2016-08-04 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2016-08-04
Time missing
Venue missing
Meeting Type regular
Directors Present missing


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Event 1: Board of Education-Regular Meeting-August 4, 2016

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fourth is called to order I'd like to extend a warm welcome to everyone here ed item that we voted on this evening has been posters required by state law Mike Rosen is absent this evening and we'll begin with student testimonies whose inner there anybody signed up okay public comment houston we have anybody signed up for one okay welcome what do you guys normally do for practice on abuse salt and fighting out the public schools what's the standard procedure after somebody's get caught doing that yeah talk talk to HR everybody cuisine and and we do not discuss personnel matters by name in this form yeah so um are you looking for us to connect you with HR roseanne to be the person if roseanne does that yes okay yeah you know thank you she rose and does what she says she's gonna do oh um thank you for coming up he's gone through the complaint process okay thank you all right any other any other ok I think I'd like to have a first of all I want to say again thank you to Yusuf and all the senior staff for all the work that you have done these news past month and beyond and that you will be doing so hey thank you it's very much appreciated from the poor second would you like to give an update on the health and safety look on goings and I do to want to thank the board for their support and during this time and I also want to thank our executive team they have been really great stepping up and doing a lot more than they probably were hired to do so yeah they're stepping up everybody steppin up in and putting their best effort to do to help the district I'm I have quite a better list of things that I will just try to keep it brief we are in the process of power went about five million dollars which is the board authorized to help us do some work on the health and safety issues that were dealing with we also appointed an interim Health and Safety Director a doctor John Burnham he's coming with great and deep experience in the health and safety in multiple universities is considered expert in the field and then we're happy to have him on board he's already identified about 40 different programs that we need to look at so he's doing a really really good work and I'm happy to have him on board we also appointed Courtney as the executive director of operation and Courtney also brings significant amount of experience and a deep knowledge Courtney Wilton I'm sorry Wilton and and he's he's being really mean it they're both hitting the ground running and I'm very pleased with the what they have got to offer to the district as far as the water testing we have completed the tests and we got all the results and we made those publicly we we are going about in the next week or so probably put the final report with varying the report with the company to make sure that we have all the data and checked so we will be produced in a seminary report of all the fixtures that were tested and we'll put that out to the public meanwhile our seas to em have been working on the fixture specifically on the kitchen to check and give us recommendation about remediation plan so we can get the schools specifically the food facility is really for the beginning of the school year on that and we're also working with a contractor to
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come and change some of the faucet or the fixtures in the food preparation areas to make sure that that's completed in time and we also will will obviously we will continue to provide water to schools through the dispensers throughout the next school year regardless of the outcome of what happened with with the testing and then what we find we have designed signage to put around our facilities to just make sure they are kids don't drink the water from the sinks and these have been printed and we will start distributing them in the schools and put them in places to make sure kids see them and then they're clear we're also in the process of hiring a contractor to go and shut down all the fountains so we can take the bags and just have make sure there's permitted shut down to the fountains there is no access at all which is consistent with the three TS as far as the lead paint we have had quite a bit of projects that have started and I can I'm going to include that in my weekly update and how many number of schools that we have worked on I didn't tally them but there is probably 15 20 schools that we have already started working on them between either completed or in the progress of working on them and we have we have a contractor that's coming on board as well to continue the assessment of the pain so what we did in effect we looked at schools since our facilities are very old and then and there is probably led paint in every school we have in the district we looked at facilities that in there look in really bad shape and we looked at the worst one and we kind of start going and fix it regardless so that's these the schools that we have start work on and as we progress throughout the summer we'll continue this work in term of lid plot screenings we have we have scheduled more sessions and I believe we schedule the next three weeks three weekends and we're looking at potential schedule in days and evenings so we'll be working with the company to see if we can bring more slots during next week since we have had a lot of demand last week and I don't really have the numbers yet but i'll also include it in my update and my weekly update and with that that's that's what i have for now and i'll give you more details in the weekly report okay thank you appreciate questions i'm curious on the blood screenings have there been some that perhaps have were notified people were registered for and then maybe cancelled without notifying people i'd seen some of that information from some parents or some so how can we help that so that doesn't happen again so that you're speaking about last weekend we have had quite a bit o numbers of people who came walk-ins and which kind of depleted the supplies of the contractor during the weekend so they had to reschedule all of them ok 44 future sessions and Joe maybe you may want to add to this as good as anything else to have a director risk management catalysts ran out of supplies and they could tell they weren't going to make it through Sunday so they did send out an email to everyone registered online and they informed us that their staff made phone calls as well to address that issue and try to notify everyone that was scheduled for Sunday so now we have three additional weekends here at this location but it did inconvenience some people yeah I think I guess some people were not notified somehow and I was under the impression that they weren't walkins that they had actually had appointments but so if we know to expect high volumes will be prepared for that these next two sessions we've had a lot of conversations ok great good thank you thanks very keen Steve two things 1i think we should try to schedule evening quickly because really it we're really down at the hand of that 60-day time right now not everybody believes it 60 days but everybody believes it's a it's at least 60 days you're okay and we're pretty Lee over that number to some degree so we're going to just more but we should try and schedule them evening quickly in my opinion and so that gives
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people a chance to get in quicker and also some of the evenings because we did I assume they're giving us some sort of a discount by since they shut down then I have two other question three other questions about his report go when we go out and do two schools now we've got some so you probably miss for you too we probably have some we have some fountains that are fine we going to leave those open we're not going to take chances with any of the fountains within or not if they show up and no letting them know they're not and you keep those running so you're not really taking any chances or mountains without that we they didn't even show up with any let in that we could keep them I don't see the point of turning off our drinking fountain that we've tested and it doesn't have any lead not going to turn around in a week probably yeah so we don't want to confuse people we don't want to have certain fountains overnight certain clothes then if we're turning off all the fountains we don't and returned off the ones that didn't add that had the lead problems we could still leave on the inner fountains for kids to drink out so Steve that's how an initial testing and before we open any fountains I would like to retest it at least one more time to make sure that it's working and there is no lead so I want to be on a double check before we open any I four fountains we want to take risks so Nick see is critical will provide the water we already did the contracts let's make sure and double make sure that all the fountains are safe before we open them for business they intersect the second question at three the second one is that I think we need to send out a notice to all the parents about what we're doing surrounding the water before the school starts I assume that you've already planted and but also I would think we would also include in there what they could do to help us for instance if their kids brought a water bottle to school that's very helpful to us if the kid has water that that they can drink and have during the day and so they don't end up having to that would to some degree help us not have to turn over it would help with the expenses and it's something that parents could do and kids could do so so we are actively looking for donations in addition to that as far as the communication plan we have a meeting scheduled I believe this next week to exactly develop a communication plan what we can do with our teachers who are we going to tell them to talk to the kids what our staff going to do what messages were going to send to the parents whether it's in in full messages or in reaction writing there are other things we will do with our administrator so we're going to have a comprehensive communication plan to address it from a different angles to make sure that kids are well informed when they come to the school so we have that on its plan to be to be completed and the third question had to do thank you thank you oh you might I don't know you're doing health and safety this room probably has to you too Oh are we making some changes in how we're dealing are we looking at how we're dealing with the safety the maintenance safety the types of things that are for instance that I talked about at some length about George middle school or took us two or three months to get out there and fix the hole with the rats in it or to get to get the gang riding off to school to take care of are we looking at where we failed in that just just that safety and anything do the wet in the water to anything to do with lead paint which which are broader things but these smaller safety issues are we are we reorganizing around what we should what we weren't doing and what we are doing what we will be doing that are different yes the answer is yesterday so that our first step was moving health and safety and the risk management because all these issues are risks the second step is what John broom as I as I mentioned earlier he already identify about 40 different programs this is not just water and let it's all sort of risks associated with with how we do business in the district and he'll be SS in all of that and that's what we address in so we're also engage in our stakeholders in regular meaning to work on health and safety committees updating the manual and do other measures to make sure we address all the safety because there's immediate risk in there's lengthy rest of the unreinforced masonry buildings that are going to fall down in a fairly decent little earthquake maybe that's a long range as we don't fix that tomorrow but
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there are maintenance things that come up during the school year that we should be on that we weren't on we weren't on them and we should be on them quickly and have it be organized so we are on those and somehow they get prioritized in a way that's not just who's calling up but what the risk is and we'll be moving there and that's the assessment we're making as we say great thank you that's nice to know it's nice the public knows it okay thank yes I want to go back to something I'm Steve said about the communication plan really quick about the LED water stuff I was just going to say for high schoolers and stuff the calling parents and writing to the parents and stuff isn't going to be the most effective way to communicate so I just say if you guys have like Facebook or something like putting that type of stuff there the high schoolers are probably going to be a lot more proactive and doing those types of things then if you call their parents you know in the high school age like you know call our parents probably nothing else snap well snapchat right if you Instagram Twitter Facebook that you'll get to high schoolers a little bit more engaged that's very helpful feedback thank you yeah maybe you can work with cordial yeah okay good good good put you on it um all right uh Roger you want to come up and come on down our eighth board member nine well welcome we've been waiting for several months to come before you so I have a prepared statement board of directors and CFO use of one I'm Roger Kirchner region to director of the Orient PTA region 2 is comprised of all PTA chapters within PPS PT PT a has over 8,000 members within the district hence it is your largest constituency second only to the students pta's model reads every child one voice we advocate for all 48 thousand students within the district for all zones and for all schools each may in cooperation with the district the Portland Council PTA honors volunteers who have contributed their time to benefit our students and the schools where they study volunteer hours are recorded by computer sign in terminals in each school's main office by early May with several weeks yet to run in the school year volunteers had contributed 240,000 hours representing 52,000 entries on the tracking system the 240 thousand hours do not include hours contributed by yourself yes school boards are uncompensated volunteers saket cbrc d brac the bond accountability committee and DAGs indeed this large number doesn't include the thousands of hours contributed at athletic events music drama and dance performance events not included in the 24 240,000 our chaperone hours for field trips Danson's lit circles helping our young readers and not included are the hours contributed by volunteers that work at the PTA clothing center that directly served 17 hundred plus students this past year providing clothing shoes and high glasses if they needed combining all these PPS volunteer hours the total hours for 2015-16 climbs upward to towards 300 thousand hours at a minimum wage that comes to very nearly 3 million dollars or equivalent to 30 full-time teaching positions at mate at the may volunteer suit celebration superintendent Carol Smith represented superintendents volunteer awards to Amy luan's of hosford pts a vice president
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who was involved in leveraging district and community resources to help repair issues revolving around hosford Sala torium who also met with traits people to get assessments on the auditorium's needs and then wrote up a detailed proposal for grant funding truth for its repair and she always advocates for hospice arts programs in the community and is always ready to go for special events also receiving the superintendent's award was Larry McCarty a bridal mouth kindergarten volunteer larry has been volunteering in a teacher and teacher and gooses class for the past 12 years he is always ready to help with any task and needs and copying worksheets cutting and pasting in data entry Larry also reached the students and helps them with academic and social skills a very important lesson in kindergarten my mother taught for 40 years Larry's a generous donations to Bridal miles library have has also helped fund the purchase of new books for the school also receiving the superintendent's award was Cheryl Walsh an akan 'some parent volunteer a dedicated volunteer with a concern running club Cheryl donated her time and talents tracking student participation in ger encouraging them to meet milestones keeping parents involved in the club and she got local businesses to make donations so students could get prizes for meeting their goals Beth eze our Franklin parent volunteer also received a super-dense award Beth is the school's parent communications director at Franklin between communications between parents and school through social media and newsletters Beth also volunteers in the library of Franklin writing grants planning events and assisting with library come collection development before coming to Franklin Beth was held held key volunteer leadership positions at Sunnyside environmental school for years she is described as a reliable good-natured and can deeply committed to Franklin High School Portland council president Lisa Kinzel announced the Portland council's Awards Portland council PT a local unit volunteer went to Michelle arts every spring all pta's in Oregon have the opportunity to honor a member of their unit whose contribution to the community has been unmatched at Portland Council PTA we also had the chance to nominate an outstanding volunteer this spring the Portland council PT a selected local unit volunteer of the year also known affectionately as the love award and we were happy to select Madison selection section vice president Michelle Arndt's to receive this award Michelle also has worked tirelessly on behalf of all students important this year as both Madison section vice president and PTA appointed member aanda brac Portland counsel presented the principle of year award to Robert gray middle school principal Beth Madison who embodies the full criteria of qualities we are looking for in a principal of year her community describes her as a passionate dedicated energetic principal who clearly loves her job students say that she is the best principal the school has ever had and not only has she given kids endless opportunities to get involved she has chosen to teach students that learning is not boring and she makes it as exciting as possible when staff members speak of her they say her leadership is cohesive we feel supported and can set goals take risks and strive to improve while having fun when we give students are absolutes are been our best so in addition to the principal of the year we select a print teachers of the year the 2016 Teacher of the Year is exactly the kind of teacher that every parent wants for their children she is an inspiring teacher who works with families to see kids succeed and is highly committed to
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students in her entire community families at school say that she supports volunteers in many ways encouraging them to decide where they can best meet the needs of the classroom her colleagues feel fortunate to work alongside her and say she is a priceless member of the staff working with parents and colleagues to make sure all students receive on hands-on real to life activities that connect with math reading and writing in a fun and engaging way and so the PT and Portland Council PTA awarded the Teacher of the Year to Andrea Smith of Bridger school Oh Portland council wanted you to know of these things about the volunteers that were honored but more than that Portland council invites each school each year to send eight representatives to this celebration like I say it was held in early May I wrote myself a note Oh with even with eight from every school you pack a ballroom so that's why it's limited 84 you need schools change from year to year whoo-hoo they to invite at your places tonight our volunteers certificates for each of you along with a few utilitarian items that you might use and for those who always criticize the board let me assure you there is no great financial value to what you've received so you are not violating any ethics law so I assure you the and PTA doesn't award or present gold watches so that's just this why you get a certificate indeed we have volunteers that have full of notebooks full of certificates that they have picked up over the years so you will find the PTA as in congressional hearings PPE ask board meetings City Council and county board meetings and at the Oregon Legislature we work for constructive change as well as maintenance of effort we guard against unfunded mandates there are far too many already education is ever evolving as Kitty Percy who served 12 years as mayor of the city of New Jean said on OPB the just recently problems confronting governing bodies school boards for example are iterative meaning they one problem after another kids my tournament whack-a-mole as directors just like superintendents principals and teachers you're expected to wear seven hats at any given time and you'll constantly be reminded those aren't the right seven recent events acutely direct our attention to aging infrastructure school buildings now averaging 76 years or older the health and safety of our students must be in sure while we continue to modernize seismically upgrade and make a DA accessible all of our buildings as PTA volunteers a perverted the successful 2012 capital camp a bond it will again stand steadfast in its support of the nests of the necessary successive bonds that will be required to fully modernize all schools Orion PTA is also a proud sponsor of measure 97 on November's ballot measure 97 is a corporate tax requiring the largest corporations to pay fair share for schools and services measure 97 asks the largest of the large corporations the walmarts the Monsanto is the bank america's comcast for example to pay 2.5% on oregon sales above 25 million dollars eighty-two percent of the major 97 taxes will be paid by large out-of-state corporations revenue generated by measure 97 pay for education healthcare and senior services and did today Governor Brown endorsed
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the measure and it is expected to raise some three billion or more more dollars per decade per biennium as sponsors of measure 97 we're also often asked by other education advocates that are promoting a measure addressing graduation rates we feel the two measures can complement one another and but our support is directed to measure 97 to garner the necessary funds that our schools have suffered from not having for the last two decades in conclusion on behalf of the Portland Council PTA we would want to thank you for your public service we look forward to working with you in the 2016-17 school year and years ahead as we work together in the education vineyard we express the hope that we will work together as a team well as my dad said we reserve our right to be wiser tomorrow Thank You Roger appreciate it appreciate everything you do and I would like to thank you for your public service Roger right and you're incredible volunteer efforts on behalf of our students and you're very thoughtful participation in so many of the ongoing conversations of this district it's really remarkable and we're very grateful yes thank you absolutely alright our next item is the compensation audit follow up use of reflective introduces in July 20 2015 the Board of Education best a resolution calling for an audit of administrative compensation the resolution included a freeze on any market adjustment since then tkw have conducted the audit and the two phases of the audit they presented them to the Audit Committee the Audit Committee and their last meeting discussed the management's responses responses to phase two of the compensation audit the business and operation committee is scheduled to discuss the recommendation by the district and the laffa chol approach that we going to take with compensation with today resolution we're proposing to authorize the human resources department with the approve of the superintendent to approve certain adjustments in order to allow the district to continue doing its business we're finding quite scenarios quite number of scenarios where we can meet market and we're losing candidate for that so we proposed for different scenarios where we make exception to that for Eastern we bring back the total package to the board thank you okay great the get this on the table here the board will now consider resolution 5317 follow-up to the audit on administrative compensation drive a motion so moved move by director anthony second second by director as far as brown miss whose name any comment yeah public comment okay for discussion mike rosen wrote a letter to the board which said there were some things in the audit that weren't taking care of him accompli in this particular resolution could you kind of just outline what that is maybe why we didn't do it yeah he pointed out certain things that we need to do which we will do in our discussion with the business and operation in terms of the steps and certain policy procedures that we need to look at and discuss with the business and operation keep it in term of the hiring and promotion etc so all of that is going to be discussed with the business and operation committee and in our next meeting that's that's what really the meaning is about so with this this doesn't necessarily lift the whole freeze it just lifted on certain options till we have that discussion so we can lift the whole tree so to just yeah to be clear on that point Mike voted against it in the audit committee felt that the process wasn't in place to get the compensation philosophy and
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framework adopted this resolution puts that in place Mike is not here but would be voting for again was it a 20 yeah so and I do want to say something about that I really want to say thank you to my kamiya has worked really well with us we worked in collaboration effort and we came up with this resolution and I think it was very productive any other comments oh my comment is that it's a too little too late 11 months to do a compensation on it where we froze our staff salaries is crippled this district we lost numerous employees to other districts an earlier meeting i listed I think 15 of them but I know there are more now and in the future I would hope that we would put something in place if we're going to do something as drastic as freezing people's salaries and freezing our ability to hire that we would figure out something better to do than a freeze so that we don't continue to ourselves with the number of people that have left and an hour l ability to hire new people into those positions because we can't even begin to meet the salaries of surrounding districts and I think that was the not a surprise to me in the compensation audit because it was told to us by staff that we had we have a compensation person who went through and did all of the work on making sure the compensation changes were bringing us to market so it wasn't a surprise to me that we there were no smoking guns in this audit so again based on all of that I certainly hope that in the future we're going a little more thoughtful about the way that we move forward with this kind of work hi I'm glad to see sorry Tom that we're finally making having movement on this because I did bring up a resolution in the Audit Committee several months ago you know looking down to see what would happen with our ability to make you know retain our staff as well as hire new staff in those crucial positions so it did take 11 months I'm disappointed as well but i have to say that I'm glad we're finally here and it's something that I had been trying to kind of acknowledge that we needed to make movements several months ago Steve yeah just drawing doing a bee follow in the public think that there wasn't darn good reasons for taking a look at this and that there wasn't in saying and I thought it was too slow too but there were darn good reasons that we took a look at this compensation and had a compensation audit and it in its brought about a more sensible approach and a more accountable approach for how we're going to compensate people and I think that it's its excellence they did take a long time but something that absolutely needed to be done in my opinion okay um Anna meantime we have many many many openings we have lots of vacancies and I'm looking forward to actually talking about this and business and operations and and because we're going to have as a board this topic is not close to us is coming right back at us and we get to decide whether we're going to lag the market meet the market or lead the market and my own my own personal philosophy it is that we should lead the market if we want to be the best believe a sure that we're going to have to as a board a chance to talk about that so with that the board will now vote on resolution 5317 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all clothes and to keep I say no any abstentions resolution 5317 is approved by those 620 with student reps and Bradley fodeez Cody yes very good all right we now consider the remainder of the business
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agenda with resolution 5316 being withdrawn 5316 is it's in your packet Pam you want to holler at me and tell me what it is it's the way and always yeah okay okay board members there any other items you'd like to pull before we vote this Huson have been any other changes to the business agenda okay do I the motion and second to adopt a business agenda so move second move by director konstanz seconded by director Anthony to adopt the business agenda the scrutiny public we have one good evening thank you for your time so I'm here this evening to really talk about the upcoming decision Europe all about to make around hiring the next superintendent and for many of you that might be the biggest decision you probably have made in your professional lives and you know I want to start by really do you want just for the record I'm sorry to state your name oh I'm sorry Joel Cisneros okay thank you and so I think you have a big decision ahead of you right and so I just want to start with early a quote from President Kennedy that states leadership and learning are indispensable to each other and I see all of you as the leaders of this district and I want to invite you to take an opportunity to be learners I think regardless of the opinion of the policies of your predecessors or former superintendent Smith there has been a lot of growth around the area of diversity in this district over the last ten years and at this point the perception from our communities it seems like that communities of color are being are not being at the table where as part of the decision process of the next for Intendant so I'm just here this evening to just remind you that a third of the student population are students of color and that it is a big constituency that puts you at that chair and do not forget to include them and include the voice of those of those students and those families I think there has been a lot of progress like I said moving forward I really hope that you're able to bring different coalition's such as the coalition of community of colors or other organizations that can support and inform the process thank you thank you thank you I could just comment so as a member of the selection committee for the upcoming the new superintendent it is my intention certainly to reach out to my community and all the other communities of color understanding that we are quite diverse and that there are new skill sets I mean this is work that has been really important to the district it's it's been interval to closing this gap this equity work in the way which we're going to roll it out may look you know we might need to make some some some new goals for that but that we need to continue that focus and I will bring that to the table certainly in my role in looking for that new superintendent and will outreach to to all of you thank you all right the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed no um that wasn't a no or was that no so I heard the word know so I just want make sure I didn't any abstentions all right the business agenda is approved by 620 student reps and Bradley yes voting YES okay we will now recess and continue the executive session that we're being held before this meeting and after we're done with that we'll come back and journey we're now in recess
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you you you
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you you you you


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