2015-02-24 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2015-02-24
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Regular Meeting - February 24, 2015

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good evening this formal meeting of the board of education for february 24th 2015 is called to order like to send a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times and it's also being streamed live on the pps tv services website director curler is absent this evening so we're really excited tonight to start off with acknowledging our classified employees so classified employees recognition week is march 2nd through 6th and i know i speak for everyone on the board and the entire district when we say that the classified employees work often behind the scenes is deeply valued by all of us so carol i'm going to turn it over to you and then over to staff to have this exciting presentation of our honorees and i will also express my appreciation for our classified staff and i will turn over to sean murray who is our chief human resources officer to do the presentation and then i will read the resolution that will be going into the record on behalf of our classified employees great thank you superintendent smith and board members good evening everyone i'm happy to be here to introduce 10 pps classified honorees who were selected by their peers to be honored here tonight we received over 135 nominations this year selection involved our union partners and was a very difficult process given the many outstanding and deserving pps employees nominated each honoree will receive the following tonight a crystal paperweight inscribed with the pps logo in the words outstanding achievement copies of all their nomination forms submitted by their on their behalf and a copy of tonight's school board resolution recognizing classified appreciation week i would like to call up each honoree individually to receive their gift from superintendent smith and the board members so at this time i would ask board members and superintendent smith to come up in the front and we'll call our honorees around you i would also like to remind the honorees to please stop and make sure you pause for a photo op with the board members and superintendent as well yes all right our first honoree is nicholas branch head custodian grant high school okay next is margie chambers bookkeep book clerk franklin high school next is samantha coffey lead food services assistant woodlawn next is sheila guy geiger vice principal secretary franklin
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next is kathy kersey principal secretary wilson thank you next is rita leonard parrot educator lee thank you thank you next is lynnell nizam naisel para educator beverly cleary at rose city park next is michael rocha from paraeducator access at rose city park uh next is timothy taylor senior admin secretary grant high school thank you unfortunately one of our honorees carrie bowen who is an educational assistant head start at kelly center was unable to attend this meeting so i'd like to announce her name as well and before i sign off i would also like to thank our union partners belinda and michelle for all their work that they do and now the audience will join me in thanking our honorees for the marvelous work that they do each and every day for our children and our families for the portland public school district thank you we use his
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in honor of falsified employees appreciation and congratulations to all our honorees it's really just a pleasure to get to honor you here tonight and just appreciate your being here so that we could do that our resolution is resolution number 5024 which is our resolution to recognize classified employees appreciation week march 2nd to 6 2015. portland public schools classified employees are essential members of our educational team from the moment students step on a school bus each weekday morning their learning experience is shaped by members of our classified staff on the front lines and behind the scenes the men and women of our classified staff are in a unique position to influence our school communities they create a positive learning environment for our students by assisting them in the classroom preparing and serving meals caring for their physical needs transporting them keeping them safe and aiding their families our classified staff keep our administrative and school offices humming attend to our buildings and grounds help us communicate with each other and our community shepherd supplies and equipment and because of this vital and integral role we are grateful for their work and support the board of education for portland public schools acknowledges and applauds portland public schools assistive tech practitioners attendance monitors book clerks bookkeepers bus drivers campus monitors clerks community agents cnas custodians educational assistants service assistants instructional tech assistants library assistants licensed physical therapists certified occupational therapy assistants maintenance workers nutrition services workers orthopedic equip techs occupational and physical therapists para educators secretaries security techs sign language interpreters and transportation route schedulers for their efforts on behalf of the more than 48 000 students in portland public schools the classified employees deserve our collective recognition and thanks thank you thank you on behalf of all of us all right so we will now vote on resolution five zero two four resolution to recognize classified employees appreciation week march second to six 2015. do i have a motion director moves and director knowles seconds the motion to adopt resolution five zero two four any citizen comment on the discussion there are not any for discussion thank you wow thank you thank you so much director my thank you is just going to be a little bit more more formal than the thank you from the dynasty just to thank you that i mean i think of all the support staff that we have working in our buildings every day and consistently as we hear about workload workload as being is a challenge for everybody and i know that you all often times catch a brunt of it and i just want to say thank you because it is one of those things from everything from the first time you walk into a building to the last people leaving the building and everything in between about feeding our kids and you heard all the different different options that we have in our classified staff i just really want to say thank you and it's really appreciated work because it's with our kids every single day well said thank you very much all right so the board will now vote on resolution number five zero two four all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose but isn't gonna be saying no any abstentions all right resolution number five zero two four six proved by a vote of six to zero with student representative jazz while voting yes yes wonderful thank you so much for coming out tonight it was really a lovely way to start the evening and thank you for all that you do you and all your colleagues throughout the district second all right so superintendent's report superintendent smith would you like to present your report i would and i think we have some visuals going up on the screen here to go along with it um so i wanted to give you an update on some of the great work taking place around our third grade reading priority i had a chance to meet this month with the eight non-profits who are partnering with us for read together which is one of our key strategies to ensure all students are reading at grade level by the end of third grade and we've enlisted a number of our partners who have worked with us over the years to work together on this particular on this particular benchmark so one of those partners the black parent initiative has begun hosting a series of black and biracial family literacy nights you can see from the photos that jason lee how great it is that reading is part of these really fun events we had 27 000 books donated during the children's book harvest this fall and those books are starting to make their way to students they're being now distributed through a grant program so
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these librarians and teachers can request distribution of the books and you can see from these photos the woodlawn distribution we also are continuing to have celebrities visit our schools to help foster a culture of reading and this month nba legend and children's author kareem abdul-jabbar stopped by vernon and talked about his latest basketball theme book for young readers so there we go totally exciting for for the students but for all of us and finally i'm thrilled to say we partnered with several organizations and businesses to print and distribute the big and awesome bridges books and as many of you know the study of our city's bridges has been part of the pps curriculum since 1950s and these incredible books are a fantastic way to teach that history we're going to show you a short video that will talk about those books i've told you about my friend the bridge lady right and i showed you pictures of her publishing and printing out the books that she wrote well those books have arrived and she is here to share those books with us today 4 hundred third graders are getting this book and we are so excited uh one of the things we focus on in pps is race and place and so how do you actually connect with your own community and this bridge book is an opportunity for students to learn the entire history of our community through studying the bridges which is a fascinating subject for them this book it would be just right we love bridges yeah we've learned a lot about them yeah bridges are awesome think about portland without bridges we would have to get boats and a lot of more money spent yes i did get emotional i was like okay i can't i can't you were making the book you're so welcome i'm so happy i could make this book for you wow well i love it that third graders love me what i love about teaching this bridge unit is that they are it's a theme that can travel across all of the curriculum hi you guys how's it going what do you so think you find any favorite parts yes yes what was your favorite part okay so part of our reinvestment in technology was the distribution of chromebooks and also we joined the state of oregon google apps for education which gives all of our staff and students access to the google suite of educational tools at the start of the school year so across the district our teachers are using these tools to collaborate with their students this is an example of beth bulger at boyce elliott humboldt who's using google classroom to share their steam curriculum work and her students are using the school's new chromebooks with google docs and google draw to create and collaborate so i just want to say thank you to our teachers who are diving in and using these powerful tools to transform what they're doing with our students but also to get other teachers excited about what's possible with these tools because this is one of those things that's really becomes contagious so a call out to all of those teachers so another really exciting thing that happened last week was our first ever heart of portland k-12 arts showcase and i'm gonna right out of the shoot call out kristen brayson who's our new arts toaster who organized this it was fantastic i'm just gonna say start to finish we had students from like all all through the district we had us the vietnamese students from roseway heights do like a fabulous performance we had the lincoln symphony we had jefferson dancers we had the da vinci dancers we had spoken word like from the august wilson monologues it was incredible and like parents were like very explicit about hoping this is an annual event that we come together and celebrate the arts and part of the point of this was really being able to thank our voters for the arts tax and what it's made possible in our schools but it was it was fantastic and students loved the opportunity to perform in the numark theater so just inspirational and i do hope that it is an annual event but kristin brayson as our new arts dosa you knocked it out of the park so thank you so much
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our pps chief human resources officer sean murray a few weeks ago was recognized with the tom rule ally award with by the oregon association of latino administrators and this award recognized shawn's work with pps to hire latinos and latinas throughout the district and make sure they have the supports they they need to be successful it was it's a really meaningful award and shawn just i want to join with all of us in giving you a hearty congratulations for receiving that award um a new power management and security plan went into effect for over 15 000 district computers in early october which is resulting in large energy energy savings the district's information technology department and our facilities resource conservation and energy specialists created the program to increase safety and security of our computer usage in schools and to reduce energy consumption so what the policy does is set student accounts to log off after 60 minutes of inactivity and to make sure their accounts are protected the program also puts computers to sleep after a set number of inactive moments and powers machines off every night so enforcing the automatic power management allows us to utilize only the energy we need it saves on power costs it saves on heat stress and wear on the computer and it reduces our carbon footprint so the impact on energy usage across the district has been pretty significant the bar graphed on the screen shows you the energy usage from some from the computers before and after the implementation of this program and it's just one of our many initiatives to reduce our energy usage and reduce our carbon footprint so yeah congratulations to our facilities and i.t department for this this initiative so we have started the building of our pps budget we're in budget season and we started our series of listening sessions last night at benson high school with a budget workshop we're doing two of these where we're offering these to parents and community members who want to learn where pbs gets its funding where it goes and how we determine how much funding each school receives and these are really informational before we actually start like asking for input about what we actually built into this next year's budget so we'll do a second budget workshop on thursday at chavez k-8 at 6 p.m and this workshop will be presented in both spanish and english the idea for the bilingual budget workshop came last year from requests from chavez parents and community partners who suggested that parents would be able to better participate in the budget hearings if they had this training ahead of time and that in fact ended up being true so that's how we've planned uh planned it this year so um i will say we'll have eight other meetings that will then be we'll have one that's a town hall that will really be opportunity to have a dialogue with board members at the front end and then a series of town hall meetings with the superintendent at the board members will also attend and then town hall meetings with the board that i will also attend so all of these are attempts to really collect the thinking and thoughts from the community as we're building our budget and prioritizing how we use dollars in the coming year we have a thank you to tim boyle from columbia sportswear's headquarters tim colombia's president and ceo contributed fifty thousand dollars to roosevelt high school's writing and publishing center which was launched in the in 2011 in partnership with the university of portland who provides writing coaches for our students students in our roosevelt's writing center have already published a book and completed several other publishing projects through the publishing arm of the center and boyle's contribution will assist in the expansion of the center as roosevelt's modernization which will include a first-rate digital publishing center so we're really excited about this and just a huge thank you to tim boyle we have had celebrations in our schools this month um a bet for the lunar new year for the portland chinese new year cultural fair and black history month so we're just showing you a few of the clips from stevenson from roseway heights from jefferson high school from roosevelt high school and from chief joseph ockley-green as they held celebrations across the district so i wanted to take a moment to
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recognize and celebrate a true friend of pbs who we lost this week who's jerome kersey was an important role model and beloved athlete in the life of this city he spent the day before he died at madison high school with other former blaze blazer players meeting and talking to our students as part of black history month he had also just been president at our um pil basketball showcase um and i'm just gonna say like jerome has been just there for kids like really consistently over his entire career and um a real part of pps so just acknowledging that i didn't know i was going to do this but he will be missed thank you mr kersey and thank you to the trailblazers i think that one was a shock for everybody but i will say it truly touched the hearts of all of us he's made a real impact on the city and in particular on the kids of our district so finally i want to end with a call out to our students so many of our students in schools embrace the noanita loan day on february 13th which is this was a national campaign to end social isolation and it focused specifically on the middle school grade students you heard from our roseway heights students earlier in the month who organized their school's activities in addition beaumont and e sylvan were among the schools that organized activities to help students be part of and included in lunchtime activity and social interaction and just the realizing students power to galvanize community and really make sure that everyone feels included so we're going to end with a video about our portland public schools part of no one eats alone day and we're going to give them a mark on their hand with a certain color and then they're going to go to that color of the balloon and they're going to sit there so the no one eats alone day is just one of many things that we do at our school to help lessen any students who might feel isolated or like they don't have a friend and when you have friends and you feel well liked then you're going to be nice and you're not going to be bullying so nobody can sit alone today you know so like nobody has to feel awkward or sit alone it kind of makes everybody happy when i was a little older i was just kind of like the weird kid and i just kind of sat by myself sometimes but i think this is a good good thing to do if i feel like no one deserves to eat alone i feel like everybody should have a chance to have a friend to talk to i just feel like giving someone a simple hello can change their whole entire day and make them really happy all right thank you very much so we routinely um have time on our agenda to be toward the beginning of the meeting for student testimony because we really value and love hearing from our students and we want to make sure they have a chance to speak to us and then go home and do their homework and get some rest so miss houston do we have any students sign up for student testimony we do we have two excellent zoe ladoo and lucine edenlord great so zoe in the scene thanks so much for being here come on down thanks a lot um so you'll have um three minutes for your testimony thanks so much for being here and if you can start by just stating your name for the record and spelling your last name and then um there's a system of lights so the green light comes on at the beginning and after two minutes the yellow light goes on and then when the red light goes on after three minutes we respectfully ask that you wrap up your comments at that time so thank you so much for being here welcome thank you uh zoe ledoux l-a-d-u i'm here to speak about common core and to ask you to think critically about the choices you're making too often they're made without a real attempt at discussing them with students the people whom these tests have the most immediate effect on because of the lack of proper and factual education on these tests the most i can do is speak to what i've experienced with oaks first of all i remember back to third grade when we first took it however the only thing i remember clearly is the aftermath with everyone talking about their scores i remember one student in particular being extremely upset over not performing as well as he should have or felt that he should have no one should have to face those feelings of inadequacy at eight years old
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can you imagine how many students will have to suffer like that when sixty to seventy percent of students are expected to fail with this first year of testing i remember every year the time we spent in class preparing for the test learning how to take it and not the actual information presented on the test it's the same for these big tests like the act and the sat it's all about learning the tricks the secret way certain questions are worded i have a hard time believing that just because common core is more than filling in a bubble things will be different this test is merely another way to take away from real valuable class time besides stolen time i'm extremely concerned about what effects this will have on the arts which as i'm sure you know is already deteriorating unfortunately this test has a negative impact in more ways than one the increased focus on subjects like english and math will lessen the importance of art music theater etc not to mention this test costs 80 percent more than oaks i'm pretty sure that's quite a bit of money money that could be going to getting working microphones for theater departments or better supplies for art classes we cannot ignore the fact that students need creative outlets to enjoy school the arts are an integral part of curriculum and common core is only going to worsen an already failing system in my opinion common core is not the solution to our education problem but at the very least i urge you to tell the truth about these tests and spread facts not propaganda thank you thank you hi thank you so much for having me here my name is luciana eden lord so that's l-u-c-i-a-n-n-a eden lord e-d-e-n-l-o-r-d and i'm here to talk on behalf of state tests my own personal and i just really want to thank you for having me here i really appreciate this my own personal experience i think that i can most clearly really remember was in sixth grade feeling so terrified and nervous about taking this test and just stealing myself to just go in there and take it and i did and i just felt so confident about it and then when i realized i fell short of the expectation of the score i just felt so annoyed because i put so much into it to get there and it didn't turn out right and it just didn't feel right it didn't sit well with me and so now flash forward to me in eighth grade i came to this meeting um just last week to talk to see like about testing because i really i really urge you please please end it i mean kids with dyslexia and adhd and people who speak foreign languages are expected to take these tests and they don't even know how to take them or know what to do and it just it makes me so sad to think that kids have to go into a room and are expected to take a test for like eight hours and just oh just sorry um and be able to do well in it when they're kind of expected to fail and it's already just a survey to just see how well schools are doing and just to know that some people like me are opting out of them and i feel like that's kind of i really don't want to be rude about the test but i feel like that's kind of backfiring because if certain students are opting out then their scores are not put in to their state and then when people read all of the scores of the tests they're missing those ones so it looks like our schools are slowly degrading which isn't true just the people don't want to take the test and so much money is being poured into this and it could just be going to pay teachers more or bring more art programs into schools and help them grow and flourish not just to take a test just for a survey so i really ask you please rethink state testing i just i have two younger sisters who one in kindergarten one in fifth grade and just thinking of my little kindergartner sister being trained to take a test just really tears at my heart and i just ask you please please rethink this thank you thank you very all right much you both so much for being here and now over to our student representative for her report so thank you to our students for testifying that was great um so good evening yesterday super sac representative and franklin senior sierra jose and i had the opportunity to attend the oregon school board association's legislative day so we spent the day lobbying and what sierra and i realized at the end was just how great of a need there is to invest in education and the challenges that stand in the way of achieving a budget that really supports our students
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so i would encourage everybody to take some time to meet with your elected officials in salem to urge them to please spend more money on our students we really need a budget that is going to support our students and make sure that every student succeeds i'd like to thank david williams for organizing the day and educating us so we could be effective lobbyists on april 3rd super sac and pps is co-hosting a day where parents and students can go to salem to lobby and i encourage everybody to sign up for it it's going to be a great day where we're going to get educated and then go lobby for what our students need so we can ensure that for the next two years students get all the services they deserve i'd also like to invite students to benson high school on march 5th to testify for either the budget or the schedule next year superintendent carol smith and other board members will be there to actively listen to what students want we want a budget that reflects students desires so we encourage you to all come so thank you for being here tonight and i'm just really happy that we had students come testify because that's something that as a board member i definitely take into account and i know others do too so thank you so much thank you very much and if i can just add director knowles and i accompanied you and mr williams and sierra yesterday and sierra and mina were just amazing they were so amazing meeting with our legislators and having telling firsthand the stories of what our differences made to have the investment that we've gotten over the last year or two from the legislature which we thank them for versus from years before and really sort of the the contrast that they see and the impact that it's had on their education and you could see in the eyes of the legislators you know we could say all we want but it's the students that really that's what really made a difference and you guys were awesome so i'm hoping we can do a video of them doing those same stories because it was great so thank you so much for taking the day to do that and make a difference and i know a lot of other students have stories to tell that are just as encouraging so i really do urge you to contact me if you have interest in coming with us to salem awesome thank you so much all right so now we'll have public comment um i know we have several folks signed up so miss houston you want to read the first two names sure caracally and amy curion fabulous so while you're coming down i'll just briefly read our usual instructions thank you so much for taking the time to come tonight and provide your comments we value public input and look forward to hearing your thoughts and concerns and we're going to be actively listening and reflecting but not responding to any comments or questions but we have asked our board manager roseanne powell who's at the back of the room she is available if you have any questions about follow-up or response you do have a total of three minutes to share your comments so again please begin by stating your name and spelling your last name and then after two minutes the yellow light comes on and then with the red light we ask that you wrap up your comments thank you so much for being here tonight go ahead thank you uh hi my name is amy curion k-u-r-i-a-n and i am here tonight to read to you a letter signed by 161 concerned spanish immersion families from ainsworth we the undersigned ainsworth spanish immersion families acknowledge that pps is taking the commendable step of increasing native speakers in the ainsworth program research shows this is a benefit to both native and non-native speakers however the method used by enrollment and transfer and administering this transition will in practice exclude some co-enrolled siblings we want the administration and the school board to honor their commitment to keep siblings together here's why sibling preference in language programs is a necessity not a matter of logistical convenience in order in order for bilingualism to take root children need the richest possible foreign language experience older siblings legitimize and normalize the process of learning a language older siblings help younger ones with schoolwork younger children help older siblings by providing an in-home context for language use extending the learning environment the integrity of any language program rests on the full involvement of families furthermore if we recognize the benefit native speakers bring to the learning experience during the school day for example now students can interact in spanish on the playground or in the lunchroom we must also recognize the importance of this same on-the-fly interaction that takes place among siblings during non-school hours again families in this together are essential to the immersion learning experience my second point the school board voted to keep sibling preference yet the administration is now in practice reducing the sibling preference in january the school board voted to maintain the sibling preference explicitly rejecting the administration's recommendation to decrease that preference however raising the number of slots was raising the number of slots allocated to native speakers was discussed but details were not revealed it was not until the kindergarten roundup in february's that families learn the drastic change that in practice puts
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native speakers before siblings in other words the administration did not provide the details to the board and the public when the new policies were being debated then after the school board voted for sibling preference the administration allocated 50 of transfer slots to native speakers above all other preferences so it looks something like this in the current policy on the ainsworth side there are four slots for native speakers and 20 for siblings and all others on the transfer side there are four slots for native speakers 20 slots for siblings and all others that's this year next year the proposal is for the ainsborough side to have four slots for native speakers and 20 slots for siblings but on the transfer side to have 12 slots for native speakers leaving only 12 slots for siblings and all others and here's my point for the incoming 2015 ainsworth kindergarten class a rough estimate from the roundup identified approximately 15 trouts for siblings for what we know now are only 12 spots another concerned parent carer will continue on with our letter thank you should i start okay go ahead hi my name is kara kali that's c-o-l-l-e-y as you can see from the letter signed by 161 parents there are many families in the ainsworth spanish immersion program that are feeling upset and confused first off the application process should be consistent for all current families with co-enrolled siblings must attend a kindergarten roundup and enter their application from february 9th until march 6th however native speakers do not have to follow these guidelines the district will hold slots open for native speakers until the end of august second of all commitments matter while the priorities of the district will change over the years commitments to families should not we know the district recognizes the values of families committing to the program long term indeed when families enroll their children in the immersion program the district asks us to make a 13-year commitment through high school when current ainsworth families applied to the program they were given a commitment that their siblings would get in going back on this fear going back on this commitment creates fear and distrust in our school community sends the wrong message to our children and undermines the strength of the desired academic results board policy has shifted in the past prior to 2010 families from the entire city were allowed to apply to ainsworth spanish immersion then in 2010 the district changed its policy that only families from the west side were allowed to apply now pps is taking the commendable step of attempting to increase native speakers in the ainsworth program but what if board policy shifts again in the future will you honor the commitment you are making to these incoming native speaker families by admitting their co-enrolled siblings we are asking you to honor the commitment you made to us the current enrolled families because the sibling preference was firmly in place when we enrolled third of all i want to reiterate the school board already voted to keep sibling preference yet the administration is now in practice reducing sibling preference judy brennan has told us she will do our best to accommodate co-enrolled siblings in the ainsworth spanish immersion program and we have faith that she will do her best but what if her best leaves one or two siblings behind we have 161 parents from the ainsworth spanish immersion program who feel this is unacceptable parents have rallied behind us because they agree that weakening the sibling preference weakens the entire program you are making a transition one that is laudable and pedagogically sound but you are not allowing any time for that transition to happen finally last of all there's an easy solution grandfathering in the preference for co-enrolled siblings still allows for a substantial increase in native speakers in short order the increase in native speakers each year will result in sibling preference for native speaking families the laudable goals to increase native speakers will be achieved without penalizing younger siblings younger siblings of currently enrolled students please direct the enrollment and transfer office to reserve sufficient slots to allow siblings to enroll together in the spanish immersion program at ainsburg thank you very much we've provided a copy of this letter to this great thank you our next two speakers scott bailey and amy dougherty are you good i hope the screen doesn't go blank halfway through this um dear school board members thank you for listening to me tonight and superintendent
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my name is scott bailey and i'm here representing community and parents for public schools also known as cpps in our last exciting episode at your meeting two weeks ago on february 10th i asked you to consider launching an educational vision process with the portland community to be followed by a strategic planning process to make that vision a reality i'd like to provide a concrete illustration from that board meeting to clarify what i'm talking about at that meeting you were trying to figure out whether and how to spend an unexpected mid-year budget surplus now i could start out by pointing out to you that the fact that you sent staff scrambling to put together a priority list with suggestions on how you could spend that money showed a lack of planning you had not created a budget process that provides for mid-year adjustments in any orderly way but i want to instead focus on a single point from that discussion one of the items you considered spending money on was musical instruments and as you were talking about the sorry state of our inventory of instruments uh director regan asks a very good question how did we get into this mess so i talked to the artstosa during the meeting in the back and asked her what the annual budget was for buying new instruments and she said there was none that's right there is no budget line item for the purchase of new musical instruments so let's take a look at that little factoid and like a loose thread on a sweater start pulling if an organization has a serious sustainable plan for a music program for any kind of a program it would have calculated the annual funding needed to support that program in a sustainable fashion the fact that there not only was there no sustainable budget there was no budget at all speaks volumes about the place of music in portland public schools let's remember that wonderful arts night that the superintendent talked about a lot of the funding for that was generated not by pps but by the community saying we're so under funding arts we're going to put to get put a tax on ourselves why isn't music more valued by pps one might ask and i believe the answer is straightforward there's no music test nature after all abhors a vacuum no matter we're never going to see a headline about the achievement gap among clarinetists or about how pps drummers are having trouble keeping the beat and my own favorite if we expanded this discussion would be pps photography students top state a little inside joke sorry my wife teaches photography but because there is no test music and all of the arts are not considered part of the core curriculum and so we refer to them as extras or specials whatever you might feel about them your actions betray your values and that brings us back to the lack of educational vision if we don't have an educational vision i'll wrap this up quickly our default is teach to the test and no matter how much our teachers and principals and students resist that the pressure is relentless if we don't have that vision that's our default thank you very much mr bailey thanks hi my name is amy doherty amy d-o-u-g-h-e-r-t-y and i am here um just to emphasize what um kara and amy said earlier about the spanish immersion um sibling um and um i have three boys i have a second grader a spanish immersion second grader spanish immersion kindergartner both at ainsworth from the transfer side and i have a three-year-old we'll hopefully follow his brothers to spanish immersion at ainsworth in september of 2016. when my husband and i applied for the program we had high hopes that um both of our younger boys would also follow in their footsteps um under the preference category i do appreciate that the school board voted against the administration's recommendation to decrease the sibling preference earlier however the administration has not been transparent about the details of the proposed changes the administration has gone behind the very parents and the school board who work so hard to support the portland public school district the administration needs to uphold the commitment it has made to the current families by grandfathering in their current siblings as um karen amy um stated with the petition and the integrity of course of any language program rests on the full involvement of families and if pps wants its immersion programs to thrive and expand it will support their families rather than splitting them up thank you very much thank you
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we have aaron smerl and dana brenner kelly you want to go first welcome please go ahead first okay i do all right uh smirl s-m-i-r-l hello fellow parents and guardians this is a short video uh it's about opting out of the smarter balanced assessment specifically for portland public schools in 2015. there's a growing group on facebook dedicated to this issue pps parents opt out group please consider joining and know that even the simplest questions are welcome there we have received plenty of feedback from people confused by official communications from across the district and i wanted to use this video to add clarity to two issues people are having around opting out first the smarter balance assessment is not being used for students programmatic placement such as compacted or accelerated math if you have questions about the use of the smarter balance assessment for placement please consider bringing those questions to this knowledgeable group second the pps opt-out form is officially titled 2014-15 parent request for exemption from required statewide assessments what you're seeing below is the bottom of the pps form the gray box indicates that it's for school use only with a signature line labeled approved by the top of the form there is language that lets parents and guardians know that the state guidelines give the district the ability to quote choose whether to allow parents to uh to exempt their students from testing for reasons of disabilities or religions please see this prior video to some it might seem as if your principal at the building level is approving or denying your opt-out request however it's not a request you are informing the district of your wishes it's possible the design of the form itself could mislead parents into thinking they do not have rights that the district can deny them yet the aclu and the due process clause of the 14th amendment say otherwise you may have been told that a meeting with your principal is mandatory in order to exempt your student from testing it is not pps director of research and evaluation joe suggs a really nice guy has said that this year pps will not question the two reasons as long as the opt-out form is filled out properly here is a brief clip of the district's position on opting out giving given by the district test coordinator mary anderson so it's not a request you are simply informing the school district of your wishes if you'd like to watch this full recording of this event please click the pps logo on the bottom right of your screen a best cya practice that has emerged from communicating your intent to opt out is to simply email everyone in the chain of command from your students teacher to the superintendent i'll put a contact list in the comment section of this video along with the available languages or opt-out forms and all of the available languages remember to add your building specific contacts lastly if you come back and click the podium at the time of this video there is legislation being deliberated that would expand your parental rights to opt out beyond religion and disabilities as well as better protect student data so get those opt-out letters into your principles email everybody look at go to pps parents opt out group on facebook check the comments section for relevant links and thank you for watching this video thank you very much welcome dana brenner kelly b-r-e-n-n-e-r k-e-l-l-e-y aaron's testimony outlined the ways in which district forms and state guidelines mislead parents about their rights as well as the mixed messages about the purpose and intent of the meetings with administrators that are to occur before opt-out forms will be accepted actually you didn't talk about that but there is a requirement to meet with administrators through the osis opt out subcommittee and as a member of the pps parents opt out facebook group i've been able to collect information firsthand about what is actually happening in these meetings in some meetings administrators take the approach of answering parent questions as joe suggs spoke about from parent reports i would estimate this is about 25 to 35 percent of situations in the other situations varying degrees of guilt shame and misinformation are employed in an attempt to get the parent to change their mind at a recent meeting of pps educators who have chosen to opt their children out the following experiences were recounted a high school student who was called out of class without parental notification and shamed for letting down her school by opting out another teacher's child was threatened with being placed in a holding cell during testing another teacher was told that the school would
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be penalized for non-participation in fact no public school has ever been shut down for non-participation while countless schools have been shut down for low test scores there are themes from parents recounted here parents have been told that their children's ability to graduate will be compromised yet that is factually not true they have been told in these meetings that low participation will result in lowered property values school rankings and funding in fact funding is not impacted by participation property values may be influenced by school rankings yet it's on ethical punitive state practices that should be challenged leading to those outcomes and not parental choices parents have been told that without testing children cannot and will not be identified as being appropriate for and tracked into advanced level classes one parent was told by her principal that she should consider allowing her child to sign into the testing and then simply not continue why because it would reflect better on the administrators and schools participation rates and not on the child's future this is a prime example of how high stakes around testing leads to a dysfunctional and damaging culture last week joe suggs stated right here that the district had 33 parents who had opted their children out one principal recently remarked that they found it interesting that they had 35 applications to opt out at their school alone on a day that pps was publicizing 33 students have opted out in the district the district is purposely trying to minimize the numbers publicly until it is too late to make parents think that they will be part of a fringe minority instead of part of a movement to stem the flow of conscientious objectors through misinformation they may be reporting to the public and the press the number of forms held in the central office yet since their own process requires that parents go through principles the principals have been instructed to hold on to these forms until the testing window opens these practices are in direct opposition to the sport's own policies around harassment and bullying i urge you as a board to be amongst those brave and courageous school boards in this country saying no be the board that said not on my watch rather than one of the many that did nothing thank you very much right thank you everyone for coming out tonight and for your comments um next on our agenda concordia agreement so we previously received as a board information on this item and an executive session uh superintendent smith would you like to introduce this item um yes and as cochair atkins just described we've had a number of uh sessions that are talking to us about the concordia fabian pps partnership and tonight we will hear a presentation from sarah king who's the program director of planning and asset management and gary withers who's the executive vice president of concordia university welcome thank you well you've you've introduced us so i'm going to this is my first time up here excuse me see if i can oh thank you okay thank you can you hear me thank you and good evening good evening you've had many presentations over the last few years about the partnership between portland public schools and concordia university tonight we will focus on the agreement for disposition of property and development of fabian school and its role in the development of the new fabian school here's a site plan to orient you as you can see all the property in the yellow boundary is existing fabian school with the existing school there on the uh on the west side of the boundary within the blue boundaries concordia university so you can see there's a really an adjacency there that's quite remarkable the institutions have had programmatic partnerships for many years now with the development of the new fabian school that partnership will become a physical one as well with the collaboration excuse me the co-location of the fabian pre-k 8 and concordia's college of education we're making steady progress with the new school dispos the disposition and development agreement is the next step in that progress it outlines roles and responsibilities including financial of the two parties in the development of the new school it will be followed after this assuming this disposition and development agreement is approved this evening it will be followed by additional related agreements including operation agreements governing agreements a lease agreement and a construction cost allocation agreement focusing on the dda terms there are four main terms in this agreement the first outlines the real estate transaction between the parties the concordia transfer property is a
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property that concordia university will deed two portland public schools for ten dollars and let me show you here on this uh map you'll see the location of the new this is the um excuse me the fabian school site and the location of the new fabian school the area in the dark gray is the property that will be deeded to portland public schools from concordia university there will also be an easement to portland public schools granted from concordia university over what we call the concordia retained property for a plaza excuse me uh-oh what did i just do there we go that property is in the stripes that property will retain will be will retain uh ownership from concordia university it will be developed as a welcoming plaza which will connect to both the campus concordia university campus and the new school we will have an easement for um for pedestrian access and enjoyment and use of that plaza then uh we will have other ancillary and pretty usual conditions to closing are closing we hope to be on august 1st of 2015. concordia by that time concordia university will provide security for its share of the funding which i'll talk about in a moment the parties will complete drafts of additional agreements that i mentioned a moment ago and they'll be the usual conditions to closings such as clear title the next uh heading there says concordia funding it's really concordia and portland public schools funding concordia university will contribute no less than 15.1 million dollars to the project with security by august 1st portland public schools will contribute 29 million dollars to the project and the parties will jointly pursue new market tax credits which is a federal tax credit program that brings resources to low-income communities and this is a mechanism we used at the rosa park school in the past the development agreement also outlines a lease that will be developed in the future that will talk about the condition excuse me the concordia university will lease their spaces for 99 years with 25-year renewal at a dollar per year the lease will include shared and common space as well as concordia's exclusive classroom space and other exclusive space to their program and that concordia university and portland public schools must participate in a capital reserve fund this is again something we did at the rosa park school when we build new schools we like to create a fund to help with long-term maintenance and repair of that building and then fourthly uh the disposition and development agreement includes a schedule which outlines dates for agreements project milestones and deadlines i'd like to turn it over to gary withers thank you and good evening it's a pleasure to be here with you again so a couple of years ago our chief development officer kevin matheny who was with us this evening mentioned to me he said gary you know this project is really cool i think the president of the united states will probably mention three to phd in his state of the union address one day and i thought well kevin that that that's pretty ambitious uh that's uh something we can think about we can aspire to that well two years later i'm convinced more than ever that this is truly a unique project for the entire country it's worthy of that kind of national attention and the odds are reasonable it might it might actually happen three points the first one is we're creating a culture of collaboration and it's a culture that starts with the faculty at fabian and the faculty at concordia and that includes the students and families at fabian and the staff and the students at concordia that's our base you have a very complex agreement to approve this evening but all the pages on the face of the earth mean nothing if you don't have a base a cultural base that creates a foundation and it's this culture of collaboration that is just stunning it's not just the collaboration between concordia fabian pps it's the partners who have come on board trillium family services pacific foods will be operating a food club an actual grocery store there and it's some pending partners in particular we're excited about camp caldera coming on board and the oregon symphony recently we met with the tooth taxi and we've met with a number of other partners like chess for success this is going to be a magnet for those kinds of partnerships and it's going to mean a lot for creating this culture of collaboration next is the design we like to say that design is destiny the principal's office the dean's office they're going to share a wall they're
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going to be right next to each other concordia university college of education students are going to have classes within the school the secure part of the school there'll be a dozen concordia faculty offices there as well there's our moment of truth classroom it's a classroom that hangs over the cafeteria and it's glass so imagine that your class is at 11 o'clock and you think you want to be a teacher and you're looking down at the cafeteria it's one of those moments of truth this is an incredible opportunity and finally what about the fundraising how is the momentum for the fundraising it's the best i've ever seen it's the best kevin's ever seen now part of that is the current state of the economy but we have to tell you i'm going to knock wood we've had nobody visit the project who hasn't committed to writing a check it is that powerful so if this were a marathon and i have to use that analogy because the the better practice for capital campaign fundraising is that we don't disclose the the dollars yet well if this were a marathon in terms of our commitments we're at about mile 10 in terms of our hot prospects and we've got about 4 million plus in hot prospects that equates to a mile another four to six miles we have some local foundations who have given significant amounts of money for our library which was definitely community engaged but not at this magnitude we think we'll add two or three miles there as well and the exciting part has been the public part the new market tax credits in particular and we have seen hurdle after hurdle kind of step to the side as it becomes more and more clear that there's a very strong probability it will be successful there the city has already donated a hundred thousand we're going to ask for another four hundred thousand the state has asked for a request for 750 000 and there's some other public bodies we're going to be addressing and we're very grateful for the opportunity to work with your lobbyist david williams there is a schematic drawing that's been prepared by eric gerding and it shows in blue the parts concordia is funding and in salmon the parts that the bond measure is funding ladies and gentlemen this is one heck of a deal this is really one heck of a deal we're bringing a lot to the table concordia will be funding all the early childhood and we're happy to do that we'll be funding the steam labs and we're happy to do that we'll be funding all the wraparound services space and we're happy to do that but most importantly this is about the impact it's going to have on families and children in northeast portland and that we are truly happy to do three hours ago four hours ago now our executive committee approved the dda it has been processed ad nauseam by our finance committee our chief financial officer is here he's glad that we're through with that process and the executive committee has said let's go for it they've authorized the president to sign it and as sarah has said we'll now be working with issues related to the financial elements in terms of security to make sure that the money is available when the construction contract is signed and reconstruction starts in february wonderful thank you so much all right so now let's move forward with our process the board will now consider resolution number 5025 authorizing the superintendent to enter into a disposition and development agreement with concordia university for replacement of fabian pre-k 8 school do i have a motion director morton moves and director noel seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5025. miss houston do you have any citizen comment no and any board discussion or questions we did have an extensive discussion in our executive session but any additional comments questions thoughts director regan so thank you for being here um last week i had an opportunity to talk to a community group and i mentioned two partnerships that portland public schools has where we're absolutely knocking it out of the park the first one is the jefferson middle college in partnership with pcc portland public schools and self-enhancement and the other one is this partnership with concordia university and i can't thank you enough i think that the three to phd model is going to be a national model i can't wait to show it off in two years so just so people know we're starting construction uh basically this summer um and in two years we'll probably be there um what i love about this partnership is that it's not just a building it's the continuation of a really long-term relationship where concordia's school that teaches teachers um they've basically been at
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fabian for years and years and years as a partner with us in the classroom and so we're now just taking this to the next level and it is so student-focused it's focused on our own fabian students and it's focused on your students who are going to become our next generation teachers and i really can't imagine a more supportive partnership for kids in our community so i'm incredibly grateful to concordia for stemming into this partnership with us and i'm incredibly grateful to portland public schools for being so open to this and leaning in and embracing this partnership so thank you thank you dr morton thank you thank you both for coming and and talking to us yet again i i just wanted to reiterate i was having lunch with a um foundation executive this morning today and uh it is definitely i i can say that you're probably right and probably right that at one point at some point in the future uh three to phd is going to be on the tip of educators tongues and it certainly is the talk of the town today at lunch it was a part of the conversation that we were having and i was talking about my experience here on the board and and the kind of partnership that i saw concordia bring to the table and i was was able also to speak about the kind of opportunity that concordia has brought community-based partners as well so i want to thank concordia and i would say that this is uh not just an example of a public and private partnership but probably an example of i mean the resource that concordia is committing to bringing to our public schools is significant significant and that is enormously welcome and i can't really thank you all enough not just for what you've continued to do with students and with staff at concordia or at uh fabian but what now you're committing your your university to doing in the future so thank you very much and i'm needless to say i'm a yes on this vote i don't think we have a lot of controversy on this one yeah director knowles so i'll say up front i'm a yes on this vote um but i also want to thank concordia and i have i feel that yes we're going to hear the president talking about this program as as matt said the three to phd program is fantastic and the fact that we actually have concordia teachers in our schools now but we'll have this broader base and the community partners that you're bringing in gary everything you said is just all the more reason for all of us to be very supportive of this program and i'm hopeful that we'll find other partners out in the community who are willing to invest the time and the energy and the support that concordia has for us in this example that we'll be able to use that is yet another example of where portland public schools is a good partner um with our uh with with the community so thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to be a partner of yours thank you you've been a great partner too and our president has said that publicly recently at a major event i just want to reiterate you've been great partners thank you wonderful all right yeah i'd also like to say thank you and a lot of my friends right now are actually applying to schools and deciding that they want to be teachers and i just can't imagine if they knew like this program in a few years that high schoolers are going to be talking about this as a program where they can learn to be teachers so i just imagine just how great this experience is going to be for so many young people and for the actual students at fabian so i'd just like to say thank you as well thank you and 288 9371 operators are standing by wonderful i knew that was coming yeah all right so the board will now vote on resolution zero two five all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes any opposed any extensions all right resolution five zero two five is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative jazz while voting yes yes okay kevin all right
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thank
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thank you all right we are going to do a slight shift on our agenda for just a moment and look at inner district transfers so this is another topic that we have previously received information about is at our january 27th meeting i believe judy brennan director of enrollment and transfer i just thought there she is thank you mr president if we do have any questions but we have a resolution in our packet resolution five zero two six inter-district transfer procedures for the 2015-16 school year do i have a motion director knowles moose and director second belisle thank you seconds the motion to adopt resolution number 5026. miss houston is there any public comment on the resolution there is not there is not and any more discussion yeah we've already reviewed it okay great all right so the board will now vote on resolution number five zero two six all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed by saying no no extensions and i think we have just five resolution number five zero is approved by a vote of five to zero with student representative jazz while voting yes yes great thank you so much so um i don't know if our partners are they all here so i know we're moving faster than we expected tonight so he's excited yeah i know get him up there yeah i know so let's move on then to the 2015 budget item around funded programs so this is one of the topic in the series that we're considering and hearing and around the 2015-16 budget and superintendent smith would you like to introduce the item um i would and i'll introduce joe lafontaine who's the director of funded programs and we'll walk you through what we're looking at for funded programs budget for the coming year thank you so much joe you're up thank you chairperson atkinson school board for having me this evening um i've provided you a pack with some information about our proposed budget for this upcoming school year let me begin by just reminding everyone that funded programs is a place where federal funds come to portland public schools to support underrepresented populations the key there is support and what i mean by that is that we don't generally initiate a lot of things we actually find ways to swoop in alongside existing programs to lend support to make sure that our underrepresented populations are really getting as much support as they possibly can additionally this year's budget is a work where i've worked very carefully inter-departmentally with the other departments to make sure that the work we're doing is supporting their initiatives that are supporting the district's initiatives funded programs does fully fund support to 31 title one schools in the district and i provided you with a list of of those schools so you can have some of that specific information if you so desire additionally i want to remind you that in 2014 there was a decision and funded for funded programs to redesign supports for our focused priority schools so a portion of tonight's budget conversation is about those specific designs that we have in place and how we've allocated monies to support the work in the schools that are struggling a little bit more this slide basically is showing that we this year's allocation is 12.5 million dollars we're looking at approximately eleven nine next year about a five percent dis decrease over the course of the last five years funded programs has had a decrease in their budget anywhere between four and nine percent and where we haven't been given a formal number by the state of oregon yet but we're anticipating in the neighborhood of five percent that reduction isn't by because of their funding level to us it really is about uh our population and the migration of our population moving out of our community as you know we're looking at an increase in our student enrollment this is really about the underserved populations moving and migrating out of our district to neighboring districts um to hold this conversation i basically want to take our fiscal centers and just divide it into these four areas to kind of organize the conversation and that's why i provided you a ledger that broke things down in this way for you i'll take a look first at the funded programs department there is 7.5 departmental staff here to run a number of programs that we have and i want to talk about these formal programs that are somewhat mandated by by law we have family engagement policies where we have to assign one percent of our total budget to support family engagement that money is not kept centrally that money is allocated to those schools so the work can be done in those communities at the at the school neighborhoods we also have a portion that goes to neglected and delinquent students this portion of title funding is for these students who really don't that have some issues that don't allow them to attend regular public schools right now maybe they're in drug alcohol treatment or some other services that are much more demanding additionally we focus funds and support homeless families and children to make sure that they have a connection to a school and that their instruction isn't broken simply because they're struggling on finding their a home for themselves we have a many of our team members and staff that work on this as well as working with our our migrant population in a very similar fashion additionally there's indirect support that comes from the funded programs budget that goes to pps to help manage a budget of this size um the second portion of this is in regards to focus priority school support this is the new section of the funded programs that is really focused on trying to make sure those schools that are struggling have the supports they need to be successful one aspect of that was that we have hired a director of school improvement this person is a school administrator who has a record of actually turning the school around which is not an easy endeavor and so this person is now on board working alongside our other existing staff who have the same challenges and helping bridge the gap between district programs ode state coaches all the different moving parts and providing guidance to the building principles to make sure that they feel as though they're supported in the process and they understand how to move their school forward as best as possible additionally we have a focused priority set aside what's important about this set-aside is the the state requires us to set aside some money but our department is approaching this differently where we aren't just setting aside money for those schools that are focused and priority we know we have 11 schools that are currently of that status we also know that the state of oregon only designates them every four years since that's the case we have some other title one schools whose academic performance right now is less than even some of those that are designated we don't want to wait until the fall of 2016 when schools are designated again for us to recognize what we know is a struggle for some schools so we have set aside money here to support those schools that are designated but we've also set aside money to support those schools that we know they would be if we don't help them so we're trying to be proactive in our approach to supporting the schools and not just doing it because some schools were designated in 2012. additionally we have a successful school support component where there's all kinds of challenges that happens in in title one schools and we have a line there to afford support to schools that may have something occur to them that they don't have monies to address and so we have a regular very very regular communication channel to identify if there is additional needs at the different schools and that's what this portion is for when a school is designated by the state of oregon one of the things that's required
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is that they have a state coach assigned to them again what we've done is we've taken on a proactive approach to our schools that struggle and we're trying to provide state coaching for those principles as well so the line item that you see there that talks about additional state coaching is really to move another expert in alongside the principal to help them 10 hours a week in their school to guide their school improvement efforts in school-based allocations um there's um there's some comparable allocations on the line there that show you the funding levels for our schools between the 14 15 school year and what we're projecting for the 1516 school year will not impact the school's funding i did share an earlier slide that talked about maybe a five percent reduction we might have in funding that won't impact the schools okay even though we have had a change in our funding formula from the cep the community eligibility program to away from free and reduced lunch it it will not impact the schools that are being funded now there are some schools that are slipping out of title one funding next year they would have slipped out in spite of whichever for which either formula we were using and that information is there in front of you as well okay additionally there are just so that you know with the application of that new cep formula there are five schools that will have a reduction in their funding but i want you to understand that that reduction is not because of the formula actually that is because those happen to be schools that have dropping enrollment and you can actually see that if you just put any enrollment criteria side by side with those with the five schools that you see with losses in their funding but even those five schools and the funding loss that they will have it still will be they will still be receiving more money next year at the school level than they got this year even with the reductions in those five schools so they're not actually losing any money even though it appears in the formula that they are we have some considerable set aside for expanding pre-k instruction in educational support for our kindergarten programs and we are prepared to come alongside the districts on this work and support the early learning designs and that's what that large chunk of money is there there's a number of different programs and approaches that are being considered right now and funded programs has a considerable amount set aside to make sure that we support that direction for early learners it's a very important component to everything we're doing we're just we're just ready to support that as it comes forward that could be in the form of additional pre-k classrooms it could be in the form of eas for classrooms we're just waiting to make sure that we have clarity on the staffing that the district does so we know how best to support that going forward we're not really permitted to establish that staffing additionally we're looking at adding two programs they're called cia and it's it's a it's a term that i can't pronounce it's connector instruct printer i've probably totally mispronounced that but this program is an outstanding program that reaches to our families in their homes we currently have one of these programs at clarendon and it's serving over 40 families in their home that we bring to the home a curriculum twice a month we work with the parents in what in providing the curriculum for them in the in the materials and we check back in with them about the success that they've had with that it's been very warmly received and we're looking at expanding that in two more locations throughout the city in the process of that we have some community stakeholders that do some similar work and we are in communication with them to ensure that as we try to move forward we're not actually encroaching on any of their designs there's a couple of different programs out there so we're in communication to make sure that we're actually reaching families that don't have any current service and we know there are some sectors of our community that really do need this these are families that can't bring their child to an early learning hub or they maybe don't have a pre-k in their neighborhood this is a great model for us to reach out to them and deliver this service to them in their native language additionally one of the things that we are recommending is that we have some
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pre-k classroom behavioral support we currently have five five four pre-k classrooms as well as the early learning hub at clarendon and one of the things we've come to understand is that just because we have a design for schools doesn't mean that our children are necessarily ready to be in them and some still some children struggle with that that classroom that classroom presence and so this person is going to come alongside the parent the student and the teacher and help identify ways that they can strategically work with the family and the child to be more successful in the classroom setting the idea here is to really give the strategies to the teachers and the parent so the child can just be successful additionally we're looking at adding pre-k parent transition support and this is pretty um this is to come alongside our parents and to assist them particularly from our early learning hubs in transitioning to their neighborhood schools at clarendon currently we have several classrooms but those parents don't know or have maybe contacts at their neighborhood schools that they're comfortable with yet these folks will work with those families to make sure that they can make a successful transition to their neighborhood school we will be working with the community agents from the department of or from the office of school family partnerships in the five languages that they offer to make sure that we're particularly targeting those families that might have language barriers and we're going to work with the parents and actually escort them to the school to build a contact at that school so they will know that at that school they'll have an advocate that they can work with i'm going to come back to this a little bit later because this person actually is going to do some other work at another level as well um we are going to continue the support that we've been given to the head start programming which is quite broad in our district and we are we feel it's an important program and we'll continue to support that as well under some specific student supports this is the eighth grade transition coordinator the pre-k i was just talking about this person will also do some work at the eighth grade if you think about a k-8 school setting these schools may have had a child for nine years and the parents don't know another school they they don't know how to advocate for a child at a high school so these people are going to be looking at targeted eighth grade classes identifying students that have been struggling working with those students and their families again again in their native language at least in the five languages that we support right now out of the office of family partnerships and meeting with the parents in their homes and helping them learn how to advocate for their child at the high school level and that isn't a one-stop type of an event actually the design here is for these people there will be two for these people to work through the first semester with these families so that as the child displays any type of struggle academically behaviorally attendance wise then the counselors will notify our super our transition people they'll contact the families and we'll build a bridge of communication to try to remedy things before it gets too far and so um we're going to work on some real targeted populations to make sure that the caseload is manageable before we try to expand this but we think that this is a way that we can really help support our children as they make transitions and help parents understand how they can advocate for their child at the high school level additionally there's monies in here where we want to support more parent education we currently have some designs here in the community this is in no way intended to replace what we're doing it really is something we want to enrich and do more to for our community in whatever languages or needs exist and again we're going to move in alongside our partners to do this work and some of those community agencies we're already in contact with we know that when a parent is pursuing their own educational growth and their child sees that that there's very few things that are more powerful than a child knowing that it's important to the parent to educate themselves as well and so this is a very effective model to help move our entire community forward um also we have been working with the office of equity and partnerships to identify some male mentoring underrepresented populations for male mentoring mill mentoring say that fast three times um and we're again we're not trying to replace anything we want to come in along lolenzo and some of his partners to help build what we currently have in place to help support the this population who have some real struggles academically i'll tell you just within the last two weeks i was actually approached by a current principal that actually has a service in her school where she was saying it's just taken off
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but she's already at this time in the year expended what she had for the resources that she needs and she needed to really double what she had and so again we're just coming alongside to continue the support for what appears to be a very vibrant growing program in supporting our underrepresented male populations and then as far as district programming is concerned we're going to continue to promote summer school programs and our um our partnership that we have with the self-enhancement incorporated i'm sure you've got some questions what can i thank you thank you very much i really appreciate the information so board members questions comments great explanations thank you director of you thank you so if i'm homeless and i'm living in a car out in southeast portland way out on the other side down in some field what is it that i can expect from the school what help can i can i expect great let's have two kids and one in the second grade one in the poor great question director bill because that that's a reality unfortunately for too many of our families so once it becomes known to our school our school a teacher one of our community agents then we go out into that into that neighborhood we find that car we find that family and then we reach out to them to lend whatever support we can to help them connect with uh with a school for their children and that has a pretty broad spectrum down to providing clothing whatever type of supports maybe it's transportation bus passes to help get their child into a school commonly it's actually taking the parent there to even advocate for the enrollment process the parents oftentimes don't even know how to do some of that stuff but we we have agents in our office to make sure that that outreach occurs i'm very proud of the fact that right now we have identified more families this year than we have in years past but i'm also saddened to say that we are finding more families than we have in years past but i feel very good about our outreach recently we made a presentation to the principals of all of the title schools and we introduced to them the entire staff to make sure they knew how to make the contacts so if they ever had an inkling that somebody may not be okay they can turn it over to us to really inquire more deeply and we do that in the native language as best we can when the state coaches come in and talk about turning a school around which is language you said we had a new person who was good at turning a school around or moving a school forward when the state coaches come in and talk they're they're talking about test scores they're not really talking about helping children broadening their education or helping them and you know by getting them involved with agencies and stuff i mean what are we talking about when we say turning a school around okay when you use that language so when i'm talking about turning schools around i mean there's only one metric that i use for that and that's the state's metric that they use for identifying schools that struggle okay the the way they identify schools that are focused and priority is through the school report card yeah okay so um and until they abandon that process then that's a process we have to address so that's the work that we're doing with those state coaches now with the state coaches what about our own person our own personality that person the school improvements the school improvement specialist yeah absolutely they were they work alongside the state coach and the and the building principle to help them with that work as well any questions dr morgan more when you get back okay director martin actually it's it's i didn't have any other questions but i wanted to comment on director beale's question regarding perhaps a homeless family with with children in the school or i would say two we have a significant homeless youth population that is uh family-less right um uh i think first and foremost i know there's a uh there's often times a um palpable anti-partner sentiment and that that floats around certain certain folks but but in this case you would work with the county and the county providers to find both the opportunity for those youth to engage in school while the county is is serving that family and finding a location for them to be safe and sheltered so uh the the district isn't any good at the work uh at one side of that work without
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the partnership of the county and a service provider to assist in in finding safety and security for that family we as a community have to network to really support those families absolutely director i just wanted to call out one of the very first things you said which is that the budget for these services the the federal budget for these services is decreasing as our student population is increasing and the travesty of that one of the things that i am pleased that portland public schools is doing is stepping into that discussion with our federal delegation so i was just back in washington d.c uh with a whole contingent of 800 or so national school board members trying to help them understand the impact when there is less funding because the federal programs really are the programs that help our neediest and most underserved and poorest students and i want to make sure that folks know that pam is going to be going back with the council of great city schools i believe in march and nina and hopefully with some students again me nancy and cr which is fabulous i'm so glad you're doing that and i'll be in dc in march myself and you will be in d.c thank you and i know that david williams is going with our nutrition services folks to talk about the healthy hunger free kids act um so i'm grateful that we are stepping into the conversation in a bigger way and i would ask anyone who's listening who has any inclination to be writing to our federal delegation and helping them understand how important these funds are because these really are the funds that help our media students absolutely and and you look at the line and you go well 11 million dollars it doesn't go far when you realize how many families and how much need there is in our community absolutely you said you had some more we're giving 375 000 to the cia just for clarity's sake that that is that uh that is that spanish group that i i cannot very well pronounce so just so just so that everybody's clear on that is that a person that goes out and 125 i mean a hundred thousand a person and then so no what that is is um that is two programs each program has uh two people two adults in it okay so we don't send out individuals to homes by themselves we try to avoid that they go to those homes and are able to address those uh the families of the pre-k in their native language okay so if we have somebody out there who doesn't match the language then we're going to partner with the office of families and and make sure that we're trying to reach those families in their native language but we visit the home each of the clarendon uses as an example over 40 homes right now twice a week i'm sorry twice a month by the two staff members who are there so they have a classroom that they manage at clarendon where the families can come in and they can show them there they can do they can do parent workshops in that classroom they have in the classroom the supplies that they distribute out to families so it's a little bit different than a classroom set of supplies it's a bit more because you have to have enough to distribute but they go back out after work after they've taught them how to use those supplies and trade them out for the new ones and train the parent to be the teacher in their own home and so what you see there on that line item is two programs four more people a training in how to actually manage that curriculum that's a national curriculum and then the supplies to do that work and that's time did they start work what time did they end um they they run a regular type of a work day at clarendon at 8 30 30 um i don't believe that they do no not currently they're they're reaching out to you know basically i think the majority of families that we're seeing right now are parents who have very young children and they don't have transportation to bring them into the hubs or to the pre-k so they're going into the home because they can't afford the child care so they're going into the home to actually deliver service right there on their couch if you will you see i think i had one more question when you said the pre-k comes alongside the district what do you what did you mean by that well the district is making some staffing decisions in regards to how we're going to be delivering early learning and as they make those decisions funded programs has the set aside there to come alongside and support what they're doing we can't basically do a lot by ourselves so if their decision is to
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put let's say they put a half-time ea in every kindergarten classroom then we would be able to afford putting another half-time ea in every title one classroom to make it a full-time person that type of support i'm talking about we can't very well we don't have enough funds to do a lot more so the pre-kindergarten increase of 1.647 million dollars is that mostly in increased classrooms or is that mostly in if we go with the pre thank you so if we go with a pre-kindergarten design where we when we decide to start some more pre pre-k classrooms that costs i believe about 260 000 per classroom with supplies curriculum teacher fte every one of those pre-k classrooms has a full-time teacher as well as a full-time ea so if the decision is that we should design more pre-k classrooms then that's how we'll expand those monies and we'll target areas of our community that don't currently have pre-k classroom support but we're just we're not we don't want to get ourselves out in front of what the district wants to do we're just waiting so that we can really enrich whatever the district design is and the uh education northwest contract for 265 thousand seven hundred dollars just for what those are for the coaches for the schools that don't get paid by the state because they've been designated those are the schools that are struggling and their achievement scores are actually as poor as some of the schools that have been designated so we're trying to be proactive to turn them around and put alongside them somebody who will work with them every week that those coaches are trained by the state so they're very highly skilled many are retired educators and administrators who work 10 hours a week with that principle so the education northwest is uh they're they're the clearinghouse for those coaches they do all the training something for the scene we go through the the state sends them out through education northwest yeah education northwest has a contract with the state of oregon okay thank you very much so i have a question on that sorry the education northwest if they're sending people out to teach us how to do the testing which is what we're talking about the turning around the schools based on this standardized testing and we're switching to the common core or s back which doesn't do anything for our uh it doesn't give us grade levels doesn't give us foundational math skills and it doesn't get teach kids to write why are they just set up to because i i don't kind of trust the state because of what they did with the appraisal reports eight hundred thousand dollars and they were garbage they were horrible they were they did nothing for us and we spent a fortune on it and they were very good educators but they didn't even let them do it i don't i don't trust them to do this so i mean what what are they actually coming out and how are they turning our schools around so i mean i don't think they're turning around do you see them turning around that's a really legitimate question let me explain that some of the schools and some of the schools that are in this type of a status are really missing um essential infrastructural designs i mean there's there's a number of reasons that schools are in these conditions that they're in these folks can come in because they have experience and they might say they might help the principal recognize that they have a master schedule that's not even delivering the core i mean there's so many possible ways that this that these experts can come in and just really lend support to what the principal is trying to accomplish in sometimes and i can tell you firsthand as having been a principal sometimes having somebody else to just run your ideas by is just a godsend in its own right because it can be pretty lonely in there trying to make the right decisions when you don't have somebody else to really bounce things off of and so these people work alongside the principal to really help create guidance that is very specific to each site so a coach at one school is going to be doing something entirely different than a coach in another school guaranteed okay i'm thank thank you for that and i don't i appreciate uh your excellent presentation i appreciate the time you spent with me today answering yesterday answering questions but i don't i don't think we should be getting coaches coming out from the state telling us what to do i'd rather that we put in a reading teacher and a half into that school or a librarian into that school and a reading teacher that's how i would turn that being to turn that school around or a counselor or somebody who works directly with children i i just don't think the state people have got it together i i really don't i mean thank you director beale thank you so um thanks so much i really appreciate the detailed information that you presented to us and that you really kind of went
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in depth on what you're providing and what you the supports you provide to our students i guess i just would comment just around the you know the the trend of the gentrification and the displacement of so many of our families through forces outside our control in terms of the housing market particularly in close and north and northeast so that's part of the reason you're seeing um that we're losing some of our students as you know yeah and inclusionary engineers passes we'll help with that um to some degree and there's a lot of work going on around that um but that's that's a really disturbing trend that we currently have i believe around 20 000 homeless students in the state of oregon i believe around 1700 over 1700 in portland public alone and many more in our surrounding sister districts so i think our former governor said that the very idea of having homeless children should be unacceptable to oregonians and so appreciate all that you're doing and all that all our partners are doing but we need to do more as a community to recognize this is unacceptable and that we need to come together to find housing and supports for all our families so just wanted to take that opportunity to say that but thank you for all your great work thank you all right thank you very much and i'm hoping we have we have one more important presentation with some partners this evening and we would love to great so we're really pleased to have a presentation tonight about elise with portland general electric for new solar panels very exciting partnership we heard about this at our last meeting from our staff and tonight we have some partners here and we're going to be excited to move this forward so superintendent smith would you like to introduce this item i would and tony magliano our chief operating officer will lead off and i just want to welcome all of our partners who are here we had a fabulous celebration at our leader and we will tell you more about this partnership but it's really exciting tony thank you good evening superintendent smith chair atkins co-chair news board of directors on february 17th staff presented a great project around adding solar to six of our roofs and during that presentation we highlighted the strength that partners bring to making complex projects like that come together so tonight we have those partners here with us and i'm going to introduce them collectively and then each partner will come to the come to the podium from portland gas and electric carol dillon vice president general are you a former california resident carol dillon vice president customer strategies and business development joey ross manager of innovative solutions group from the energy trust of oregon debbie menashe general counsel and former pps board member welcome back you missed it didn't you just gonna stay away lizzy rubidoux rubido who is the senior solar program manager and from bonneville environmental foundation sean mcqueen program director solar for our schools so with that carol welcome from portland general electric portland general electric that's true we're so glad that portland general electric is pointed quite busy thank you so much well it's already been mentioned we had a fantastic event last week announcing the pps solar school roof community partnership at a really exciting press event in our leda and it was sunny and the kids all signed a solar panel and it and we decided that was such an exciting feature that as the panels go up on the schools we're going to continue to have a panel for all the kids to sign because it was so fantastic so this has been work in progress for the past two years and we're proud because this really continues the effort of growing solar in oregon and as energy demand continues to increase in our service area and throughout the state it's really an imperative that we have every tool in our toolbox and solar is one of those tools pge is committed to meet the state's renewable energy standard of 25 by 2025 and in total this project will produce enough electricity to power the equivalent of more than 100 homes funding for this collaborative project it's all about partnership two million dollars came from pge's 110 000 renewable power customers who voluntarily signed up for green power on their bills and contributed to pg's renewable development funds in addition the energy trust of oregon will provide incentives of up to one million dollars for the six school installations and we are further pleased to announce the
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project includes funding for a district-wide solar education program from bonneville education foundation in the fall the schools will receive curriculum and professional training for teachers interactive project kiosks and learning kits and materials for students i just want to note that over the last several years pg has helped deliver a number of solar projects in the community and some began in the school district our previous solar efforts with local area schools included david douglas high north salem high and cleveland high school on a statewide basis in 2008 we collaborate with the oregon department of transportation on the country's very first solar highway and we followed it up in 2012 and we created the country's largest solar highway project at baldock on interstate 5. i just want to say again we're just delighted to work with our partners portland public school district and what's so exciting about this partnership is the benefit for all of our students just to see all the the shining faces at that event last week was so thrilling and was thrilling it could provide educational benefits for them and they're going to understand what a future that's sustainable looks like in oregon in our community and further we'll be creating some green leaders along the way so i can't be more excited on behalf of pge thanks for collaborating with us on such an exciting project thank you well good evening board members it's very nice to be here again on this side of the room it's uh really especially gratifying for me my name is debbie menache i'm general counsel of energy trust of oregon and it's very gratifying to be here doing something to support public portland public schools which is of course very close to my heart for time spent here and time as a pps parent um i'm here to say a few words on behalf of energy trust's executive director margie harris who loves this project and would have been very happy to be here she's at a regional energy efficiency conference in tacoma so she sends her regrets but i'm here with energy trust senior solar project managing manager lizzie rubido she's going to give you a little information about the project but we want to say i want to say on behalf of energy trust that we are very pleased to work together in this collaborative arrangement with our partners portland general electric bonneville educational foundation and the others who have played a part in helping oregon schools generate renewable energy it's very exciting to see those panels on top of schools we are also pleased that energy trust has been able to help portland public schools and other districts around the state invest in energy efficiency we've helped with energy efficient heating systems lighting and insulation and the dollar saved in heating and lighting schools can be put right back into the classroom and i am i take personal gratification in that but our organization is really pleased to work with portland public schools on those projects as well tonight you're considering this exciting new project that will add more solar to six portland area schools and on behalf of energy trust i want to thank the forward-thinking members of this school board and portland public schools we want to thank again our partners of portland general electric who really share a commitment to solar schools and renewable energy um the leadership and educational engagement of bonneville education foundation environmental foundation you will be pleased to see the kind of kiosks and educational arrangements that go up around these installations they're always fun and engaging for those around them and our thanks also to every student parent and community member who recognizes the importance of saving energy resources and using solar energy so all of us are essential parts of making these kind of projects happen i'm going to let lizzy take over a little bit with a few more details about the project so as one of the worker bees in energy truss solar program i wanted to share a couple of fun facts aside from just the megawatts and the you know how many solar panels uh and how this project is really contributing to oregon's clean energy mix so with the installation of these systems the district is going to be gaining an additional 1.2 million kilowatt hours of solar power every year and i can tell you that's a really big number i work with a lot of these projects every day and that's that's a really impressive uh accomplishment which as you've heard is enough energy to power over a hundred homes but another fun fact is that as we add these six systems to the more than 7000 solar electric installations that energy trust has funded throughout oregon to date we will have installed more than a quarter of a million solar
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panels across the state which is a lot in fact it's enough to completely cover 135 football fields with solar panels so this is adding to major accomplishments throughout the state and on a personal note last week i got to attend that fantastic celebration at arlida and i had the opportunity to see the students gathered around the solar panel signing the solar panel really genuinely excited about the idea and the opportunity to learn about how you can turn sunshine into electricity and that was terrific and for me that's a reminder of why i work every day at the job that i do to help contribute to a more sustainable energy future for oregon so i want to thank all of you at portland public schools thanks again pge bonneville environmental foundation for working on tirelessly on these projects they are incredibly difficult to pull off i cannot tell you and it's so exciting to see one right here about to kind of cross the finish line and go towards the celebration and also for your support on this project and for bringing more solar to our neighborhood schools thank you very much thanks for having me hi i'm sean mcqueen with bonneville environmental foundation and i just want to say that i'm pretty excited and happy to share a commitment to this project it's pretty great we at bef believe education plays a critical role in securing a clean energy future so that's no you know we've been doing this with portland public schools over 10 years and 21 projects many of which also were in partnership with pge and energy trust of oregon and we're pretty excited to go ahead and roll out the educational benefits so you've been hearing about teacher training you've been hearing about science kids what exactly are we talking about we're talking about durable science kit materials that can become part of the pps multimedia library and can be signed out by teachers all over the school district and each of the science kits are tailored to a specific training for different grade levels so that we can focus you know in the lower grades on things more appropriate for elementary school kids and then high school get a little more complex so we're pretty excited also to partner with solar oregon as a follow-on to the teacher training there'll be some in-classroom support with solar industry professionals who can share with kids the various career paths in renewable energy everything from you know of obviously engineering and installing solar to being marketing finance you name it there's lots of ways to get involved even doing the work i do you know it's it's very various ways to get involved so we're pretty excited about that and also one of the other cool things about partnering with portland public schools is through this training opportunity teachers can get access to graduate level credit through partnership with the district and the portland the portland was at the portland metro stem center pardon me i get all the stem centers names correct so um we're also we also have a new library of teacher generated peer-tested and technically vetted classroom lesson plans and then we post them on our website and we've got many more in development and so what's really neat about that is that we can create all kinds of lesson plans that we want but unless a teacher has tested it in the classroom and actually gone through you know if you think it's cool to use a little like starbucks dome to track the sun but then the kids put it on their mouth like this and then they ruin it like those details have been figured out in these lesson plans and what's also really cool about the lesson plans is that they're developmentally staged so teachers give each other advice on like this is uh before christmas activity no don't do this until a springtime fourth grader so it's kind of cool that we have new curricula that would really be relevant to teachers and connect that to the next generation science standards in a meaningful way so that when your students by the time they graduate high school get their own homes graduate college the grid the nature of the grid itself is going to change and they'll be able to participate in a meaningful way in the future of energy and through this partnership we also hope that we inspire the next generation of clean energy leaders with insight and innovative thinking necessary to solve the world's energy problems thank you fabulous thank you so much good questions great yeah well let's go ahead and get this resolution on the table thank you so much to all our partners for being here and for your flexibility with our schedule and our agenda we really appreciate that so the board will now consider resolution number five zero two three license agreement with portland general electric do i have a motion director below the motion to adopt resolution five zero two three any citizen comment no there's not i have i have just
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yet and for discussion or comments director great thank you um first of all thank you to all of you who are here tonight and i'm so excited about this opportunity um not only there are so many pluses to this i mean i was not all that familiar with what is happening with the curriculum or how it had been developed and that is just tremendous news to hear the work that's going to be done with our students in that area but also we earlier this evening had an opportunity to thank one of our other partners concordia for being a great partner of ours and here we have four different entities that have come together with portland public schools to collaborate and have this wonderful opportunity for us to put solar panels on our school roofs and also to provide another piece of education for our students about solar power sustainability and i just don't think we can thank you enough for giving us the opportunity to partner with you to bring all this to the district so thank you so much dr blow first just one point of clarification did i just hear that we have curriculum that's been developed and teacher tested that could help parents keep kids from ruining the starbucks plastic domes because that could be a money maker that's great um thank you all i just want to add my thanks i appreciate you highlighting how complex these issues are or these these projects are and it does take a long time of sticking with it and i really want to appreciate all the parties both our staff and our partners to stay in because probably started out with an idea and then we kept saying well where are we gonna who else needs to be part of this conference who else because all of this of course is part of our 2012 approved bond program which is part of our 30-year program to revitalize all of our schools and modernize all of our schools but in order to make this effective in order to best use our citizens funding we had to make it pencil out thus the partners coming together to make this happen so yes sustainability because it will in the long term not only be better for our community and for our world and will save money but on the front end we still had to make it pencil out and so i just wanted to say thank you to the partners for sticking with it and looking under every rock and turning over every turning over every week yeah for making this work and for remembering that this is about education right this is about our future so having the kiosks available having the curricula so that our students can begin to engage you know there are a number of things in this world that i still don't really understand and energy translating sunlight and electricity is that's phenomenal and technically to get kids to begin to engage in that and begin to understand because it's not incomprehensible obviously people have figured this out just not me but to begin engaging at the younger ages i just really appreciate it so thank you so much and i'm excited to move forward and again just a reminder to all the partners at the table it's just part of a 30-year program so we have six we'll be hopefully looking for more as we as we continue to look at our infrastructure over the next 30 years and we know solar energy and renewable energy is changing so quickly we don't know what that'll look like but we hope that you'll stay engaged thank you so i first wanted to um say thank you to our two former board members who are here debbie menashe and carla wenzel is also here from pje it's nice to know that there's life after doing this work on the school board and that you're continuing to do really important work so thank you both for being here and thank you to all of our community partners so um you know we passed our bond with taxpayer support in 2012 and it gave us an opportunity to start doing some really necessary work for the city for our school district including rebuilding for high schools but also doing improvements at up to 63 of our schools and that's where the roofs came in and one of the first questions that i think that i started asking was as we looked at our ed specs and we looked at how we were going to be moving forward with the design and construction of these schools the question was can we put solar on the roofs it wasn't originally envisioned and or budgeted for in the bond itself and so then the question was can we at least make sure that we're designing the ruse that they could handle the weight of solar panels and the rest and and i think the portland public schools paid attention to that which i'm really grateful for
02h 10m 00s
because it gave us this opportunity to step in after we started doing some of the roofs and while we're in the process of doing some of the new roofs because that's really what when you want to put solar panels on so um and one of the reasons that i was um so interested in other than the obvious benefits to the environment and the sustainability education the rest that we can do with our kids is that when you put a when you put a roof on a building when you put a roof on your house or on a school and you complete the project the next day nobody knows the difference but if you put a roof on and then you add some solar panels which tend to be more visible all of a sudden folks are talking about it and it does give us an opportunity to have an ongoing conversation about why it matters with our kids which is why i'm so glad that the bonneville education foundation is also going to be putting kiosks in all of our schools and helping us with that as well so the one thing i wanted to mention is carol and i attended the the celebration at arlida with all of our partners we did sort of a press conference and gazillion kids around and just so excited but one comment that was unbelievably adorable was a fifth grader i was standing next to carol and a fifth grader came over and said mrs smith and she said yes and she said i have always wanted solar panels on our roof it was so cute oh my god it was so cute um so i just want to lend my thanks and appreciation to the amazing partners who have have stepped in with us so pge the bonneville power foundation and the energy trust we couldn't do it without you and i also want to extend just incredible appreciation tony to you and to all of the folks at portland public schools who who really stepped into this partnership in a really significant way because it was very it was a complicated partnership to move forward for a whole variety of reasons and we did it and our kids in our community are going to be the ones who benefit so thank you to everybody dr martin so thank you all for coming and also for partnering tony thank you too for the leadership you've shown in in making this happen um two quick things one is i love this because it it's a reflection of uh the importance and the work necessary to save taxpayer dollars this and tony i think you're creating an argument as to how investment in facilities we did this a couple of years ago with the boilers how an investment in facilities actually creates opportunity to improve connection and support for students saving money in one place allows us to invest in another so i thank you for that i think it also is again an opportunity for our schools to reflect the values of our communities and the schools within each of our neighborhoods so the more we can do that i think the better the better it's going to be and it's going to attract parents and families and others to to our school so i i love it it's uh it's one of those things we can i think we uh we celebrate for good reason and one of those i think we need to continue to prioritize so thank you all right so i'd like to say thank you so as an outdoor school leader something that always inspires me is how passionate these sixth graders are about sustainability they'll talk on and on about it and i'm just excited that for these students it won't just be outdoor school now they'll be exposed to it at a younger age and then after outdoor school it won't end until who knows they'll go back and have curriculum and just what you can do at outdoor school will be so much more so i'm just so excited that we're going to have this opportunity for our children and thank you wonderful actually i'm going to just add too like thank you guys it was a really exciting event celebrating the partnership and we had huge student enthusiasm so even the small amount of hands-on stuff that was available they piled on and they were i mean they were they were so excited and the student that bobby just referenced she was bursting out i mean she was like really heartfelt about like solar yeah she was really excited about it but also my other favorite moment was jim pyro so ceo pge was and he's up at the podium reading his remarks and usually the audience is out here they are just piled around him and like looking over his shoulder and right up on the podium with him i mean there was just like huge student excitement about about what was happening and the um i agree with the having the kids sign the panel so then having that be part of the demonstration but like really there was huge excitement about everybody getting their name on that panel so anyway i just feel a huge possibility of where we go with this um in terms of student interest
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right out of the shoot so it was it was very fun so thank you all thank you all right fantastic so it'll now be our pleasure to vote on resolution five zero two three all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes no extensions resolution five zero two three is approved by vote of six to zero with student representative js while voting yes yes all right i just wasn't the correct student yes ready thank you thank you thank you so much all right for those following along at home we are now uh to item 10 our agenda which is the business agenda so the board will now consider the remainder of our business agenda having already voted on resolutions five zero two three three five zero two six any changes to the business dinner and do i have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda director regan moves and director noel seconds the adoption of the business agenda any com public comment any board discussion all right so the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes proposed abstentions the business agenda is approved by vote of six to zero with student representative jaz while voting thank you very much all right so the next meeting of the board will be held on tuesday march 3rd at six o'clock pm and this meeting is

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)

2015-02-24 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: Board of Education - Regular Meeting - February 24, 2015

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