2015-06-15 PPS School Board Study Session

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2015-06-15
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Event 1: Board of Education - Study Session - June 15, 2015

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good evening this study session of the board of education for june 15 2015 is called to order i'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers well our study sessions are generally rece limited to receipt of information from staff and discussion of that information and review of resolutions prior to a vote at times we do conduct votes during study sessions any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our pps tv services website co-chair knowles and director regan are absent this evening so first up we're very excited to introduce the recipient of this year's board scholarship to dong from madison high school so um while she's coming up the board scholarship was established in 1989 by the then current members of the school board as a way to encourage outstanding students to return to portland and become teachers come on down thank you so much for being here the fun symbolizes the founders belief in the importance of education to our society to our society and of teaching through education so this year's award is 1 646 dollars and will be sent to your college of choice um so just want to welcome you down and to tell us about your college choice and your plans for future study thank you so much for being here thank you yeah it'll go ahead thank you hi my name is and my future college will be i will go to bccc first and then i will transfer to psu and i intend to be a math teacher in high school excellent wonderful so thank you so much for being here and congratulations on behalf of the board we'd like to extend our sincere congratulations to you i also want to acknowledge your parents and ask them to stand are they here tonight and then if you want to come up we'll go ahead and take a picture with you thank you yeah thank you so much all right excellent okay ready thank you congratulations so that's a nice way to start our meeting congratulations again and best of luck to you in the future and to all our students who graduate i think we've completed all the graduations now and they were all awesome and i know we had the opportunity to participate in those so next we have on our agenda public comment um miss houston do we have anyone signed up we do we have four great and our first two speakers lady valdez and arisel becerro so welcome come on down and my understanding is would you would you like a spanish interpreter or do you prefer to speak in spanish you want to speak in spanish okay so i think you provided us with your comments in english so you don't want the interpreter okay all right just want to make sure you knew you had that option i appreciate you being here so if you can go ahead and state your name spell your last name and we really appreciate you coming and sharing your thoughts thanks so much thank you my name is
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foreign way thank you thank you very much and have you connected with roseanne our board manager and so she can she help assist us with follow-up on issues that are raised so gracias thank you very much for being here
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our next two speakers maria de silva and chloe welcome i was just trying to clarify that the parents you know there is a lot of retaliation are regular so um they brought these papers for you for the board of directors and then she needs to ask permission to the parents or to you to get copy of it and she had a copy without asking permission and parents are very afraid to speak out my name is mariana maricilba i'm not here to talk about regular um so i'm actually here because i have not been able to register my kids and it's very scary my son is in a kindergartner i cannot bring my daughter to wrigler anymore because of you know they call the police on me they gave me a trespassing warning and they i've been harassed several times i filed at least six complaints with pps uh four of them with judy martin with the ombuds person and i'm still waiting for the result of all of these hopefully my kids can go to spanish immersion we speak spanish i was born in mexico spanish is our home language i did everything i had to do with the wrong enrollment and transfer i enrolled my son in the mandarin immersion he's in a waiting list hopefully both of my kids can go to king meanwhile we are allowed to go to a bilingual school where my kids can't enjoy the spanish that is part of our language their dad is only as a spanish speaker so that will help a lot and you know as i said before spanish is her mother language uh my daughter um cannot go to wrigley anymore because of the retaliation and the problems like the other parents just mentioned um i live in vernon school neighborhood so it has been gentrified and it was historically a black neighborhood so there is no programs so if we cannot go to a spanish immersion program so my daughter who has been since kindergarten in spanish immersion she never been in an english regular class she only reached in spanish then can you bring spanish programs to vernon elementary school or to king where we live and we live on alberta street by the 14th avenue and this is very sad for us because uh while we're trying to register our kids hurricane um i still we still have not been registered and we did try since january to go to the kinder transition school we did everything we i wrote transfer i petitioned i appealed i got denial and your office never gave me a reason why they are denying my kids to go to a spanish immersion school and i want to know the answer or i want programs that are culturally appropriate for the latinos that were still on the gentrified neighborhood of alberta at this point my kids are not registered anywhere and that's very sad i'm afraid this is a retaliation from realtor from bps for me filing complaints on the parents rights on our rights and i want you to take a matter if they're denying us the appeal and the transfer to beach or to any other bilingual school they need to give us a reason not just deny it my son has special needs and spanish will help in more than mandarin thank you thank you very much chloe so could you call again the last person's name chloe unflat no chloe okay all right pardon me thank you everybody very much for coming tonight to share your perspectives and experiences um next we have an exciting presentation about the seal of biliteracy superintendent smith would you like to introduce this item i would and actually i'll call it debbie armendaris who's the senior director of our dual language immersion and michael bacon who's the assistant director of dual language who are going to present an exciting pilot that we did here in pps this year with the state with the seal of literacy and and we're going to be able to recognize some of the students who earned that this year debbie and michael good evening board members you said my name don't need to say my name again debbie bernardis senior director of the office of dual language and michael bacon is the assistant director so we are here tonight to share with you some exciting information and to celebrate the students that have attained the seal of by literacy michael has been working with the oregon department of education to conduct this pilot so he will share with you our exciting news
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like to say good evening and congratulations to all of our the very first oregon state seal of bi-literacy awardees i'm going to actually ask them to als those who are here they're not all here tonight to stand up please at this moment we're going to ask them to come up afterwards to take a little picture with all of you so um portland public schools is proud to recognize approximately 128 excuse me 120 graduating seniors who earned the very first oregon state seal of bi-literacy awarded by the oregon department of education as part of a pilot program these graduates come from high schools across the district and represent a wide range of languages including somali ukrainian america swahili vietnamese russian korean german spanish chinese japanese aroma french and arabic so actually do i move the powerpoint or does something else oops other way either way that's what they're saying here he comes here oh the tech person black outlet they're also just forward that way you think i would have had this down by now so the oregon state seal by literacy is designed to provide a rigorous proficiency-based recognition of the linguistic assets and academic skills of biliterate graduates the seal represents a major accomplishment by each and every one of these graduates in being able to perform academically in at least two and for some of them three or more languages with the seal in hand graduates will have a standardized measure of their language proficiency to project their skills to college and career they possess critical skills for the 21st century and our global economy so there is the seal actually on the right hand side and it goes actually on their diploma and they each have a certificate signed by our superintendent of schools as well so real quickly this was also in your packet this evening what you can see here is the actual standards that are used on the national level from the actual proficiency guidelines and as you can see when we have a two-year outcome for our world languages it's really down that novice area and you can see the description of what someone can do at the novice level what's really exciting about our seal of recip by literacy recipients is that they're hitting up into the advanced level proficiency and what that means is they can really handle academic academic language be able to really work in paragraph like construction really have a strong discourse it is an accomplishment on any standard i also shared this in your packet um what it's exciting you can spend more time perusing this but this really helps you get a sense of where students are when they perform at the advanced level and even what kinds of careers or professions they can take on as you can see down the novice level it's empty but when you get to the advanced level there's quite a range of options for them of course this is not the end of developing high levels of language and literacy um we expect our graduates to go on to universities and careers that allows them to expand to that what we call professional proficiency was one more step up so this evening we're very fortunate to have some of our students uh represented here and we also have our assistant superintendent who is highly bilingual and biliterate antonio lopez and he would probably like to share why the seal of my literacy thank you so much michael good evening school board so this is this is one of the areas that it is um it is long do uh long overdue for those of us that are bilingual we were seeing as our language been a deficit and how now it's it's an asset the way it should be and i'm gonna give you a little bit of the
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of the history in the 1920s especially for the mexican-american kids uh it was viewed that these children are mentally due to their language 1930s spanish-speaking children do not achieve in school because they are bilingual 1940s 1940 because the mexican-american children have a language problem they must be segregated 1950 bilingual children reading problems arises generally from their home situation 1916 common language are the primary causes of skull failure 1970 english language achievement is the only yardstick for educational success bilinguals children must not mix their language 1990 these students come from dysfunctional homes and need additional help so what is happening today is truly a vindication of what we knew that our language is an asset and those of us that are bilingual bring something to this culture and this society that is of value so i want to say congratulations to our 120 students the 2015 graduates who earned the first oregon station of by literacy that recognizes your high level of bilingual and biliteral skilled set criteria for being an effective member of our global community for our emerging children then the implementation of the aragon stays sealed by literacy represents a major paradigm shift shift from seeing students home language and culture as a barrier to attain academic seal of success zero principles equity in action um see all recipients just because you graduated earn the oregon state seal of biliteracy represent not an end to your pathway by rather a milestone along a life lifetime journey your bilingualism and by literacy is a gateway to your future congratulations of course most important is our student voices we've two students were nominated by their teachers or their schools to speak with you this evening so first up here is lynn huang of franklin high school she's going to speak to you about why being bilingual biliterate is important to her and her future so now in english good evening everyone to be able to speak and read and write two languages has given me the opportunity to communicate and understand the people around me i had the time and opportunity to participate in bangladesh school to teach and promote the literacy among young students besides teaching i was chosen as the president of vietnamese club at franklin high school there i had the opportunity to share the vietnamese culture and language to everyone at my school i believe that reading and writing will help me to be able to be more successful in the future i'm
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delighted to hear that the pbs started the vietnamese superimmersion program to teach the truant to be able to read and write vietnamese i hope that the next generation will continue to know two languages as well as an easy way to connect and build a community stronger thank you thank you so next is ivan of alvarado can i say it right of roosevelt high school the fact of having roots that extend themselves to mexico a country where spanish is the language that is most frequently used being bilingual helps me understand the culture that i have inherited thanks to my parents even if i am in the u.s by being bilingual all the material that i came across during high school in one language helped me devise much more detailed essays in the other demonstrating a great level of intelligence that would be unreachable if it weren't for the ability of being fluent in both languages during high school i also learned a lot of material that would derive from texts in english as well as spanish to help me see the huge connection between the two of how one would help the other grow when completing assignments i don't consider this growth as something obligatory i consider it a privilege because not everyone in the world has the ability to read and write in two languages in a large manner at the same time many hispanics of my generation in this country do not take the opportunity to develop their understanding of the spanish language they instead leave it behind like a bad habit thus leaving behind the bridge that connects them to their hispanic culture in an uninterested manner all to focus solely on english being bilingual is important to me because i am able to see the importance of not only speaking both languages but also demonstrating in school that i am indeed bilingual in writing and reading as well as demonstrating that being hispanic is something to be proud of i will use this ability to not only reach goals that i place on myself to improve as a person but to also get to inform many future hispanic students of this achievement achievement that would hopefully inspire them to take on this challenge and understand that being bilingual is not a drag it is a gift that helps us understand who we are and who we can become thank you pardon me thank you so much so board members questions or comments director martin yeah well thank you all students for being here and congratulations on this award i think uh this is um it's really a fantastic fantastic opportunity and i think the gentleman who just spoke said it best
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the importance of this i mean you said helps me understand the culture i inherited thanks to my parents and i think that connection to your culture is one that will take you very far and i really appreciate the focus on that and the understanding of that and i i just congratulate all of you who who have paid attention to this and and have achieved this so thank you so much anybody else i just had a question just in terms of the state's process so this is a state pilot and do we know approximately how many is it just started this year are we just now joining in so this is the the pilot year there were six districts that participated so not every student who was eligible in the state of oregon this year received it okay um so we were one of the six um and we actually have and i have this in the notes there that we actually probably have at least 50 more students beyond the 120 who will earn retroactively the seal by literally this summer once the ap and ib scores came out because we had a number of seniors who take that their in their senior year the spring unfortunately the scores don't come out but the ode allowed us as well as the other districts to award those retroactively so we'll probably coming back to you sometime in july august with those students as well so we're very excited um and as a pilot part of this is figuring out exactly what the standard is and how we award that and so that work will happen in over the summer and then in the september time period we'll be coming out with the official rollout in um next year that's great and i assume the state is allowing for student voice to be able to give feedback about the impact for them and right and part of tonight's is i've asked these two fine young people to give me their statements because we want to start collecting those statements and giving those voices absolutely right want to include them this is so exciting congratulations to you to all of you those who couldn't be here tonight and really excited to see this moving forward superintendent smith did you want to ask me before we do a photo no just a congratulations and thank you for taking on the work of making having us be one of the pilot districts i'm really excited to have had this opportunity for so many of our students and it's just exciting to be here acknowledging all of you here tonight so and we look forward to having a photograph up front here with you great i i we did ask them to all bring their diplomas tonight they all get a seal on their diploma and a certificate as well i would also mention that there are parents here and teachers here who i'm sure played a major role in their accomplishment um so we probably should recognize oh yes thank you can everyone stand and we can give you a round of applause all right let's do a photo with students thank you so much bring your diplomas um congratulations be helpful yep please show your diplomas with your code three two one yes
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all right that's awesome peeling off your seal so moving on in our agenda thank you again all so much for coming out tonight that's the highlight nice to have a highlight in our meeting so next we have a discussion around the budget amendment number four to the 2014-15 budget superintendent smith would you like to introduce this what somewhat more prosaic item i would so useful wad our chief financial officer and david wind our deputy chief financial officer will present the fourth amendment to our 2014-15 budget yusuf and david good evening board members superintendent smith this is the amendment number four in our budget and our last amendment it will include a couple of items the first one is to cover the arbitration award that the board voted on last board meeting it's um 1.77 million the total amount would be about 1.96 do the taxes that goes on with the with the dollar amount the other item includes miscellaneous adjustments for the carry over amounts and another small items that david can cover in a second that would be that will be there thank you so as yusuf said in the general fund there's a couple of things going on the arbitration award um we increase expenditures in the budget and we reduce contingency to offset that and then we have carryover which is a process we go through at the end of each year where there are programs and projects that were budgeted for 2014-15 where we now know that spending will not hit until after june 30th these cover things like curriculum materials adoption the one-time money that we have put in the budget for musical instruments library books and pe equipment some summer programs increased investment in cte and avid and some facilities projects those total 5.5 million dollars and what we're doing is we're reducing expenditures in the 1415 budget and increasing contingency by that same amount and then in next year's budget we will increase the beginning fund balance and the expenditures by those two amounts so it's stuff that we've that you've approved for us to do and that we budgeted to do and we're simply moving all of the money associated with that into next year's budget so that we have it there when the actual stuff hits after june 30th the net impact of those two things on the 1516 budget is a reduction in uncommitted contingency down to 2.6 from the 3 in the approved budget we will have other factors that will impact the 15 16 budget that we will be reviewing with you in the fall as things become clearer how the school state school fund for the current year plays out what our actual ending fund balance is uh you will recall that in budgeting for next year we assumed two percent underspending in the budget for this year we built that into the beginning fund balance and then there's the whole issue of what 2015-17 actually looks like in terms of how the legislature finally settles that down and how much of that funding is in the first year and how much is in the second year so all of those factors will play out in the future and the other things that are in the budget amendment are in a couple of the other funds we're truing up the appropriation to make sure it matches expenditures so in the grants fund we're making sure that we've appropriated money correctly between um support and also the there's a community there's a line for community engagement where we need to make sure we've got that appropriated right we're adjusting the construction excise tax to to reflect the stronger collections that we've seen and then in the bond fund we have to make sure again that we have appropriations right between categories almost all of the spending in the bond fund is for facilities acquisition and construction as you'd expect but there's some activities bond issuance the costs associated with ocepd owner-controlled insurance policy and some of the arbitrage reporting that we have to do where those expenditures count as support and we need to make sure we've appropriated enough money to do that there's one other change that will be in the final documents that you see next week which is not in the drafts that you've got and i apologize for that in checking our numbers in fund 32320 which is the debt service fund for the recovery zone bonds in our budget we show a federal subsidy for the interest cost the amount of that federal subsidy has
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been reduced as a result of continuing sequestration and so we're going to need to find another fourteen thousand dollars in order to balance the books there so we will be increasing the transfer from the general fund by that amount and reducing the federal subsidy and those numbers will show in the final documents that come to you next week and that's amendment number four great thank you so much so board members any questions or comments again we're going to vote on this at our next meeting on the 23rd so discussion tonight any questions no scene pardon me scene then i'll just note how exciting it is to see 2.4 million more in construction exercise tax revenue yay we're excited about the construction exercise today as long as the there's not as long as you keep seeing all those cranes right for better or for worse and things are good for construction exits great thank you gentlemen very much thank you thank you director buell i'm sorry um david yosef could you come back director bill when when will the teachers expect their checks for the two million dollars when like if i'm a teacher in portland when will i get my check so they can plan to image along with their regular june payroll june okay thank you great thank you very much teachers superintendent smith we have a milestone tonight and want to give you a moment topic we do we have a milestone that i want two different milestones i want to acknowledge so first david williams who'll be doing his legislative update um next on the agenda this is actually david's last board meeting as the director of government life relations for portland public schools because he will be leaving us to go join the beaverton school district to create a new um comparable position for beaverton so david i just want to thank you for your service to pbs and representing us in the legislature and really carving out what that position is for us over the last five years so thank you and we look forward to your report in a minute so and then secondly melissa goff who has been our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning um is going to be a the superintendent in philomath which we have previously recognized and i so this will be melissa's last board meeting and i just want to say thank you so much for your leadership um and we really look forward to seeing you in your new superintendent role so good luck to you all right so with that we have the bittersweet moment of welcoming for his final legislative update to us david williams director of government relations thank you very much uh superintendent smith members of the board david williams your director of government relations for the moment uh this uh the legislative session is slowly beginning to wind itself down so i'll sort of cover a little bit of what's happened since the last update we gave and and certainly happy to answer any questions of things you might have read about in the paper or are just plain old wondering about so let's start with budgets of course first we continue to work with all of our coalition partners to push heavily on the legislature to reach the 7.5 billion that was identified early on in the session as what it would take to keep all school districts in the state whole to the program that they had last biennium as well as add back full day can add the commitment to full day kindergarten i hesitate to say that we might not quite reach that 7.5 billion dollars there is three or four weeks there are three or four weeks left in this legislative session so we will be continuing to push as hard as we can at the moment the current public commitment is for about 7.4 billion dollars there is going to likely be a small change to the withhold the distribution from what's called the common school fund that will increase a distribution to local school districts which is offset in the formula this is a complicated way of saying they found about another 27 million dollars to add to the education budget statewide that will get us to that 7.4 billion there are some targeted investments that will be on top of that 7.4 billion as well most notably about 35 million dollars dedicated to career and technical education that will come out of the current proposed deal of how to deal with the gain share the so-called gain share revenue money that was being split between the state and washington county um there was a strong commitment to carve out a bunch of that the 35 million for uh cte so at the moment that's where we're at i think we're cautiously optimistic that the legislature may be able to find some additional revenues in the waning days of session and certainly with strong advocacy bush from all of our coalition partners we're not
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going to be letting them off the hook anytime soon it is worth noting that uh where we have been over the last three biennia where the 2011-13 school year was funded at 5.7 billion dollars so we are almost 2 billion dollars above uh that number as we approach 7.4 or or above and i think this is really obviously um credit goes to a growing economy which certainly doesn't hurt when you're a heavily income tax dependent state but there have been a lot of choices the legislature has made has had to make and certainly finding a way to fund education at those levels has been what that one that they have made and we want to applaud them for that while continuing to push them to go above and beyond um there will be minimal changes at this point to the state school fund formula of course so we do the overall amount and then how do we divide that up and that's often a very long protracted debate in the session as people bring various changes of the formula at this point it appears there'll only be one notable change and that is the doubling of what's called the high cost disabilities account so right now for students who who cost their the delivering of education services to the student costs in excess of thirty thousand dollars uh the state high cost disabilities account kicks in and it only covers about forty cents on the dollar above that thirty thousand dollars uh what they're doing is essentially doubling the amount in that fund so it should cover approximately eighty cents on the dollar for everything above thirty thousand dollars in in uh in incurred costs for those students so that's where we are at on budgets and revenues i don't anticipate significant revenue conversation as we close out the session i think we have been trying very hard with the revenue chairs to generate some conversation especially around the kicker as you know the last revenue forecast projected a fairly significant kicker and we think that they should at least have some sort of conversation around what that means to taxpayers and to the state and where that money could be spent maybe a way to means tested or deliver kicker rebates to the the lowest third of income earners or something along the line those lines and that conversation simply has been uh for the most part a non-starter i would note that in oregon of course it takes a um a three-fifths majority to raise taxes so in a 60-member house of representatives it takes 36 members to vote to raise taxes to retain the kicker however takes two-thirds so it will require 40 members of that house of representatives in order to retain the kicker so it is an even higher bar to get over and that's the hurdle we face at the moment moving on to policy i think that the couple of the biggest policy debates since we last talked uh the today the house gave its final concurrence vote on the student opt-out legislation and that is going to the governor's desk for her signature we would anticipate that she is likely to sign that into law that will essentially remove the religious or disability um exemption clause for opt out and simply allow students to opt out for any reason for a six-year period it will also require twice annual notification by school districts to students and parents of their ability to opt out should they desire once at the beginning of the school year and once at the beginning of the testing window or i think it's 30 days before the opening of the testing window is technically how it works so basically september and january is when those will go out the first notification won't be required to go out until january however because there is no emergency clause in the bill so it has sort of a delayed implementation until january 1. the u.s department of ed has made some made known their concern for the bill and i think their response to it as it becomes law may dictate further legislative action but it remains to be seen at this point the other major piece of legislation coming out is senate bill 187 which is the student data privacy legislation that representative lou frederick really championed and help move through and this really is about protecting students from their data in this burgeoning environment of online and other computer-driven technological resources that their data is really not to be used or saved for any purpose whatsoever so i think this really puts uh the student protection foremost that if they're going to use that piece of software if we're going to use in a classroom that it's really only for educational purposes and not for some sort of data mining purpose as well and that is headed to the governor's desk for signature as well the last sort of bigger policy piece i do want to flag that's still outstanding is this conversation around the fifth year senior programs and its intersection with what's called
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accelerated learning there's been this ongoing conversation throughout the session and i know you as a board have had this conversation as well and we certainly had it in the when we were developing the legislative platform uh uh going forward it looks like there is going to be some sort of uh interim working group on how do we address this notion of the fifth year senior where is it appropriate where is it's not appropriate um what does it make sense for kids and really that's been our conversation uh director belial testified in front of the committee and really it's about what's best for students here um within the confines that we find ourselves so i think that that's probably a positive conversation going forward but it is something that that they will have in the interim it is possible that they will add to legislation in the waning weeks of the session a one year moratorium on the creation of any new fifth year senior programs and so that may impact conversations we uh have here as a district about looking at that type of program so that moratorium would allow those who are doing it now to continue in place while the legislature crafts some sort of solution quote unquote solution to that uh dilemma going forward the intersection of course is with what's called accelerated learning and this is all of the ways that students earn college credit while they're still in high school are still enrolled in the k-12 system and um i think that's that that these things obviously blend really well and really lend themselves to how are we helping kids blow those lines between high school community college four-year college etc i think it's remaining to be seen it appears to be developing to some sort of more or less a pilot program but with some actual funding behind it to allow districts to experiment with more with ways that we can get kids access to college credits while they're uh still in in school so that then the last sort of outstanding issues would be sort of labor and employment issues um obviously paid sick leave has passed both chambers and headed to the governor and i think we're still sort of uh discerning what kind of impact that has in an education environment where nearly all employees do currently receive paid sick leave and then lastly the speaker has announced her intention to try to push through a statewide increase in the minimum wage i believe to 11 an hour with a local ability to add on to that minimum wage currently local communities cannot create ordinances to increase the minimum wage so any increase in the minimum wage will have some effect on uh payroll with the district as well and we're not we're just monitoring those conversations at the moment but they are part of the the employment life that we uh find ourselves in with that i really would be happy to answer any questions about uh policies you hear about bills you uh know are going or not going or other issues you might want to know about colleagues i think for director bill i'd just like to thank you david for all the help you've given me on the school board you've really given me some great reports and i'm sad to see you going out to beaverton but i hope you'll continue to fight for all the things that are hopefully beaverton is not too much different than us and we'll be fighting for the same things i would hope and so thank you very much for that i and i also wanted to give a thank you here publicly acknowledge lou frederick and what if we have a super friend in the legislature it's lou frederick those first two bills were bills that he brought forward the opt-out bill uh was his and so was the date of privacy we have to get a handle on the date of privacy things and and this is a good start and so i just like to acknowledge what a wonderful job he's done down in the legislature for education he's really been a fighter down there and it's been great so thank you very much for and i had talked to some people and they said yeah you're gonna miss that guy down there and i said yes we will so good luck in your job appreciate it thank you director belial i'll just echo my appreciation for all your work um it has been tireless and endless day in and day out i know down there trying to figure out the lay of the land who's moving what why and how to help us access that and that be the best advocate so thank you i look forward to our folks working with you in your new position down there so that we can continue uh to move the state in the right direction i have three questions or comments one is with the change of oeib it looks like that will be sun setting a new department started is there any talk about achievement compacts is it assumed that those will also be going away or will the new office continue those yeah uh thank you director belial uh yeah the the the oeib with the passage of the oeib uh reform legislation that was a pretty broad work group piece um the two notable outcomes from it are the board itself will cease to exist um i believe on july one on i don't
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believe they've actually met uh since cape round has taken office um and then the other is the achievement complex will likewise cease to exist so those are the two big upshots of that the department of the for lack of term the office of the chief education officer uh will will persist and i think there is certainly a role there as a coordinating uh policy entity there will also be ongoing work group conversations led by senator arne roblin from coos bay the current chair of senate education he will continue to lead those throughout the interim in talking about what's the appropriate setup of that agency what's the appropriate tenure of it what's the appropriate role for the chief education officer i think there was an interest in not immediately sort of ending the work of all of those all the folks in that department um with the assumption that you're going to have something exist past it but you wanted to have that conversation while they still um continued their work so that's the the status we're at with the oeib great so i'll make a statement about that i just um i remember hearing that there will be some sort of advisory structure some group that will be helping with that policy and i just want to put a note that i hope that we're working with them um strongly to make sure that they get them that membership correct um because i know we were we struggled with some of the makeup of the oaib and that didn't that's not against the people that were there but we thought there are more folks that should be included in that my next question is senator mark hass has been a fantastic advocate for revenue and state expense reform does that seem to get traction uh no okay yeah you know it it's something we obviously um we have been strong allies in the conversation around both revenue reform and um tax expenditure reform the state sends out in the form of tax expenditures which are tax credits tax deductions tax breaks about 50 cents on every dollar that they levy in taxes so we're only collecting half of the actual taxes that we levy on people and some of those are really positive tax credits they incentivize really great behavior some of them maybe not right but the state really has not taken a really significant look at that some of them are really big think mortgage interest deduction i think the personal exemption credit these are really big ones that take big bites out of that 50 cents but there's a whole variety of things in there that that that are ripe for review on some level i think if there's any traction to be had the one that the one crack in the ice so to speak that we're beginning to see and and it's good to do now while the economy is fairly strong at the moment or at least moving forward um is the conversation that in any future decline in the economy the state only has one tool for well they have two tools for reducing budgets they can the legislature can come in and decide where they want to cut or the governor can implement what's called allotment cuts which is just across the board and and this has been done during my time lobbying and education it's been done a couple times you say just a 2 across the board everybody gets cut well that cut doesn't affect tax expenditures and so i think there is a conversation about saying in times of allotment reduction that any allotment cuts both budgets and tax expenditures equally and so i think that there is there is some opportunity to keep that conversation going um forward then then there's also the conversation around the property tax system and the income tax system and the way we are structured in the state um and the way it is intertwined in the constitution makes it um a very difficult task to tackle one that's long term that we've certainly been a party to the district will continue to be a party to i would flag the city club that has been leading a study group for some time now about the property tax system and really trying to find ways to advocate more about the reasons the property tax system is kind of messed up with the oregon legislature and they've really been reaching out to senator hass a whole variety of others and we have fantastic allies and i think continuing to push that conversation with them will i have to believe we'll eventually bear fruit i'm an optimist to the core and i might probably burn out a lot quicker if i wasn't so i have to believe it will eventually bear fruit but it's a long-term project thank you because the volatility that's in our system currently is just unsustainable we will continue to get the similar outcomes until we change volatility and that doesn't always just mean more money or reduced expenditures the volatility um is detrimental to any organization it's actually why businesses look for projections and assurances in their tax their tax expenses um so that they can have that steady understanding of what to expect my final comment is um i am very much in favor of raising minimum wage um i think that's great that the state's
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looking it's too bad that it's as low as it is but i understand that they're making very difficult choices as well but we that means we could also find ourselves in a situation where our community locally who has been fantastic supporters um decides to set a minimum wage for 15 which would have an impact on our budget and whether or not the state legislature is looking for increased then appropriations for communities who decide to do that or we wind up with again a locally mandated higher expenditure rate and no significant change in appropriations from the state that that's a fantastic point i don't believe they are looking to add any amount to a budget to offset any potential increase in expenditures as a result of a minimum wage increase thank you again for all your work thanks anybody else down here no well i'm sorry um i had a question around smarter balance has there been any discussion for me personally that one of my major concerns really is the length of the test has there been any discussion whether the legislature or the staff that just presented to them about looking and reducing the length of that test uh thank you director atkins no obviously the the variety of problems that the assessment has presented to the system have been the motivation behind some of the legislation we've seen but really the the content the length etc are not um i think the legislature has not found a way to grapple those in a statutory sense right um i think the the goal would be that the movements we see on the ground as well as the legislation we see moving through the through the body would really be the impetus for the either the smarter balanced coalition to modify their assessments to make a more reasonable approach or for other locally driven assessment to um to grow i think that's you know that that's the we're going to enter an interesting year of course because other companion legislation passed earlier in the session which says we're not going to rate um schools or teachers based on smarter balance scores then combine that with the opt out we're going to have this this one year period where there is going to be going to be a lot of this as well then overlay the feds and any potential esea reauthorization and what impact that would have i think there's a lot of wild cards it's a little hard to predict but the legislature has not to this point had that conversation about what they could do specifically around things like length yeah i mean i guess for me personally that rather than opting out that's that's fixed the test but that's that's me so director buell are we supposed to have a uh study next year on the cost of the testing in that that passed didn't it yes correct in the in the in the bill mentioned that i mentioned around um alleviating the accountability for smarter balance assessment for this coming year they directed the secretary of state's department to do an audit on both expenditure as well as a a performance audit on the the use of statewide standard standardized summative assessment i can't remember the data off the top of my head it might be next september so a year from september is when that audit is due and that'll obviously drive a lot of policy conversation in the next full legislative session so in the 2017 legislative session right great all right thank you thank you so much and you have uh it's just a huge hole you're leaving the district i'm very fortunate in my day job i get to see you around salem sometimes when they're talking on housing issues but as everyone else has said you've just been an amazing asset to the district and advocate for our kids so we're going to really miss you but we do look forward to partnering with you in beaverton as we go forward thank you and you know um it's been a fantastic experience obviously i came from a statewide association and then down to the district level and i am a measurably better advocate having had the experience of advocating for a school district it's really changed my approach in the building and um i think changed the level of advocacy in the state and i'm excited that not that beaverton's adding me although i am kind of excited about that but i'm excited that they're adding the position because i think it just doubles that voice of the local district voice in salem which is something that has been missing um around here and i hope maybe on some level i've left the district a little better place but i know i'm leaving as a better lobbyist so thank you thank you so much david all right so the last item on our agenda is superintendent's evaluation so each year the board completes an evaluation of our superintendent and votes under contract renewal which is a one-year extension of the
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three-year kind of rolling contract so before 20 2014 is it always been done in conjunction in october but then back in october of 2013 we decided as a board that we really needed to postpone the superintendent's evaluation until the following spring first so that it would be done at the end of the school year and we could look at the areas of focus for the coming year having kind of looked back on that year and then also really importantly so we can include the graduation rate data from the prior year which are not finalized until february so we moved it to the spring then last year we also did a more pretty extensive renegotiation of the superintendent's contract in terms of her pay rate so that did take longer so we didn't actually end up voting on the contract until august so just some background for contests because a lot of questions have come up so this year we were planning on going back to our usual practice of doing the contract extension along with the performance appraisal in conjunction but a number of questions have come up and so the superintendent requested of us that we remove her contract extension from the agenda for tonight in anticipation of the new board coming in july so in response to that request we went ahead and we have pulled resolution number five 101 extension of the contract from tonight's business agenda so just for the record from my perspective it was entirely appropriate and fitting that we would be able to as we usually do extend the contract um as an affirmation of the strong performance of the superintendent her value to the district the value that her longevity as superintendent brings and um just the great results that we're seeing in the positive um all the positive achievements and momentum in the district and just to be clear just because i think there's been some misunderstanding nothing in our taking that action of extending her contract would have precluded in any way the future boards and taking a different course or doing a different uh to going in a different direction it purely is our ability to say as we are um approving a very um glowing appraisal of the superintendent's outstanding performance that we affirmed that we want to see her to continue to lead in this district but again that move would in no way have precluded a future board from doing making a different choice but that being said the main thing is that we are here tonight to approve the performance appraisal for 2000 2015 and completing our duty as a board and leaving on the record are statements about her outstanding performance for this year so with that we will only be discussing the superintendent's uh the resolution which accepts the superintendent's performance appraisal so with that we'll now consider resolution number five one zero zero superintendent's performance appraisal 2015. do i have a motion in a second electrical aisle news and director morton seconds the adoption of resolution five one zero zero miss houston do we have any public comment we do not no public come any board discussion director blau this is my last chance to get to vote on this so i just wanted to take an opportunity to um publicly thank you superintendent smith um for your leadership we keep talking about longevity which is really important again that volatility can really affect any organization but i also just want to say that we had 14 areas of focus this year which begins to feel like we don't have a focus so i appreciate my colleagues narrowing it down to four for next year so that we can actually make some progress more progress on narrower sets so um i want to mention that i often in the community whether before i was on the board now everybody likes superintendent smith i'll just share that with you superintendent smith i i like her i like her and then there was always a second question of but is she the right person to lead the district and i'm just going to share my learning over the past four years with that um so i came in with that mindset i'm not sure that superintendent smith is the right person to lead this district and as i've come to know you and i've seen you work as i've seen you um navigate seven board members many with our own interests and our own passions the time that you spent at the end of the diocese listening to us talking with us figuring out where our heads are and what our priorities are and how to make that happen in direction in service of this district has been quite um it's been interesting and exciting for me to see because you make it seem effortless which then i hear back from the community as perhaps we're a rubber stamp really it's to your due diligence um to listening to what your board is directing so that when we come up it's not something that we have to argue about you hurt our intent and can move forward so i just want to share that second i had somebody one time ask me is she very smart
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and i just want to share having gotten to work with you for the past four years um that you're one of those people who sees the issue at hand you understand the opposite side of whatever is moving forward and you understand about five other pieces and i don't know if somebody shared them with you or if it's just what you're able to project but i see that you're able to um hold about five or six or seven multiple perspectives at the same time while staying grounded in students um you're under you're aware of the political you're aware of what looks good you're aware of what looks bad you're aware of all those pieces and you have an uncanny ability to understand that in public education in portland public schools in public education if there is somebody that comes out of this feeling like a loser we all lose and so you work tirelessly not necessarily to make or to make nobody feel like a loser but still lead a direction leave this district in a direction that is best for kids so i just wanted to share that with you that some people in our society get really strong into rhetoric and they get strong and the dichotomous thinking either you're with us or you're against us either it's this way or it's the highway and you manage to not fall into that and to do your homework extensively and i just want to say the hours that you put in um are extraordinary and i just wanted to say thank you for your service if we look at data it's interesting because i hear people say well you've missed three miles four milestones out of the five milestones first of all thank you for being bold enough to say there should be metrics that measure whether or not i'm doing something you were the first superintendent to do it the state wound up feelings following suit there are some board members here who don't think any of this data should be in here they think these data points are not what we should be measuring but we've made progress on those so in the past 15 years we have the highest graduation rate that we've seen by any measure that is extraordinary nowhere where we want to be nobody is pretending that but to pretend that we're not in the right direction is is false i just wanted to say that the same people that are saying well you missed four of the five milestones are some of the same people who are saying well you can't rate our kids by a test score you can't use one metric so often times that as people are processing through this people get hung up on one or the other metric and again we had 14 different priorities um that we had on we're taking them all into account i'm being long-winded i just wanted to say thank you i'm excited to approve this evaluation i would have been excited to extend your contract and it should be just a pro form of peace it isn't anything special by us actually moving it what we've said is this should be a political football and it should not be just as staff evaluation should be they should just happen every single year the same way as best we can and i would have actually been in favor of a cost of living because not giving you a cost of living increase will get us in the same position that we found herself last year with an extraordinary unprecedented raise that made many of us scream because it was so large but it was making up for years of not taking this very action of giving you a cost of living increase so thank you for your service and i'm excited to vote for this today thank you all right other folks any other comments director born uh greg hit on every topic um literally the uh i think i think the one thing um two things one is uh i think you're probably used to me telling you how um how you're a much better person than i am and uh and i really do believe that um and i think it's it's because of the because of the things that uh that greg has shared but it's also this um this characteristic that i think i i call kindness um and uh generally and and it's patience and it's the willingness to listen and uh and a lot of people a lot of leaders don't do that these days um and i think uh i think that's really an amazing uh and attractive quality the other thing is a is a story just happened a few a couple of weeks ago at the jefferson graduation when you and i were greeting and congratulating all the seniors
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as they were receiving their diplomas and uh and as you who know carol she's a hugger and she was hugging every single young person that came across the stage and and one of the students turned to you and said thank you so much for your support of jefferson and to hear one an amazingly astute young person to know that that's your support and your advocacy and your relationships led to an environment that allows jefferson to function at the high level they're functioning now but then also it really is true and i think every graduation that that you attend every opportunity students have i believe to thank you for the support you've given so i'm obviously in support of i feel like my comments and and recommendations uh are in this evaluation i'm supportive of the evaluation and i just thank you so much for for the service you offer and i can't yeah i can't thank you enough for the work that you do carol thank you thanks matt anybody else uh yeah director sure um so just a couple comments uh one is um uh just the the enormity of the task of being superintendent for this district is huge and um certainly as i've been on now two years uh i i've grown to appreciate the the um the difficulty of the job um and i think you do a uh a fabulous job dealing with all the complexities um and your work ethic is uh beyond anybody i've seen so really appreciate it i i think that the um that the evaluation essentially is speaks for itself um we've made progress but there's still a huge amount of urgency there and we all i think we all feel that i was glad to see the the 360 feedback mechanism um i i don't think it's it's totally exactly what we where we want to be with it but at least we got started and so it's something that we can work on in the future uh as well as the the the surveys in each school so i think that that's just a good direction that we're going and you helped make that happen so i appreciate that um and then the last thing i would say is just to be clear and greg you talked about the the focus for 2015-16 um and there were there's six um here but i i think it's going to be important for the new board at our really at our first meeting uh one of the actions that we that we should take is for the new board to review and set those um in conjunction with you uh and um so i look forward to the next year uh working with you on all these thanks don yeah so everyone has said it already really well i know and i'm really excited and i'm sorry to be able to but it has nothing to do with the superintendent it has to do with the method and the way that we put together the evaluation okay i think that it's it's not very well done okay so um you know as i leave the board i'm just uh since our tenure sort of overlapped since the first thing one of the first things we did when i joined the board was to hire you which was as i said the other night the best and most important decision that i've made for this district i believe um just seeing um the increase in our graduation rate 17 percentage points um since you've joined the district that alone well again as everyone agrees um it's not enough and we're still unacceptably low and have unacceptable disparities a huge trajectory and one that i know that um with the team that you've assembled and just the momentum in your leadership that we'll be able to see that continue and i and i agree of course with director curl the new board will make their own areas of focus and have their own way of doing things which is great but certainly i i hope and presume with the same urgency and the same focus on increasing our graduation rate reducing um out-of-school discipline and disparities in the discipline and certainly one thing that we identified in the and shared with you or concern around in the evaluation was the flatness of the third grade reading and so that'll
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continue i hope to be a an area of real focus and acceleration and we ex and we identified others as well but certainly um we are very fortunate to have um a superintendent beyond fortunate to have a superintendent of your caliber and longevity and i think sometimes all of us in this community maybe take for granted your amazing talents the hard work and the value that you bring to this district and to all our students so while you're beloved i want to make sure everyone understands also the value that you bring and sometimes it's hard you know people don't always see all the work that happens and the complexities of the accomplishments that you have done so with that let's go ahead and vote on resolution number five one zero zero all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes i'll oppose please and indicate by saying no no so any abstentions no okay so resolution number five one zero zero is approved by a vote of four to one all right thank you very much and thank you all for your feedback and i appreciate that actually what did go into the document and the kind of feedback that you all generated as well as what went into setting goals for the coming year and i agree with director curler that we'll review those with the new board but i think this was a good thoughtful reflection on the work of the past year with you so thank you wonderful all right so the next meeting of the board will be held on june 23rd this meeting is


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