding much to the diversity goals I'm actually a little bit ambivalent on the um on the preference for free and reduced lunch I see that that could um present a lot of value but for me in Reading both reports I just haven't seen any any serious look at what the implications are in terms of keeping the program um sustainable like uh Amy star Thomas brought up we have a problem where if people leave the program we can't replace them in later grades and I just haven't seen the modeling um to show what kind of effect that's going to have and what that's going to do to the school um it would be good to know if we had data on like what the attrition rate is among divided amongst different demographics people who live far away and for whom it's more inconvenient people who have kids in different schools if we had this kind of information or if you guys would consider that kind of information that would give you a better sense of how easy or difficult it would be to uh make these um fairly sweeping changes thank you thank you my name is Jake Harris h rris uh good evening uh my wife and I uh are parents of a third grader at Richmond and a daughter will hopefully be going into Richmond next year uh I just want to say that removing the guarantee that siblings will be allowed in is saddening news for us both personally and what it means to Richmond uh my concern aside from my own child uh is the F future of Richmond I worry that low-income families the group that this is designed to benefit uh might actually be deterred uh if they learn that their other children might not be admitted uh I also worry that the attrition will increase uh due to both uh caring a part of families and the increased number of lowincome and geod diverse families who historically change schools more often uh Richmond is a very special place and it's not fair to lump it into other Focus option schools that are not based on language immersion please don't jeopardize this amazing program by removing guaranteed sibling preference thank you very much next two please the the last name I have on the list is Christina Callum good evening I'm Christina Kalen k r i s t i n a last name Kalen k a l l n and I have had the opportunity to work at Richmond for six years as a principal secretary my kids went through through Richmond and mount tabber so my big thing tonight is the district keeps families together I have proudly said that for six years so when people come in the blind Lottery to apply for the blind lottery I always say Bev doesn't make backd door deals you either get in or you don't but the district keeps families together so that's what I'm asking for tonight is to keep sibling preference um we've had some trust issues as you know one of the reasons why we've had trust issues is because in 2013 a call went out for dual language immersion families to come and talk about enrollment and transfer and immersion five of our parents went and then they received an email that said it was cancelled after the second meeting I have the emails here and said um regarding language and dual immersion will keep you posted well we didn't hear anything else until our PTA president heard about this whole sacket business and people don't tend to um hope for something if they're told it's been cancelled that's just kind of sad so what I'm here to ask tonight is put us to work put us Richmond parents to work I will dedicate a Saturday to you I'm free I'm not a budget line item I will Market our program to families of color to the underserved to the free and reduced populations I'll work for you so
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give me a s Saturday during that open enrollment and transfer cycle if you have a marketing strategy at Expo or at convention center and I know that some of these Richmond parents would work for you and we are free so we have 771 volunteers at Richmond we don't have a lot of money but we have people so we're rich thank you great thank you very much do we have anyone else signed up I do not okay well we have a few more minutes before our schedule board meeting so we could just sort of go and mingle and visit in the audience um as um just for informal dialogue before it starts at 6:00 otherwise I'm going to adjourn the hearing Ruth we have one oh okay yeah I think i' better just go chat a few minutes ask yeah does anyone else I mean there's a few more minutes left or we can just come out and visit welcome come on up sorry I'm a little late that's okay apologize Catch My Breath absolutely I just finished a course at Portland Community College where I teach politics full-time uh we finished at 5 o'clock and I had a student in crisis so I apologize for being no worries welcome just catch your breath and then let us know who you are and we'll I am Michael Sun lner M uh I've taught full-time at Portland Community College for the past 26 years I'm coach chair of the peace and conflict studies program at PCC I am a candidate running for the Portland uh Community College Board of Directors in the next May election um I'm very concerned about educational issues I wouldn't know about this one except for The Oregonian article and I especially appreciate Steve bule's comments as quoted in that article and I I hope that you were quoted correctly I probably watch I urge you to um go slowly on eliminating the lottery I urge you uh based upon my own experience I was as a parent many years ago uh a co-founder among the original 20 parents that created Leonard D Vinci Middle School Arts Middle School um that's one of my babies and one of the problems of that baby was trying to figure out a way that would equitably allow people to apply to transfer to that Arts Magnet opportunity I then volunteered masochistically I'm sure for about a year and a half on a committee perhaps not unlike the one that has issued this report a committee that established the original Lottery I'm one of those people from like 13 14 years ago I'm sure you're aware that the original intention was to encourage A diversity of students transferring I wonder if that has not panned out whether there might be details that could be modified one of our original concerns to increase the variety of students that would be transferring would be to give additional weight kind of a waited in the lottery option for families who had children in reduced price lunch systems relatively poor students are disproportionately non-white we were very conscious that that might have a bias in favor of a non-white students being able to move more likely in the lottery system I don't know what has happened to that weighted system Perhaps it is not so weighted anymore perhaps the timeline L could be modified perhaps greater Outreach could be made to to encourage people to participate in the lottery who are currently not applying to do so line is consider this carefully because the lottery was seriously and Care considered in being implemented in the first place I would like to see why it is not functioning as intended if in case in fact it is not don't throw this baby out it was a long time with great effort being created in the first place thank you very much any questions thank you anyone did anyone else in the remaining because we're almost done with our time did anyone else want to testify in our last couple minutes ask any questions well what I'm suggesting is we adjourn the hearing then we can go and ask questions good meeting last night thank you so much thank you Steve we missed that all we're doing is this now
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e e e e e e e e e e
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e e e e e e e like e ready good evening everyone this study session of the board of education for December 2nd 2014 is called to order I'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers and to all of those in the audience who were here earlier for the comment session SE session on enrollment and transfer this meeting is being televised live and will
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be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the Board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PPS TV services website student representative jwal is absent tonight um at this time I'd like to go ahead and have public comment Miss Houston do we have anyone signed up we do we have six our first two speakers Cara colie and Jerry Eaton okay while you guys are coming up I'm going to go ahead and read the I did earlier looks like a new group though I think we just just in case just in case there our folks here are testifying who weren't here for the earlier hearing I'll go ahead and go through the instructions so thank you very much for taking the time to come and speak with us tonight we value public input and we look forward to hearing your thoughts Reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen and reflect on your comments the board will not respond in any comments or questions during public comment but we've asked our board manager rosean Powell who is in the back someplace there she is Rosanne back here to follow up on issues raised during public testimony rosan is available in the back if you'd like additional information guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration of others complaints about individual employees should be directed to the superintendent office as a Personnel matter you have a total of three minutes to share your comments please Begin by stating your name spelling your last name for the first two minutes of your testimony a green light will come on right there in front of you when you have one minute left a yellow light will come on and when your time is up a red light will come on and a buzzer will sound and we ask that you wrap up your comments at that time we we sincerely appreciate your input and look forward to hearing from you so go ahead whichever thank you shall I go all right uh hello my name is Jerry Eaton I'm a teacher at Meek professional techn High School uh that's eat by the way hello um part of Alliance high schools and I'm Alum of the superintendent High School action team and a proud parent of PPS student I'm speaking to you today as sort of a preamble to the presentation that'll happen later tonight when Karina wolf um will present on behalf of all of us that uh oh hold on Synergy just closed out on me that should not count against my time all right uh she'll be presenting for all of us that uh operate under the banner of alternative Pathways I'm hoping use my time as a frame for dialogue for you to have later with her and with Laura F Buffalo hor our principal uh and to convince you to take some immediate action um on some tangible things that we need um first bit of context this is not my first time before you that's why I'm going so fast many times before I'm usually begging you not to cut another critical elements I'm glad to say I can finally say thank you uh there are some significant reinvestments to our mission we've begin to see some of those rewards um we've added backstaff positions we've lost we've used FTE new ways to meet the needs of our students retention is improving uh gains in the effective Realms are manifesting themselves in tangible academic ways skills learning credit Etc um but no good deed goes unpunished and there have been some unintended outcomes to these changes um as we grown our ability to meet the needs of struggling students we've seen a radical increase in the number of students with IEPs in our classrooms a 20% increase in the last year alone uh since October 1 my understanding is that 29 specialized students have left PPS comprehensive schools 20 of them have found their ways to our front door in that much time um there's not a lot of choices out there as you know we've lost three alternative schools in last year um we love these students and we bring all that we have to meet their needs but we're drastically lacking some of the kinds of wraparound services that they need uh ironically uh the kinds of services that exist in some of the schools they're leaving um Community Partnerships like sun Step Up Etc mental health and Health Services um even adequate sped Staffing um we don't have art or music we lack PE facilities and equipment and we have less than 20% of our former vot Tech um CBE offerings um what we lack largely is diversity um if we're we're approaching 50% sped population um that is not a diverse classroom environment and that's exactly what the IPS of these students is call are calling for they need a diverse student body in a highly adaptive Alternative Learning environment and we need the kinds of programs that will attract a robust diverse student body not just students that are really um you know On The Fringe of um surviving in the comprehensives I'm so the asks um we need more computers um we need uh more space we're running out of space we need a bigger building we need to be able to operate after five we can't in our current location um let's see what else we need community supports uh accountability students that leave comprehensive schools those services that were there should follow them um and we need to attract a broader array of types of students larger um sorry we need a long-term plan we don't have a strategic way to meet the need
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needs of non-traditional students we have still a hodg podge and it's a smaller hodg Podge than we've ever had before and I think we're losing an opportunity if we don't start now to engage in a dialogue of what's going to happen next year and the year after we need to think bigger and we need to know it's going to be expensive but that's the only way we're going to get to the kinds of goals that we've set for this District so thank you for your time thank you hello my name is Cara Ki my last name is c o l l y I live in the Chapman neighborhood and my daughter Lottery into the Spanish Immersion program at answorth and I have a son at home who is four who I hope will be able to go to answorth um both of my children are enrolled in the Eastern band of the Cherokee Nation um I do support looking for ways to better serve historically underserved students but I don't support that when it breaks up families um is there a way to better serve low-income families while keeping families together I say yes I say Keep The Sibling preference in place and add the low-income preference after that when we accepted the spot at answorth they asked us to make a k to2 commitment and at that time in 2013 The Sibling preference was in place and so we made that commitment but now the school board is thinking about changing the rules this F feels very unfair to me feels like a breach of trust this possible change in The Sibling preference has caused much stress and uncertainty to my family family families that lottery in before this 2015 cycle I believe should be grandfathered in that were grandfathered in with the rules that were in place before but actually I'm not just up here arguing for grandfathering in I believe the sibling policy is good policy it's good for low-income families it's good for Middle inome families and it's good for Rich upper class families it's good for white families black families Latino families Native American American families and Asian families families should stay together I also like a previous speaker mentioned I do not follow your numbers the superintendent report says 728 out of 732 siblings would have been approved had the low-income preference been in place well first off these are historical numbers and the applicant pool is certainly going to change as more recruiting and Outreach occurs secondly if this is really about four spots four four spots why cause such stress and uncertainty to families why not keep the siing preference in place and let in all but four in low-income students I want Portland Public Schools to be a place that tries to remedy inequality but I not if you do it by breaking up families keep the sibling preference in place and add the low-income preference after that this is good for all families and finally my son and daughter know that I'm here tonight and they ask me where I'm going I said well the school board is thinking about not letting Ry my son go to anworth my daughter Sage who's in first grade has a message for you as well I want my brother to go to the same school as me so we can ride on the school bus together thank you thank [Applause] you our next two speakers are C casy and Adonis lomu hello thank you for taking the time to hear me today my name is Kat casy last name is C ke y I want to tell you a little bit about myself um I I am 27 years old I'm a Portland native um and I'm a high school dropout I went to Franklin High School um and I did really well my freshman year I was on the honor role I Got A and B's I did extra extracurricular activities I did all the things that they say um will win you success um not just academic but also social um but we all know that life is not so cut and dry as that um and education is not black and white and it's not one- siiz fits all um and I I ended up dropping out when I was a junior um I've always valued education so I'm sure everyone else here does as well um so I went back as a senior and I dropped that again um what preceded was four years of feeling like a failure and um it wasn't until um I drove down down the street
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one day and I saw a sign for Portland youth Builders uh for those of you who aren't familiar with Portland youth Builders it's an alternative High School in Southeast Portland um they focus on like job Readiness um and I saw their sign and I uh went to check it out and it changed my life um I didn't fail in Tradition um in the traditional education system because I uh lacked motivation necessarily um or was unintelligent um I believe that there was a a whole series of personal barriers in my life at that point that um restricted My Success um and pyb offered me uh emotional support financial support um educational support job Readiness support a whole series of wraparound services that is not found in uh in any other educational institution that I'm used to um I ended up leaving the program and uh going to PCC I graduated with um an Associates of honors and I just this past May graduated from lisis and clar college um with honors um I now work as an cor volunteer at pyb um so I can speak to the importance of programs like this in our school system um like I said before education is not one size toit all and uh certainly wasn't for me um I just want to end by saying that I get to work with students like myself every day now and I can see uh the benefit from Pro this program on them so thank you thank you uh good evening uh my name is Adonis lomu L muu uh first off i' like to start out by saying thank you to superintendent Smith and uh other members of the school board by allowing me to talk to you today uh when I first came into high school I enrolled at Jefferson High School I stayed there for two years and while there I received less than a 1.0 GPA it's really bad um it's not because the work was tooo hard it was always because I would put the work to the side and say IID do it later which never really happened and probably was a motivation thing never had it uh and just last year I missed over 37 school days just last year yeah um uh after getting earful from my auntie and other members of my family about my future I started noticing it myself uh my future as I know was dropping dropping at a dramatic rate I needed to change and I need now so I decided to roll at Alliance at meek of September this year it was a really big day for me because it was a fresh start uh it wasn't just a big day for me it was also a big day for Meek because they just receed started a new program there called Discovery otherwise known as disco uh disco really helped me a lot with getting to know a lot of people that I usually probably wouldn't talk to but then again I talk to a lot of people um so and also one of the main things I learned in Disco was transactional uh communication analysis this which really helped me talk to people in new ways that I wouldn't really have thought about before and it also helped because uh I plan on going to college to major in Psychology because again I love talking to people um now today I am receiving at Meek uh 4.0 GPA which is a big leap from less than a 1.0 and it's not because the work is easy it's the same work as you get every normal high school it's just all just the name Alternative High School so and I have not missed one day yet this year all right stay there uh my plans now is to graduate high school and go to college I'm thinking about majoring in math psychology and drama because people said I'd be good at it that um one of the biggest things for me would because uh about going to college it'd be make me the first in my family my immediate family to go to college done great thank you thank you so much thank you both for your stories our last two speakers are Daniela Hernandez and Travon brazwell
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all right good evening members of the board my name is Trayvon brazwell and I'm a senior at Mount Scot Learning Centers Braswell b r a s w l l oh excuse me I started at Mount Scott in 2009 as a seventh grader and I'm graduating early at the end of January 2015 Mount Scott helped me find a balance between my home life and school some things I do with outside of Mount Scott are living with my mom on disability a father I've never met gang influences and housing that sometimes has mold decomposing walls and at times lack basic utilities the transition into Mount Scott from bigger schools put me at ease the small community at Mount Scott gave me the opportunity to connect with students and teachers while providing access to resources this also helped me build confidence and gave me a space to express myself now I'm working on scholarships to attend college and my plans for the future are to open my own barber shop while learning more about video production I really don't feel like I would have gotten this in a bigger learning environment being able to have bonds with teachers has empowered me to be confident while working towards my own success for this I'm grateful to Mount Scott for as fed my completion of high school and giving me the gas to find my driver in my future thank you for your support prams like Mount Scott and for welcoming my testimony thank you superintendent Smith and members of the board my name is danela Martinez Rosas and I'm here to talk about my experience with the team parent services and Alliance at M I've been with the team parent program for three years the team parent program has been a huge support for me and many other team parents in Portland they provide daycare counseling supplies for our children and many resources and help in reducing the stigma of being a team parent in the first place Dalia sandino is one of the staff in the team parent service at Alliance at meet she is also one of the people who has helped me throughout my journey of being a Teen Mom she has helped me in my mother a lot she is always always checking on her team parents making sure we are doing good in school and in our own personal lives may God bless her and her family always and I thank her personally for her time and love I've been at Alliance at meek for 3 years it feels good being part of me I was brought to the US when I was one from Mexico as you all may know English is not my first language throughout my education I've struggled a lot especially in reading and writing but today I can say I see myself with a big future ahead of my son and I Meek has helped me and many others and our teachers as well they all take the time to get to know you as a person and as a student they also take the time to ask you questions about your education gos and in what ways they're able to help you understand the class something that I love about Meek is that they work with you oneon-one if needed and make sure you understand most importantly they don't give up on you even if that means a little bit pressure but to see that your hard work and their hard work pays off by seeing you and you seeing yourself walk across that stage and get that diploma and graduate someday I am the promise of Oregon thank you and have a blessed night thank you both for your testimony and good luck to both of you and to all of our other who testified that's just those are just great stories just just great okay at this time uh on our agenda we'll have a discussion regarding our enrollment and transfer policy decisions um superintendent Smith is there anything you'd like to add before we start the discussion um you a few a few more pieces of information um prior to your discussion um and just also Express appreciation to all the people who' have been coming out to um the discussions with the board and to and to testify and give us information about how you believe this will impact your school community so Judy uh good evening I am going to do my best to make this Swift because I know that you still have much to discuss but
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um we wanted to make sure that you had a chance to have um some additional information about the uh one issue that that you've heard a lot of discussion about over the last few meetings um uh I also want to let you know that we are preparing additional information that will be in your packets for discussion next week that would include um a more full set of information about the petition process and a uh draft of the administrative directive that we go with policy so and of course we'll be be taking good notes about whatever else you need that we hear from you tonight but um this is a particular topic that you've asked questions about and that we've heard discussion about so we thought we'd try and dig into it for a few minutes you have a handout that is still wet with ink probably because um it's been a busy day and it looks something like this and what you'll see on the slides there are copies of it back there for the public as well we will get it posted on our website by tomorrow morning um and what's on the slides is largely here as well um okay so there's a key question that's been asked I'm going to phrase it as a question would there been this topic has come up a number of ways but the key question that I hope that I've heard right and if I haven't you'll let me know is will the new preference for low-income students that's being proposed result in fewer siblings of our current students being accepted to focus op in schools so I'm going to try and answer that for you or give you enough information that you can play with as many models as you can in your head and answer the questions for yourself okay to do that there are a couple of pieces um actually that I mean that's not my question okay okay but if you want to go ahead let's go ahead and go through this and then we can talk about other questions okay okay so there were there's some variables to be aware of first of all um how many slots are there and so we used an average over three years um how many applicants with low-income preference might there be in the future and then how many co-enrolled siblings might there be in the future so what I've heard folks say is that while they appreciate seeing what could have happened in the past the past isn't the future so what could it look like in the future so here's a just a quick picture of how the future might look different conceptually than it does for people today and starting on the left if we thought of our Focus option schools and the slots they have every year is a glass that we're filling up um the way the preferences are sorted today it is entirely true that a 100% of slots for a focus option school could go to siblings there's 24 slots for kindergarten at Winter Haven there could be 24 siblings and the only students who would get into that district-wide program are siblings of kids who are already there and it's not surprising that even though it's just listed in policy as preference people have come to think of it as a guarantee I think I heard that from a couple people tonight and you can see when it's the potential be as much as 100% it can feel like a guarantee it has been a preference so far it would be a preference in the future the difference is if you allocate 45% so less than half your slots but a substantial amount for low-income students um then that leaves you up to 55% so it's still more than half of the program but it's just over half of the program for siblings and the key question is would you have enough space then to bring all the siblings in or are some going to be left out okay so what I did this afternoon is um try to identify which schools would would be likely to have sufficient applicants to qualify for the 45% set aside who's close to that who's far away and then I just said just assume that everybody gets to 45% regardless of where they've been just assume that they get there how many um would there still be left would there be enough in that 55% that's left to take care of all the co-enrolled siblings now I really so um so here's the results and you also have it on the spreadsheet in front of you and I think this has a pointer in it it does so hopefully this is um something that okay so the first thing I looked at was how many slots are we talking about just by numbers so for example here's Buckman for the last three years they've had 20 slots per year if 45% of those were set aside for low-income students that's nine that leaves 11 for everybody else okay over the last three years at Buckman how many applicants would have qualified for those low-income seats 11 each year that's more than 45% because it's only a 45% cap they wouldn't all be accepted some of those
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students would be um moved down to the lower priority they wouldn't get in so um I think I heard a comment earlier about uh what would you do when there's more low-income applicants the preference as it's set now would say it's 45% for low-income students not all low-income applicants okay so in this case there's actually a deficit of two spaces each year to accommodate the number of low income applicants for Buckman as it stands today what about for siblings over the last three years there's an average of 11 sibling applicants now unlike this portion because it's the sibling part is not capped it's really hard for me to know how many siblings they going to be in the future and it matters because Buckman could have 30 low-income applicants in the future we would still only accept 45 under that preference category they'd still have a chance under random number but under the preference category however if there were 30 Co enrolled siblings then we would have um a different challenge because there's only 55% of the space more than half of the space for siblings but still not enough for that many but this is my best guess based on what I've seen over the last three years it's the best predictor we have for how many siblings we would have in the future 11 those 11 do equal 55% and in this case there wouldn't be any siblings over the last three years who would not have been approved to Buckman so the purpose of this chart is to walk through school by school and I'm not going to do that because your time is limited today um but it does allow you to look through and see where there are um gaps um in terms of where you already have applicant pools that are at or above 45% it's two of the schools that we analyze Buckman and creative science that are there now but in the other one so Odyssey here's Richmond here's Winter Haven and here's Da Vinci in these places you still have a considerable amount of low-income applicants who would need to add into the pool in the coming years before you would even hit 45% over on this side with the siblings you can see that at Winter Haven last over the last three years 57% so more than half of the applicants for the program are siblings and there's a potential that at least one of them each year wouldn't have been approved because that's more than the 55% available to them at other schools I'm going to go to Richmond because I know that that we've heard a considerable amount there at 41% of the applicant pool right now they have a buffer of about 16 slots for additional siblings before they would hit the 55% and the 55% only matters if they actually hit 45% here being at 15% now it's likely that there's a considerable amount of room both for sibling growth if such a thing were to happen as well as lowincome applicant growth before you would see conflict between the two is this helpful is this helping you see what what we were seeing in our heads and and I think this is a reflection what what sacket was hoping that we would um be able to produce okay quickly so I think I've covered this at Buckman and Winter Haven we see co-enrolled siblings making up more than half of the slots over the last three years um and one of the things you might have noticed too is that there's a small number of slots 20 slots 24 slots since one or more siblings could be denied entry it that would only happen if there were at least 45% of the applicants who qualified as low income if it didn't then there'd be more room for siblings and it could be noted that slots could be increased at those schools and we've worked actually with schools over time where we've seen a place where oh I've got one more sibling could you take one more slot in the lottery the number of co-enrolled sibling applicants at four schools has been lower than 55% and it leaves that cushion um in my mind for where there's a difference between the number of siblings that we've seen and the number that that they might have in the future before they would get over the edge of worrying that siblings weren't going to get in and that's what that looks like by by those schools I noted that two of the schools now have applicant pools made up of enough siblings to qualifies as low income so they're close to our district average they these two schools applicant pools look closer like the district than than um the other schools um and there is room for that portion of the applicant pool to grow before it reaches that cap I want to point out that if we did have cases where there's more low-income applicants than the 45%
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co-enrolled siblings in that group would be accepted first so you would have a co-enrolled low-income applicant who would receive the space first before a non- conrolled low-income applicant Co rolls have priority in whatever set of slots we we have um I think that's everything that that I had but of course I'm available for more questions okay other questions Tom did you have still have a question okay uh yeah is that's good thank you the um is somebody came up to me and said that they've asked for the model that you're running um and that we haven't been able to give it to them uh and I'm wondering you know from my perspective this kind of public policy 101 uh if if we're using a model to affect different parties then we ought to be able to give that model that model ought to be transparent it ought to be um you ought to be able to replicate it so um in terms of public uh process and input that would helpful is that possible to do so um everything that I've shared um with you is what's online um the methodology that we followed is described on a document that's online if there's missing information and I've I certainly haven't meant to ignore anyone's questions or concerns so um I'm Happ to work with that um so I'm not sure what so these are results from um the modeling that we've done so far in terms of data input into it in input data input into I'm just guessing but we can have this offline but in general uh get giving the model and the data out so everybody can replicate results and understand because you're working a little magic machine here and you're spitting things out and you're saying this is what it is and I have full faith in you uh but also we should be able to replicate those results others who want to do that certainly we've done our best to do that but I'm happy to hear of any other additional information now keep in mind that we have worked with raw data that includes student information and so it's not redacted I can't I mean it would be considerable amount of effort to um redact the essential part so that students could be identified and then just make that publicly available so in other words the lines and lines and lines of of applicant data um include student specific information um name address parents name Etc so um right we would not want to share but we wouldn't give away right so and we we could if we took out all of that information and just had lines that didn't have that it would take us a while to get that available but if it seems that that's an important way for the public to be able to um have visibility in our work we could over time make that happen Okay thank youth um I would just say I actually would I think that's not a good use of our staff time because I really want to be looking at how we're going to implement these pieces and it's been as we know this is changing this policy which is a really important step it's just the first step and there's a lot of of challenging work ahead in terms of um the petition process and the Outreach and and um all those other pieces so to me I really appreciate this this is something I was kind of noodling in my head this morning trying to understand hearing these concerns like how could we what would be a way of of doing that forward modeling so I really appreciate your your brain and you doing this um because it helps me a lot um and I think we'll we'll probably need some time to digest it a little bit but um to me this makes perfect sense and um hopefully it helps um reassure folks um but again in terms of being getting into alignment with our racial educational Equity policy that's the really key piece here that we need to get that alignment and have this um this U low-income preference in place and um and then after that as I said we're going to be working a lot on the implementation I'm really glad that you're going to be able to come back next week with some more detail about that just some initial thoughts we discuss others Bobby do you have something I just get frustrated sometimes because um some of my colleagues speak as if their truth is the only truth in the room and it's not there's other truths in the room so and you know I think if Tom is interested in some information we should figure out how to get that to them I don't see why one person has a say over another one particularly I think truth though only one yeah many truths many truth in the room um I had um you know what I have a couple of questions that don't pertain specifically to ciling preference so maybe I'll wait if we want to continue that discussion have other related to the policy okay um I brought you can you
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can stay there if you like or you can sit back notes I think those would be questions for you so I had asked two questions last week um that I'm still looking for actually three questions last week that I'm still looking for some clarification on the first one is in um uh in the new board policy that the superintendent gave us the the markup um there's three questions I have one is under policy scope it says that the policy does not apply to Charter School admissions and the question I asked last week is whether or not we um have an inclination I hope to go to the state to ask them when we do our Lottery whether we could um ask that our Charter Schools follow our Lottery process rather than a random open Lottery process and so I'm still uh wanting an answer to that um because I think um if we're looking at getting a more diverse uh student base into our uh Focus option schools uh that should also be a um something that we're looking for in our uh PPS Charter uh sponsored charter schools so I'm wanting to understand if what the possibilities are of taking that approach um a second one is um something that I've asked for about for a few years which is if we have someone who applies for a um another school outside of their neighborhood and they're accepted and they start in that school and it's just a miserable fit for them and they want to go back to their neighborhood school um we currently say that they can't do that that they've made a a year commitment when I read admission which is five it says by area of residence students have a right to attend the neighborhood school where they reside with their parent or are supervising adult accept as provided in section four I'm trying to find where in our current policy is the rule that's says that your neighborhood School wouldn't always be your default um and I'm specifically asking because if it's an absolutely terrible fit um then likely we're going to lose the student they're going to drop out their family might decide to send them to private school to homeschool them that's not in anybody's interest either so um I would like it pointed out where in the policy um that past practice um is cited so that I could possibly bring forward an amendment to change that because my personal opinion is that your neighborhood school should always be your default you should always have a right to go to your neighborhood school um and then the third thing is again under Section Five For admission under two it talks about transfers to a different neighborhood School request to transfer to n school will be considered through the petition process and the next question next statement says petitions will be considered on an individual basis based on a standard set of criteria and I'm still looking to see what that standard set of criteria would look like and I don't know if we even answered to that yet maybe this would be a specific question do we have a standard set of criteria or when will that be available for us to see because again there was some sense that she just said she just said goe sorry I missed that she can say it again sorry so we're putting a packet of information together for you regarding our petition process what's in it now um what it might look like differently next year you'll have that in your packet this week and we would be prepared to discuss it if you'd like next week that would be great and if you so we have the specific criteria you guys let's let's wait turn please thank you um and I'm I'm uh you know also looking then next week for information on why we went to Lottery system to start with and if some of the concern was that it was it it it felt more arbitrary or less transparent um so I'm just U wanting to make sure that when we move from a from a lottery to a petition process that we have some really good strong criteria that are transparent to folks and people would understand why decisions are being made the way they are so could could you clarify the question that you had about uh why we went to the lottery because that no but I mean I know what you're saying but there's two possibility answers there one is we went to a lottery because we we made this other decision the other one we went to a lottery because of of other types of um other types of uh factors like well then we don't have to send our kids to this school I mean are you mean why did we go to the lottery after we made that because one of the problems that we had for 20 years one of the reasons we shifted of course was because people wanted resources in their own schools and they had more political power and they ended up getting that for a long long time in the school district that's one of the things sacket supposed to deal with so do you mean why do we go to the the whole idea of allowing kids to shift or not or you see we you coming from maybe you don't um what I'm what
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I'm specifically asking is that when we went to a lottery system back in the day uh what was the reason that we went to that I presume that before that there were some um percentages of transfers here and there that were granted but we went to a lottery instead so I'm just trying to understand what that's all about I'm I'm I'm generally supportive of your recommendation I have obviously some concerns around the ciling preference but the what I want to make sure is that when we it if we move away from the lottery especially for uh neighborhood to neighborhood or after um I just want to make sure that it's an an unbiased Fair transparent process that we're going to be working with so so um in our response to you um and we'll be prepared to discuss next week and hopefully in your packet um will'll provide some a brief description of the rationale that accompanied this set of policy changes that you're going to be looking at including creating a centralized law what was the rationale behind it for the folks who were making the decisions of the time great thank you Greg this is um I don't think I have all the information but you'd asked a question about legislative and charter schools and um I'm just going to share what I think I know um in maybe our first legislative um committee meeting we talked about for the past two years um we've we've tried to bring a bill or had a a bill supported by legislators um to for districts who have more than 5% or more of their student population in charter schools um to allow school districts to add additional requirements to those charter schools to say you have to not only fill a niche in the district but you also have to um help us attain what are basically our achievement compact goals um and so I think that's what I hear you saying is how do you match especially if we're trying to reduce disparities and all that piece how do we require them how do we engage them in that the last two sessions that hasn't been successful and my understanding is we think that this time it will be successful so I believe it's another bill that we're planning to to do but I think one of the challenges right is that a charter school is another public school um that we lose some semblance of control over but we are hopeful that we can get the legislature to say listen if you're holding school districts accountable and charter schools are part of our portfolio then we have to have the ability to to engage them in a way that helps us as a district meet our goals and have consistency yeah I mean it just feels like if we have a racial Equity policy and then we have sponsored public charter schools that we should at some level have some ability for them to be following the racial Equity policy and this is one of those pieces so my recollection is that when we review our Charter Schools we also look to see what their we do what their uh population looks like their demographic looks like like as part of that review although I'm not sure we have any ability to do anything about that well I think we kind of remind them always but thisly give us a little bit more right exactly yeah Tom did you have more I I have some thoughts y now is the time go forward okay um and I guess one question clarifying question which is um so we'll have a detailed uh petition the the petition process in detail the one that we're if we pass this policy we're going to use um next week um I guess we'll find out whether it's detailed enough I I um what what I I think we're planning on providing for you is some context for what the petition process is now um what the criteria is who's making decisions how it works now and then the modifications that we potentially see coming forward um if you're looking for something else it would be helpful to hear that now well um yeah I mean I guess yes I mean I this this kind of segue in my own my own thinking this is work groups I just wanted to share everybody absolutely yeah go for it um uh so I mean so I mean I I look at this whole on on what we're doing um and I'm it's to me it's a we're in a paradigm where um we're pitting Choice whether it's sibling preference um neighborhood schools uh against uh versus equity and um and I think the the superintendent recomend and Sackets all
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their all their great work um within that Paradigm have come up with some uh I don't think you could ask for better recommendations in that parad um with the exception of The Sibling preference um so uh and in many ways I'm I'm very very very excited in in all ways I'm excited about uh what it takes for this community to make sure that um every neighborhood school is uh is powerfully great and providing and delivering the services um and that's what I think we we all want I do get frustrated sometimes that um all this that we spend a lot of time on things other than what it takes to make schools great um and to me that's that's really the the focus where that's why I ran for the for this board and um I didn't run for all these other this other stuff that seems to come with it but I I'm willing to to uh plow through um so uh but the question that comes back to me is can we is there a uh a paradigm where choice and Equity are not opposed to each other but actually are catalytic to each other um and uh and so that's kind of what I've been that's that's where I've been mauling um and would like to have discussions with anybody who wants to discuss it and and I don't I don't know the answer but that's where that's the Paradigm I would prefer to live in um than a zero which I think is a zero some where we have to fit siblings against Equity I just don't think that has to happen and it's just not um so uh so this gets back to the choice aspect of it which is um so this this recommendation the choice now is going from the lottery in terms of the neighborhood the neighborhood schools uh to um the petition process and uh really understanding that and I know some of the sack members probably all of them some some are here today um have very have expressed concerns about this process so I I'm not really excited about saying yes to something without knowing exactly what that looks like how it's going to be implemented um and making sure that it that it's um that it has Integrity so to answer your question Judy uh and Carol um the um and then I think about the enrollment process so so you know so here's another Paradigm uh in in terms of choice and equity and blowing the Paradigm that they have to be um opposed to each other what if we lifted the um tomorrow lift the cap on bensing gave more people choices and increased the uh economic opportunities uh to uh to folks across the city um Benson is our number one has the best graduation rate has the best graduation rate among the underserved folks so these are just the things I that that this discussion about enrollment and transfer uh you know I've just been thinking about and so it's not for me it's not a not slam dunk clearly it's sack it took 18 months I I'm gonna not hopefully take 18 months uh we're not giving you yeah okay I know particularly uh yeah um my last question the last thought and which is for you Carol is um is I also wonder uh about we we have this boundary review process and and uh this issue is so linked to that but we're out of we're out of step with it um and so I would like to hear your thought process of saying okay this now and we're going to you know re REO our rules then we're going to tell you where but as opposed to a process the district
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review process which seems to actually be rooted in really really good um on on paper really good uh public process and hugely extremely um bold goals on how to make that work um whether we ought to just we'd be better off to do it all together and I know there's there'd be a lot of push back to that but I would I wanted to hear your thinking on that of the why of why do this why why are why are we sequencing as as opposed to actually doing everything together well and we've I think as we approached this back when the board talked about these two processes we described them as being very connected yeah and we um enlisted sacket um saying we want you as part of both um I think the policy um changes and doing those first particularly if part of what you do is retain more of the students in a catchment area will influence then what are the looks we're doing at what boundaries we we move so like it's all connected it's all going to be a dynamic process and it's part of why we want the same group of people in both um but we we collectively said let's tackle the policy the enoll transfer policy first before we start looking at boundaries but then it'll be I know it'll yeah but we're going to be we would under this we would implement it first before and we'll Implement even though they're connected yeah correct yeah yeah correct yeah yeah okay yeah just I just so I'm still chewing on that but I think what I what I thought I heard you say is that we're going to make changes to one and we'll have one run at least of what impact that has and I I think I expressed I don't remember if it was last night's town hall or at some point um a question about right being aware of what schools are going to then become overcrowded I can think of one very close to me that all of a sudden if they capture all their neighborhood Schools they're not going to have room in it um which then will inform boundary the boundary discussion but if you do them both simultaneously it's kind of like taking a guess at both and then having to redo it shortly thereafter where at least if you have one land first you have some Trends to look at and then you can lead it to in that's my thinking I guess and actually there there so we've got the the enrollment transfer policies we've also are setting in motion the review of all of the focus options which includes looking at citing of them we're also looking at the districtwide boundary I mean all of these connect to one another um and even when you're putting um Benson in the mix like part of this is about health of individual schools and looking at the Ecology of the whole system and it's all of these levers and I think um the policy changes we're talking about um go into effect next year for next year's kids we'll start to see the impact but it's not going to be a wholesale all of a sudden everything shuffles it's going to be we're going to start to understand what this impact is um but yeah we're looking at how are we getting a health of the whole system and you could do this with any part of it why were we doing boundaries first when we're going to change policies that then end up shifting what kids are staying in their neighborhood schools I mean you could say or you could do it together any one of these you start at any place and you're going to say why didn't we do the you know why didn't we start in the other place or or you could do them together which is which is what we're doing I mean I think that's exactly what we're doing is trying to yes I get why you're wrestling with it Tom yeah Ruth so I just wanted to offer a comment just just offering my perspective um that I don't see this is choice and Equity being put in opposition I see this as using an equity lens for our choice system and that's that's to me a crucial difference so I just have a different point of view on that and actually I'm going to say similar when you um like I think part of the whole tension of this is the desire in this community to have strong neighborhood schools and have some element of choice and US figuring out um how we sustain all of that in a healthy fashion and that's what we've been looking at is what's the amount of like um that what's the amount of each we can have and have them all be healthy yeah but when and and I agree and so I'm so so I don't see them pitted either I think that's exactly what you're trying when when you say uh you know certainly from my viewpoint on on The Sibling preference and I can to talk about the other the neighborhood neighborhood school as well but from a sibling preference um
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if we can't keep families together and increase opportunities uh and give educational access to to everybody then we also resign from the board and get another job we can do both and so it is pitting it's pitting one against the other I don't think that uh that that is necessary and and I offer Benson High School you know as exhibit a for an ability to increase um our opportunities using the equity lens but we're not we're capping it so you know and and um if if so it's just it's it's a you know we we we're looking at every little school as opposed to the system um so yeah I don't I don't I don't buy it for me for me it is it's pity and I'm not going I will not vote for that Craig I appreciate um you using Benson as exhibit a um because I think there are communities in this District who would actually use Benson as exhibit a to prove that by focusing um just on Benson or allowing neighborhood to neighborhood or not paying attention to focus option and the choices that we make in policy about it was exactly decimating their neighborhood school it was the thing that was keeping from robust or healthy programming in each of their schools um so I appreciate what you're saying and I hear what you're saying um but I think Benson can be used both ways um both as an example of how exciting and how well we can do equity and not um not at the expense of lowering a standard for example as often people worry but it also does become an example of um the flight that happens sometimes just through reputation of neighborhood schools um so can I just add Bobby what what what killed our neighborhood schools was not Benson it was no child and it was it was the Federal Government forcing us to label schools as failing and to move teachers out and to move principles out it was not Benson versus neighborhood schools it was the federal government and the the flawed No Child Left Behind Act and they're still doing it Ruth um so yeah I appreciate the discussion and and um um I think I guess I still from my perspective this superintendent's recommendations don't do have both and it's not pitting because to me especially given um Judy's additional analysis here I feel like we are we're using the equity lens um applying it to our to our policy and to our procedures and it's also clearly from this analysis maintaining um sibling preference so I think it does do both and I'm I'm suppored Steve we haven't heard very much from you do you have anything I have a bunch of things go ahead first of all I'm very disappointed in our public process around this uh I thought the meeting last night at Jefferson High School was one of the best I've seen in years and the fact that we're not going to have a couple more of those meetings and we're just going to have what we had tonight which you might as well send me an email as come up here and talk you have a little bit of Personality maybe but I don't learn anything new unless I'm able to ask questions in dialogue or we're able to talk about that so I I an objecting to the public process first of all and it wouldn't slow us down we could do it tomorrow on the next night uh I one quick question that is on kind of almost a little different topic Miss Brennan uh would you go over for me and for people in the audience the what are the rules for the Dual language immersion how you determine who gets into those what's the steps so pick a well someplace like beach as a as a Spanish Immersion okay what's the steps that gets in if they're overcrowded how do we decide there is a lottery correct so uh dual language immersion programs um most of them have what we call four different sets of slots um slot plots for students who live in the neighborhood and those are divided by those students who speak the target language and those whose primary language is English so in the case of beach you'd have Beach neighborhood English speakers Beach neighborhood Spanish speakers there are also slots then for students who um live in other areas uh for beach that includes priority for other students who live in the Jefferson cluster or the Roosevelt cluster and again those slots are divided by by um whether students are
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native uh Spanish speakers or English speakers so like with any other choice you would apply in the lottery um you also attend a meeting at the school and at that time uh indicate your child's language so that so that's where the language is captured and then your child's name is run through the lottery if you are a co-enrolled sibling of a current student in the program you name goes to the top of whatever bucket your child fits in so if your child is a native English speaker but a co-enrolled sibling they would go to the top up with other conrolled siblings of the Native um neighborhood speakers group so four different groups slots allocated based on proportions that are set um by the schools many of them are 5050 neighborhood um 5050 language so um there's some work to be done to get the numbers just right we'd run the lottery check the results and um send that information out to families do we ever have siblings in those schools that don't get enrolled there's too many siblings that fill up the spots it can happen no do we has it did it happen this last year has happened this last year did it happen did it happen this last year thank you for the question I not for any students who are in the neighborhood or the priority Zone although we did have I think two students who weren't identified as priority and when we became aware of that we fixed that problem after the lottery ran so technically the answer was yes it was because of a technical mistake once we learned of the mistake we were able to write it so all the siblings basically throughout all how many emion programs do we have so I want to clarify there are some siblings in immersion program Spanish immersion programs who don't live in the region and so they have a lower priority than those that do and we did have siblings who were not approved uh into answorth I believe last year um because they are siblings of student Ang worth though angor Spanish Motion it's not dual it's is it the as Richmond it's a Spanish Immersion program they have a set aside of 15% for Native Spanish speakers they have a set aside for neighborhood students and they have priority for students who live in the Wilson or Lincoln clusters Co enrolls siblings of students who live in other clusters did not get in last year so Richmond isn't Richmond and anworth similar in terms of the proportion of native speakers they are similar but are there different rules for anworth and for Richmond uh the the rules um the difference is Richmond doesn't have any kind of regional factors it has we know one pool for all students regardless of where they live um at answorth and other immersion program programs any other program that's collocated in a neighborhood school they have uh some set asides by by area by geographic area could be the neighborhood it could be um the the high school clusters around that area are there any other emersion programs that aren't collocated that there's all total immersions or the only one that's not collocated the only all immersions School in the district is Richmond okay thank you very much did you have more uh anything else yeah go ahead uh are we are we looking at did are we when we're determining uh what rules to have for the if you want to call them hardship transfers what do we call them petitions petition transfers thank you D some places they call them the hardship transfers have we looked at like Evergreen and Vancouver and Eugene and Corvalis and tilok what rules they have for changes have we looked at that on my do we have like a whole list like 30 or 40 other areas where we're looking at what they do and and we're trying to line up ours with successful ones and have we talk to them about what the problems they' had they they have for instance because I know when I was just I hate to always bring up my own personal experiences but when I was teaching up at Evergreen they had seven seven uh middle schools and you went to the Middle School in your area that was it unless and that was that was okay someplace do have we looked at all those do we have list of those that we've gathered up and stuff um so as as the Director of the enrollment and transfer center I can tell you that we have U I would say sporadically interacted with staff from other districts the most recent interaction that I had personally was with Beaverton looking at their process and what um uh what constitutes hardship how those decisions are made at what
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level at what time of year and the like systematically I would say no but um I would also say that the petition process wasn't a factor that sacket in particular raised as problematic so they weren't auditing the results of the petition process and saying we you know there are problems and flaws there now so we weren't um our at this point my thinking about what we'll do next is not based on um um uh on something that that needs to rectify problems it's more in line with um one making sure that we're aligned with our racial educational Equity policy and two um being prepared to for more volume because the thinking is if if you don't have an opportunity through a lottery there are still people who would be interested in transferring and we want to make sure that we're um managing additional volume well and following um the guidelines from withm PPS could we work with other districts and talking through that absolutely I'm just talking about if they have written policy we're we're going to have written policy concerning that so I P policy from Salem and Beaverton most recently worked pretty closely with um David Douglas and other nearby districts just in general to understand there's certainly a lot of pieces of that through the inner District the changes that we've had to make through our in districts talking with other districts about what constitutes a hardship there and not here but I would say that's within the guise of the general assignments that I have the pleasure of doing for Portland Public Schools just directing the office and um not necessarily specific to um uh what's coming before you for policy change okay I have a statement Tom do you have something just a quick followup question sure um so Judy would would you sit down with these folks to go over your model with them because I specifically was asked that they don't understand yeah and and as soon as um as soon as I can I'll be right in the back and I'll get this this guy right there that guy'll the numbers guy okay okay cool you're an analyst got I heard you see I heard you listening I was thank you we do okay so we have we're already about a half an hour over our time so director B go ahead and kind Move Along yep there a statement has it isn't really about the specific sacket thing it's about if we're going accept the sacet recommendations what we need to do in order to go forward as a school district and I think it it's all Germain to the topic of that's on the agenda right now it's all Germain to the topic great I'm leaning toward voting for the sacket recommendations with a couple reservations which would be no surprise to people who were aware of my previous work as a school board member any of my campaign information and my work in past years with a now archived blog PPS Equity I am pleased that the superintendent has brought forth these recommendations but if neighborhood schools with no neighborhood to Neighborhood transfers are to become the system by which we populate our schools similar to most other school districts then we can no longer continue with business as usual either here on the school board or in our central office administration if there is no safety valve for parents in a school which is struggling then we need need to change the way we're looking at our District's disjointed educational philosophy a principal said to me recently that he wished the central office would realize that their job is to support the schools not the schools job to support them after a year and a half on the school board this is the lesson that I have learned we need to support the schools in a manner which makes them better not which meets the needs of the people in this building including ourselves we can no longer be compliance oriented we must become School oriented we can no longer afford to spend $8 million outside of our budget of possible 88 FTE and put only six FTE in our schools and spend the rest on process and other assorted programs we can no longer spend $14 million on general education Consultants when this could be more than a hundred extra teachers in our buildings we can no longer afford to dally when a community is upset about their school and the way it is running hoping things will work out we will need decisive action based on what is actually happening there not some corporate education dream of what we what could happen if we only implemented their expensive programs we can no longer afford to Waffle on third grade reading and must get the Librarians and reading Specialists into the schools to meet the needs instead of relying on professional development scripted lesson plans and waiting for the promised Miracle of the Common Core and the esac a miracle which will never arrive we must build a solid Educational
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Foundation in our elementary schools and middle grade configurations upon which we can then scaffold the necessary people who can actually meet the children's needs this Foundation needs to have a whole child engaging component to it which gives our children things at school to look forward to and reasons to be there outside of the esoteric idea of getting a good education we need to make these things our priorities so people will be willing to partner with us in making their neighborhood school work let me tell you a story when Matt profit the highly respected PPS superintendent was working late one evening here in this building he received an Irate call from a parent just happened to pick up the phone her child had left his textbook at school and couldn't do his lesson she was mad at the school it hadn't made her son it hadn't made sure her son had left with his textbook what was his response profits he went to the school got the textbook which your son needed and delivered it to her late at night now some of you sitting in this audience might think this is nuts but it is the type of specific dedication to the education taking place in our schools which we need my colleague Tom curler often talks about wanting our schools to be the best there are we can only do this under the sac recommendations if we focus on our schools not ourselves if you can't do that and I'm speaking to my fellow board members then don't make or support these recommendations they will do more harm than good thank [Applause] you others okay so I just had a couple of things Jun um first of all I think I just want to say that there's only one reason I'm on the school board that's because I care about children and the decisions that I make on the school board I make because I think about everything that the people write to me when you come here and you testify I think about all those things I think about my own kids I think about my own experiences we all do and out of those we try and make the best decisions we possibly can for all of our students here at Borland Public Schools I think all of us here on this board are dedicated to your students to our students and to making sure that we do the best we possibly can so with regard to enrollment and transfer um I'm happy to hear that you said that you're going to provide us with the information about the petition because that's at the top of my list um I'm really concerned about the objective subjectiveness at that um with Bobby I'm very concerned about making sure it's unbiased Fair uh transparent how we do that and I appreciate your comment that we haven't had complaints about those over the last few years um but I would like to make sure that that continues and I think that that's a that's a real danger when when we if if and when we do away with the lottery because we will have a higher volume and it will be harder for us and the implementation which has not been our strong suit in many cases others it has been but the implementation will be what makes a difference on this so I'm very interested in seeing what you have um the other thing that I'm interested in and nobody else has talked about this tonight is um and it and it's one of the things that concerns me about the whole process that we've been going through and that is how are we actually going to get more people who are free and reduced lunch low-income people to apply I mean that's really the issue um we can change all the preferences and do all that but if they don't apply it's going to be for not so um I I would also like to see what the marketing is going to look like before we vote on this how are we going to Market these schools uh to the to our public um and then the other thing is I've had a little bit of discussion today with someone about um this whole process and we were talking about why aren't people applying or how do we get people to apply and he said well once you get them to apply then there's another there's another barrier there and there are several barriers that we know about but one of those barriers is is your school welcoming to somebody who's culturally different from what the school currently looks like and so this again goes to implementation what are we going to do to make sure that our schools are welcoming to those students that we're trying to make sure are going there because we know right now there's a low number free and reduced lunch a low number of children of color in those
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schools so what are we going to do to make sure that if and when they come they're going to feel welcome they're going to feel like they're a part of the school they're going to be at the PTA they're going to be uh volunteering in the classrooms and this is diversity of our current population or demographic is one of the strong suits of Portland Public Schools we just haven't quite learned how to use it and I think we need to work harder at that I think we've come a long way in the last three five years but I think we have a long way to come to embrace the diversity of our demographic and to welcome people into our schools and make sure they feel like they're their schools as well so that's another implementation thing that I'm very concerned about and then finally I think that um we need to make sure that we include within all of this um when we get ready to do the resolutions um a check and balance on it have we actually include something within our resolution that requires us to come back each year and hear what's happening yes so that we can make adjustments because this is going to be new um and we are going to want to see what's happening and we are going to want to make adjustments if we need to so those are the things that I'm most concerned about and that I'm thinking about and I haven't made up my mind yet how I'm voting on any of this so I'm continue to welcome emails from people I personally enjoy hearing your comments face to face um I also enjoy the town hall so I couldn't be there last night I had to work darn that other job gets in the way all the time um but that's that's really everything I have so thank you very much for being here tonight with us thanks to you okay so we move on good point you thank you okay next on our agenda is the always exciting comprehensive annual financial report we are so glad you guys are here tonight superintendent Smith would you like to introduce this item and I'll tell you what for for those of you who wonder what we do this is the comprehensive annual report that you also could read if you run for the school board it's available online they don't have it's actually really great the the audience uh people who are leaving right now but those those people on uh I'm not offended by any no it's it's actually very very interesting I think the first especially the first few pages where it talks about the history of the district and our uh recent financials it's it's really quite fascinating to to see what we do so I encourage everybody to go ahead and take a look at it so go ahead sorry wait and I'm going to introduce Sheree Lewis who is our senior director of accounting and payroll to present the report and I'm also going to say we received National recognition for this for the I think we're the longest standing District in the country in terms of recognition for our annual financial report so Sheree Lewis and Canada thank you superent and audience I'm sorry I cleared the room for you but um oh who see the most exciting thing in the day I'm sorry um I'd like to introduce two members of the team that help put this together sherone and David chick they help us put this together so thank you very much um so what's in your packet in that L wonderful 366 pages about 250 of it is the Light reading that you just talked about um basically in there as the superintendent said uh I want to thank everybody in the district because this does not happen in itself it takes everybody in the district from the schools we rely heavily on the schools I thank the Communications Department who put together the covers and the inserts that have the wonderful pictures that tell us what we achieved during the year uh uh anywhere from the graduation rates with the person cheering on the front page from the person paying with ro robotics so thank you very much for that it was uh very enlightening and uh I apologize if I say caffer it actually means comprehensive annual financial report and the other report that's in your packet is called the single audit report which is basically a report that says what we have in the federal money and H and basically how much we spent in any one given year um so I know it's enlightening reading so um right now we want to present to you that this is we have no findings in this year which is there are no internal control findings
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which is how we run our processes and procedures for internal controls and there are no internal control or findings on any of the federal money which is roughly 50 some to 60 some million dollar so that those were major things and as the superintendent said we in the district have been receiving this wward for 34 this should be the 35th year consecutive year that the district has rece received this reward and we have been in or participated in it 43 years the longest District in the United States and Canada so it's a wonderful thing and as you read the lightning fund documents I will just say the district in is in good standing we have uh 20 funds in the district and all over room in good standing we got basically what we call an unmodified opinion which basically we are in bre understanding um if you want to read the as we all go through college and hope there's The Cliff Notes The Cliff note version of what you're reading is on page 4 to 13 so if you want to take the other 200 plus pages and reduce them down to about 11 pages of excitement that's page 4 through 13 I just think it's exciting I'm sorry um so I get excited about this stuff so um if you wanted to at this point what we have them this will be the first reading the Auditors will come back on December 9th the following Tuesday they will present the financial statements and at that time we will ask you to approve the financial statements in its totality but as the state requires us we have the Auditors present the financial statements and we do the initial draft does anybody have any questions I wanted to compliment you on something just a silly little thing but uh I was looking at one word in your document called nater n a d i r looked at that too and I I honestly thought it was a typo and I was going to say what the hell is it so it was on page 2i so but I'm impressed because I looked it up back from it after more after more than a decade of steady decline beginning in 196 uh 19967 Portland Public Schools have seen increasing enrollment counts for the last six years since a nater in October 2008 so I can't take that accomplishment to David who put that there so I would love to take the accomplishment for that wonderful wood but I will I will pass it on to David well it you may me look it up so a nater is the lowest point in the fortunes of a person or organization go nice okay even more helpful anyway write that down I guess just showing that I did in fact read at least the pages that you indicated we should definitely read those are the great pages so I although I made kind of light of this I I do um say that you know it it's one of our major responsibilities is the finances of the district and do appreciate you uh bringing this to us and look forward to hearing from the auditor um next week so he may not be as fun as I am I'm sorry they're always good Greg I just I just wanted to say something I appreciate it is I know that um last time we were here um there was a question about the procurement card um and I was glad to see the the steps we had taken um have produced um and I appreciate the extra eff effort that we went through by pulling and auditing all the full Year's worth um I just appreciate that extra due diligence and I was glad to see the control is in place thank you work thank you Shar thank you yes a minut you have a comment question yes sir if thank you for this uh also thank you to Mr wine for answering my questions that I would have asked to you so you I saved you some answers there he did thank him he gave me good answers I thought uh one of the complaints that we often get around budget time is that our budget is incomprehensible and one of the answers we come up with is that it's incomprehensible because the state requires us to report the budget in a certain way and and but you've summarized this audit could we use the same careful a system close to that to summarize the budget and come out with a summarized budget that would allow people to actually read it who are somebody off the street who wants to understand the budget could we do that do you think um in response to that the answer to that question I would love to take the credit for it but it's governmental accounting standards that on page 3 through 14 it's the management discussion and allow analysis is the requirement of the federal and state government that requires us to put that in there in very specific detail between every fund budget comparison worth is capital those guidelines 99.5% of what you see are very
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restrictive guidelines in what you see so our latitude is very small in what you're looking at the cover page the back of the cover page the index everything else pretty much is very restrictive and very you have to put it in certain strategic order so that the the cliffnote version is by guidelines of governmental Accounting Standards we are required to do that the same kind of concept can be taken for The Bu budget and we kind of do that but we put a little bit more different of approach to it but it can't in the same concept I'd love to take the credit for it sir but that's not mine it's the federal government we have to follow well we could do a regular budget that we're supposed to do under the law and then we could do a summary budget that somebody on the street could understand could would that be a possibility that we and that's something that I believe superintendent Yousef and David and I are looking at a better way for uh presenting it for for everybody as a citizen to understand thank you very much I I would suggest that perhaps an audit format is not the uh sort of Common Man or woman's perspective on readable uh so you might I think I think what we're looking I mean I've I've been on boards for you know only 15 years or so and uh each year there are colleagues of mine that struggle with uh for the format of federal regulations and it's not it's not common speech and uh and I think in order to to create accessibility for our for records like this and certainly records like our budget um there's probably some other venues to to pursue but that's just my my opinion is a discussion with the superintendent Yousef and David and I is taking components of this along with the budget and create a version that is not structured by federal or state guidelines and make it more transparent for all members of the board and the audience to read excellent we like that thank you thank you okay uh next on our agenda um is our discussion about multiple Pathways uh superintendant Smith um yes here we go here comes Karina Karina wolf um who is our senior director of multiple Pathways to graduation is going to present this report and I'm just going to remind you this is part of um we began a um series of presentations to the board cluster by cluster where you got to hear from all of the schools in a given cluster and got perspective um this is the presentation that our multiple Pathways to graduation programs have put together for us led by Karina and they're totally excited uh to present this part of our organization to you well the information that you provided to us was wonderful so thank you very much thank you is this is the report that um 2013 is there something yeah refreshed so um good evening superintendent Smith School Board directors um I think what you're referring to um director nolles is a segmentation analysis which was on included on in the packet and is on the website and it is um data taken in 20112 that was then analyzed in 1213 and published in December of 13 so we're so it's all all the way the data is all the way back from 2011 right wow yeah so when do we refresh that um it's so we are looking at refreshing it um on last year's data for currently great it's kind of in the queue to be done again great thanks sorry didn't mean to jump on you there right before we got going yeah no it's great um so I what was just handed out different than what we got in our packets is there a reason that we got it it's the same it should be the same okay and I actually have um copies here in the um board boardroom as well no we've got it yeah okay thank you sorry so the purpose of tonight's presentation is to give um an understanding of the depth and the breadth of the schools and programs that multiple Pathways to graduation serves to ensure that all of our students suc um and I'd like to say that I have a presentation um that I'm going to go through my presentation and then I also have in the audience tonight are the multiple Pathways leaders and principles and so during the question and answer part I would um I would welcome their voices as well um if there are particular questions so I just want to acknowledge and honor that they're here as well you might go ahead and let them introduce themselves that'd be great okay if they're if they're right are they here they are and we were told we had do we have a loose mic oh there were a couple up here but
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they're not they can just stand up and say who they are and where they where they're principal we can hear it's okay don't be shy y go ahead I'm Dean BTO Hernandez I'm the assistant director of learning and credit options Christine I'm Christen miles and I'm the program director of charter schools I'm Carla gay I'm the vice principal for reconnection Center I'm Elise Huggins I'm the education manager at Portland youth Builders I'm Julie Prindle and I'm the senior manager manager of Social Work services for multiple Pathways hi I'm Serene Bertram and I'm the assistant principal with the Portland Dart School hi my name is Mark Van homon I'm the principal for the Portland Dart School hello Lorna fast Buffalo horse principal of Alliance High School hello Drake Shelton vice principal of Alliance High School hello I'm Cheryl James program director for team parent Services thank you great thank you Qui thank you very much you're bet and we're missing um Joseline bter is at the Coosa law conference so she could not be here today um so um so I have a lot of information to go over and I just want to also just share with folks that we are coming back in a charter presentation in January um with specifically around Charter School issues and then in the spring we're also coming back with virtual Scholars around technology issues so I just wanted to share that information um what we'd like to do to start um as you saw earlier is our our students tell the story best and so we have a video right now of some of our students the students that were here earlier were wonderful yes they [Music] were you know I was really falling behind you know and freshman year I did good in the 10th grade I started falling behind and I just really needed a up [Music] redirection but as I got older I started to realize how important school was well the year and a half that I have been here I've like I've made through a lot of progress that I didn't think I was going to do I thought I had to get my g&d stuff but you know I learned that I could actually you know get it all done it's a good fit for me because it allows me to go at my own pace you know what I mean so let's say I don't get something then like I said earlier it's more like the teacher there to help you I mean it's really important because you know you always need somebody to help push you the you know the extra [Music] mile if I don't get that degree or equivalent then I'm not really going to I'm probably going to be at McDonald's you want to have a good job you don't want to be working at McDonald's for the rest of your life and a lot of good jobs that require you you have to have a [Music] diploma but I could be on track to graduating this he that's my goal I slacked off day now I need to go here to make sure I still graduate I'm hoping in 10 years I'll be a veteranarian in 10 years I want to be able to look back on these days and say thank God lines cuz if they weren't there then what would I be [Music] doing EXC so our commitment is to provide multiple Pathways to academic achievement where all students are welcomed wanted and worthy and that's really the overview of multiple Pathways and we do that um through a series of schools and programs that provide um wraparound
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support on a Continuum from prevention intervention and re-engagement um and so the the programs that we have under multiple Pathways um are many all of the contracted schools are under multiple Pathways to graduation so that includes the charter schools as well as the um alternative schools the community- based organizations which we refer to as cbos so in the prevention support we have and when we talk about prevention intervention and re-engagement our our job is really to prevent High School Dropout and to promote student achievement so um what we do is we provide specific support um to to keep students engaged and enrolled in a variety of ways so when you look at Charter Schools Charter Schools offer an opportunity for Innovation and and learning models that are brought to our district when we look at learning and credit options we have Portland evening Scholars summer Scholars virtual Scholars and under virtual Scholars we also have credit by exam um and those are really our districtwide credit recovery programs and I'll talk more about them um in a minute we also have teen parent Services um and so you meet our teen parents where they are you heard from one of our wonderful um Teen Moms tonight and so we have teen parents as you can imagine all over the continuum with regard to intervention intervention and re-engagement uh with regard to intervention when when students are needing an alternative school placement we have Alliance our IND District alternative school which is on two located on two campuses as well as our contracted Community basic programs we have our day and residential treatment schools or our Dart schools um and those are schools where students are placed by either OA the Oregon Youth Authority or by DHS and so when they're placed in facil facilities that are within Portland Public Schools boundaries we provide the education services for those students we also have our multiple Pathways Social Work Services um and you just met Julie and we'll talk about that as well and then with with regard to re-engagement for our students who have left un been unenrolled or left their education um we have the reconnection center and we have reconnection services so this is the broad umbrella that is multiple Pathways to graduation and what I'd like to do is share a little bit about each of the each of the programs with regard to the segmentation analysis that director NL you mentioned earlier um this is one of the graphics from the segmentation analysis that when we looked at our high school system we looked at who's on track for graduation and who's off track and of the students who are off track how significantly are they off track and so the terms you can see from this graphic that the vast majority of our students are being served very well they're being served very well in their comprehensive comprehensive or Focus um High School what you see in the yellow bars is the students who are off track to varying degrees and the terms are National terms and I'm going to share with you the definitions so if they're old they're old 17 and older so between 17 and 21 if they're young they're 16 and under if they are termed as near they're within six credits of being back on track and if they're termed as far they're more than six credits behind with their coh peer of their cohorts um and so when we looked at as a system and those are again those are National terms when we looked at as a district we found that we have um a population which is um off track but they're young and near so they're not that far off track we also have a portion of our students who are older so they're 17 and above but they're not they're within one year of being back on track we have a segment of our students who are older and more than a year away from being on track and we have a segment of our population who are young and more than a year off track quick question sure um two things you might already have this never mind you might already have an answer go ahead I'm I'm hoping that's the case um so our focus in multiple Pathways is to really look at particularly those top two tiers but to look at our off trck students uh so all three of the segments of that triangle and most particularly um the two the top two the middle and top triangle and so when we look at this again this is from the segmentation analysis when we look at this we look at what's the level of service intensity that's needed to wrap around specific segments of our high school population um and so we look at um the top tier are
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the 602 and 201211 the 602 High School dropouts in our middle tier we had 856 who were significantly or more than six credits off track and in our bottom tier we had 2932 students who were slightly off track they were within one year of being back on track with their C so that is that so that's really our focus is how do we really look at who our students are and how do we wrap around them to stay to stay uh stay enrolled and and be successful within our alternative schools with our alternative schools report card we this is the student demographics that we have So within for students who need an alternative school placement in our alter in our in our alternative education programs the top to line that you see is those served by Alliance and cbos and the bottom is the PPS High School um system in in total so we served in 200 um and this is the pilot I should say from um from 1112 so in 1112 we served 2628 students and this are these are the demographics so 56.4 of them were students of color as compared to 45.9% of the General High School population 56% of our students in alternative education were male same age range 13 to 21 um where the PPS High School population is 1.7% our pregnant and parenting students we serve 7.3% uh we have greater special education percentages of students where the General High School population is 16.6 we serve 22% of our students our special education so we have a higher rate than the district average and then um the last two which are both significant is our high school population has a homeless population of 3.5 and we're at almost 10% of our students are homeless students um and then lastly our English language Learners 5% as a district and then alternative education were at 6.5 and again this was from um this was from the 2013 pilot and we'll share more about that what that says if you take that a little bit further is when we looked at the specific students histories the average number of schools they went to before they enrolled in an alternative school was four the average number of weeks does that does that mean that doesn't mean an elementary school a Middle School a high school that means right for for high schools okay thank you so the average number of weeks out of a PPS School was 12 weeks so while we have some students that are only out a week or they're unenrolled and they're out a week and they transition quickly we have many students who are it's it's much longer because the average turns out to be three months so we certainly have students who have been out a year or been out six six months a significant period chunk of time um the average age at entry into our into our alternative school system is 17.3 and then the average number of credits by grade level when students come into alternative school is the following so in nth grade they come in with one credit at in 10th Grade they come in with four four instead of six in 11th grade they typically come in with seven instead of 12 um and in 12th grade they come in with 12 instead of with 18 so that's the typical and certainly there are ranges on either side of that but that's those are our averages when you look at historically underserved when we speak about our racial educational Equity policy and we look at where our students of color in the particular populations that we call out black African American Latino um Pacific Islander and American Indian we are they are over represented as in multiple Pathways as compared to districtwide so the the red bar that is the highest is in our community based alternative schools followed by Alliance are in District High School when we look at exclusionary histories and one of the things that I know you've already received information on is that for students who've received one or more exclusionary meaning out of school suspension or expulsion that um that our graduation our four-year covert graduation rate drops to 45% from 68 so when you look at the disciplinary exclusions it has a direct impact on our ability to graduate students particularly at the four-year in the four-year cohort when we look at who our students are before they enrolled this year in multiple Pathways programs they were higher than at varying ranges but higher than the district average so our Residential Treatment schools our charter schools are similar comparable to the district average but our our
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alliance in District alternative and our community based alternative schools were at a rate five times higher than the district average when you look at our learning and credit options programs so again uh Portland evening Scholars summer Scholars virtual Scholars you look at the um this is by incident the average again is for Portland evening Scholars was the highest followed by summer Scholars virtual Scholars and then districtwide when we looked at in enrollment Trends over the course of the last seven years in multiple Pathways this is what we see so um we served last year in 1314 a total of 4,800 students our high was in um was in 11 12 serving 5100 students but you'll look at each of those lines very differently So within our community based alternative schools the top line on the red we've actually um reduced in the last six years in the last seven years excuse me 695 seats so one of the things that we know is that as a district we have less seats for our contracted alternative schools at the same time that we know with the segmentation analysis and um that with the segmentation analysis that said that we were 600 seats short as well as the good news of we're doing a great job and a much better job of re-engaging our dri out Youth and so we need that Continuum of placements for our students part of what we see with the green line the charter school line is that over the same period of time it's increased from um from 1150 students to 1882 last year one of the things that's important to note about our Charter of schools is while we have increased our Charter School enrollment it has not been an increase at the high school age so that the Char schools that we are uh have authorized in over this span of time have been either k5s or k8s um the two bottom lines you'll see um the the purple line is Dart the day and residential treatment programs which have maintained fairly consistently right around 500 serving 500 students per year and then we've have Alliance in the blue which has also um hovered and reduced a little bit um over the course of the last seven years um serving last year they served 364 students the year before that they served 342 students so we're starting very slightly to to increase our enrollment there and part of what this says also is just how do we have the right resources for our various student populations so with regard to prevention um our Charter School so our Charter Schools provide the opportunity to meet the learning needs through specific models um I just shared some of this so um so as of last year we had 1764 students um so what what was on the um trend line was eight charter schools in September we opened our n9th charter school which is chyros so that's how we got to um 1886 um we have nine charter schools and then we work certainly with the with the board School Board Charter committee um as well as you know our state organ regulatory statutes with regard to our Charter practice with regard to learning and credit options um again these are student these are students that we serve districtwide and one of the things that I think is really important to note is that when we talk about districtwide programs we talk about students in these programs we talk about students from comprehensive high schools from focused high schools from charter high schools from Community Based alternative schools as well as um at times the reconnection center so we're really looking districtwide in a variety of of um placements and school placements that our students have access to again accelerate their credit recovery to help them get back on track in summer Scholars which is our largest um credit recovery program we had last summer 1416 students enroll who completed a total of 973 high school credits so those are they complet half credits um each there's two sessions in each session you would get5 credit if you completed successfully um and so as a total for last summer we are our students earned 973 high school credits um that's followed by Portland evening Scholars which is happens during the school year and that we had 1260 students participate last year who earned 753 credits during the 134 school year um and those are offered in the evening at Benson High School and then virtual
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Scholars is our Blended online credit recovery option and we had 363 courses that were completed districtwide during the school day so one of the things that we have talked about and said is how do we help students receive Credit Recovery during their day or where they are and so virtual Scholars has been one of our opportunities to allow that to happen students do that during a free period or something like that they schedule them specific to so that's one of the things where the school counselor at this at the high school Works directly with virtual Scholars to to do that so they can look at their transcript and say oh you actually really to get to accelerate and get you back on track it's in these particular areas and if summer Scholars is an option Portland evening Scholars is an option other at home uh at this their home school credit recoveries are options virtual Scholars is one of those OP options that we have our virtual Scholars team of Highly qualified you know uh Portland Teachers who are working with students districtwide right yes if you uh went to summer school so to speak and you did the summer credit option what's the most if I was a kid who wanted to really Ram it and I was ready to go with whatever you had what's the most credits I could get you could take both sessions and get 1.0 credit that's it y to take 2.5 two classes of a half credit each you can't get through or four credits no we don't have them is and that's because we just have it that's because that's what the amount of time it takes to to cover the instructional time to get 05 credit so one of the things that we do certainly is that fits right in with 130 um as well as you know all of our OD requirements around um course time um and so part of what we do is we try to also maximize how many students we can serve with a districtwide option and so we've broken it into two three week sessions so if I got my one credit in the summer how many hours a day would I go for how many days you would go from 8:30 to 2:30 for three weeks for 05 and then they it's also open with an extended time for folks that need for students who need tutoring after that a period of time so that would be your you you could stay later than 2:30 but you are you would be required to be there from 8:30 to 2:30 for three weeks correct for to 0.5 correct then I come back for another three weeks for the 0.5 can I come back for another three weeks that doesn't sound like that exists there's two sessions there's two there's two sessions so we have 12 we U you're going six weeks 6 weeks 12 weeks okay thank you three weeks and three weeks I mean three weeks and three weeks but we only go we only go 6 weeks correct is that a is that a the reason we don't go 12 weeks is that a uh monetary reason or is that some other reason I I think that there's a number of factors and certainly budget um budget has implications for all of our programming I think it's also that we employ um largely our teachers and so it's also what works for their schedule as well as how do we create a program where we get the GR greatest amount of student attendance during the summer months so I think those are all factors that contribute to how we came up with our program model thank you team parent Services is another prevention program that we have um so we um follow all of our state um guidelines um and provide individual support group support and academic support so we have um services at all our te we have our team parent Services team who provides services districtwide wherever students are and we serve um teenage mothers as well as teenage fathers um the only service that teenage fathers do not get that our teenage mothers get is because of a a for medical reasons they receive home instruction for six weeks following the delivery of a child other than that um both of all of our services are for young men and for young women but we and we only have um child care in a couple of centralized places and we only have child care there's a slide um in in the future too but we only have child care thank you for bringing that up director rean we only have child care at Roosevelt High School and at Madison High School but we do not including our community based Alternatives correct thank you yes so as far as intervention our programs that um focus on interven vention and often intense intervention is when an alternative placement has um been determined to be necessary we have
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Alliance as well as our community based alternative programs so at Alliance Alternative High School we have two campuses um The Alliance at on the Benson campus which we sometimes refer to as ABC is located is collocated with the reconnection center so the students on the video were students who had come through the reconnection center and then we're now being served at Alliance High School in which is collocated um we also so we have students so that's collocated with the reconnection center it operates a Monday through Thursday schedule it operates a flexible schedule because we often have older students with varying work schedules or family needs it offers as you saw in the video individualized proficiency based instruction um and it serves students with a whole variety uh a whole variety of need um Alliance Alternative High School at the meek campus is our day program and it's has four CTE strands um and so there it's manufacturing Automotive digital media and natural resources and it's as you heard earlier from a student one of the things that we've done is we've implemented a social emotional learning curriculum to pair with our CTE Focus so can I ask a question here sure um I'm complet completely confused why we would have Alliance Alternative High School on the Benson campus and not have CTE strands as part of that model that makes no sense to me so can you help me understand that so I think one of the things that's hap that happened um is that Alliance day to night program um has part of what happened was we had different Alliance evening programs at different places throughout the district as an example we had U Marshall Knight high school so we served a lot of students at Marshall Knight High School when we closed Marshall Knight high school we we we served students at Madison night High School um and and then that has since um that program no longer exists at this time so part of what I think has happened is we haven't had such a concentration of just two campuses where I feel like now we are engaged in those conversation as far as how do we bring CTE to Alliance at Benson and I will say that there are um there so that's something that that we're exploring yeah I mean it it makes so much sense um for us to be using that facility with everything that it has in it so I I would love to hear more as we go on that and trying to get that to happen as soon as possible so those are our alliance high schools and then the other options that that we have for students are our community-based organizations our cbos and so we have two at the middle levels um that serve students in middle school and we have 12 at the high school level that serve students between the ages of 14 and 21 part of what we have up here as you can see all the things that we offer in our array of Community Based alternative schools um a lot of focus is based on our postsecondary Readiness and so it's really that College college career Readiness so um Pathways to postsecondary often you'll hear students speak about high school diploma or GED programs where it's with a transition to postsecondary as an example the programs that are served at PCC as you go through and graduate from their programs you get the first semester of PCC without charge so they they've done different things there's been very intentional things across our system as there is across our larger system there's also those f focused intentions within our CBO system to say how do we help students to do that bridge to what is their next either career or college cbos serve students who have been expelled by PPS correct but that's not only who they serve correct that is not only who what percentage of how many kids did we expel last year that ended up being served by cpos about do you do you have any idea I believe it was around 40 40 um and I and and that's an estimate so I can I can go we can go back and get that specific number but one of the things that's important to note is that when we showed when I showed the slide earlier about Progressive discipline we're also talking about students who have had more than one out of school suspension and so when they when we have students who have struggles with behavior and Progressive discipline if they are expelled from a particular school we they're expelled from a p being on a PPS building at times but it doesn't negate our responsibility as a school district to serve them and so this is our opportunity to make sure that we are
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saying we absolutely need students to continue their education and here is how we would like to help connect you to where is the next right place for you can you be expelled on Tuesday and in a CBO on Wednesday um I don't know that you could I'm not sure that that or within a week or so yes thank you can I can I just double check A clarification there um people I often hear people make the comment that um we we push kids out of our um comprehensive high schools into community- based organizations or alternative high schools to improve our graduation rate and I just want to clarify right that if somebody started at our comprehensive high schools and then leaves but goes to one of our district whether it's a contracted or one of our own high schools um that they their graduation rate or their success or not success is still assigned back to that Community comprehensive is that correct so we are they are PPS students so we're all in this together serving our PPS students and so um I'll get in there there's a little bit just a little bit about slides but what you're referencing um director blle is the accountable schools so if OD has a report card and you are an accountable school if you left an accountable school and you went and graduated from a CBO that account goes to the accountable school so it would go back to the Comprehensive High School and I have a I have graphic that will show just how how how the programs are working together to help our graduation rate overall thank you for the clarification that they're all our kids um so intervention our um our day in residential treatment schools um is comprised of seven schools and so I already shared a little bit about this um is that we have host mental health agencies who provide the mental health treatment and we provide the educational servic and we have multiple Pathways Social Work services and so we're working to incorporate Social Work services within our department so we understand that we have students with a high level of need and so we're uh we have currently we have three mssw interns and we're working to say how do we continue to meet the need as well as to work um as well as to work with with uh tspc in Portland State to look at how do we encourage folks to get students to get the initial School social worker license now that that is one of our licenses within tsbc okay and then re-engagement um so our reconnection services um they our reconnection services team provides individual Outreach to students districtwide and we do that in two ways so the reconnection center is a physical location at Benson where we serve students physically at physically in our location reconnection services I think of as outside and everywhere so we're outside we are in the community we're at a variety of schools we're in people's homes or in different um agencies talking to students about um how can we help them get re-enrolled in school and what would be a great school placement for them we do that both in a districtwide setting as well as we have hsgi our high school graduation initiative which focuses re-engagement efforts um in the Franklin cluster as well as the rose Bel cluster our door knocking campaign that we um and thank you um to some of our board members and our student representative who participated um this year um which we really appreciate so we are um activities related to our door knocking campaign we can't solely say it was the door knocking campaign but activities related to the door knocking campaign and related to you may have seen the um uh the murals that say if you left high school before graduating Portland Public Schools wants you back um we have 114 students have been returned since our door acum campaign so we know that we're really proud of what we're doing and we know that it's making a difference for students Steve ahead is there uh the door knocking campaign I think is great do we have other specific programs within this group of programs that actually go into kids' homes to try to get them back or go find kids who are homeless or whatever to try to get them back in school I was out I think I was out at uh Alliance and I said who do you have that can go out into the kids homes and I'm not sure if this is correct but I don't think they said they had basically anyone I mean do we have people who specifically have that as their responsibility some playes throughout this that is exactly this team so what we have is we have the reconnection services team and
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along with the um reconnection Center works together and this is one of the last slides I'm going to show you and it speaks to exactly that so I think it answers exactly your question um director gu so in the last three years if you go through just our last threee totals in the last three years we have done Outreach just like you're speaking of to students receiving Outreach Services was 4, 102 students of that 4,12 students we have brought back into school 2339 students so how many people how many people's on that Outreach team so we have five people on the reconnection center team the districtwide team and we have four people on our hsgi team that what which team our high school graduation initiative which is focused in the Roosevelt cluster and the Franklin cluster it's a Federal Grant and so it's we have we live by the parameters of the grant which are focused on those two clusters so I'm just going to um say so out of that 3 out of that 2339 students some of them were directly placed the ones that were not directly placed we had 329 students come through our reconnection Center so we had students who it might not have been an easy oh this is the great next school for you and it's really easily identifiable we've had students who had their PS had expired or they had different circumstances we really need to have some time um and to have them connect back to school and for us to really do a nice wraparound job of connecting and making uh and developing a true understanding of what really would be the best next fit for these students and so our reconnection Center is where students come but they don't have to come through our reconnection Center many of them as you can see 2337 um are are directly placed so that's a lot more than come through our reconnection Center um as far as that so our so our placement rate from the total 57% of the students we've done Outreach to in the last three years have been connected back to school of those students of the students that have been connected back to school um 54% of our students are students of color 58% of our students are male and 51% of our students are 17 or older and I think one of the things that we're really passionate about is making sure that we're not forgetting our older students there's some percentage differences that are pretty striking on that percent of total students or students of color goes from 38 to 59 the students place for the reconnection center goes 94 to 63 to 172 are you learning things those years is that's what's making the difference or do you have more staff is that what you think's making the difference uh which which I mean did we have less money in 20112 than we have in 20134 you know what's the discrepancy do you think what would you to to what would you attribute it I think there's a whole variety of things one is that they're different students and um and so our are and and we are learning every year so are we learning absolutely we're learning every year and I think one of the things that um that that we have had is we've had um some changes in our programming so for instance our collocation as being really collocated and and working in tanm with Alliance at Benson has really happened over the last two years so I mean there's different things where we've just developed programming in a different way over time so what's working um so this is directly back to director B's um question so the impact on our four-year and fiveyear graduation rates as PPS as a district when there's a lot of confusion around when students in their last um in their last point of enrollment is either Dart a day in residential treatment school or a CBO and so when we looked at as a in our research Department students who had their last point of enrollment being a CBO or a dart school then those students completing there's two slides this one is specific to high school diploma so what we've see in the last three years is each of the last three years it adds 2% to our high school graduation rate in our five-year rate which is certainly a more uh I mean our four-year rate is one data point but when you have students who are coming in at 17 and a half with more than a year behind a fiveyear rate is is is another really important rate for us so as is a six year so when we have we look at our fiveyear rates we have 3% each of the last three years as far as how students being served by the cbos or Dart schools are contributing to the to all of us working together for high school High School graduation with the next slide we have total completions so total completions include High School diplomas they include adult high school diplomas
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they include modified diplomas and they include gegs and so when we look at what our our last again the same last point of enrollment being our being our cbos or Dart School these are the results that we can peel um and peel back and look to say this was the impact over the course of the last three years when we look at learning and credit options over the last two years this is the impact as a as a total so 297.00 and 2,113 credits earned in 1314 oops and then when we look at our teen parent graduation rates so when we look at our teen parent graduation rates when the district has provided Child Care is the blue line and the numbers over the last five years have ranged between 77 and 100% and the and the range um in the in of the red line is for our teen parents for whom we have not provided child care it is at least 35% lower so that investment very clear here that investment doubles graduation rate for team parents yep doubles it and and why is why is are we not providing uh services for the red so we have we don't have child we have child care centers located at Roosevelt High School and at Madison High School those are the only high schools that we currently in a comprehensive Focus or Alliance doesn't have it either so Madison and Roosevelt are the only high schools um in PPS schools that that we provide as a district child care that we have child care centers and we know that we mirror so what this data says is we mirror National Data which is child care is the and the provision of child care is the number one barrier to high school graduation which is why it was in the Franklin design it's in Frankl so what's next is we have our uh our recommendations from our segmentation analysis so um as we have in our reconnection Center and certainly in our placement with our cbos been the early warning system for the district one of the things that we have done is to look at how do we build our early warning system so um the high school action team and particularly the subcommittee on um High School System alignment made recommendations about early warning system growth and coordination which is also in the segmentation analysis growth of districtwide credit credit recovery options additional home um high school credit recovery options continuing to provide services to improve our services for off track students in every um in every High School comprehensive Focus an alternative and additional Social Work capacity an additional counselor um with within multiple Pathways to graduation um was recently received with the um additional funding um that was just provided which is much appreciated at portlandian Scholars our alternative accountability framework is the report card that you saw and that we have here tonight and what we're really looking at is um is digging in and saying how do we measure growth in a variety of areas that make sense for the student population that alternative schools are charged with serving and so this is more about the report card we are currently doing the second year of our pilot report cards which will be out in March aligned with our and we're aligning them with our other metrics um lastly uh we're preparing for a request for proposal for next year every five years we have a request for proposal for our community based alternative schools and so we're preparing that and that will be part of next year's work and specific there's certainly specific populations that the segmentation call analysis calls out and we certainly know of who's over represented in our in our alternative system and so we'll have particular focus on the ability to serve those students and then um lastly we are um really thrilled that Portland Public Schools has been called out as one of 16 Exemplar school districts Across the Nation with regard to our re-engagement efforts and so we are we selected to host the fourth annual National re-engagement plus convening that's taking place here next week um and where we will have um School District representatives from around the country and policy makers um engage in conversations about how do we do and continue to do a good job re-engaging our students who have left school and so we're excited to that we welcome all of you to that that's next week um and we are partnering with Portland Community College the national Gateway to College network um um and the City of Portland to host that convening um which is funded by the national league of cities and Aspen um youth funders group um
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along with that work the blackmail achievement initiative work will be part of that which certainly has a thread from national state city and local with our school district so cor could you make sure we get information on that I would have loved to have had that on my calendar on this conference next week sure I mean I think did we I think you did I think it's on your tracker but we'll yeah do a specific um and so um it it's not everything but it's certainly a start of an understanding and I appreciate um your time um in getting to share about the wonderful uh students and staff and programs and we welcome you all um to come hear from us and come see um our students and staff in programs great so you ready for more questions I am and I'm sure that my team is too okay great thank you colleagues questions I kind of just like some clarification go ahead yeah we have this list right here it doesn't say which are which are ones that are controlled and run by Portland Public Schools and which are ones that we contract for could could we just Alliance that's run by Portland Public Schools correct and access that's important I think all these on the first page met Learning Center okay uh Portland evening Scholars so our contracted programs are programs that have their own sta that hire their own staffs so that's our charter schools and our contracted Community Based alternative schools so the staff that we provide is our special education staff to all of our programs districtwide including our contracted schools so Helen's view Mount Scott so cbos yes na OB meow Rosemary cont alternative schools who hire their own teachers and we provide the special educ so what's our responsibility with those Open Meadow which is a CBO we give them money but what else do we do in relationship to them anything else that didn't give money we we partner with them to to serve PPS students what does that mean to partner with them so we provide part of what we do in the way that we um that we claim all of our students is we have the same programming as far as supports with regard to bigger things like bus passes or with regard to bigger things where we um have services so we have professional development opportunities we have um training opportunities we provide special education teachers throughout our district um and so we provide resources as a district around training and professional development we also per their contract whether it's a contracted charter school or a contracted Community Based alternative school are responsibilities that the school also maintains separate from us as a district so what's what are the ones that are so we don't hire their teachers they hire their own teachers all right so um what other major ones do we were were do we have any other major responsibilities well we have all the major responsibilities that to meet all of our um district and state standards with regards to testing with regards to um graduation requirements with regards to instructional hours um so all of those things that are required by us and for all of our schools our contracted schools are required as well so what happens if they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing we have a review process with all of our schools every year um and so we have a fiscal review process we have a School site visit process and we have a compliance review process that happens for each of our schools every year both our Charter School and our contracted Community Based alternative schools and do we have a formula for providing money or do we just do that on a school by school basis no we have a formula both for our charter schools and for our um alternative schools what does this formula for the alternative ones so for the alternative schools we pay we have our formula which is 80% of our student um ADM and then we add we put that into a formula as far as um with our net operating expense and so so there's a district formula that we that we create that we create as a district for all of our students but the percentage that goes in for students in
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alter in our contracted alternative schools is actually at an 80% ratio does that include the all the other types of supports we do or that just include is that a lump sum we give them that money and then they use it how they think or they should make sure they meet our thing I mean which so for all of our contracted schools we've reimbursed per student served in the days that students are served so every month we've receive an invoice from every single school that says how many students they served and which days and we reimburse for students enrolled and attending at those schools thank you yep colleagues other comments I had a variety of questions so first of all thank you to everybody who's here and who does this amazing work with our kids um I was part of the high school action team several of us I think were um last year and um one of the things that we talked about quite a bit there was trying to figure out how to um support our kids better in our community comprehensives whether that would be care teams or graduation coaches or Social Service workers um trying to figure out how to provide similar kinds of services but at our community comprehensives themselves um is would that still fall under you and your department or does that then fall into a whole different category so services that are provided at focus and comprehensive schools are are not my purview so when we talk about with with the exception of credit recovery services and so um when we talk about like we've added counselors or social workers that would be in the St table for those schools typically or it would be um it would it would be in our general education Staffing and services so those would not fall under multiple Pathways so in terms of The Advocate on your staff Carol who's who's making those programs happen who who is that so Shay James is right now the person who's leading um programming for high school so she's over um and and then each senior director dor super supervises the high school in their cluster so you kind of have two layers of what's Happening one that's really focused on supervision of what's going on in the school and then Shay that's doing the systemic work so she um is coordinating CTE efforts for instance um the um early warning system development will be there things like high school graduation initiative though which actually do provide supports to kids in the Clusters and in the high schools are under Karina so there's a little bit of you know straddling of the two and hopefully there's some you have a relationship hopefully with our high school counselors so that if if kids are struggling they understand what's available absolutely and and um and one of the resources I was going to say actually is student services falls under our and their community and family Partnerships so um so there's a variety of districtwide supports that we are all connected and there's like uh like the superintendent mentioned that's follows there's the office of school performance as well as the office of of school support work together um in providing some of those services and actually a number of the support services you just heard about would like even the um learning credit options are for students who are still enrolled in Comprehensive High Schools but are supporting them staying in teen parent Services I mean there's a number of things that are supporting students staying in some of the services provided by our cbos like stepup are reports for to help students stay in their Comprehensive High School but trying to do more wraparound support so you've kind of got right right how are we all wrapping our arms around all of our kids yeah so um it would be helpful for us for me at least prior to our next budget development to also understand what is being done in those areas so if Shay or the senior directors could come and and talk with us so just as we're trying to figure out how to prioritize and have the most impact on graduation rates do we invest here do we invest there um probably both but um I'd like to understand better where you think the the biggest impact can be made and I'm always wanting to try to have Services as close to home as possible and one of the things we had prioritized for the staffing process this round was looking at the um schoolwide support table which is looking at um counseling librarian I mean what are all of the other adult support roles in that we think believe
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each School needs to have so that's one of the directly responsive to that and we will be talking about that with you guys because one of the things you mentioned is that we're five or 600 seats short of capacity that we need and then the immediate question is but do we need that out in the C world or could we be bringing that those same sort of resources in housee and right questions just trying to understand that right questions um I had one um question that's um I'm a little puzzled by if you can help me so I've been um serving on you know as I've been going to all the Portland gang task force meetings um every other Friday for a couple of years now and I've recently joined a juvenile justice task force I've also been asked to be on the local public safety coordinating Council task force on r Equity recently which I'm just going to start to go to those um when I'm at those um especially at the gang task force I've been really grateful to see some of our community- based organization Partners U niia uh is there always um Helen's view uh poic huge presence um Rosemary Anderson folks um what I'm not seeing as much Carol is uh who who at Portland Public Schools is attending these kinds of meetings regularly because all of these meetings are are basically trying to work toward the same thing which is supporting our youth who are sometimes struggling and whether it's um the county county folks there city folks there pastors uh community- based organizations I mean everybody's there for the same reason they're trying to support our youth so I'm trying to figure who who at Portland Public Schools is our contact there so within multiple pathways is we have attendance there from our hsgi coordinators attend and then often Miss Cheryl James our teen parent program director um also attends those meetings so could you make sure they introduce themselves to me sure at those meetings so I know who they are so we can kind of coordinate together I often give little updates and I would love to hear them giving updates at these meetings because there's such a thirst in the community for engagement not just from Portland Public Schools but from all of the molma County schools because we're all in this together we're all trying to figure out how we interconnect and partner um but I would just love to see a much I can tell you there's a yearning in the community for more engagement from K12 in all of those discussions and maybe we're there and just not being as visible or outspoken as we can or should be um I was going to say Tammy Jackson also serves as arle as on a number of those lenzo po serves on a number of things things and actually our um we just had a team who just went and presented our discipline data right and it was wonderful people were thrilled to hear from them and they did an awesome job but great we should be attending regularly George woy often attends um and there's one other person who does but I'm just not seeing the consistency or at least it's not visible to me okay um and I think it should be I think it's a huge opportunity for us so thanks Matt couple of quick questions and uh then a couple observations so hopefully we can get through them real quick but uh the first one is is regarding the re-engagement reconnection services and I'm interested in knowing what uh role uh Our Community Partners can play in that and what role they do play in that uh reconnection work car you want to come answer that sorry I didn't mean to your chance to get stretch your legs yeah stret leg thank you I'm the vice principal at the reconnection center and I was um a part of the start up of reconnection services before it was known as reconnection services in 20101 so I've been with the program in a variety of fashions for several years um one of the things we uh to somebody brought up the timeline of the reconnection services and the change in the data and what I'll just say is that in 20112 we added Outreach coordinators prior to that we were just the center so when we added Outreach coordinators it took us a while to get some traction around their role um we added two initially and now we have three who are Outreach coordinators go they do go to doors knock on doors go in literally jumping fences while kids are escaping out the back window to say hey we want you back in school we're not here to get you in trouble so and we have plenty of stories of that um with regard to reconnection service this is one of the areas that we know we are working on is coordinating with the folks in our community based alternative schools and in Juvenile Justice we do have folks who
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perhaps inconsistently but do go to gang task force um meetings to try to connect those Partnerships and so one of our pieces on our work plan is to create a more cohesive um approach to networking around re-engagement and we're actually working on a grant with some other partners right now um Nia included to figure out how we can have a strategy specifically around a countywide um coordinated effort around re-engagement because we know that every single one of our programs is also doing the same work so how do we not trip over each other but how do we do a more coordinated effort and and that that really is the next edge of our work yeah and one of the reasons I ask is that I I mean it really comes down to how do we uh how do we address absenteeism how do we bring kids back into school what is remarkable with that I'll actually I'll get that in a second with three FTE I'm interested in this last year 840 number um total number of students placed in schools was that across the district so it included comprehensive schools alternative base Charters and all of the above and so yes so we pull that data from a database of out because we don't our district database doesn't include students who are out of school right so we keep our own database and then we match it up with our synergy dat the students who are out of school then come to us through a variety of methods both through those three Outreach coordinators also through referral to Juvenile Justice department of human services they may be coming out of a treatment Residential Treatment place and we collectively put that data into a database and then collectively look at how many of those students are placed in the school so that's all that's all high school and and yeah that's high school students there's also middle school students in a different bucket in dat and I think back or to the comment portion I think this is important because particularly over the last well yeah over the last year and even more than that um if you've been a part of the and tracking the alternative based uh um uh work within this District um you've had people march in talking about the drain of resources out from comprehensive schools into alternative schools and uh and what you're describing is not only a an increase in graduation rates this last year by 6% in a four-year cohort but in a five-year completion by 12% you're also talking about capturing almost $6 million in revenue from the Lost revenue from these students and that's a conservative number a lot of these students based on the demographics you shared a lot of these students come with a lot of entitlement dollars they come with a lot of resources with them so uh 7 million conservatively I don't know another program frankly within the district that it both improves graduation rates and and is revenue generating how how much revenue are we generating now if we're bringing back 7 million how much does it cost us to get to that how much are the total C What's the total budget of all the uh alternative schools that we're talking about here this evening that took from the school district from the school district it is um approximately 7, 400,000 so we're pretty close to 7 million if we're generating 7 million we're spending 7 million right I'm not sure how it generates and the other thing is Morton's reasoning the other programs you don't understand capturing students I understand capturing students I'm just wondering if it cost 7 million to capture students worth 7 million it how does it generate Revenue I don't understand that and not that I'm not for it I'm I'm for putting more money there but I don't understand how it would generate Revenue so that the 7 million that Matt is that director talking that's the that's of the 800 some students that we re-engaged right we serve between our contracted alternative schools if you're just talking about those an alliance over 3,000 kids okay so those 800 are a subset of the 3,000 and the 800 are not only in the um the contracted Alternatives and Alliance they are also in our Comprehensive High Schools about I don't remember the percentage but there's a percentage of those students who re-engage back into their neighborhood high school and they come through the reconnection center because they were out of school for some reason and when they want to come back it's not the right timing so they'll come and spend time and do credit recovery with and then enroll so my point 7,000 7 milon 7 million and it's 30 and it's 30% back you would be recapturing 30% of the 7
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million I'm not I'm sorry I'm not following your math all what I know is that director Morton said that it's about 7 million of the 800 that we re-engage that's 7 million of re-engaged kids through our database through our reconnection services it's not necessarily all of the students who've been re-engaged many of the students who come back to either a comprehensive high school or a contracted school walk back in not through reconnection services at all but mostly through Word of Mouth friends family that sort of thing so do you chart that we could we don't have that IM I wondering because I was trying to actually see where you were generating the money that he was talking about because I couldn't put it together in my head so we don't collect money on on students that aren't in school do students but we have to spend a certain amount to get that collection and I'm just saying that it is it actually generating funds or not I don't know doesn't sound to me like generates $800 million just because we spend it doesn't mean that it isn't generated well sure there only generator so that's why this is a confusing thing it is I some people don't want to know who was that Ruth I don't want to know I I just asked six questions trying to figure out why would I not want to know took them six tries to get it to you and it didn't work and they're still not there no that's right so I just wanted to say thank you so much to everyone for all your great work and for the um thorough presentation and all the information and I guess I just wanted to sort of echo or reinforce the just the really appreciating your um everybody's focus on a system and that we need to get better at that and really um so for instance I mean I know sometimes with all the different challenges that many of our students are facing that Gap piece is is so disturbing of leaving in the length of time and how hard it is to get back on track everyone's working so hard to do that so just just looking in terms of our budget again hoping that we're going to see you know soon in our budget discussions a a comprehensive system wide that includes our alternative system as well as a comprehensive how they're working together what you were talking about before Carol I'm really excited and interested to see all that and then to see specific budget requests and kind of the plan of how we're going to go forward um so it feels like we're moving away from the the siloing of the past and that we're really seeing the importance of having that connection there and having it be a a system that's that's serving our kids regardless of where they are but is really mindful of of of that and having that minimizing those um those gaps that are so um destructive to Student Success and also just wanted to thank you for organ ing both the iners and the video testimony from students and how powerful and inspiring that is so really appreciate that thank you Craig I just wanted to say um in the short time that I've been on the board I've just really appreciated the increased accountability and the efforts we've made to make sure that it's both a cohesive system and that we're doing right by our students I mean as I look at the principles here and the support services here um it's folks that are being really intentional about about what we're doing and how we're doing it um and really understanding that it's about support for our kids um and so I just wanted to say thank you for the work that's gone into that because I've seen a significant change um just in the three years since I've been here um I also want to mention um that this might be a little bit in your purview but probably more outside but I'm looking forward to hearing more about our early warning system and I think that'll be part of um our budget discussions um because I do think that's an area that we still um it'll be important for us to wrap around students early um and there are some indicators that we should be able to know pretty early and um I'll be interested to hear how the high school graduation initiative plays into that um because I know I think you mentioned that it's a Federal Grant and it probably will be ending uh soon um and so just how do we continue that work or what it is because what I've heard from sites is how important it is to have those bodies to go out and connect with the students and to say hey we know you're there um and we're noticing you're missing can we help with something um that's what I have got that well Tom did you have anything okay Bobby I had a couple more clarifying um questions and then a couple of others still um I was a principal for a day at Pioneer um schools and um and I know they're more specific to special ed but I I think I had assumed they were kind of under your B W also so a lot of people um that's a common thought and it makes sense because
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there're students who are in an alternative school placement um and so Pioneer is um is completely special education students and so they are served under the special education department the other thing that I would say is for our Dan Residential Treatment students they are either placed by organ Youth Authority or by the department of Services which is not necessarily the case with plant Pioneer there are PPS residents okay do you interface with them a fair amount Yes Yes sounds like good I hope I would hope and also um this is just a silly question but mlc is an alternative school is there a reason it's an alternative school versus a focus school so I'm just not putting my head around that one still so mlc and access are also alternative schools the the reason that they don't fall under this umbrella is because the primary purpose for Alliance is Dropout recovery and kind of that alternative placement and that and there are seven reasons by Statute for having an alternative school we just really focus on the need for alternative placement in a much more narrow Focus which is kind of the students that you see the students that we've articulated that we serve and so there that so there's is a broader Spectrum with regard to the alternative student statute you but as I was reading the materials for this meeting it included access and mlc under your so we try not to confuse folks and so when we look at who are believe it or not so when we look at who are or who are alternative schools are or where our our where our alternative schools are we list them together because they are all alternative schools by Nature they're not gened Schools they're not focus option Schools they're not Charters and so we list the three of them together because they have the same category with regard to organ statute so I'm going to just say part of when we just as part of enrollment and transfer and um one of the S one of the recommendations is that we go through and we do the review of all of our Focus option schools and we included mlc and access in that review precisely for this reason because generally speaking like an alternative has been about um services to particular population of students with particular needs that you're addressing with the alternative education services and the focus options have been more a um particular program model um and uh or program philosophy access access to me makes sense as an alternative an alternative because it's serving a specific population but mlc feels like it's more of a program so I'm and with that and that's exactly the conversation we've had many times which is why we said let's put these in and just do the review and re ask the question and where do they fit in our system so okay yeah and this exact dialogue happens frequently so so I had two more questions that the first was you uh gave us a survey a high school exit survey yes and the last question um talks about have you and there's a whole variety of questions filled in an application for postsecondary been accepted to postsecondary taken a community college all these different questions and I was surprised at how frequently the answers were no because I I guess I I of all of our schools I feel like our alternative schools are kind of trying to help kids get through and moving on to the next step so is that should I be surprised by this or go ahead so uh this was a survey that was created several years ago when we had a contract with Pacific research and evaluation to evaluate our programs um one of the things that we asked our programs to do is administer this survey to all school all students who were leaving their school at any time during the year or at the end of the year um over time the intent originally was that this these questions would only be answered by graduating students okay but I but over time I believe what happened and and we've actually suspended that because we're initiating a new climate survey districtwide over time as I think that all the students were answering these questions and you might have you had a nth grader exactly or you had a student who was two years away from finishing okay whatever good I'm glad I asked the question because it didn't make sense to me so um when we did have um High School cluster principles come last year and ask one of the questions that was always fun to ask is if we could give you in the next budget cycle a couple million dollars what would your highest priority be I would say thank you any any sense of what the highest need or the where you're just itching to get a little bit more fun um so I think there's a there's a lot of ways that um there's a lot of need and there's a lot of things as far as
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wraparound supports as far as Staffing and FTE as you've articulated many times we've been as everyone all you the directors have we've been in a cut Lo for so many years that last year felt nice that it was the first year where we kind of exhaled um for a bit and it would be really nice to start building back to where to previous levels where we've been previous where we've been previously um I can think of a variety of things the discovery curriculum that we've done at Alliance at Meek I think is is I'll be very interested and I'm very optimistic about it making a difference with our student retention and our and how that unfolds um I think there's a variety of of needs that we have the largest need that I think we have is that we don't have enough seats for our students in alternative schools and so I just think as a system when we look next year for our RFP the students that I worry about the most are when we bring do I mean we're doing a great job Carla and her team and Joseline and her team and others are doing a fantastic job my biggest worry is where do we where do we welcome students too okay that's good thank you when you say that are you talking about Portland Public Schools or are you talking about cbos because we get back to that same com ation about revenue and if we added more seats in those we would get the revenue from the students coming in so when we look at the demographics that were up early and they're on this report card that show students have been to four high schools prior to coming into an alternative school I would love we serve like Carla just articulated some schools will go some students will go back to their neighborhood school that will be the right next choice for some students that will not be the the next best choice for a lot of our students who will have told us we've been there we've tried that and so I think in our alternative Continuum of services and interventions we need to have a variety of placement options for the different students we serve so one and I'll just give one so when I said that I was talking about Alliance not our comprehensives so Alliance or cbos or both both I was when I you showed that chart up there about charters and how there were fewer students but in the same breath almost you were talking about how the need was great I I was having a hard time seeing how those two are matching and and it is because we are not Contracting for as many seats again I guess it's for me it's like if it's a revenue issue if we're receiving the money from the state to educate these kids why aren't we going ahead and and developing more seats we've also lot a number of our um CBO have actually during didn't survive the recession right right and actually went nonprofits that could not sustain the financial model to to withstand the recession yeah I mean truly we saw a number of nonprofits go under and we heard the um instructor a teacher from uh Meek talk about how crowded they were also so I guess the other issue or question is is there going to be another place we already heard about closing down different Meeks around and so I mean that's another question correct actually you know another factor that we heard is as we have in like when we added Our World Language um CR uh credit requirement it we had a number of our smaller CBO um Alternatives who could no longer meet that graduation requirement yeah it was too hard to do in a small setting um and struggled to do it for a number of years and then just couldn't and went decided to go out of the high school business so that's that's exactly right I mean we have essential skills our requirements are just different and more and more intensive than they were previously I just want to really quickly clarify and or confirm that um our District boundary review process and our um sort of systemwide reviewing including our Alternatives as well as our early Ed I mean it's this the whole system right as far as where they're located you mean and we should add located location and need there's no boundaries for them right right but I mean that that conversation is going to program configuration and I'm going to say yes I don't know that we've called that out specifically but yes we're looking at systemwide how are we serving our kids and where are we locating things and what's the system might impact by how we locate and Early Education as well correct right rather than displacing and yes right one real quick thing that I forgot to uh ask and you may or may not have this I think I'd be interested in seeing it if you do but the uh the second slide of content where you have the on track off track young old near far um I would really be interested in seeing the uh we know that over 50% of our students and alternative
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schools are kids of color um I'd be interested in seeing that disaggregated across um across populations so if um if you look I'm happy to get that to you if you look at the front of the report card it does it as far as for students in our um cbos and Alliance great so you'll see that it says um black 20% Native American 4% Hispanic 21% multi 8% Pacific Islander 1% white 43% Asian 5% okay thank you okay yeah great so um I I also just had a couple of comments and questions first of all being thank you very much this wonderful information and thank you to all of you who are attending tonight we appreciate you being here um one of my comments is that I think that we always have to remember that as much as we would like to have all of our students return to our comprehensive high schools there are those students who just won't or can't whatever the reason and so I'm very pleased that we have these Alternatives that are available to those students so thank you again um I asked you about the charters um we we also had uh the same um teacher speak tonight about an increase in special education students at Meek so over to over 50% of the kids are special ed is that is that a right number and what is what what why it's not over 50% it is it has dramatically increased for in the last two years and part of and I think there's different reasons for that so one thing I will just share um quickly is that as we had more special education students attend Meek this year we have asked for more additional FTE after the beginning of the year and we have had some adjustments within our special education teacher system to accommodate for that and so um so there are more special education students within the alliance system and we are receiving more Staffing than we have in previous years for those students so that is one piece of information um the the point of it being um more than 50% is not our intention and that um you get into kind of different categories of populations and that hasn't been the intention and it is not the intention um in at Alliance and so one of the things that we also have when we just articulated is and and you've seen it um in the slides as well as when superintendent Smith just talked about the schools that are closing is we have our special education students struggle at a greater degree um in our system and so they are over represented in our alternative system and we have fewer alternative options than we've had in the past so we have we're carrying them a heavier list with a smaller number of schools okay okay and then um I also noticed in the materials that you provided for us that um and I could have this wrong but for the summer uh and the even even and all of the um there's a charge for those so I was curious why we would charge our students for those when on the other hand we're bringing them back for fifth year or if they're in an alternative program there's no charge why would we charge them when we by doing the summer or the other scholar programs they could graduate on time and so one of be in those programs so one of the things that we've had is in the short H history of the in the last six or seven years um we've we originally had four grants that um funded the majority of Summer Scholars and what we've had is we've had those grants expire over time and so when it's beyond the calendar year part of what we've had is we've had a tuition base and we've worked to reduce that and there are budget implications to that so I think those are um one of the things we have is we have categories of how do we serve students tuition free and we are working to do that as well as our student population in summer Scholars has shifted to a greater degree of free and reduced lunch students than it has been in the past and so we've made those um those financial shifts as well where it's a much U it's either free or it's a very it's a much smaller um tuition base right so when when you're listing the things that are your priorities where would that fit it it's up there because one of the things is that when I talk about it being beyond the this calendar gear then the summer programming we
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don't collect ADM for those students and so that is Def certainly a budget consideration really wow but schools can can collect their ADM if a if they retain a student for a fifth year that's great that makes a lot sense okay not okay thank you Steve what's the percent of kids who are not in special education who are have severe reading uh problems you can Divine severe however you'd like so you we can look at I don't have that data with me at the moment you can look at any of our school websites and we can talk about the amount of students who are meeting are exceeding in either math or reading no I mean s leig ones not meeting or exceeding but like two three four years behind in Reading do we keep that we have those we we can get that information for you we have that information yes can you send that to me if it's not difficult sure thank you anybody else no great thank you so much sorry we kept you so late nice job you guys appreciate you all being here thank you again everybody out there [Applause] I'm gonna call for a five minute break perfect okay at this time um we'll move on to our next agenda item which is school Improvement plans um superintendent Smith would you like to introduce this item and these people I would so we have jela Fontaine who's the senior director of funded programs and Greg wallik who is the director of school programs who will soon be joined um by others while let them introduce um talking about our school Improvement plans and really looking at um this was something that we did an audit on or the board the board's auditor did an audit on a number of years ago we responded to we piloted and we're now going districtwide with a particular School Improvement plan so I'll turn over to Joe I'll turn over to Greg good evening I'm Greg wallik director of school programs and I'm here with jul fontin director of funded progr and as the superintendent said we're going to be giving you an update on what's going on with regard to school Improvement planning in our schools this year and we're going to be joined in a few minutes by um Lisa Mcall senior director for the Madison and Lincoln clusters and by Emily glasow the principal at bestel elementary school first though a bit of context school school Improvement plans are intended to help schools increase academic performance by identifying instructional weaknesses selecting new instructional strategies setting achievement goals and assessing results beginning of the 90s all public schools in Oregon were required to develop and Implement a school Improvement plan since then Portland schools have implemented plans based on District develop processes timelines and formats with varying degrees of success as the superintendent mentioned in February of 2013 we learned in a report to the board by the district perance auditor that while some principles believe the plans provide benefit most do not use the plans to guide and Lead instruction the auditor recommended that if the district chose to change its process and format it should consider the Oregon Department of education's recommended approach that uses an automatic planning to it in a response to the auditor's report the superintendent wrote We Will assess how well the OD recommended tool can effectively serve all schools we hope that the tool can be custom to B align with our strategic priorities around racial equity and our key performance indicators the tool now called industar had already been required for use by the Oregon Department of Education in our 15 focus and priority schools and this year beginning this year it's also required in our other Title One schools so a total of 32 schools all together during the 20134 school year the regional administrators and collabor with the offices of teaching and learning and student support reviewed both the tool and its implementation in our focus on priority schools we looked at especially at how the two aligned with our district achievement priorities and our successful schools framework based on this review was a regional administrator's recommendation to the superintendent that industar would be a valued if used by all of our schools is especially useful now that has been tailored by the state working with um the districts to 34 indicators of work the superintendent supported this recommendation and in May last May an implementation plan was shared with our principles and you can see the timeline up on the screen last may we
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met with all the principles here in the Board Room and share with them our expectation that this would be the tool used in all of our schools we shared with them the plan for providing uh orientation and training in the use of the tool over the course of this summer and the expectation that's beginning this last August and going through December that each of our schools who hadn't already done so would be doing a self assessment that is part of the tool and that Joe will be talking with you about our plan then is for the schools having finished a self assessment to use that information to identify their priorities and to develop comprehensive achievement plans between winter break and spring break comprehensive achievement plans is the same ter the term they use an into start for school Improvement plans same meaning our district objective is that by all schools have a cap in place aligned to the district priorities and successful schools framework to guide the work as we all plan together for 1516 City directors have been monitoring this ongoing work during their monthly meetings with individual principles and Joe and his staff and funding programs have been providing orientation and training as well as technical consultation and individual support to principles and school teams so I'm talking about the develop of this tool Joe's going to show you what actually looks like in practice so the industar system is a web- based uh tool designed to guide schools through the school improvement process that'll also customize their work to creating a transparent product that's easily managed and monitored the work will generate a a comprehensive achievement plan that will replace the previously required School Improvement plans the state of Oregon has been using indar for a little over four years uh by the fall of 2015 all Oregon schools would be expected to use indar to draft their caps and and present them to their districts my charge is to kind of walk you through the tool a little bit and answer questions that you may have about that so what I've done is rather than running through putting the whole tool on there and Diving through it which is very technical and very deep I've just taken snapshots of the critical Pages for for me to share with you um this is the front page and it shows that this is a coded product which means that all schools even a Karina schools that are um um uh alternative schools all have codes that you can access uh these uh their uh programs um these will also be available to the public so the public can also see each school's program if they so desire that makes it extremely transparent um it is a product that is given to all school districts by uh the Oregon Department of Education so there can be some commonality in the design product this is the front page of uh sit elementary schools uh cap and I chose it since I had been at sit for the last couple years I'm I'm very familiar with it and I wanted to just maybe walk you through a couple of technical aspects of the tool that I can show you by using their page um most importantly you'll notice that the um this process right here is there's a three-step process as continuous Improvement um also over here you'll see that there's a snapshot that helps you track a lot of information that comes out of the product as it's used now each School in Portland Public has begun the assessment process they sit down with a small team of teachers building leaders and they examine what the school has been doing using the 34 indicators in the tool you'll see here in the assessment thing that it says 34 out of 34 were assessed by that team and they examin each IND individual School using those research-based indicators to identify which of those things are really going to change the work at the school prior to doing that assessment they establish in their team the three goals that will move their school forward they examine their data and they examine what what the school and Community recognize as work it needs to occur they make sure it's aligned with the big three initiatives of the district and establish those as their goals as they enter into this examination of these 34 IND indicators in the end the team will select three maybe four of those indicators on which to build their plan the work here is is very technical I'll show you some of these indicators so you can see what the language looks like some of it's in your slides as well um but you can see it's very um technical some of the terminology that's used in that process um this assessment process will help the schools identify the work they need to accomplish in their cap design and it helps them to rule out other work that may not be as critical the second phase of the plan is a creation this is where the work gets
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specific to the needs of the school the list of tasks are created for each of the indicators so they might have three or four indicators but there could be a dozen there could be 20 different tasks that need to be put into place for each of those things to really come to fruition these tasks must be met for the product for the indicator to truly be completed with Fidelity it's during this cap design process that all the stakeholders in the community can really have input to what needs to be occurring at that school and how it aligns to what the school's goals are while the cap is addressing three or four indicators there may be dozens of tasks the third phase is to monitor the progress now here you'll notice in the creation process s had nine out of 34 indicators that they selected they launched their cap two years ago we've since been able to refine the pro the process so that we can sustain greater Focus some of the schools that didn't have um the guidance that we can provide now had 20 30 indicators which made their caps in some cases 70 to 80 pages long very unwieldy very difficult to use and manage um somewhat similar to some of the sips that we had written in the past actually um this third phase is where you really monitor the work that you've done and you've created um sitting again launched their two years ago so if as you look carefully at it you'll see that they they have four of nine um of their goals uh completed um also as you examine this a little bit more carefully um you'll notice that this page show can show you in the Box the last time time that the page was open the last time that they added a task the last time they completed a task so if you're a a Community member or a staff member who wants to know the progress of one particular initiative inside your school you can log onto this page and see exactly the progress that's going on this is a a new level of transparency that we've never had with the school Improvement plans never we again the 15 Portland Public Schools that have designated have been designated for formal School Improvement Planning by the Oregon Department of Education have been using this tool for two years the rest of our schools are in the assessment phase of their planning um and in and many of them are actually done with that phase right now that Pro that process can take anywhere from two to eight hours uh but the staffs have being are being compensated for putting in that extra work um what I've done here is is I've pulled from um from the list of indicators these are the 34 indicators and the five areas or categories that they break out into and the reason I shared this slide is to show just how well it does align with our successful schools framework so you can see from these topics that it fits very nicely into the work that we're already doing it's got your community components it's got your leadership and effective educator uh components if during the course of the year uh the school clearly needs to create a new and Urgent Focus then the appropriate indicator can be selected by a senior director and recommended goal and corresponding tasks can be generated so just because they may go through the three-step process doesn't etch the thing into stone it's still very malleable the indicators that are selected those are hard to get off off the list you can add them or you can complete them but those don't go away so easily the tasks in the system though can be added and uh refined which is very helpful because when you first make your plan you know there's always plan B and you end up adding additional things this is a snapshot of s's actual plan and the nine indicators that they have in their plan and I just share this uh picture with you to show you that um when they are completed you can see that they turn green that's what these down here are these are four completed tasks I also share this slide to show you how uh Dana nber's name is already included in this cap and as you know uh she's the new principal there at Sittin and that's one of the real beauties of this tool is that um in administrative transition the new administrator can come in and actually pick this up and work up in the progress so that it's not like our current system which is you would have to basically read the Sip and try to understand where things are at this the current sip document does not help track that information for you so you would basically have to go out and research with each individual uh person who's driving any Improvement where it is in its status this document shows you not just where it is but you can drill down
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inside each of these to find out which tasks are listed for it and how many of those tasks are completed I'm sorry Steve I know it's such small print that's why I've I've tried to make a copy for you guys um I'm going to small on mine oh okay U you can see um I'm I'm going to drill down a little bit on this one right here um just so you can see this one is completed about 80% it has 10 tasks and rather than showing you all 10 tasks I just want to show you what it looks like when you drill into it a little bit and I've just cut and pasted some information off of that page the basically much larger print and um this particular this is the indic IND Ator here that they're working on you can see the responsible staff member is the principal and that they expect to have this one done by June of 2015 this particular indicator had 10 tasks assigned to it and they've got 80% of them are completed these are the two that are not yet complete yet okay you can see who is responsible for getting it complete the date they have targeted for it and so what this does is as you get into the tool it's hard to lose track as to what the work is and who's responsible for it and and I mean best laid plans even if you have a deadline and you don't meet that deadline the tool will say basically okay you missed your deadline and it helps prompt you to look at your deadlines and examine why that's not been completed it may be that maybe the resources weren't in place maybe you just forgot to update your your plan but the tool will help a little bit in that process and um and that's one of the pieces that we don't currently have in a sip is is once it's drafted in the fall it's done till the next fall this actually will continue to inform us about the pro progress if you were um if you were a Community member and you had an initiative in this in the cap that you really wanted to know about you could log on you could see exactly where it's at what the timelines are and and if it is moving forward at the pace it was originally planned uh let's I just wanted to take um a moment to just kind of tell you that some differences between the tool the school Improvement plans we currently have they're drafted once a year in the fall uh the goals in these documents can be created without a lot of direction or organization or oversight by the district uh while they while they are submitted to the district they're difficult to monitor because of their actual form uh the process offers no guarantees of the stakeholder involvement or oversight in the drafting of that document either their content was difficult to review or site if you happen to be a new person person coming into the building and once again each winter or each fall it's a new one is drafted it's not necessarily coherent from one year to the next um the cap is actually easily monitored by any stakeholder it's accessible on the internet it can be uh altered to meet the everchanging needs of the school as you lay out your plan and then you discover that you need to take it in a different direction you can if you have Ambitions and you're not meeting your goals you don't have to wait until the next year to redesign your plan you can go hey this isn't working we need to go to plan B now um it reports progress and results before the school year ends so you don't have that that um examination of the school and whatever accomplishments and failures you may have had in the spring you can recognize those as you're moving the school forward uh you can also adjust your resources where you may not have known you needed them as you're moving forward it provides a timeline for completion that helps helps keep the work tracked and it serves as a way for the document to um measure progress that is made and the work that still effectively uh required to effectively improve student achievement in each school now I personally use this tool in two different school districts in two different schools uh I find it to be very friendly and malleable um and it really met the needs of the school Improvement project management that I've done in those other institutions additionally narrowing the scope of our school improvement work to research uh to to the 34 research-based indicators provides the district the ability to track our school Improvement Trends in ways that we've never been able to before U this information may become useful to us as we examine how to organize our professional development or how we might refocus budget because now we can really identify where we're where we're all placing our work to move our schools forward in a way that's different than ever before um this tool will provide us new opportunities and greater transparency in our school improvement work now we have with us today uh a senior director and a school principal who can also share with you some of their uh information about what it looks
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like or feels like for them at their level have a great go ahead and have you guys come up and then we'll work at some questions after that did you guys coordinate your dresses you retire it's amazing that's really impressive goal number two okay so uh good evening superintendent Smith and uh directors of the board my name is Lisa Mcall I am the senior director for schools in both the Lincoln and Madison cluster and then um Emily uh Glasgow she is a the principal of Vesta which is a K8 school this is her second year she's a very strong instructional leader and she'll be able to share her personal experience with uh portions of the cap which is the assess assessment piece of the cap but for U myself and the other senior directors our roles in this process is one of support and we do that by our monthly visits where we go out and uh visit with the schools the principes and staff um um and sit down and discuss how we can best support the schools in their goals um um particularly in this s assessment piece of that and what that looks like is looking at um the data looking at their goals and using the principal's monthly uh checklist um you heard about that last week and that is align with our district priorities and so you know we have a um conversation um we understand and we know that this process is one that all schools are involved in and our goal is to support the schools in this process and we do that in a multiple of ways such as providing support for their teams to get together if that includes teachers you know there's uh funds that superintendent Smith set aside to allow for uh schools to use so that they can bring teachers to hire Subs to come in so that the teams can meet and collaborate and work on the um the indicators and selecting their goals and from my perspective um it has been a a smooth process and I'm going to let Emily tell you about her experience with with that process yeah so I think my job is just to tell you really briefly what this has felt like at the ground level and you know we're still very new to cap um I think like Joe said we we just completed our assessment phase and are sort of planning how to move into our creation phase um I pulled together a leadership team representing all the key programs in my school uh to work on the assessment phase last month so that included at bestl a primary elementary teacher an upper elementary teacher a middle school teacher a special ed teacher an ESL teacher uh myself and my assistant principal and we invited in lesli Odell from title one to help support us and facilitate our assessment uh process so that we could be really efficient and have somebody who knew more about the tool than we did there with us and we were actually able to to move through all 34 indicators in a two-hour block after school one day uh and I was able to compensate the teachers that were involved with the the money that Lisa spoke of um and it was a really useful it was an efficient process and like Joe said that the tool did feel really user friendly um but it was not just a compliance process it actually felt meaningful to me and I think to the teachers that were involved often gave us a chance to sort of rearticulate for ourselves the goals we were already working on put some language behind them and then do some prioritizing because the tool has you rank um on each of the 34 indicators are we imp are we implementing this fully at this point are we partially implementing or are we not implementing at all and then is this a priority for us high low medium and is it kind of possible within our scope like is this more something that's a district or a state thing or is this something we really would have control over creating some action action steps and moving um so again it's really user friendly it's really easy but in two hours we were really able to kind of do some meaningful work that and and um the process for me shed light on you know most things we were pretty much aligned on and we were able to move really quickly through but there were a few points where at the table we all kind of stopped and we weren't in alignment and we had to really stop and Hammer out like Oh I thought we were here no I thought we were full I thought we were partial to me this is a priority to me it's not here's why and there was some meaningful discussion there even in that step so that's where we are now we've completed that um I would say there's about 10 of the 34 indicators that came
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out as both high priority and needing work in terms of where we are with implementation so our next step will be to pull that same team back together in January um and look at those 10 and decide you know which three or four are we going to really focus in on that are most aligned with the districts three and and our current three and you know the work that we know that we're already engaged in and and have some traction on and then we'll sort of decide how we're going to involve the rest of the stakeholders in the process of creating the plan between January and March so that will involve our School site Council our PBIS team because that's kind of one of the buckets of work that we're really focused on this year um and the larger faculty so there'll be some going back and forth we'll probably Farm some of the creation of action steps out to those different teams and then have them all come back through the instructional leadership team and School site Council to make sure we have a comprehensive plan by March um and then one of the things I really like about this tool versus all the other school Improvement plan tools I've used over the last 10 years or so in different districts um is that it it's not just that annual like and we'll see it again next year like there's actually this live process of that we're you know we're supposed to be setting different deadlines for all these different action steps and then I'm supposed to be checking in and helping everybody in my school Community check in to say you know we said we were going to do this by June did we do it did we not do it why didn't we do it what's on our plate for next year so it feels like it has the potential to be more of a live planning and Improvement document than anything that I've worked with before so we'll see we're in we're in the middle of it that's and open to questions yeah okay colleagues great thank you for the presentation it's great to see um and it's good to hear that it's um feeling more like a living document something that actually helps you do your work rather than something that feels laborious and disengaged from your work and then you put on a shelf and as you said come back to it any year um or two or three um so thank you for that I I just have a question about um many of our schools are lucky enough to have uh additional resources sometimes they're Partners sometimes they're Extended Learning opportunities our reading initiative we have lots of Partners involved the All Hands rais partnership is focusing on can you talk to me a little bit about how imagine incorporating those into this because it seems like a good place right to engage our partners to say hey you're responsible for this and hold each other accountable I can speak to it in the Vestal context if that's helpful I mean we so we're in new Sun School this year and uh and so our School site Council and Sun advisory Council are one and the same this year as we're building um so sun will be integral to this whole process and will be part of the planning and one of our big buckets of work is around family and Community Partnerships and engagement so that you know they'll be involved in that we're also partnered this year with reading results with Blosser center with several of playworks with several of these other initiatives that I know you're speaking of so I they will all be featured prominently in our cap because they are the action steps we're currently taking to do some of the work we need to do so we'll be you know I don't know what that will look like in the tool as in are we making them responsible of the outcomes who's responsible for this like who does it say is responsible but they'll certainly be named as as the action steps we're taking and the levers that we're using to try to move our school um and we'll bring them into the planning process I think as appropriate between January and March just want to follow up a little bit on that because I was surprised that the stakeholders were coming in later um I may I guess that's just my past experience um and particularly not only were they coming in later but that the like you said to be some missing looking for the parent or in here I mean you said site Council so I'm assuming parents there but I'm just not seeing a stakeholder engagement in this which I think is really important to a school to have Buy in from your community so where does that really fit and and I think it varies why is it so late it varies from school to school for example some schools they have leadership team that includes parents on their leadership team and so if that group is working on the um the assess assessment piece that does include parents but it does vary from from school to school one of the five indicator areas that um Joe talked about is family and Community um involvement right I saw that in there that's why I was surprised that they w't coming in until so late but it may come out as a priority of their school's planning process that they need to do more in that area so when you're assessing where are your priorities it could be for a given school that they need to do more with family and Community Partners and that will come out in the process and there will be tasks then to set aside for them to do to bring them into it form so depending on how your community is approach their process to begin with um there is if if they haven't done that it'll come out in the self assessment
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tool it'll come out in the plan that follows that and and I've just add around families I mean for me the the process of completing a school Improvement planner a cap has never been isolated from the other ongoing work in the school so we spent the whole fall as new Sun School doing community forums and Community inventories and all kinds of different meetings to hear from our families and Community Partners about you know what's working at Vestal what do we need to develop at Vestal and all of that was brought into the conversation around the assessment so when I was sitting at the table with teachers completing the assessment and looking at those indicators that that Greg's talking about that have to do with family and Community engagement we were drawing on the knowledge from all of those conversations we had with families this fall to rank them so it what you know we were the ones at the table for that conversation but we were using all that input we've we've got off all and then they will be involved in the creation plan well I I I think that's that's great that you were all talking about what you did with parents but I really think you need to have parents in at the get-go you need to have some somebody from your community in at the get-go on these kinds of things there's been training sessions for the schools on how to how to best manage this tool um and so they've all been it's been discussed with all of them to engage their communities whether through their site counsil lsac whatever parent groups they have or Community agencies that they're working with um to ensure that that there is voice in in the plan um the reason you don't you don't see as many in that very first piece of assessment is because the language is pretty Technical and it can be difficult for them to understand all the different work that's going on and so that's that's that's yeah I don't I don't go there I don't buy that okay that's okay thank you Joe and maybe I could I think I had something um so thank you so much for the presentation and I sort of and reading through this in the previous information we got before it was on the one hand um really glad that we're moving away from the old school Improvement plan model but also still saying what it's felt as if the role of the side Council had been um diminished in this and so that that kind of authority and and direct involvement so I'm I'm hoping that maybe over time as we roll this out that that can be brought back in more in the front end and along the same line just in terms of the transparency it's we have the the web based and the consistency and and that's all a positive but I also have concerns just in terms of its accessibility in terms of not all not all families having web access or having the ability I mean as you said there are technical pieces to this so you know on certainly are the old school Improvement plans were not things that were as you said they were not living documents that everyone had front of mind and that were sort of you know fr the center in a community but I I'm concerned through all the strengths and I'm really excited to hear directly from the principal about them that there's still a piece of how will every parent at the school every stakeholder every Community member really many will be able to benefit from this but I'm concerned about those who might not be able to as well so it sounds it just feels to me like that's a piece of this that we need to keep working on one thing I would say that just one thing we're being encouraged to do is once we get to the point where our plan is created we're being encouraged to create sort of a onepage very visual summary of what our big three priorities are and kind of what the bulleted action steps are that are highest leverage under each one so that we can give that to everyone in our community with the goal being that you could walk into my school and ask anybody what are the big three and they could oh that's great yeah and I've seen already some models of other PPS schools one pagers that that are nice to work from that that we'll work for that's great and and those would be in several l which is right in our school they would need to be we certainly have some parents who would take that access code and would spend hours and hours drilling through it but we have others you know who aren't going to be able to do that so Bobby so I think I'm GNA Echo uh what my colleagues have said I uh before I was on the board I was a site Council co-chair years and years ago and it was probably the most miserable experience I've had as a parent um and in large part because the princip people at the time who we were working with just you know continually limited what we were allowed to talk about or look at and there was no sense at all about community and engagement or the culture of the school or whatever it was mostly about test scores to be honest and uh and it was horrible and part of the reason that I got involved with Community parents for public schools and we were trying to do site Council training so parents could really know how to proactively step into the the role of being being on a site counsil and understand what their rights were and how they could be effective and impactful um so um as I'm hearing about this new tool it sounds in many ways very positive and I'm really pleased to
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hear how you're using it but I guess I'm also concerned about the role of parents and the role of the site Council in the whole process and wanting to make sure that uh parents are a big part of it so anybody else Steve you want to go okay I'm not so concerned about the parents as I am concerned about the teachers and uh people putting this together who owns industar anyway this reads like um a lot of this reads like the new Reform movement and education and we're going to ask you to do all these things and make all these put it all together like this with uh and I quote use instructional strategy initiatives that are grounded inent evidence-based practices strengthen the core Academic Program increase the quality and quantity of learning time cut out all the recesses yeah that'll increase the quality of the that'll increase the time the learning time that you have the the quantity of learning time no but that's what happens that's the kind of stuff that happens with this kind of language so who owns indar I mean we bought this program from somebody or the state state did the state buy it from somebody does anybody know the tool was developed by the academic development Institute in Illinois in conjunction with the state of Illinois other state Departments of Education have been looking at this tool as an option for use in schools Oregan Department of Education adopted this and is requiring it for many of our schools our Title One schools schools and Improvement and focus on priority or all title priority and it has been customized one of the things the superintendent asked for with some customization for our district and we reduce the number of indicators we working on the language within them and we will continue to do that but that's where it came from and that's who sponsors it and that's who pays for it OD pays for it so they bought it from somebody and then they then they sent it out now they're going to tell everybody to use this is that what you that's kind of what I I'm sorry I missed the very beginning I the state requires it for all of our title schools and eventually is moving toward all of our schools and so we're actually one year ahead of the the game on this one here and using it within all of our school in the district when you say moving towards all our schools are they actually going to have they said we're going to do next year all the schools that's what they've said do is our lobbyist down all over them ask that of the superintendent Lobby us down complaining about the fact that they're telling us how we have to set up our school Improvement plans and that we embraced it as being a valuable tool and what part of what we were doing and part of what we were doing since we had a number of schol schools who um were already being required to use it is tried to figure out how do again how do we customize it so it aligns with the work that we're already doing but how do we not have multiple tools going for multiple purposes but how do we have a single tool that we've got all of our schools on that we are streamlining and building into our regular practice that we really think drives School Improvement so that's been our effort is to make this work for us and actually I feel like we've done a great job making it work for us I've been really excited about how people are responding to it and I know this drives you crazy Steve it dri it absolutely drives me crazy czy that we're sitting here doing all of this stuff and spinning our Wheels when what we really need to do is be out there in individually instructing kids who are way behind in Reading I mean that's what we need to be doing how many reading teachers do you need at Vestal could you use three or four more huh yeah yeah we could use three or four more are you using using do the plans you were using I mean you using the common core and asking all your teachers to relate to the Common Core around all their reading now what are you using then to uh to uh measure whether or not your kids are at grade level you can't use the Common Core the ESC next year because it doesn't do that right so what test do you use to measure all your kids who are at grade level um I a whole range and I would love more that's a whole another conversation I would love to have uh I mean everything from easycbm to Dibbles to embed curriculum embedded tests um it depends what skill we're trying to test so actually one of the things just back to cap that I liked is I mean one of one of our big buckets of work is is RTI at Vestal so we're really working on strengthening core instruction there's some really good stuff in here but also interventions right yeah there's great stuff in here and I can find a lot of language to name that I guess is what's helpful and you know I that's what that's what we're working on already this isn't telling us we have to work on it we know we're working on it but it's kind of giving us a place to articulate it and say so what does that really look like what do we really have to do and by when and who's going to hold us accountable to doing that so how how
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many days how many days I was talking to a to a principal in an elementary school last week or week before I can't remember and she had her teachers out of her classrooms out of her classrooms taking taking basically District mandated stuff over 16 days 16 days out of the classroom how many are your teachers going to be out of the classroom this year for mandated each teacher each teacher yes she had she maintained her whole school was out for 16 days that's not true in our case I don't know I mean we certainly send teachers to the trainings they need to go to um so people have come into the system at different times and have missed different parts of the curriculum rollouts and things like that so we send teachers that need to catch up on the you know Scott forestman enhancements or different pieces of the bridges curriculum that they need further training on if you were but I would say that's a couple of days per teacher per year that's it um yeah so specific to this though because this is the topic we're on not on General wiers this specific to this excuse me I'm talking yeah I know but you're also so specific to this you said two hours correctly correct this was two hours of compensated time after school and then it will be some more between January and March thank you but not a ton not a ton actually so um thanks I have another question just in terms of um so the new climate survey coming out and so I'm assuming that as that rolls out and gets integrated into our ongoing that this that also will be woven in and we'll figure out a way to have them connect and I'm not sure question it's a good task right it's a good task to put in the action plan to try to get really good feedback on that and then it somehow monitor yeah that's great okay EXC and this tool allows you to actually put all those type of documents as historical documents inside of it as well so it's not just static you can add that stuff that's important to the work moving forward that's great anybody else the hour is getting late I know you guys are probably ready quick quick and this is I the one thing that I think that um maybe to get to your point Pam ear is how do we you know we the stakeholders Engage The stakeholder engagement in this and one of the things that that has been or will be rolled out over this next year is a new sort of climate survey so I'm I'm really interested in how these multiple layers will play on themselves um uh for one and I think that the second one is and that's the uh sort of my um uh what I'm hearing uh and I'm sure experience is different across the district but I'm what I'm hearing is that as a tool uh as a tool that can be used that can be consistent across uh your instructional staff and and in terms of creating expectations across your school Community it seems like something that has been worthwhile so far um and uh and that's something that is important to me because there are a lot of tools out there this is a tool if it doesn't work it's not effective for me or the the way I communicate to my staff uh or my community um but if it is it could actually prove to enhance what you're trying to do and also create some level of accountability too so and you mentioned that a little bit Emily on um what did we meet what didn't we meet why not what is the next timeline that we can meet it at and so on so I'm interested in two things one is how do we how are we going to layer some of the new information new stakeholder data that comes in and the second piece is uh how good of a tool is this for actual accountability on a school level I mean it it sounds like on a district level this is it's harder to track because there's a lot of narrative there's a lot of moving Parts but on a school level how do you how do you measure it in terms of accountability you you've been to that phase as a principal so you I'm happy to do that so um at a school level it's actually um very very easy to use you um you may have a plan a design in place and then have something come in like the survey this community survey you're talking about that may totally alter the direction that you're going with this tool you can put it in place and you can change you can change the course of your work if it really informs a different path right you can you can delete future tasks and create the new tasks that are going to take you where you want to go with it if if if the um work needs to be Chang changed if um as far as how it informs districts I can tell you that actually by by the use of 34 indicators we're able to now identify uh the work that Emily's going to do at her school and plot it if you will on a spreadsheet
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and uh if you just take Title One schools or 30 Title One schools 34 indicators boom you can see right now where the work's being done what people are focusing on and it's going to provide my department an opportunity to look more carefully more carefully at the work the schools are doing so instead of having 8 to 10 schools all trying to do similar projects and a lot um and using their professional development money to do those projects I will be better informed about how I might be able to support those schools that are trying to get the same work done right so it sounds like I mean one of the challenges that we've had is uh rep replicability of certain programs and you know left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing kind of thing so what you're suggesting is that in fact this could be a tool districtwide that you could see okay this is happening over here now how can we get them administrators or or teachers or whoever that cohort might be to help support another school who's going through the same we're currently using that we're currently using it that way right now in my department for the focused priority schools so learning communities develop it's all plotted Educators okay thank you that's great so um Joe Emily Lisa and Greg thank you very much for being in here and thank you for showing us it it sounds like a wonderful tool very excited to see it roll out every place else thank you thank you guys join okay so patiently waiting first statute the board annually adopts its cash management investment policy superintendent Smith would you like to go ahead and introduce this I think our last item Sheree Lewis senior director of cash management accounting Comm up good job Sheree here again GL and people are leaving [Laughter] again not can I say this is the second lightning oh sorry everybody just loves to take accounting as a major I know it just all that you guys drive for takes a special time that's true I want to thank the board uh chair superintendent and U what's left of the audience for letting me be here today and I want to introduce Barb Barb gives us the new treasury manager we had hang coin for many years Barb comes to us uh just under a year and with h 30 plus years of investment and policy and directions around investment in cash so what we're trying to do today is bring to you our already existing cash and investment policy and bring a consistent manner so as every year that we bring forth the the comprehensive annual financial report which is the cafer we'll bring forth the renewal of the cash and investment policy at the same time because as we do that it's a financial instrument it allows us to be more active in the in the in the investment world and as we all know we need as much money as we can particularly around the bonds to get the interest and the money so how we invest them need to be active and and ongoing so um we brought with you the resolution and we brought with you a few minor edits on the policy but the only major change was on page 10 of the investment policy that just made a few minor edits of it so we're asking this will be the first read to the policy then we'll actually come back for the second read to ask for you to pass the um policy and I don't quite have that date I'll have to work a man aanda and in of exactly when going to come the second time as we're trying to get everything in I've got it for you don't worry we'll get it in at Future so if there's any technical questions I'll rely to her simple questions I might want to answer how's that so why are the changes on the signatures the changes on the uh fa simile signature the electronic sign El electronic signature um it um um to us it didn't seem to matter um whether it was specifically only the CFO as you know when Neil retired we had a bit of an issue because we didn't have a CFO right um and so um we did have another policy that talked about our chief operating officer from back in the day um and so we thought that that could be something that could be um because we we are we have signatories and Sharia is one on our bank accounts um that in a pinch we could use that so we thought that that might not necessarily be something that would have to have specifically the CFO the same time we also thought that it's very important for the CFO to approve opening new bank accounts but we're trying to close a bank account now and
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we probably really don't need the CFO to close an account with 7,000 bucks in it so we thought that that would be something that just shouldn't maybe shouldn't be in the policy per se okay good other other Cor well I had a question about the only other change or almost only other change is about um no about the actually the closing of the account um and any additions or deletions because if right now we're trying to close an account and right now there's $7,000 in it there could potentially be an account that has a million dollar or $2 million in it and where that money goes or transfers like I I just I don't understand why right um it was it was an old money market account at a Commercial Bank in town that decided not to pay us a decent rate of interest um we have worked very hard um beginning with Neil uh back this spring to try to get more of Our Community Banks to um um basically bid for our funds or offer to pay us a decent rate of return um we have Colombia bank is a Regional Bank uh they U are based in Tacoma and they just bought West Coast Bank that was out of Lake iGo well LT Community Bank um is one down the valley that has an office here so we've placed funds with them as long as the return to the district is at a good level last spring we talked to Bank of the Cascades they're in Oregon bank and they were not interested in paying us a decent rate they've come back this fall and we opened some accounts last week and be placing some funds with them because that's our tradeoff we we have a responsibility to get the maximum amount of return for the taxpayers and for the district in a safe way I understand that I guess I just don't understand why we're making the change um to to take off the CFO responsible for closing an account or making any additions or changes creating the account basically we allow for the CFO to make the decision as we did with Bank of the Cascades so as we go and create the ability to create the bank but when we get to a point when it's we've done it we've had it for years it's not being Financial the CFO has are informed but as when Neil left or when Heidi left if we've had gaps in them or we have had interim people basically allowing this latitude allows the flexibility of me informing the other people in the leadership that these are the issues there it doesn't financially stable for us to keep that there so we move the cash out of that account move it somewhere else we get better rate of return by not having let's say Ryan here who didn't have the ability to make any investment decisions and we had five month months four months whatever when between when he was here versus when we had Yousef just arrived we couldn't with this title couldn't do that Latitude I'm a signature but I'm not the ability to actually do that so this gives us the latitude to talk to the superintendent and the other people and give me the latitude because I'm still on the account to make the decisions with leadership and still get us the best rate of return I guess my concern is um it's sounds like every instance where this has been a problem is when there's been a vacancy and so it's almost that I would rather have a vacancy written in the case of a vacancy here's the process um because right now what this could be is you said you know of course we would inform the CFO but that's not in this policy and so I could see a staff member taking it upon him or herself maybe having informed people making a change and then somebody coming back and say well wait that wasn't the right change um and then there's a a lack of accountability for who made that change no cuz there's still two signatures on at the banks so no one count can be closed without two authorizing signatures on the account so if we took that one like we had to add Tony magallano onto the account so when Neil left we had to add Tony magallano onto the account but as Tony would tell you in the past I I don't understand how that works so I'm relying on you to help me understand the complexities of why we would do that so there's always one person in the district either in my shop or the CFO there has to be at least two to three signatures on that account at anyone given time that understand the financial stability of the district and you can never change it and just have one signature so by just saying the CFO that was basically just one signature in the CFO allowing the authority this now gives us the latitude to have that diversity in that pocket okay and does the superintendent determine the signatures or who or does the board approve them I don't know that the superintendent we work with the superintendent in their roles of what
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they have the authority to we asked the opinion of leadership as in when Neil left we didn't want to just leave me who would be the signature so we asked who would you like to choose to be the person to represent the district as a sign so that process is an internal management versus a board approval of something okay the only question I unless right um Tom thank you the uh these uh these money markets they're not insur is that correct answer sorry money markets are they insured or non insured um yes um not only are they insured but we have a collateral program ORS 295 we're the Investments are under 294 and that's what we specify there ORS 295 is um a different actual section of the legis of legislation that says that the state treasurer runs a collateral pool and requires all of the banks first the banks that we invest in like Bank of the Cascades needs to be on their approved list and we need to notify them that we're going to be banking with them the state treasure monitors all of their balances of all public funds if the bank gets in trouble they can require the collateralization of those funds to be 110% to cover the public investment and over and above that there's a cross collateralization between the banks where if for some reason the 110% didn't work and there was any possibility of loss to a public entity all of the banks would share on a prata basis their obligation to make that entity whole I helped write the legislation back in 1996 2007 I got it down good job so so uh that that's a that's an insurance that's not afforded to the private sector that's over and above the FD and absolutely not not afforded to any most money markets are not insured right yeah right okay thank you help I mean a class on financial okay any other questions it's the best subject in the World Finance and Accounting I'm sorry just got to take it we're all getting our second win now I think we can go another half hour don't you what people are coming in we're talking money people are coming in we just put you know some money in the Cascades what is it okay thank you both of you appreciate uh you sticking around here for so late um so this uh policy is posted on the board website and public comment period is for 21 days as you said the last date of comment is December 23rd uh 2014 uh contact information for public comp public comment it's also posted on uh the website and the board will hold a second reading of this policy on January 6th um 2015 can't believe that and that's it thank you so much thank you very much the next meeting of the board will be held on Tuesday December 9th and this

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)

2014-12-02 PPS School Board Study Session

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Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - December 02, 2014

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