2015-03-09 PPS School Board Study Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2015-03-09
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	study
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - March 9, 2015

00h 00m 00s
good evening this study session of the board of education for march 9th 2015 is called to order i'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers our study sessions are generally limited to receipt of information from staff and discussion of that information and review of resolutions prior to vote but at times we do conduct votes during study sessions any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by state law the meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our pps tv services website um student representative jess wallace absent this evening so before we begin with our agenda tonight just want to remind everyone in the room and watching at home about the town hall meetings that are being held to hear from the community about your budget priorities so there are still six meetings to be held they all begin at six o'clock p.m and they are going to be march 11th at cleveland high school march 12th at madison high school march 16th at lincoln april 13th at wilson april 21st at franklin and april 27th at roosevelt so do please plan to attend one of those town halls and share your budget priorities with us we had a great meeting um several us were there last week at jefferson and it was a really nice dialogue and conversation with folks who came out so that was really valuable for us and i hope felt like a good use of their time as well so with that we'll start with public comment miss houston do you have anyone signed up and our first two speakers jonah carpenter and alicia brown welcome so come on down and while you're getting settled i'll just go through our usual instructions so thanks so much for taking the time to come and attend the meeting providing your comments to us we value you being here look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns we'll be actively listening and reflecting on your comments but not responding to any comments or questions during this time we have asked board manager roseanne powell who's sitting right over there to follow up on the issues raised during public testimony so she's available afterward if you'd like additional information about how the board might respond so guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration of others complaints about employees should be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter and won't be heard in this forum you have a total of three minutes to share your comments please begin by stating your name and spelling your last name for the record during the first two minutes of your testimony the green light will be on when you have one minute left the yellow light will go on and then when the red light goes on we respectfully ask that you wrap up your comments so again thank you so much for being here and you may begin thank you my name is jonah carpenter c-a-r-p-e-n-t-e-r i'm a special education teacher at james john elementary in a self-contained focus program for third through fifth grade students with social and emotional disabilities i'm here to share with you our experience this past year as the special education department and the district began closing the k2 focus programs in attempts to mainstream these students at the end of last year our sped building team all met with the the director of special education and we were told that the k2 focus program would remain in place for the 2014-15 school year we were told that the paraprofessionals and critical one-on-one support staff would remain in place the department was aware that the numbers of students placed in this program were low however they understood the high needs of these students the projected incoming students the high needs of our building and the 3-5 focus classroom so all staff would remain in place we were told that as we move towards inclusion for students placed in more restrictive settings staff could be utilized as the building determined to support these students unfortunately three days before school started we were told that three paraprofessionals would not be in place no rationale was provided we were left to scramble causing a big setback that absolutely worked against the goals of inclusion for all students two months later the department did close the k2 focus program and remove the teacher again with only three days for us to plan this was incredibly disruptive to the students this teacher was serving not only the focus program but the other students with behavioral needs she was supporting as well it was also disruptive to the general ed teachers supporting these students and the non-disabled students who also experienced this transition the lack of support from the department limits progress towards inclusion for all students and has forced us to make difficult decisions my team is routinely placed in untenable circumstances where we need to choose between the better of bad options regarding student and staff safety we cannot progress with the current supports in place when the district does respond it is
00h 05m 00s
reacting to repeated disruptions and dangerous incidents as opposed to thoughtfully preventing safety concerns and planning for success by having appropriate supports in place how are we to include students who are ready when the only staff available are consistently supporting students who desperately need one-on-one support to stay safe at school this leaves no support for students who are ready to experience inclusion opportunities my team would like nothing more than to see these students succeed in an inclusive mainstream general education environment yet we are struggling to meet the current needs of students on a consistent basis based on current supports in order to close this gap and help these students succeed we need direct involvement from district leadership these students deserve more support not less as the district rolls out these massive changes and services thank you for your time thank you hello my name is alicia brown b-r-o-w-n and this is my third year as a learning center teacher and special education case manager at roosevelt high school over the last three years our team has fought to establish an inclusive push-in model and have seen special education students passage rates increased by double-digit percentage points in core content classes our district's new special education redesign compromises our success it has decreased the already deficient support for our students increased our workloads and threatens to weaken the success of our accomplishments this redesign is flawed idea states that students with special needs should only be removed when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that the education in regular classes with the uses of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily our students can access the least restrictive environments but only when given access to the supports and services they need this redesign had made our services less satisfactory currently my building's five learning center teachers and 200 students share only one paraeducator who is often designated two tasks similar of a campus security agent this has resulted in an increased disproportionality in the exclusionary discipline of students with special needs in our building our students need paris support to access general education classes and have none also students currently have no step down process for transitioning into our building they arrive and are thrust into a model they are not yet prepared for at the beginning of this year we had hasty meetings for four students who came to us from mental health facilities focused behavior placements and residential facilities only one of these students remains these students needed more transition support and got none the 3d identification process requires case managers to complete paperwork that solely increases our workloads it has no follow-up seeks information easily found in our information systems and arrives too late to support students we have had nine students identified for the 3d process because of academic attendance and discipline concerns of these two passed seven of eight of their classes at semester and five were flagged after they left our building one had three discipline infractions nearly perfect attendance and past seven of his eight classes while i have lists of nearly 30 students with similar or more significant attendance behavior and academic needs who have not been flagged the 3d process could work but only if it identifies students with the most significant needs and provides commensurate support in our buildings here's what we need to fix these issues one-to-one pair of support for each learning center case manager transition teams that include students families district representatives and members of the old and new placement staff a 3d process that brings support to students designated special education coaches or department heads in each building a district-wide disciplined policy that involves student support teams and disciplined decisions redesigning our services should not be done in a way that undermines or increases our workloads diminishes the safety of our buildings or decreases the supports and services for our students we need a redesign that puts more professionals in our buildings not more paperwork on our desks thank you very much our next two speakers shalin joseph and ben welcome go ahead welcome my name is shalyn joseph j-o-s-e-p-h good evening board directors and superintendent smith i come to you tonight to speak about concerns regarding the current special education redesign recently you have listened to formal presentations from the director and assistant director of special education in which special education redesign was touted as an aspirational plan which would bring services to students instead of sending them to programs that some perceive as exclusionary
00h 10m 00s
use data driven decision making and build capacity using school resources you have heard many slick titles and descriptions in this redesign plan such as reach 2020 3d and swift first and foremost is my concern about the recent closure of behavior focus programs and loss of services associated with these programs such as licensed teachers and paraprofessionals the u.s department of education outlines required continuum of placement in section 300.115 b1 which states a continuum must include alternative placements such as regular classes special classes special schools home instruction and instruction in hospitals and institutions in writing ieps site-based teams often have to dance around level of services supports and placement due to pressure from administration to not write paraprofessional support for students despite site-based teams identifying the need for paraprofessional support my second concern is regarding the process and procedure which triggers services and supports for students with a recent special education redesign in portland public students are often placed in general education classrooms with limited or no supports to see if they can be successful of course they often fail academically or behaviorally an alarming trend i am witnessing is that frustrated and concerned teachers are asking special education teams if students need to be medicated because of unmet mental health and behavioral needs finally i speak to my concern about how special education services are allocated to students the recent special education redesign has undermined and taken away site-based decision even more than before in favor of newly formed non-site-based team district teams using the 3d approach in which attendance and behavioral data in synergy is analyzed in many schools attendance and behavior incidents are not documented in synergy with fidelity rendering the 3d method of analyzing unreliable in closing i will ask that the superintendent and the board please consider the negative impacts of special education redesign that have been presented does the special education redesign serve to meet our students needs for intensive wrap around safety mental health and learning needs or are our decisions being made based on catchphrases and buzzwords instead of actual efficacy thank you very much to the members of the board and superintendent smith i appreciate being given your time my name is ben grosskop g-r-o-s-s-c-u-p i've been teaching at madison high school for 15 years and i am a parent of a fifth and sixth grader in pps since three minutes is not enough time to cover all the issues surrounding the administration and use of data for the s back i want to focus on one element time something bothers me this year a high school junior is going to be exposed to between 14 and 22 hours of standardized testing with the elpa a-c-t ap tests oak science and sbac i am confused as to how this enormous amount of time does not impact the required classroom minutes that have been mandated and furthermore and mystified by this egregious use of educational time the block system which was put into place because it was a good fiscal decision in the time of cut cut cut does not help our students in their learning so much material is covered in a block and when students miss a block recovery of material is difficult we're going to pull students out of eight to nine block classes on average just for the s back then academic priority sped and eld kids will need more time yet for them the loss of instructional time is tenfold worse because of the support they need i work with those kids and it upsets me that we're going to subject them to this it does not make sound educational sense at all i asked the district to do two things or at least one of the two things one refuse to administer the s back to portland students until there's clear evidence that the test will support student learning and if unable to do that due to state and federal pressure compose a letter to the community state and federal government stating the district's concerns about the implementation of the test and the impact the results are going to have in our community highlighting that high stakes standardized tests do not work because people don't live standardized lives number two return the high school schedule to a seven period modified block thus allowing for better instruction of the common core standards uh frequent exp uh frequent exposure and practice of content and skills also this will go a long way to solving both class time and course the requirements that have been mandated in 2000 in the case against standardized testing alfie khan points out that our children are tested to an extent that is unprecedented in our history and unparalleled anywhere else in the world i've gone to graduation every year when i shake students hands i know we're doing good work we can always do better so still the title 10 kid who earns his
00h 15m 00s
diploma the language learner with future plans the young adult who is the first in the family to graduate those hands and faces tell me that we're doing good work and that good work is based on the relationships we develop with our students the feedback we give them throughout their school experience and the learning evident in their work it is not based on their performance on a standardized test i once saw a sign in a cafeteria that said a leader is someone who steps out of a line when everyone is marching to the wrong tune let's take this opportunity to be leaders and put a halt to this senseless dedication to high stakes standardized testing thank you very much lastly we have stella augustine and christine ivey welcome go ahead hello and good evening my name is stella augustine a-u-g-u-s-t-i-n-e i'm and i'm a ninth grader at lincoln high school today i'm here not only on behalf of the students that make up lincoln but all pps students teachers and parents alike to talk about a shared fear smarter balance i'd like to start off by reading the district's goal by the end of elementary middle and high school every student by name will meet or exceed academic standards and will be fully prepared to make productive life decisions starting this year these newer tests where you place oak's test and with more than half of students expected to fall short of the median score this is clearly not the smarter choice first placing raised academic standards on an already shaky system is not in the best interest of anybody students cannot be expected to exceed academic standards when we do not even have a reasonable teacher-to-student ratio teachers will end up spending the bulk of their time teaching the challenging format of the test rather than the content on it district administrators will have to spend money on the tests which are estimated to cost 27 and 30 cents per student these tests are estimates because a sizable portion of the cost is for test administration and scoring services that will not be provided by the smarter balanced companies second is the implementation of the test the smarter balanced exam is even more demanding than the old oaks test as it requires students to cite evidence and is not solely multiple choice about 90 percent of schools are on track with assessment training though only 58 have given out practice tests or on schedule to do so even though this test has yet to be taken officially for the first time fear and stress have already been instilled in a significant amount of students parents and teachers if you the district expect to carry out your goal of portland students exceeding academic standards and making productive life decisions then you owe it to us to rethink your decision to implement smarter balance thank you thank you very much so christine ivey go christine okay all right thank you all very much for your comments so um tonight we are going to hear the superintendent's 2015 to 16 budget framework plan and stephen okay so just um by way of introduction for what's happening tonight as part of the overall budgeting process in the last two years what we've done is do a two-part budget presentation so tonight what i will be presenting is a framework for the overall budget process but then the staffing plan which allows us to move forward with staffing i come back on the 31st of this month to present the entire budget the rest of the budget okay so just so you know what you're hearing tonight is a framework for the overall budget and the staffing plan so we have already had one board superintendent budget town hall at jefferson last week tonight is the school staffing plan to the board school staffing actually starts tomorrow so the fact that i bring the staffing plan tonight allows us to go start early with our staffing this is a week earlier than last year and five weeks earlier than two years ago which is really significant this has been a huge effort on our part in order to get out and be able to do our staffing early we then have a series of town halls which chair atkins just read to you at the beginning so three that will happen prior to what the proposed budget and budget message on the 31st and another three that happen after the proposed message on the 31st and through all of this there's opportunity to adjust adjust things in the budget so first the framework and part of what we use as the as the framework for the budget our vision equity and excellence every student every teacher every school succeeding our mission
00h 20m 00s
every student by name prepared for college career and participation as an active community member regardless of race or class we have a strategic framework for the organization which outlines our values for cultural transformation prioritizes every student succeeding regardless of race or class and then names effective educators access to a rigorous relevant program for all students collaboration with families and communities and individual student supports that allow students to access that rigorous relevant program and then under underlying it modernizing our infrastructure and a stable operating model so i put these in front of you we've used these frameworks for a number of years at this point in terms of really saying these are the things that prioritize particularly in times of scarce resource these are the frameworks that drive how we make decisions this one is at the organizational level this one is at an individual school level where we've named here are the things that we believe at an individual school are the factors for success and this is based on research within our own system so equity at the center professional learning communities positive school culture quality assessments and quality instruction which are inextricably intertwined and then school and family partnership so and then finally our measures of success at a at a district level where there was the milestones framework where we named progress at key transitions in a student's journey through portland public schools and they are tr they're indicators that that suggest um success at the next level so basically they're predictive of success as you move through our system and particularly third grade we know you are multiple times more likely to graduate on time if you are reading at grade level by the time you end third grade and if you are entering 10th grade on track to graduate credit wise five times more likely to graduate on time so these have been ones that we've used as key measures of success as students move to our system and indicators of the health of our system we have also named three core priorities one that we want 100 of our third graders reading at grade level by the end of third grade again because it predicts success as you move through the rest of the rest of our system we want to reduce exclusionary discipline and we wanted to reduce the disproportionality of students of color being excluded suspensions or expulsions by 50 percent and we want to reduce our overall use of exclusionary discipline meaning that students are sent away from school by 50 and then the third one we're working to accelerate the trajectory of increase in our four-year and five-year graduation and completion rates okay so those are the key things we're trying to accomplish the budget assumptions so what are we looking at as we're building a budget this year we're at the front end of a biennium so while we're working to build a local budget we also have our state working towards to identify what amount of funding will go into the state school fund so that that will be a moving target while we're in the process of trying to construct our budget so our assumption uh going in is that we're we are working to maintain current service levels and what that assumes is that that the state actually finally arrives at a 7.5 billion state school fund allocation for the biennium and even at that level 7.5 does not cover the entire cost of full day kindergarten for portland public schools it's three million if there's a three million dollar gap for what it costs us to provide full decay the 7.5 billion number has been identified as a statewide number for that works for most districts across the state as a current service level uh and ability to implement full decay number secondly for portland we have a recently renewed local option which increases our ability to hire teachers and part of what the the recent renewal did for us was no longer pulled dollars out and sent them to urban renewal but allows portland public schools to capture the full amount and have it directed to services for kids so this is a big deal because it allows us to have additional dollars this year that support our schools secondly assessed value on property is increasing which gives us some additional dollars and compression is unwinding which gives us some additional dollars so again i'm going to tell you that this factor right here the local option is something unique for portland and only a small number of districts in the state have this that allows us to be adding at a point when we're unclear whether or not that will be true for districts across the state so this is a unique feature for portland and a thanks to our voters that were in this position and then finally
00h 25m 00s
the budget we're constructing we'll assume again a 4.5 unassigned contingency which is a level the board has indicated that they are comfortable with okay the other parts to the framework that um we're looking at sustaining and building upon current levels of service to students families and schools so looking at holding steady on things we've invested in the last couple budgets and continuing to build on that sustaining and building upon the strategies that impact our three priorities so early literacy reducing disproportionate discipline and accelerating graduation and completion rates prioritizing strengthening capacity at schools and strengthening the organizational capacity to support schools okay so those that i just went through are part of the framework for the overall budget what i'm going to walk you through now is the plan for school staffing so that's only a part of the budget so school staffing we're looking at building upon the work of the district staffing team from the last two years and part of those overarching principles included investing some resources by school type and achievement needs and not solely by the number of students so essentially this is saying we are willing to differentiate resources based on the needs of schools and the needs of kids as opposed to just doing a numerical distribution of dollars and then secondly providing enough time for resources to shift culture and build capacity meaning we're trying to hold steady from year to year with teams that have been built and strategies that are in place to allow them to have the time to see if they work we're maintaining the equity formula within the staffing ratio allocation and i'll walk you through in a minute exactly what that was and this will be the third year that we're employing the the equity formula we will do non-formula editions to address specific considerations so if in fact you've got a split campus that requires additional staff we'll consider that and get you'll get a non-formula ad there are some unique programs like career learning that would would ask us to do a non-formula ad we have unique situations like schools that are actually at the implementation phase of the with a bond so a rebuild of their school that we will allocate some additional staff and then an attempt to minimize disruption and then finally each year we set aside a pool of fte to address specific program challenges some of those and you'll see when schools get their allocation the thing that will move is if you have fewer students that show that are actually showing up in your school than were then last year or then were projected you will see a drop in fte in some cases you're able to figure that out as a school in other cases you're no longer able to offer the core program and you'll work with your senior director to figure out okay is there another solution to this so just to say there would be there could be situations there's also we also hang on to some fte in a pool because kindergarten enrollment in the fall we can't we can predict so far but we will generally want to be able to respond quickly if we have additional students who show up for kindergarten in the fall the equity allocation we hold back four percent of the ratio funding and then allocate it to schools with 15 and this has changed a little bit because we now have direct certification meal status but it's based on free and reduced lunch so schools with 15 plus free and reduced lunch by direct certification meal status would get an additional allocation with the equity formula secondly we hold back four hold back and distribute four percent of the ratio funding to schools with 40 percent combined underserved that includes students from one of the four historically underserved racial groups black latino native american and pacific islander students qualifying for special education services students qualifying for english as a second language services and students eligible for free by direct certification meal status so part of what this does is it allows us to have an additional bump of adult attention in schools with high needs student populations so and again this is the third year that we'll be doing this equity allocation the staffing formula is essentially we do the ratio fte that's assigned by school size first add to that the ratio fte using the equity allocation that i just described then there is a school-wide support table which includes things like your principal your assistant principal or vice principal your counselors your secretaries all of the school staff that are required to actually run a school building and then finally non-formula
00h 30m 00s
fte like i just described would happen for specific special programming or schools that were undergoing bond work those kinds of things split campuses which gives you your total general fund fte full-time equivalent so this year our priorities are sustaining classified staff and teachers that were added between 2013 and 15 ensuring that our core program exists at all grade levels improving middle grade elective offerings and this is one we've heard a lot from people is the need for improving our elective offerings in the middle grades additional college and career readiness staffing for middle grades and high schools adding counselors we're doing a minimum of one a full fte at every school grades pre-k through eight we're looking at a 400 to 1 ratio and we're maintaining the high school at a 300 to 1 ratio we've brought the high school ratio was 400 to 1 went down to 350 to 1. it's now at 301 and we're working to hold steady at that at that ratio for high school secretaries we're looking at a minimum of two full-time secretaries in every school building regardless of size and then there's a ratio above the two full-time and then educational assistance we're looking at adding in kindergarten and i'm going to walk you through how these connect to our priorities but overall that's what we're looking at in this year's staffing okay a couple other factors for you to understand so portland state does a projection of our increase in students each year we're looking at an additional 585 students come in the coming year which essentially gives us another 33 fte for staffing our schools based on increase in student numbers our local option and this is the additional parts of the local option like i described will essentially and this is the combination of the no longer sending it to urban renewal increase in assessed value um and what was the last one i just and compression unwinding thank you um gives us another 140 teachers that we will get to add okay so our early literacy priority 100 100 of third graders reading at grade level by the end of third grade two things one educational assistant support for kindergarten we'd be adding a 0.5 educational assistant in each kindergarten class for schools with 50 percent or more combined historically underserved so that's 29 schools that would get this additional ea in kindergarten classes we've targeted early literacy support for focus and priority schools which adds a teacher to work on early literacy and rti response to intervention with student both students and teachers and this would impact eight schools it's eight elementary schools actually and one middle school second one reducing exclusionary discipline uh and again reducing disproportionality by 50 as well as reducing overall exclusionary discipline by 50 um the ads here that we believe will be an impact adding counselors in k-5s so again having a minimum of one full fte in all of our k-5s we still have last year we had we still had schools who had didn't have counselors at all so the current year where that were in we added counselors to every school but we still have schools that only have a partial 0.5 or um not a full-time counselor this year we want to get to a full counselor in every school and then using the 400-1 ratio with k-5s with k-8s and middle schools same thing at least one full-time counselor and a 401 ratio rounding up and down across arcades and middles and then i put the again the educational assistant support for kindergarten here in the impact on reduce exclusionary discipline because we believe that ad will impact attendance in kindergarten it will impact our ability to impact our reducing exclusionary discipline and it'll impact our third grade reading reading goal the high school graduation and completion goal accelerating the trajectory of increase in our four-year and five-year graduation and completion rates we're looking at increasing elective offerings in the middle grades at both k-8s and middle schools this will add a 0.5 fte at all of our k-8s and a 0.2 in all of our middle schools what word the guidance that we'll provide to principals is that we'd like to
00h 35m 00s
prioritize art and music for schools that do not have middle grades art music prioritize avid if they are a school that is adding avid in the coming year and or college and career readiness so those would be the priority guidance for that those elective ads what were the breakdown in the numbers carol the teacher numbers k-8 in middle school how many in each one so it's 0.5 0.5 for the k-8s and 0.2 at the middle grades i mean the middle school middle schools college and career readiness in the high schools it's a 1.5 fte ad which allows them to for schools the high schools that are adding avid allows them to add avid if they're not avid they a career college and career readiness option and then finally 20 fte that are to add courses in the high schools so athletics we're looking at having a middle school athletic director who moves to full time having high school athletic directors who are currently in the school-wide staffing table at 0.5 moving them to full-time and having them be responsible for managing cluster-wide athletics we've been working to build programming back into the middle grades this gives the high school athletic director in each cluster more oversight of the programming throughout the cluster and the district-wide athletic director and high school principals will operationalize this in terms of um both hiring and accountability uh and reporting structure and then the last one um is the one thing that we will be adding in our multnomah county education service district resolution dollars is to move our outdoor school experience for sixth graders expand it from three day program to a full week program so it's the one thing that's a little bit different in here but i wanted to make it visible because it's the thing that we're going to add with in our service contract with the esd and it's one we have huge interest in always okay strengthening school capacity to address all of our priorities looking at um having school secretaries in k-8s a minimum of two full-time 40-hour a week secretaries in in all of our k-8s so some of this is topping off fractional positions and making them full time and then secondly adding five full-time educational assistant substitutes and five full-time para educator substitutes we've heard a huge amount of um just need for this uh in terms of keeping stability in the system and and a big deal to prioritize adding this so we're excited about that one okay so that that is the um the plan the staffing plan what i wanted to walk you through is the state funding update because this is uh as i said we've got a moving target with where we are with the state legislature and our overall funding this you can't read the words on this but this is the chart that the combination of cosa so the confederation of oregon school administrators oea the oregon education association the oregon school boards association and a number of educational advocacy groups have done this chart um that all every that represents statewide the different levels of funding you've got this one the lowest bar at 7.235 which represents the co-chairs budget the 7.5 billion one in the middle bar which is what we've been calling fragile stability which essentially represents current service levels for districts around the state and the ability to add full day kindergarten okay so this is the one that we used as our base for budget assumption and then the 7.875 billion represents the ability the ability to do strategic ads that allow us as a state to accomplish the things we've been prioritizing as a state so our conversation has really been about this is our ideal target of what we want to do and puts us on the um a glide path towards the quality education model 7.5 billion is that we at least should hit this one which has us at current service levels and and funding the full decay which the state has prioritized for this this next school year so our proposed budget again the entirety of which you will hear by the 31st is based upon the 7.5 million appropriation from the legislature billion billion and the current status is the co-charge framework is 7.235 billion for k-12 so right now that's where we stand
00h 40m 00s
and there's some uh an effort to have this move quickly at this number so just to say move fast and be settled early with a number that's too low according to ode this is more than 120 um dollars less less dollars per admw than the current biennium for portland so this is a big deal we get 120 less per student if we are if we are land at this number before accounting for cost increases and this number is more than 13 million dollars short of the cost of maintaining current service levels and paying for full decay without having to draw away from programming for other grade levels in order to implement full day kindergarten carol i thought you said under even under the 7.5 we're three million shorts we're still short we're still short okay just by what our allo so that the the so the middle one is not this the middle one represents for the whole state what is a called yeah what's up what's a current service level in implement implementing full decay for us our allocation for implementing full decay is still three million dollars short and again that was an effort to by all those parties to say this number represents you know the best shot for everybody across the state okay what else is at risk if we end up at the shorter at the smaller number we have grants that have provided critical services to students so our high school graduation initiative our early warning system grant grant we would absorb into the general fund and keep continuity of service to kids so these are generally wrap-around services that we would hold steady as opposed to have them be a cliff because they're part of our services to kids the other one is we have an opportunity this next year to have two leveraged partnerships with multnomah county one where multnomah county would pay the cost part of the cost of mental health qualified mental health professionals that we would in order to mat we would need to match it in order to receive it the second is attendance staff who would be monitoring attendance and this is building on a current attendance initiative that they would pay for part of those those folks but we would have to match it so if we don't have dollars to match it we don't receive it what kind of dollars you're looking at um we are looking at a couple hundred thousand dollars for each of the each of them just let's just make a note and hold our questions and some of these end up being things that will be visible in part two of the budget things they're not visible yet the other thing that um that uh at the current number identified by the state would stall current forward momentum we have in critical areas including cte expansion support for emerging bilingual students inclusion for special education students school security so campus security officers getting to expand avid services to the schools that were planning to do that this year early learner programming equity programs and training so beyond diversity for our new teachers pbis and restorative justice training for our new counselors and for all of our counselors and we're working to build that capacity internally so that we're able to have that as a skill set in each of our schools and then technology for students and teachers so the things that will not move or will be at hold steady rather than have movement include those things and that would be the end right thank you so much so questions i have a few popped up earlier any other clarifying or other questions or comments for the superintendent sure have a question it's a director curly yeah um i've got a few but just uh maybe you can explain the um how does the substitution pool fit into this budget if at all um i mean the bigger sub teacher subpool yeah so i would what i've been uh hearing is that we're we're low on subs and i i hear story after story it's canada but it's a bit worse and so uh does that have a place in this budget or how has it what's educate me on that so we're holding steady on the amount we've budgeted for subs some of the training things that we've identified end up requiring some but you won't that's not part of this budget it's not part of staffing and some of the issues that are identified are who's in our current sub pool what days they will identify themselves as being available and we hired a lot of our subs last year so it's actual people that we need in our sub pool
00h 45m 00s
and the but the budget would be much and it's not this part of the budget so here we're actually budgeting staff in part two of the budget we would be if we were looking to provide substitute teachers for any particular things that we're doing we would add more dollars for subs so like when we're doing big training efforts one of the things that we are avid for instance things that we're at we are planning on teachers being able to be out of their building then we have to build in sub costs but it's not in this part of the budget this is paying for staff no i get that and so uh so but in terms of in terms of substitutions and the rate that we have for um classes being filled now with substitutes and there's an x percentage that do not happen because we don't have subs we just for that some reason that day the sub's not there our sub pool is too small okay and so but that's not necessarily a budget issue per se but it it actually is because when the sub's not there then the money's not being spent and so it reflects upon forward captain so as a budget issue we need to budget when we are planning on hiring subs and as a recruitment issue we need a subpool that's large enough to accommodate our need for subs and we also have subs that can will put restrictions on what buildings they'll go to what days they'll substitute and we've got some of those parameters that we need um that need some work but different than a budget issue that part is different than a budget so i guess my question so i get all those three so my question is to you is um do we need to budget more for actual subs dollars spent for substitution and i don't it's a good question that would show up in part two of the budget not this part of the budget okay okay any questions dr keller uh i'm i'm good for him okay dr buell i had three questions under the third grade reading we have eight fte is what it looked like we were adding there and the language was to work on early literacy what does that mean so it's it's reading specialists to work on early literacy but either with um in our focus and priority schools so it's designated focus on priority schools who would benefit from having an additional staff person who's working both with students so it could be pull out kind of things with students or it could be working with staff to increase their um their capacity so what's our what's our expectation of the working with staff and working with students i think it could look different school to school so it'll allow the individual schools to do some what are their needs i did not see any increase in librarians on your list is that correct you did not and i'll tell you why steve is we did the um the big push on counselors in in this one and i knew you would ask about the librarians we listed avid as an as a elective i don't know i wouldn't call that an elective so you gotta have it mixed in there with all the other electives it'd be interesting to find which are avid which are electives because abbot isn't really an elective so what we did was add elective capacity across all of the k-8s and you've got and middle schools and you've got a a number of middle schools who'll be adding avid and so this gives them the capacity to do that you've got other ones that don't have art it gives them the capacity to do that so we didn't do that only the avid schools get something or only the art schools we basically gave gave everybody the capacity to do something that either they're planning to add or that they have a gap so thank you any other questions for you director beale no that's my three questions all right at this point in time other folks any comments going to a director sure there's just sort of writing down all my little comments and comments and questions i wanted to mention so first of all in terms of school staffing it's totally exciting to see that we're adding more teachers almost across the board um so that's great at the high school level i was uh i want to ask the question that i know we're going to get asked from every high school parent which is is will this then allow us to
00h 50m 00s
schedule every high school kid for eight period day for a full school day you know it's it's continuing to move us in that direction and part of what we're asking is that we add more elective classes so that students have more capacity to um again in the high schools yeah so i it mathematically does it allow us to do that i don't know the real answer to that so i'll get back to you with an answer could you get by obviously that's where we want to land um and then i had the opportunity this week to meet with um linda and michelle with a classified union and it was great and i was asking them what their highest priorities are so i'm going to just channel them for just a second but i think they're going to be thrilled to see that you're talking to i don't even know if they're here two hi two secretaries in every building was a huge high priority so thank you um you know they were even saying that with one secretary they they can't even take a restroom break um without leaving the front office free and there's all kinds of safety concerns in the rest um and the fact that you're adding eas you know they were talking about k2 but it sounds like you're focused first on kindergarten which makes sense and will grow from there and especially trying to get those into the para ranks one of the things and that they were talking about and i don't think you're getting into this level of detail yet but i'd like to kind of put it on the radar is the uh professional development and the training and the orientation that is given to you know school secretaries and eas isn't nearly what it needs to be and so i just want to make sure as we go that we're talking about what the professional you know that we have a sufficient professional development budget as we're bringing in all this new staff because i know we have like teacher you know we have mentorship programs for teachers and the rest and i think they have a keen interest in in that for um the eas and for the school secretaries and especially for new school secretaries in a school with a new principal it's really um hard so i just wanted to kind of put that on the radars in terms of professional development budget the council is one counselor in every school i'm just absolutely thrilled in outdoor school um the athletic directors and moving to a full-time athletic director in our high schools i think is great one of the things that i hope we look toward in the next year or two if the state comes through with more funding is to have a similar kind of capacity in the arts i mean wouldn't that be exciting to have uh you know a full-time person in each cluster uh figuring out and working with all of the schools to get to that k-12 articulation so i think it um it makes sense to start with the athletics i mean we're already pretty far along and we've got a great you know athletic director over the whole district we've got artosa now for the arts but you know clearly to have that kind of capacity um at the cluster level for the arts too would be um pretty exciting so um yeah i'm thrilled with what you have this of course is dependent on a 7.5 right million dollar budget so we're going down to salem tomorrow to testify which i'm really thrilled about in support of that um but um it will look very different if we don't get there so here's what i'll say so what i just presented to you is really because of our growth in student numbers and our local options so the staffing we're going to push go tomorrow um all the other things so when you're listing professional development and what we would like to see which is part of what we're looking at as part two of the budget um is dependent on us getting more money from okay yeah the state yeah so below i i appreciate ending with that conversation about that it's predicated on the state budget at seven five because that's if we're if the state budget is 300 million short if we assume that we have eight percent um of that that's 24 million dollars short that i am um i just to our to our local media who may not be here or who are here who will carry this message of all the investments that we are projecting to make um please be sure to mention that if we are adding quote unquote 140 teachers because of unwinding of compression increased assessed value and because of the local option levy it will not feel like we're adding 140 if the state winds up 300 million dollars short of that 75 number so often times i remember two years ago we got in this piece of saying oh look we got this art tax we're going to be adding teachers and really we were still cutting because the state budget didn't meet what it needed to and families were confused they're like no you said this was a reinvestment like we was a whole steady budget and we were cutting so i just want to be clear that
00h 55m 00s
this budget um has to come in at 7.5 for us to have current service levels and even that comes with its challenges like we said it doesn't fund our full day but we can manage that small of a gap 7875 is more the target and i hear that across the state again from our sister district saying if we're really going to make progress on our 40 40 20 and even if you don't like 40 40 20 if you want to begin to see the services that our students need um back in the schools we have to make progress towards that seven point eight seven five yep director knowles sure thank you um i also am excited to see some of the ads secretaries so important eas the counselors i'm really thrilled about avid because i think it's so important for our students to have that program to help them realize their potential i thank greg for your concern or voicing it so well the concern around the budget because if we are at 7.2 you know this is not going to happen all this reinvestment that we are so excited about and all this extra help for our students to help us meet those three priorities would be very difficult for us to make that happen and i i also want to make sure that like i stated earlier that we're not confusing this 7.5 with being everything portland public schools needs because it isn't and it's not with every there are a lot of districts out there there's not going to be enough but 7.2 definitely is not enough so i'm very happy that you're going to salem tomorrow to to work on that and and then the other thing the one my one big disappointment which is not a big disappointment because it's also great is i also would like to see more happening with the arts because i think that they help hold ours our students in school just as much as um athletics if not well i won't say more but just as much as athletics um and so i'd like to see us investing more in arts as well uh across the grains and articulated curriculum so that we're we're able to have our students start in kindergarten first grade with arts and move forward and the other thing i saw dave porter there is foreign language also i'd like to i mean we haven't talked that much about foreign language recently but it's a big concern for me i've never been able to speak another foreign language and i would always wanted to be able to speak a foreign language and i've tried and tried and i think if i'd have had it when i was in grade school it's not too late i you know what i'm starting spanish classes i'm not giving up um but i really think that uh um that is important for our students because we're in a you know a small world and it's important to have another language um so arts and language are two things that for me are very important still and then finally i just want to say um i also was very happy uh to see and hear the work on continuing our continuation of looking at career technical education and reinforcing that because i think that that's also going to be so important for our students not only to hold them into school but to give them that um vision for what the possibilities are for them as they move through our district so that's that's exciting for me so thank you nice job dr buell superintendent smith i'm kind of confused about this presentation because we we talk about third grade reading being our basically our core priority i mean maybe the number one priority in the school district and we put in this new budget we put reading specialists into eight schools one reading specialist and eight schools i mean those schools probably need two or three each we have middle schools i talked to middle school principal not too long ago who said i have 200 kids enter her school two or more grade levels behind and we're putting in eight reading specialists and no librarians it doesn't make sense to me i don't understand how we would be attacking third grade reading with basically almost no change and only doing it in eight schools where we have tons of schools that need reading specialists and they're just not showing up we're putting in avid but not reading specialists i mean i don't like to do that where you go this versus this because i don't think it makes sense but if let's quit saying third grade reading is our priority then let's all let's have a motion and say third grade reading is no longer our priority and it certainly shouldn't be if this is how we're approaching that
01h 00m 00s
priority with tons of kids in our school district who are unable to read near grade level and we're trying to catch them by the third grade we're not going to catch them by the third grade with this we're going to have the same thing over and over again we're going to catch up quite a few kids with a reading specialist in those eight schools but nowhere i mean let's just dump it as a priority if this is how we're going to approach it with no librarians to get which is everybody knows librarians are a key to kids reading well so i don't know there you go that's i'd like to see that changed i'll come in and show you where to change it if you'd like or then i'll point out who to get rid of and what do and we'll set it up and then i'll we'll add all those all those reading specialists that we need and librarians all right so can i just so a couple things just the eas in kindergarten we actually saw as a really high leverage strategy because the um the third grade readings is not all about just third grade and so we saw that as a really high leverage strategy we've also added some things in the one-time budget that we just passed like the dyslexia training and trying to increase the number of student of teachers who are familiarized with the dyslexia training and melissa both our october and our last one time ad included things that were specifically directed at third grade reading so i agree like what i like to do librarians across the system i would absolutely like to be librarians across the system i know and well and what we did was prioritize counselors in this one and if we get to keep going like if we get to the 7.8 let's put librarians on top of the list adding eas to kindergarten will in some ways help the reading but the kids who are in the first grade this year next year the kids are in the second grade the kids are in the third grade the kids are in the fourth grade and the kids are in the fifth grade who can't read are going to all be with us for 10 more years and we need to focus on that and then we can look and see in a couple years if when i'm for adding the eas in kindergarten if it makes sense if it really is a strategy that makes sense i don't know where it's been a strategy that makes sense for reading anyhow i don't know for one thing uh most this is we're almost brand new with the common core teaching kids to read in kindergarten i mean that's a that's almost a new thing so will this help maybe but how about those kids that who are in the first grade next year and we're condemning them to be unable to read when they anywhere near grade level when they get out of high school i mean it's a condemnation on those children and i don't think we should be doing that we should be teaching those children to read and the only way really to do it is to get reading teachers into those schools to help those kids who aren't reading anywhere in their grade level that's at least my opinion maybe we could use some of that eight percent money for specifically for reading teachers because that's we're talking about that i mean it's it's difficult to get those kids they have the money but it is it's not earmarked for reading teachers maybe it should be earmarked for reading teachers and i guess i would just add i mean i think some of you often speak director view of the 14 million dollars in outside contracts some of that money goes to partnerships with culturally specific organizations who work directly with um families and children and supporting it it ain't working that's the point and reading teachers will work they will work so i would just like to wayne i just really appreciate this superintendent smith i would again just echo the legislative piece and really urge those watching to contact their legislators when we were down with the student representatives hearing from a legislative leader that the 7.2 million was a good number was very distressing to hear so i think it's it's not going to be us saying it it's going to need the constituents you all out the audience are the ones who are going to move this when superintendent smith said that there is a movement to go quickly to the 7.2 and settle the school number that's not our movement that's in the in salem so i our legislators need to hear loud and clear that this is not acceptable for our children and that quickly settling on an unacceptable number that goes backward on investment in our children is not acceptable they need to stay in there and keep fighting until we get the number and the type of schools our students deserve so please if you don't already know your legislator's email address you can just google oregon state legislature they have a really great website you can type in your address and that will pop the information for how you can contact your representative and your senator i really would implore everybody watching to do that if we don't get at least the 7.5 as the pretended smith has outlined we are going to be cutting we are going to be moving backward we are not going to be able to have whether its reading teachers um librarians cte expansion avid early learners restorative justice support for emerging bilingual students
01h 05m 00s
our dual language program school security technology a long list of pieces in addition just to the basics the superintendent is outlining here we're not going to be able to do it and that's not acceptable so that's my pitch to please weigh in as well as coming to our budget forms we love to hear from folks about you know feedback and thoughts about what the trade-offs would be what you would support but really in terms of getting what we need that the focus needs to be on salem because they're the ones who have the power to make those decisions so and actually for portland i think these two talking points end up being important ones the first one that um according to ode we would be getting 120 less per admw than we are in the current biennium so we're going backwards and any local option then starts filling holes as opposed to being an ad which is what our voters intended and then the second one as we implement full day k we're 13 million dollars short of adding full decay which we already offer so we can no longer charge tuition we will go ahead and offer it and where the dollars to offer it will come from is from our other grade levels so those two end up being really significant i think talking points if you're communicating with our legislators about the impact on portland yeah so thank you so much all right so thank you so much i've got a few more questions oh sure director sure um so in in terms of the local option uh a couple couple things one we're going to reemphasize your point is that this the staffing plan is we're going forward tomorrow apparently correct um yes we would go we present the staffing plan and then we punch go so we yes okay yeah and there's there's no the board is there approval to that or you just go tomorrow and i'm just curious from a budget standpoint how that works so this is generally what we'll do is that i will come forward with the staffing plan and make it visible and you guys will ask questions we've done it with principals so the principals have all weighed in both on the overarching what are we doing but our hope is and part of why we split the budget into two separate presentations is that we're not waiting till the end of march or to start our staffing we're able to hear the staffing plan punches staffing plan to move forward exactly and it's and it is uh whether the um the budget wherever the budget lands in salem we're gonna move forward with this staffing plan that i'm gonna show you be a minimum exactly okay is the local option what are we um in terms of the what are we assuming here uh so in other words what's the assumption on the assessed value and the compression unwinding what's the total number of dollars here that we're looking at the total amount on you david you want to come on up and do this question david wine deputy cfo and budget director so um three assumptions in terms of the increase in dollars for local option first by virtue of the renewal and no longer diverting money to urban renewal we're assuming four and a half million dollars of additional local option revenue from that those are the numbers that were generated as part of the campaign when we researched that and went out to voters so that's one factor assessed value growth we're assuming three and a half percent that's the same number that people across the state are using for permanent rate taxes um it's a relatively conservative number given what our assessed value growth was last year and so what how much what's that mean in dollars to add to the 4.5 um so the total from the three factors is 10.6 million dollars that's how we get to 140 positions um the assessed value growth um i i will get back to you with this with the breakdown between assessed value growth and compression online total is what i was looking for yeah so 10 six four and a half is is the renewal factor from urban renewal three and a half percent is the assessed value growth and then we assumed uh that uh compression would be five percentage points less than it was this year last year it went down by just over five percent and it's it's very difficult to predict that exactly but we looked at real estate real estate market data and based on what we saw happening in real estate markets particularly on the west side for portland which is where compression is an issue for us we believe that that five percentage points unwinding in compression is is an aggressive but reasonable expectation okay so yeah i mean uh fleshing those out would be helpful thank you and then
01h 10m 00s
in terms of the pool that you're set aside for later on um did you mention how many what's the fte on that set aside i was just gonna say i know so no i did not mention it okay um and it's roughly 40. okay and i will say some of that ends up being as soon as principals get their staffing they identify issues and they'll come back and they'll work with their senior directors and we'll release some this year and then some of what we intentionally hold back to the fall when we get adjustments and the actual number of students that show up that's different than what we projected so it allows us to be responsive quickly once once we learn that kindergarten kindergarten being the biggest wild card in terms of what we project and what's real right in the fall great good to ask one more question superintendent in your school staffing formula you talk about non-formula additions like for a unique program a unique situation does that include ib coordinator in the six schools where we have ib programs or does it include any extra support for the i think it's the high schools that we have advanced scholar programs in where they need some additional supports franklin and i think madison actually i'm gonna ask sarah singer to come up and do this one more specifically because those are programs that require i mean the ib program requires an ib coordinator i mean you can't not have it so and i know it in the advanced scholar i believe that there's extra standing out of it as well so yeah so um for ib we do support some of our um i think seaman and skyline and a few other um well there's vernon and things in there king saban scott king like in cleveland so do they all get ibc so lincoln and cleveland it shows up it will show up this year in their um position in their school-wide support table so they'll get an extra 0.5 there for that okay and the advanced scholars is not part of that advanced scholars we did we supported two schools last year and if the other part of the budget comes through we were looking to add a third yeah and so and advanced scholars is supported in the other budget process so the other part isn't it and on the 31st yes correct yeah and it's all advanced scholars is also dollars we give them a dollar amount as opposed to supposed to yeah right because i believe they pay teachers to mentor teachers after school and that takes extra time yeah exactly okay great okay thank you so much another one oh okay director curler because the mentor were uh reminding me so we have a mentor program going here teacher mentor teacher members and so this is assuming the same level essentially this budget assumes the same level of staffing yes and i don't recall exactly roughly in terms of how many mentors we have and essentially release times or is it fully no they're full fte mentors oh god i'm safe yeah i'll have to get back i was gonna say eight but we'll get back to you and tell you like we doubled it last year and um some of this was initially supported by a grant from the state that we then last year put general fund dollars towards and we are again looking at submitting another grant to a private source to try and expand it um this year but yeah okay and it yeah we'll we'll find out what the numbers are all right so to be continuing how many how many we have 17 mentors right now awesome okay good yeah good great thank you all so much thank you so much superintendent smith so this is going to be obviously an ongoing conversation march 31st is your full budget message to us we've got the town halls and then after your message to us then it'll be over in our court for further deliberation input and discussion modification whatever so um ways to go in the process but this is an exciting start and again just to highlight this is you're doing your best effort your staff are doing their best effort but it really lies in the hands of our legislators and in the hands of you all as their constituents to make it what it needs to be for our kids all right so moving on in our agenda next we have interdistrict transfer procedures so this was an item we first heard at our last meeting and we're now ready to vote i believe judy brennan is oh she's right in front of me sorry judy judy brandon director of enrollment transfer is here if we do have any additional questions the board will now consider resolution five zero three nine two thousand fifteen to sixteen standard inter-district student transfers do i have a motion director knowles moves a second and director morton seconds the motion to adopt resolution five zero three nine this isn't any citizen
01h 15m 00s
comment there is none any board discussion seeing none the board will now vote on resolution number five zero three nine all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed and any abstentions so resolution number 5039 is approved by a vote of seven to zero all right thank you very much okay so next on our agenda is a smarter balanced assessment resolution so um last week we discussed a draft resolution there's been further input and suggested edits so i believe we've got um at our places and should be up there in the corner um the latest hold on a minute i had it all ready and now i'm not finding it thank you resolution and then also director buell emailed him today of some additional proposals so that should be there as well so the board will now consider resolution five zero four zero resolution on implementation of the smarter balanced assessment do i have a motion summary director reagan moves and director director morton seconds the res motion resolution number five zero excuse me five zero four zero and i know we do have some citizens signed up for this so miss houston can you go ahead and call them down our first two speakers maria dominic and scott mclean i'm going to speak for scott mclean who was here and he left so he needed to get home okay we were just going to give testimony from gm garcia my name is siobhan burke b-u-r-k-e uh gm garcia is a dll teacher administrator and consultant excuse me i'm sorry can you ask just state your name for the record sure i don't know if you can hear me i see the little green light so i was talking uh siobhan burke b-u-r-k-e okay welcome hi i'm giving testimony for gm garcia who could not be here she's an ell teacher administrator and consultant a few years ago pps began to use the term emergent bilinguals because it emphasizes bilingualism as a legitimate asset that our students bring to the learning process sbac is one more way for the corporate education reform to disenfranchise and discriminate against students learning english as a new language common core testing is filled with language barriers for emergent bilingual students academic testing results should not reflect how much or little english a student knows students from other countries and many bilingual program participants right here happen to know and can demonstrate skill in reading writing math social studies and science in languages other than english how are we measuring their academic knowledge and skill if we can't answer that question then it is time to revisit what pps means when they include diverse language learners in their equity policies and practices there was a time when the oregon department of education used the aprenda exam to measure spanish reading skills in third grade has pps approached ode with requests to assess spanish reading good teachers know that we should test in the same language that children have been taught it is the best way to measure what they know as the largest district with the highest number of dual emergent programs in oregon bilingual educators parents and students should expect that pps will stand up for its ell students and the bilingual programs please demand that ode be more linguistically responsive to our programs and our bilingual students in addition please examine the quality and quantity of local reading assessments that we as a district have added to the dual immersion programs we need to use the equity lens to be more specific gulas veneticas dibbles dra must all be subject to review for overlap linguistic appropriateness sound spanish reading pedagogy and the impact each one has on instruction in closing i am requesting number one take a public stance for linguistic and cultural equity as it relates to s bac and our emergent bilingual students and two form a task force or committee that has at least 50 percent bilingual classroom teacher participation charge this group with examining all the reading tests required of pps and dual immersion elementary schools using an equity lens that ensures best practice according to research and other successful bilingual programs in oregon lastly this group's work and recommendations should inform policy changes that decrease the quantity and increase the quality of reading
01h 20m 00s
assessments in our elementary bilingual programs thank you very much i'm gonna put my timer because every time i speak they cut my three minutes my name is maria di silva and i just wanted to ask a question to the audience if they know this book or you guys if you know this book is called separate is never equal my statement is about your hand you equality this book come on you guys are educators no wonder why steve buell is advocating for librarians so this is pretty much what the mendez family suing the district for segregation discrimination so i really recommend you to guys to read it bring it to schools this will help a lot in terms of diversity i do have a lot of questions i also have like 20 questions that i can give it to you that i passed to mr robert saxon when i went to gladstone to he says back presentation i never heard anything so i could give it to you if you're gonna be able to answer my questions first of all i just hear because i support uh opting out it gives time to parents spanish speakers not only gives them a choice but it gives an opportunity if they fail they are feeling that they are discriminated or if there is racism in this test to investigate to research um i don't know if you know but a regular our computers don't work pretty well and they freeze um we also have tried to hire a tech specialist but nobody wants to you know work for the little money so i i hear a lot of comments of the educators they say why would they do these tests back to our kids if our computers are not working they're broke they're freezing it's ridiculous um i think my job has been just as a parent volunteer to educate parents in their legal rights to opt out and i was intimidated by the assistant principal the reason why i am educating parents is because bps i believe you guys don't do a very good job educating latino parents spanish speakers i don't know how many of you guys speak spanish but we do have thousands of latino parents and students who needs to be you know educated about the rights in terms of opting out i don't think you have made it clear that is their choice and is a legal right you definitely have not tell them that only three percent of the ell learners will you will only pass i i've been told by the assistant principal that she's in favor of this back she has debated in our committee meetings she has advocated she even compared the time of this back test into the oaks testing i i was approached by her last thursday i did bring a letter to you i don't know if you got it um she even told the the only person who i helped in that week to opt out she they even gave us the form out to opt out to bring it here they don't even want to send it to the research department and i gave it to her to finish this she the assistant principal compared me with the jojoba witness she got the thank you she got the teachers contract she pulled it out she called the regional administrator so she can talk to me she called me to her office to tell me that i cannot pass the up that form in the school she sent me to the street she kicked me out i'm a parent volunteer i've been asking and advocating for money for the school for the pta all the suddenly when i pass the auto up that form for to educate parents i call a jojoba witness there is more to it i will be happy to talk to carol or any of you guys that are willing to listen i also just to make it very clear how i felt discriminated and inequity i came to your office she saw me here i asked a form to to file a transfer for my son to alameda and she said no alameda you cannot go tolamina because it's very small it's very crowded it's like a gatekeeper so i'll rob so i do have more more examples of you know how you know i have not even encouraged to feel the form of transfer and then even if you deny it it's okay but at least give me that opportunity it's in my way to school my son goes to legacy emanuel to do this ot and then i have to drive to regular to drop off my daughter so there is more i'll just gonna keep coming to ask more questions thank you so much very much next year uh our next two speakers and chris allman i'm a teacher at wilson high school
01h 25m 00s
should i start please do well um you know i i have to say i'm really up not even upset i'm angry that i have to be here i have student work i have to grade and i've been bringing up this issue since last year and i feel like the response from my administrators and from the board has been horrible i've been pointing out since last year that there are major problems with not only us back and common core but i'll just focus on sbac tonight i've been pointing out since last year that it's questionable whether these tests themselves are valid the way that they're scored are valid and what i've gotten from the district from people like penny pavla the consultant hired by the district the other representative i forget her name she's i don't blame her because she's newly hired and she's being told all this but either way both the leadership within pps and in oregon state has been either negligent or deceptive one major issue is the way that these tests are scored i've been bringing up since last year we've been seeing reports from other places in the country with both park and sbac that these tests are scored either with computer algorithms or with temp workers hired on craigslist and that's been i've heard from penny pavla at once she admitted that part partly it would be scored by computer algorithms and then she claimed that it would be certified teachers and this is flatly untrue i've done research and i know that um with every single test i've seen for sbac and park they are scored by temp workers i've found numerous ads on craigslist for temp workers hired by data recognition corporation which is the company that's subcontracted by it by air for oregon in other states it's um done directly by air in other states it's done by pearson but all of them are hiring temp workers random temp workers on craigslist paying them between ten dollars and seventy cents an hour and thirteen dollars an hour and in california it's um they're hired hiring uh contracting through ets and also hiring um temp workers and um they've they're planning on hiring six 6294 temp workers to do this scoring and so far they've certified 3777 of them certified who knows how what you know what counts is certified but out of that only 241 of them are teachers and i have to ask you why would a teacher waste their time scoring random essays um and constructed responses even from third graders responding to explaining their math questions when they they are busy um scoring their own students work and you know i as an educator my hourly rate is 40 an hour i'm not going to be hired i'm working 13 for 13 an hour um scoring random writing samples from students i don't know and i know as an educator when i score my own students work and assess their work and i have a stack here it takes a lot of work and effort to do that i know my students i know what i've taught and i have to take breaks every two hours because if i go for more than two hours scoring essay after essay i i'd start losing perspective and you could read what the accounts of professional test scores have been sitting in you know in front of computer screens as temp workers where they're being driven to work as fast as possible read as fast as possible this is not justice to students to um use these as high stakes tests to determine whether students graduate or not and you'll even say that you know they have these other opportunities but you know think about the psychological effect this has on especially our struggling students to get another experience of sitting for nine hours through testing badly designed tests that ask stupid questions like pineapple sleeves and things like that and then that failed them how's that gonna make them feel about themselves and about their futures as um for their education thank you very much that's great um hi my name is chris allman and uh for the record i am actually a beaverton school district parent but i appreciate this work that you're trying to do on uh resolution number 40. um uh that you're even questioning whether espec really measures college and career readiness is i appreciate um but i do believe that portland public needs to go a little bit further in looking into what is going on with student privacy to give you a little context i've been studying this issue for about three and a half years now i've worked a lot with beaverton on assessments language art lit project team that i'd worked on i was with city club on earth care and education research committee for a couple years washington county commissioner and children families worked with then superintendent ron rob saxton on
01h 30m 00s
improving latino academic success but more importantly what i did is i was probably the first parent in the nation to request my son's state longitudinal data system records and what i found out is that he was labeled as a dropout four times and of interest is um one a few of the times were intra district transfers and one was an inter district transfer one year of data was actually missing so this is something that's been widely discussed as i also talk about the fact that i'm a physician and i see what's happening with big data and uh in in health care with data breaches um what is going on with uh sbac is that the oregon department of education has uh two contracts aside from what they're doing with the smarter balance assessment they have contracts with american institutes for research it's a nine-year contract and one with ucla national center for research on evaluation standards and student testing that's called crest for short um so as was mentioned uh air is um they're they're the vendor to uh for the the test which makes sense because they they develop computerized uh adaptive testing they have products that they can uh benefit from this arrangement ar is collaborating with google to do an assessment uh through uh the chromebook that concerns me they work with data recognition corporation which has their fingers in so many big data miners including booz allen hamilton smyter balances student privacy policy states that they may provide access to student data that has been altered so students identity cannot be recognized so smarter balance has affiliated with um crest for research into accountability systems practices and policies they've worked heavily with the melinda gates foundation but more importantly what i find concerning as pps is talking about ways to create local assessments what crest does is quite the opposite they use biometrics and even bigger data they talk about using real-time unobtrusive measures such as quote keystroke response latencies and eye tracking data in combination with data mining and cluster analysis techniques they have partnered with with west ed to assist with 16 regional centers and all 50 states in developing state and district capacity for data use and to improve teachers formative assessment practices and that is only a smidgen of what's going in the state longitudinal data systems which i've already alluded to so this is the focus on sbac please pay attention to data privacy thank you very much just in the next two our last two jim demarco and andrew davidson see andrew jim demarco are you still with us oh coming down great welcome thank you good evening board members superintendent so i was asked to come speak tonight oh by the way my name is andrew davidson for those of you who don't know d-a-v-i-d-s-o-n i was asked to come speak tonight as a former board member who was on the board when we were sort of drafting resolution 4943 and first of all i just want to say thank you because i think the position this board is taking is really uh you know compared to a lot of places a strong one and i wanted to say that i think that it's really important stuff that we're taking i think that we also need to be looking at how we convey that to the community as well i mean obviously this is a hot topic right now it's becoming really quite divisive in some of our communities and i think that you know when we're trying to to prove that we're doing what's best for students which is something that you know this resolution obviously tries to do on behalf of this board i think we need to convey that to parents as well what we're trying to do uh and help them realize that you know we want to support them do what's best for their child so making sure that you know if parents feel that they would like to opt their children out of the testing we you know are supportive of that and we're able to help them do that because the fact is what we don't want is for the you know the students who have parents who are able to take the time learn about this subject and you know support their students in that way to opt their students out and those who don't have that opportunity to then you know not have the opportunity to opt out um so i just wanted to say thank you and really support you if you're able to go the extra mile and you know this is again you as board members know that this is not your first choice uh you know your resolution that you passed this summer was quite an ambitious one uh and i hope that we can continue to make progress
01h 35m 00s
so thank you thank you very much hi i'm jim dimarco my children attended glencoe elementary school we've been in the news quite a bit lately a number of different topics we've had a number of different news organizations reaching out to us asking us what's going on at glencoe is it permissible to give you handouts i'm sure just hand them to staff and then they can get them to use thanks we're looking for transparency and truth in our school system um have any of you seen the current survey that was implemented for pbs oh yeah a successful school survey yeah yeah it was the one uh for success school surveys yeah yeah and has everyone taken that survey yep they just see a raise of hands and did you find that survey to be adequate we're not actually engaging the dialogue right now so why don't you go ahead and share your perspective you could find that survey to be adequate that's great if you didn't i understand um answer is this related to the smarter balance assessment or is it more about the server it is okay um i guess what we're talking about there was one question about smarter balance in the survey itself it was just one question as i paged through the survey and whatnot i found just interesting topics throughout about teachers respects for students about intimidation how the other staff treats the students and then it asks the typical questions about who you are where you're from and then it had some really interesting things to say about where you're from if you're an african-american or from different parts of africa or if you are other africa or if you're other black and then it was also really interesting is that it then asks you in a survey about your sexual orientation and we just found that really curious why that question would be asked and i'm sure all of you would you know agree that that might be a question that you are uncomfortable asking or or even um answering but um i'm just wondering why are these questions on these surveys and then how does that tie into a smarter balance or common core i think a lot of it from the perspective of parents and the perspective of guardians or perspective of grandparents is that some of these questions might feel intimidating but also uncomfortable so i didn't finish the survey so i don't know if any of my questions will actually count because i don't know what the rules of the survey are just like i'm sure a lot of you don't know what the rules of common core are so in the balance of all of this we have regular common core opt-out meetings once a month steve comes to all of them i don't know if any of the panel has been to any of those common core meetings for opting out in that packet there's an invitation to join us on april 12th at 2 o'clock it would be great to see all of you i know steve will be there um but what we're really looking for is the transparency and truth about what's going on with common core or the smarter balanced tests thank you mr demarco is my three minutes up yes it is okay and you can also follow up with roseanne our board manager have any additional questions about the survey and how it's been working thank you very much so thanks everybody for taking the time to come and comment on this resolution so if i may just briefly um before we open it up to comments from the colleagues i just want to kind of quickly because since the last one that we discussed last week um there's been a number of changes to this resolution so if i could just quickly go through what's what's before us tonight um so in the recitals we just briefly note that we did pass the resolution 4943 last summer um expressing concerns about multiple concerns about the state's implementation of the smarter balance assessment that the oregon department of education has moved forward statewide implementation testing is starting tomorrow we'll run through june key piece here is that a nice new development is the state work group along with nancy golden oregon's chief education officer is proposing to delay any sanctions due to smarter balanced results calls for a reduced role of summative standardized testing in our children's education um this is in draft form i'll just say as an aside so this is another piece that's really important for folks to weigh in to the state so those recommendations are in line with what we called for our latino resolution last summer so we're glad to see that also have learned and we added to this
01h 40m 00s
resolution that there are promising discussions at the federal level also about reducing the use of high-stakes testing we also note in d that we have a pps assessment advisory committee collaboratively working with our teachers union and our teachers to do a comprehensive review of all types of assessment conducted in pps and the recognized assessment expert dr rick stiggins is a volunteer advisor to that committee as well as to the statewide committee so i want to be sure we have that information out there for folks under e we just note the things that staff has done to help prepare for the state's implementation of the sba in our district under f we note that we support moving away from oaks but that we are opposed to high stakes or cumulative state or federal mandated summative assessments under g we note that we're concerned we continue to be concerned about the length of time that is being spent for students in grades 3 8 and 11 taking the test lack of opportunity to review test results as well as the potential negative impact on schools and students as a result of any state imposed sanctions or labels and then the final result just wants to thank staff and everybody in the community for the hard work during this pretty challenging transition and then under the resolved we call on the state to a reduce the length of the test b provide constructive guidance for schools and students regarding the results including feedback to students that will help them learn from the test c provide a comprehensive report on the first year if a smarter balanced implementation so cost time spent lesson learned reliability explanation of how the results would be used d is we also call on the state to develop a plan for how to support districts with families opting out and consider that they consider not counting students who have opted out as part of the cohort in other words not have that be accounting against schools and then under eid that we urge the state to support the option presented at the national level of moving from testing every single student to using a sampling of student and that's something that is under discussion is a possibility at the national level so we wanted to include our support for that and then resolve number two is again supporting the state work group's vision to reduce the role of summative standardized testing and develop a greater focus on in-class teacher and student-driven assessments and then finally our last resolve number three is that we direct the superintendent to provide balanced information to families including how families can provide feedback to decision makers at the state and federal levels in other words how we can support that moving forward with that vision of reducing the role of summative high stakes testing both at the state and federal level and also that we ensure that administrators and teachers are communicating to students and families that the lower scores than those on oaks do not mean that students are failing or that their schools have failed and ensure that any time spent before the test is around getting oriented to the testing interface rather than extensive um you know going through lots of spending lots of time on practice tests so that's um kind of an overview of where it sits right now and now open it up for discussion thank you for indulging me that in that uh review of the resolution do we have the resolution so this now that's on the table it is yeah because we it's on the table because and then we had um public comment mm-hmm it's i just wanted to thank you for all the work you've done on this um it it seems like a really solid resolution and i know that when you um brought a first draft forward one of the things we asked for was to streamline it just a little bit and i think you've done that really well i think you've hit most of the really key points that we're trying to get across so i really appreciate your work on it thanks uh is it if one would want to make an amendment how does one do that well you would move the amendment okay um so i'd like to make a motion to amend um and it's it's essentially strengthening it's adding a little um it's adding to e which uh we're saying we support the option presented by the national education association of moving from testing every student's grade 3 and 8 through 11 to sampling of the sampling of students to gather the same data and i would amend that we direct the superintendent to work the state of oregon to pilot such a program this year instead of the existing regime testing regime so just to clarify starting tomorrow uh starting this year yep okay so in other words instead of testing how many kids we're going to do this year
01h 45m 00s
where every kid takes the test pilot since this is okay what where we want to move so let's let's see so let me just make sure i have this so you're amen you're moving amendment to resolve number one e that you would add the wording we direct the superintendent to work with the state of oregon to pilot i'm sorry what's the rest of the wording um to pilot sampling of it can match up with with the wording on the resolution that says eve essentially a moving from testing to every students to using a sampling of students to gather the same data um and that we pilot that this year uh in order to give the state some so this can help help the state okay so to pilot this year meaning to pilot starting on march 10th it probably would we wouldn't start on march 10th but what we would uh ask the state is to um allow us to do this it might take some more time so we probably won't so you mean this so i'll just just say this school year okay is there a second second director bull seconds any discussion can you read it back i'm gonna did bobby do you have it well tom had sent me an id tom can you just read that okay so here here's another way here's another way of saying think about it and i i was gonna add it to either there's an easier way which is the board directs the superintendent to work with the state of oregon to pilot a random statistically valid sample of the sbac test this year in lieu of the existing testing regime draw my second and second attempt motion okay so you and essentially it's it's just it's just putting meat behind what we're saying let's let's do it okay so you're modifying your so you're clarifying the wording of your amendment so direct the superintendent to work with the state of oregon to pilot this school year a random valid statistical sample of the s back in lieu of the s back period no that's not what i said so i mean it is the cons can we just talk about the concept okay so i see director bill's cut selecting the concept okay so here's the language the board directs the superintendent to work with the state of oregon yeah to pilot a random statistically valid sample of the s back test this year in lieu of the existing testing regime just for portland or yeah we're the portland just for portland that's where we seconded it so you make sure director buell has seconded and now discussion okay um and the reason i'm saying this it just adds meat to what we're already saying we're saying we we support this notion so if we support it then let's actually do it um one thing that's that's clear to me about the current test uh is that it is in r d phase um and there is an there's lots of folks who want to see if we can do you know if we can get the information that we can through less uh testing every kid so let's let's let's pilot it let's work to the state and see if we can come up with something that makes sense directorship um so one i mean this test has been field developed field test it's a number of things so i hear you saying an interest in another one but i guess i also question the fact that we asked the superintendent to work with the state we could decide right now as a board that we want to make the decision that we will only sample a statistically valid session rather than well we're asking the superintendent somehow to magically work something with the state that that's all we're going to do and i'm saying that again if this is in the spirit of let's do this then let's do it and we'll we as a board will accept the consequences of whatever that means and i'm not even sure what that means well that's that's essentially if you want to add friendly language on that that's the intent of this language is it the issue there's a difference between saying we as a board will not do more than a statistic statistically valid sample versus superintendent go work with the state to see if you can do that right there's a moment where we're the superintendent is a person who's going to interact with the
01h 50m 00s
state so we're not unless you're going to call them up tomorrow so we're asking the superintendent on our behalf to work with the state to make this happen and the state can come back and say okay that's a great idea we've been thinking about it nea wants to do it other folks have talked about it or the state can go back and say no in which case the superintendent would let us know and we can do something else but we have the language here we might as well put meat on it and i guess i would just say the the language here is referring to discussions that are happening at the national level i don't think it's i mean this is trying to support that discussion and move that conversation support the option presented right that's a national organization yes so that's different from saying right away this spring that's what's going to happen so it's really more like supporting move because things do move more slowly than that at the state and federal levels so you know if we had brought this if we had brought something like that forward last summer or last fall that would be different but for us to ask the superintendent to implement when we're about to launch tomorrow after many months of preparation a whole shift in how we do things um to me i i don't support that i mean i hear what you're saying in terms of the the principle we want to get to it might be easier to test only 700 instead of 40 000 so far but let's just vote on it okay yeah okay any other discussion okay so all in favor oh sorry i just wanted to point out that that the idea that it's not it doesn't we can't use it for learning for our individual kids we might as well just do a random sample it'll give us the same information tell us what's going on so might as well just do it this way this is what they should be doing hopefully they'll come to this and that may be what we find because when we're pressing them for that report and accountability after this first year that may be what we find and hopefully as the conversation with that statewide vision as well as the conversations at the federal level it feels like the momentum is heading that way but we're not there this week so any okay director reagan so i like the language that's in the current resolution but i would say that what um director curler is doing is just try to really take a much stronger symbolic step by saying to the state you know what we we're doing this under protest almost that we think that it should be a random sample of students instead that we like this idea i mean it's all it's doing is putting a little bit of meat on this do i think that if the superintendent calls up the state tomorrow all of a sudden things will stop no but i think symbolically it's a it's a good statement for us to say we've been doing some pretty strong statements to the state already around standardized testing and i think we should we should push it i mean there's no reason not to so i i'm going to support it i don't expect that it's going to go through but i think it's a strong statement for us to be making that we shouldn't be testing our kids for seven eight eight and a half hours um and that if we can get the same information through you know a statistically relevant group of students uh we ought to be looking at that as a state so i guess i'm i don't expect this is going to change anything other than strengthening what we're trying to do with this resolution at all which is to kind of do a protest other than the directing the superintendent to go out and try to figure out well she calls she calls the wrote a letter i mean we direct the superintendent to do stuff all the time so okay well what yeah okay director below i'm just going to repeat that again whether you're in support of the idea that that's fine um i just think that we have a voice we can contact the state we did a resolution this summer and if we want to use our collective voice then use our collective voice that's what we're doing here greg if you want to if you want to propose the language to strengthen what that then propose i'm open to it so that's what we're doing here so i i don't know what what you're saying i directing somebody else to deliver the message is the part where i find it weakened we we always do that though i mean the board always starts so she's director director morton and then let's move to vote on this amendment please so we can move forward director martin thank you so um you know i'm really curious if i were to um if i put it into sort of my daily context and i had something that that i was wanting to pilot or wanting to implement within my organization um i think the the and i didn't have an idea of whether or not it was something that was going to be effective or something that was going to be helpful um well first of all i probably wouldn't
01h 55m 00s
move forward with it at all but but if there was a if there was a if there was a an intention around okay this this is something particularly if i mean we do things all the time that you have to do because your funders say this is an expectation this is how we're holding you accountable when we give you this resource so if there's something that a funder is saying here i don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility or outside of the uh what is reasonable to think that a pilot period particularly one that would essentially cost you less money could be implemented in a any given year that could inform whether or not this was something that was going to be effective for your for your sort of the future your future programming your future um calendar so uh i didn't go i didn't even see that the email that that director curler sent out um before we sat down to the meeting today but now that we're we're talking about this i'm i gotta tell you i'm really feeling like the the smart money is on saying why do we have to do this with all students across our district why can't we create a sample that allows for us to be informed for our next year uh greg i really do appreciate your language around um this is a message that we deliver as a board i i you know i think we deliver message well i'm sure everyone is is listening now so we're delivering this message but uh but i think i think it's important to uh um to at the very least say we're being um i think we're being smart about how we invest our resources in things when particularly when we don't know um or we don't have the evidence that demonstrates that in fact it's going to be effective for us as a district you can't get that money back if at the end of that time period at the end of that pilot it is not an effective tool for you that being said next year it's going to be it's probably going to be a tool because again your your funder determines those those things that you you take out i guess you know what i would you know what i would suggest would be that the first part of that would be we call on the state to pilot a random et cetera et cetera that's what i would say well you can i thought we just finished a pilot did we not last year yeah we participated in field testing it last year and i don't know but we don't have results we have no results right we have no data and the other question i have regarding a change like this where we would if we went to the full step of saying we're just going to do this not asking you to negotiate with the state about it but if we just did it uh what what are the potential ramifications i mean matt's talking about a funder and they're a funder so if we say we're not going to do this we're just going to give you a random sample what's what what are the ramifications what could happen because i wouldn't want to vote for something like this without knowing what would happen they'd say no there's a lot of stake yeah it's not just i don't think the resolution is asking it is saying that we should just not do it i think it's asking the superintendent to confer with the state and say i i think people are talking about both of those things yeah so i'm i'm curious what are the reasons if we just said we're not doing it right we just said no yeah i think that's what i don't the superintendent to work with the state to pilot a question yeah that's right that's that's saying we're expecting that it will happen that thomas also said that he was willing to take a friendly amendment that said that takes out work with the superintendent is just so i'm curious i want to know what the ramifications would be i don't care what the language is i want to know what would happen if we didn't do this at all well and also what's the ramifications for our staff we're about to go out and start trying to staff our schools because all of these things we're talking about willy-nilly decide right here that all of a sudden we're not going to do it without knowing what the ramifications
02h 00m 00s
would be exactly right i think that language so i'm asking the superintendent if you know if i will well i mean this is right we don't know well i mean it is that this is from a funder and it's federal dollars as well as state dollars yeah but you know the asking the question i think is different than us just taking you know i guess i'm not hearing in that language that we're just asking and if you're asking me that question of what are the consequences i will go learn what the cons the real consequences are because we're just assuming right thank you director knowles are you talking about if we actually did it without the state's approval or if we did it with the state's approval because it would be different ramifications without the state's approval they'd probably yank our funding uh to some degree they would define us with the state's approval which is what the amendment is we would have the states approval there would be no ramifications whatsoever for us as a district because we would have the state's approval and so they'd have to kind of count it as a wash year on our schools that they're planning to close down the line in a couple of years before they're planning to that they're planning to fire that there was a friendly amendment that was being discussed that's what would happen the ramifications so yeah that's that's what would happen and that's a question to me to find out what the realm of the people so i guess i'm still trying to understand the intent of the wording because i'm not seeing it as raising the if it's raising the question of the state or calling on the state absolutely i support that but if it's directing the superintendent to pilot no you're asking me to follow the statement to work with the state of oregon to work with the state so it's not saying we're gonna just not okay if that's if that's what the intent that wording isn't clear to me but if that's what everyone understands the intent is that you're asking a question here make that let's make that clear i think they could be made more clear okay we direct the superintendent to request the state of oregon to pilot a random state okay that's very different to me so are you hearing what i'm hearing in that is the superintendent makes the ask to the state and reports back to us obviously says the board has asked me to request that okay exactly so we direct so the amendment now is we direct the superintendent to request the state of oregon to pilot a random statistical valid sample of the aspect test this year in lieu of the existing testing regime okay that's good so that's our tom's nodding is that acceptable as the wording to you okay so all in favor please indicate of the amendment please give me saying yes yes the opposed no no so the amendment passes with a vote of six to one um all right great so now we have uh the resolution as amended oh and karen did did that become clear to you in the end and roseanne what we landed on okay thank you very much all right so now uh if we can go ahead and vote on the resolution number five zero four zero as amended oh director no should i i have a couple of amendments to add do you want to do that now or how many um this would be the times we're about to okay there we go a couple comments first as i go along here and then and then and see going down the resolution c in part c we talk about that it's worth that the state assessment is calling for a reduced role of summative assessments that's not exactly correct and i don't mind having the language in there it's not that foreign somebody could do it but the language i'd love to have it correct but it's it's okay same with d there it states our assessment group is not reviewing the s back the superintendent made that clear and we say they are but they're not reviewing the s back what they're doing is reviewing the whole testing spectrum but not that s back itself per se as a test we're only counting uh what tests we're doing so i don't mind leaving it in here because it's no big deal but i just wanted to point that out as we went along here we start getting to something that i would like to change we on f section f it says it's a more challenging assessment it's not necessary it is a more challenging assessment but it this is kind of written it says the portland public schools board continues to support the elimination of the multiple choice oaks and moving toward a more challenging summative assessment that is just what measurement excuse me assessment that is just one part of an over overall program of assessment for learning for learning we but this sounds like we're supporting the ass back see what i'm saying we're supporting a more difficult uh assessment and so i would uh strike the first paragraph so as an amendment and then when you
02h 05m 00s
want to make them one at a time please so okay so your your amendment striking the first sentence in section f striking the first sentence in recital f is there a second so what did uh sorry so what we would strike is the portland school boards we're not we're not supporting uh more challenging and summative assessment that is just one part of overall program that's supporting the s-pac you can't say both things okay so that's removing that first sentence in recital f is the motion the amendment and is there a second for that okay hearing none do you have another amendment uh on g g ah this is a comment i'm gonna make a comment on it it says the board continues well it's a comment that's directed at the whole thing and we're going about the whole thing so the comment would be valid uh the board can yeah the discussion would be bad that's what i'm doing making it just make your amendment and then we'll discuss it will that work yes okay we can do that all right then i got to go back and double and do it in your order you've got to do it in your order so one for the order of robert's rules we have to see the test questions thank you greg just saying so you're looking at an amendment back just a second i'm going to give you the amendment because i'm doing it in your order okay on resolved b strike b it says provide constructive guidance for schools and students regarding the es the smarter balanced assessment results including feedback that will enable students to learn from the test results okay so because we don't we're not excuse me just can you just say that that's where you're missing we'll get it on the table so the amendment is to strike 1b all right yes okay so the amendments and the reason okay thank you the amendment uh is to strike one b is there a second so you know secondly would like to talk to you what is your next amendment director buell we've actually had quite a bit of discussion and dialogue about this so can we move on to your next amendment please we can if there's no shutdown i'll i'll second it thank you yes i would the discussion thank director buell this particular section says that we're asking them to provide constructive guidance for schools and students regarding these results including feedback that will enable students to learn from the test results they can't that's an impossibility they don't have they can't give us that feedback so why are we asking to it well then we should change it to to read that we would like to have it as opposed to the fact that they should provide us feedback we should say no feedbacks available and we would like to have the test set up so we could get feedback i can make an amendment along that i'll go for strike and then i'll come back and make another and then i'll strike it and make it any other discussion of the amendment to strike resolved 1b no other than i mean i think this was your of being responsive to something that mean in my essay yeah it was all right um let's now vote on the amendment all in favor pleasing it by saying yes yes opposed no okay so the amendment goes down do you have another amendment director fueled okay i'd like to strike c from public school direction superintendent two wait i'm sorry where are you c uh 3c now 3c okay so recital 3 c you want to strike that is there a second second point the point of order yes sir um director bill you said you wanted to strike 3c but what i heard you reading is not on my copy of 3c can you clarify ensure that time spent on testosterone thank you you said something about this yeah i was okay okay thank you okay so i'm sorry now i've lost my train of thought three seasons okay all right so now unless they're any further okay now i've got the final one okay and then i want to go back and talk to the resolution all right like that if you take the page that i have which
02h 10m 00s
is resolution two resolutions resolution one resolution two and if you move the first section which says portland school board director superintendent two which is the same as in three and you move this to d wait i'm sorry you're gonna have to slow down i'm losing okay so the first paragraph d take this resolution two and strike before the school board directs the superintendent because that language is in there okay so i set this up as a singular resolution it's getting passed so okay so let's try and start at d bring forth a comprehensive report so that would become one that would become 3p got you okay sorry i'm slow on the uptake here so 3d you're moving that there we would add to the resolution under resolved three we'd add a new section d that would begin with bring forth a comprehensive report etc and then from then on and i'm going to read this for the audience for the record yes since you did just email it to us so under section 3 d it would which starts out the portland public schools board directs the superintendent to it would say to bring bring forth a comprehensive report to the school board by july 21st 2015 concerning our district's response to the smarter balanced testing the report should outline the following at a minimum implementation steps which were taken to administer the tests an appraisal of the impact of the testing on children teachers and other staff members an estimate of the time taken by various administrators and teachers in preparing for smarter balance an estimate of the money spent on delivering the test including an approximation of district and building administrative costs a full report on opt-out numbers by school and their effects on the state report cards preparation for this report shall be conducted in a manner which attempts to be unbiased and includes positive as well as negative aspects of the smarter balanced testing preparation for the report should include school visits and confidential interviews of teachers students parents and administrators as well as a review of the literature surrounding high-stakes testing and common core okay thank you for reading that is there a second second second the motion is second and now discussion um s back test which we're not going to get the state of the state to put back to five percent though as much as i would like to have them do them it's incredibly important to what we're doing out in our educational system in this in this city and it is all but what's really important for us is what is it that we are actually doing that in the end we can say okay this is what happened if we're going to take all this time and energy and money and we're going to spend it out there and we're going to do this testing and we're going to push for it we're going to do all this then we need to have a report that says this is what happened so the next year we can actually say here's the adjustments we need to make to make this test work now i know three of you aren't going to be around but i'll be around there in a year from now and i'm going to want to say hey how did it go and this says you're going to get a comprehensive report and we're not going to just get okay a couple people thought this or we'll get something from the bsc which is nice and i don't have any trouble with that but i want people out there to talk about how does this work how did it work should we be should we as a district be opting out students ourselves should we be asking parents to opt out kids if you know no english why don't we just ask a parent drop them out and get them knocked out instead of sticking them on a eight-hour test with no english if if is this being is this fitting with our equity policy does this fit with it there's there's literature all over the place that says no this does not fit it does not fit with our equity policy if we have an equity policy does it fit did it fit let's take a look and see what we did and how it worked and see then what changes we need to make and by asking for this comprehensive report it directs the superintendent to actually go out and do this in a certain way where we're guaranteed in the end hopefully an unbiased solid report about what took place it's critical that we do this if you don't care about what's happening out there in our schools concerning these incredibly disruptive and incredibly influential test where we're we're doing this and this and this and
02h 15m 00s
all this and we don't care how it comes out we don't care about the education of our children or how this balances out fine vote against it but if you care about how this is going to work in our schools and how it's working then you need to vote for this particular amendment thank you other comments i'll just say i mean i think steve we actually i think it to me it's wordsmithing and i'm i'm willing to to vote for it it's also in in one seat so it's instead of yeah how many sentences you've got here it's done in more concise form so certainly on one seat and that that's what once he asked the state of oregon to do it because there's 198 districts we're all going through so it has the state of oregon and we've seen how good the state does yeah and i think for me um why i didn't include that suggestion that you had made was you know hey i'm i don't want our district and our staff to be spending more time and money on this piece i want this it's on the state it's their test and so that's why the 1c is there and that's why i'm hoping that the next board is going to follow up on this and demand that if they are slow to do that or if they provide something that's inadequate the other piece too and i know you disagree with me on this director buell but i do feel that our own assessment advisory committee can be the place where we have as they continue with their work that they are looking at the entire assessment picture so that's where where they aren't necessarily doing all the pieces that you're outlining in here that's something that the board can continue to draw on their expertise and their insight so to me this this amendment puts an onus on our staff at this time that to me i think the owner should be on the state and it's the onus then on the board to hold this and the rest of us to hold the state accountable so that's why i'm not supporting it anything else before we of director buell yeah bonus on the state we have no control over that we're stuck with the smarter balance test which if you go out and talk to teacher after teacher after teacher i think there are about one percent on the last survey that i've learned about who think that smarter balance is a good thing i talk to tons of principals who aren't coming out publicly but who think the smarter balance is a bad thing i mean you can't find people out in our schools who are really encouraging this so what and yet we're stuck with it so we need to look at what our district is doing in relationship to what we're stuck with and we don't have anything in here like that and you can't the assessment committee isn't set up to do that we need one person who goes out does the interviews who really studies it takes a look at it and comes back now you don't want to spend money here then how can you not want to spend money to find out the probably the most influential thing in the education of our children right now is the smarter balanced test but we're not going to spend a dime to find out if if it's working or how we're dealing with that that's craziness i mean well yeah fine there's money out there we can find money i'll go find it if you'd like we can have my suggestion is that the superintendent actually says take somebody who in in her administration and assigns him this task fine let me do that instead of something else this is critically important and it needs to be and it needs to be done and i want that assessment next year so we can make adjustments to this test in the manner that is best for the children in our school system and i hate to see people who are not there next year pop that right back on top of us to now we're going to do it next year so we've done a whole year of not making uh improvements okay so let's go ahead and vote on the amendment all in favor please indicate by saying yes roll call please oh the roll call please director curler yes director morton no director knowles yeah yeah no uh no director bella no but here director regan no director buell yes and chair atkins no okay so the amendment does not pass all right so do you have any anyone have any further amendments to propose before we move forward okay so now let's go ahead and vote thank you all very much thank you for all your work yeah you bet oh so additional discussion on the resolution as amended director that's okay i just have a couple of comments um one i appreciated the testimony today and it is as we put in our resolution in july we had advocated for multiple languages for this assessment and i appreciate director buehl what
02h 20m 00s
you're saying to have a student who doesn't understand english very well to be sit sitting eight hours in front of a computer screen is ludicrous how does that going to work and so i appreciate like i said the earlier testimony to say we should be advocating for that at the state level which we have to some degree i also want to highlight somebody else talked about and it says it in our this is my favorite part actually the resolution is we are opposed to high stakes or punitive state and federal man mandated summative assessments my issue all along with these has been the high stakes the fact that there are educational questions about what kind of learning it's measuring not only that but it was never designed as an evaluative tool of the instructor that being said i know that teachers having been one the biggest difference in every group of students is the person standing in front of them but this tool was not designed to measure the effectiveness of the person in the front of the room and so to pretend that it's a high stake so that it is evaluative of that i think is a mistake and so i will continue to have an issue with that aspect of it especially i mean even when it gets to the point when we begin um measuring um specialists such as music teachers art teachers drama teachers on whether or not a student has passed their their english mastery of it so i just want to highlight that i again appreciate the testimony earlier about the data privacy i think that is a huge issue and i appreciate representative lou fredricks working on it and i don't think his bill even goes far enough i think data is going to be a problem and we all know that it's been a problem in some of our biggest and most secure sites but student data is with a click of a button just so easy to access and i think it's something that i hope that we don't have to and not we just portland public but schools around the country don't have to have some massive data breach for us to wind up as a country and as a state to address that all that being said i'm not against smarter balance assessments um without those aspects you know when when multiple choice bubble tests came out everybody was against bubble tests i don't fit into a bubble now people are against the smarter balance when portfolios came out people are like oh these are great but they take so much time and how do you ensure inner rate or rele there's always a challenge with whatever assessment you bring and i see this just as a next step whether it's pilot phase whether it's test phase you know we're always growing and learning i would hope that as a system that's what we want to do meaning continuing to grow and learn from our next step and i've also heard people talk about how dangerous it is that this is a corporate reform which is interesting that i hear teachers some teachers saying that protecting in fact the corporate reforms that they would have fought against in the early 1900s that our current education system was carnegie and rockefeller investing saying we can build people just like we build machines and here we are having those same disagreements about the philosophy of education and we do try to strike a balance between our we try to provide contributing citizens which means that they are good workers as well as that creativity that how do we develop a well-rounded individual that maybe can think outside and or provide the art that speaks for an entire system or a group of folks with new ideas i hear people talk about that changing standards isn't equitable our current standards could be inequitable changing the standards could be inequitable um and my interest is not in the fluctuation of the standards but it's how do we actually help our students who have historically not been served well to reach those standards whether they're higher or lower this oaks sim cam smarter balance common core whatever you want to call them it's about how do we relate every single day and how do we make our instruction relevant and finally i just want to provide a different narrative about that i think somebody just called this the most influential thing in education and i just want to put a shout out to all my students teachers or all my kids teachers that in no way have i felt that testing has been the most influential thing in their education and oftentimes even though if they've spent time practicing on it you have done an excellent job of continuing to make sure that they are learning well beyond the test and i thank you for that and i hope that as this board has continued to say we are not interested in just teaching to the test and i applaud you for your efforts to continue to do both how do we give them the skills they need and continue to develop great people great thanks the other direct reveal i want to amend g we've got an amendment to g okay i want to include this language
02h 25m 00s
at the end it says i'm sorry i'm a little slow on this because i forgot my glasses for students to review test results as well as the potential negative impact on schools and students as a result and any state imposed sanctions or labels on test results or any in equities which violate our equity policy okay so you would add to the end of recital g after the last words based on test results or any inequities which violate our equity policy right is there a second hearing none the amendment does not move forward okay if i speak to the whole amendment i mean the whole speakable resolution yeah okay i'm not going to vote for this because we have an equity policy in this district and that equity policy we take seriously it's an incredibly serious policy and yet we're willing to sit and give this test and not in any way even take a look to see if it violates our equity policy which it clearly does and there's all sorts of literature out there talking about this two of the uh best educators in the country brian jones and jesse hagopian both speak to this sbac test as being incredibly inequitable and that it's that it's really destructive for students of color and it creates extra problems for those students in the educational system so we're just we're gonna we've got an equity possible a great little equity policy here but we're not willing to look at this we're not willing to study it and let the have that and have the superintendent look at whether it violates our equity policy or not as we go through the process we're not for that we just got an equity policy that we just talk about oh yes we have a nice equity policy we have the little equity cards but when it comes down to doing real equity we don't seem to have it and this is a place we could be talking about equity cards and we're not doing it i mean this place we could be talking about equity and we're not doing it so please please don't those of you who are still on the board for the next couple three months please don't let me hear you talk about equity i know i really don't don't talk about it because this violates our equity policy so badly it's unbelievable and people who've studied this and looked at it who are not just kind of going oh this is great this is really nice but are actually looking at it will find that it does violate that equity policy and i'm not going to vote for it because it does violate our equity policy as far as i can see okay so dr buehl stated any other comments before we vote okay so we will now vote on resolution number five zero four zero as amended all in favor please indicate by saying please with a roll call please director yes director morton yes director knowles yes director regan yes director belial no director fuel no and chair atkins yes so um resolution number five zero four zero is approved by a vote of five to two and thank you everyone for the spirited debate and all your input and to the public for all their comments as well thank you for your efforts yes and um okay so um from our lips to the state's ears right and um all right business agenda is the final item on our agenda so we're going to now consider the remaining items on our business agenda having already voted on resolutions five zero three nine and five zero four zero and just i want to point out the resolution five zero four one in the business agenda is the one that's going to allow the issuance of additional capital improvement bonds for our schools and that was something we previously reviewed and it's very exciting to move forward on that so miss houston are there any changes no any public comment yes one oh excuse me we gotta wait first on sorry i jumped ahead of myself so there are no changes do i have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda second director belial moves and director morton seconds the adoption of the business agenda and now public comment yes we have one job perky great thank you come on down it's not included in the business agenda we've already voted on it i'm sorry let's get to mr perky's comment and then we'll discuss okay thank you thank you ahead
02h 30m 00s
my name is joseph perky p-u-r-k-e-y um i'm speaking tonight on behalf of community and parents for public schools cpps about the bond issuance vote we just as a housekeeping thing we recently expanded to include members and the mission of our portland our schools um we are supportive of the bond sale and want to say hooray for this extremely for the extremely low interest rates that we'll be going out under you prudently budgeted for selling at higher rates so this sale will mean taxpayers paying less for these improvements to our schools while this is perhaps not the most glamorous thing happening in the district right now it does affect all taxpayers and people are paying attention this is a very positive situation and your planning and luck and good luck are noticed and appreciated so thank you thank you very much i wanted to make a quick mention also i hope you are all still thinking and individually and starting to talk as a board about what it might mean what it will mean to have a guiding educational vision for the district we look forward to having that conversation with you and helping to start that process to develop an educational vision for portland public schools thank you thank you very much okay so is there any discussion board discussion on the business agenda so so we have already voted on his decision including the business well as i said we've having already voted on resolutions five zero three nine and five zero four zero we're now considering the remaining items okay all right so all in favor of the business agenda please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes any opposed are any abstentions i'm sorry director will you voted yes okay so business agenda is approved by vote of seven to zero okay so the next meeting of the board will be held on tuesday

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)

2015-03-09 PPS School Board Study Session

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - March 9, 2015

Sources