2017-09-12 PPS School Board Regular Meeting, Public Hearing

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2017-09-12
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular, town-hall
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education Regular Meeting - September 12, 2017

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good evening everybody I'm gonna ask the remaining board members director comm Stan so the regular meeting of the Board of Education for September 12 to 2017 is called to order everyone welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by law this meeting is televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PBS TV services website interim superintendent Awad is absent this evening and director Rosen is out with the flu and we all need to wish Roseann Powell a happy birthday there's probably better ways to spend your birthday happy birthday Roseanne as a reminder we now have our PPS ombudsman Judy Martin attending our regular board meetings specifically Judy will be here to listen to the public comments and if appropriate provide additional support to families who need or want it Judy can be reached at five zero three nine one six three zero four five or Ombudsman at PBS net we also have interpreters with us this evening and I'd like to ask them as we now have at all our board meetings I'd like to ask them to come forward at this time introduce themselves in the languages they'll be interpreting and inform the audience where they'll be located in the auditorium should someone need their assistance when a service Miami Lucia so interpreting espanol Joe Eszterhas in a Seton okay let's talk interpreting honestly I'm not Skippy would pass the Predators toramaru banana guy Joe kind of yeah he wasn't going Juanita Kettleman funny cop in home security my name is now is Bettina me since y'all thought about oh nothing big today new conceived uh thank you since we just had a community listening session on the middle school plan that's been under discussion our public comment which usually is at the beginning of the meeting is now going to be at the latter end of the meeting so when the new board was sworn in on July 1st we committed to get out into the community for meetings and the best place to do do that is to hold our meetings the schools around the city tonight we're at the home of the Senators I want to thank the staff and the Madison community for hosting the school board meeting tonight and I'd like to introduce Madison High School Principal Patrick Allen who's here to welcome us this evening [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] so thanks again to the Madison community next I want to introduce Whitney eller SiC the assistant director of nutrition services who has a few words to say and to recognize some quiet community heroes
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thank you so much for it for making the time and the space to hear some really positive and kind gestures that are happening out in the community specifically within Portland Public Schools the nutrition services department is a proud supporter of the education of our students by providing a variety of nutrition programs throughout the district and throughout the school day in the past few years there's been some national attention around school meal accounts specifically unpaid school lunch debt most of our students in the district pay for their meals based on their family's financial situation due to the federal rules that guide and financially support our department that we are unable to pay off these school lunch debts using federal funds given that our department serves over 33,000 meals a day this can be a very difficult situation to face alone while we had many donors over the last few months each and they're wonderful in their own right I'm sitting here today with some honored guests Maryann and Kathy who were our single most generous donors they decided to donate their inheritance that would help with the community specifically our Portland students they donated ten thousand dollars to cover school lunch debt that would help many families that's equivalent over three thousand five hundred meals for our students [Applause] thank you that means a lot we know that their help will help families now and into the future and their interest in health for our students and our community is tremendous and it's because of them an action like theirs that families will not have to struggle as much and can allow my team to do what they do best and that's feed the kids so we'd like to take this time to formally thank Mary Ann and katha for their generosity and extremely kind gift here today at the board meeting as well as with our token of appreciation for them and to commemorate it like to present you with this award my crystal apple on it has the PPS logo that says thank you for the generous gift to support the health of students through school meals [Applause] honored to be able to help people within our sorrow with our parents deaths last year thank you much so much I know that you've touched lots of students lives in so many ways so thank you for what you've done and I want to put a lie to the thing that people with our children don't care about Portland Public Schools [Applause]
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I love this Portland community so on August 30th Portland Public Schools started a new news year with a new superintendent a new board three new or rebuilt schools opened on time and on budget and new funding to address critical health and safety issues I'd like to thank the principal's school administrators teachers and school staff for making it a relatively smooth opening the school year students are still enrolling and balancing enrollment and staff is still being monitored and adjustments being made but I think all in all our students had a really good start to the school year thanks to a lot of people in this room and I also like to thank the central office staff we set up coordinated command center with hotlines to answer schools staff and parent questions on the first day of school TV Services has a very brief video just recapping [Music] seeing all the faces and getting the hugs I love those kids they just make all this work [Music] I wouldn't get off say days and you almost adieu we're letting kids know that we're about community here we're about taking care of each other and building each other up and working towards a common goal which is academic excellence [Music] some kid seemed sleepy and first day of school you know but there's a lot of kids that look really happy to be here I've been feel today overwhelming it's a little exciting I want to see who's in my class and stuff yeah it's been a lot of smiles both on the students and the adults [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's thank you so just on the last note of the enrollment and student balancing the forecasting in the next couple meetings we'll probably have a report from enrollment and transfer on students and our classrooms and sort of what that means for the staffing of our schools just for the rest of the year our next Jenna item I'd like to ask director Esparza Braun to lead this section of the meeting regarding a resolution the board of education related to the deferred action for childhood to continue on caring for each other as a community and building each other to up tonight we have a proposal for the president's recent action so in response to the president's decision last week to rescind the deferred action for childhood arrivals program known as daca tonight we are proposing resolution 509 or resolution in support of daka's dreamers because we know that many of our students some of our staff and community members will be impacted by this action yet it's incumbent upon our entire community to support our dreamers who many of whom were brought here as young children leaving behind a birth land with which now they have little connection and in fact many of the dreamers no longer speak the language of their birth country this resolution affirms the board and district support of our dreamers and it's consistent with laws that entitle all children in our country to a free public education no matter their immigration status so Resolution 500 9 is also consistent with our immigration immigration resolution that we passed in November 2016 affirming our resolve to keep our schools as safe zones for children staff and families and this means that no immigration official may enter the
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schools before contacting this superintendent and our legal counsel tonight's resolution reminds us to treat all of our children fairly and an equitable manner regardless of their status and that we ask our legislators to create a path for our dreamers to remain in this land that they call home Portland Public Schools believes in all of our students they believe we believe in our community and we know that the eight hundred dreamers that live in our country are paying taxes and they are sharing with their talents and their dreams and so we offer this resolution tonight [Applause] thank director of ours Brown so the board will now consider resolution 509 resolution in support of daka's dreamers do I have a motion so moved director Esparza Brown moves and director Bailey seconds the motion to adopt a resolution 509 miss Houston is I'm sorry Miss Powell the birthday girl is there any public comment on resolution 5 509 there is not any board discussion on this resolution I also feel as a student why I've seen is that there needs to be more resources for immigrant students especially with that now has been taken away I know but my best friend who's under daca doesn't even know she can apply for FAFSA and these resources that she just doesn't know that are available for her people tell her like oh just look it up look up scholarships that don't need that don't need that citizenship but it's really not that easy and she's really lost in where she needs to find the resources to get the college I think we need to focus on providing those resources because I know right now it's really scary for her because she doesn't know what she's gonna do after high school and you know right now is the time to start applying for scholarships and colleges and she doesn't know where to start Thank You Moses there are many great groups that have wonderful resources so I we can put resources from you know we can gather the other ones that we know about on the website also I would refer us to you know our culturally specific community partners like Latino Network and echo that also have resources for our students and our families in our staff thank you any other board discussion or comment doctors as far as the brown do you want to close yeah again I don't know personal note it was a really hard week I have you know focused on children that we've historically underserved both with because of ability differences and language differences in color differences but this resolution and and the fact that we have this discussion discussion in our community leaves me with hope and again as I look at all of the teachers I know that you care about children so if we band together and we really work with our our legislators to create this path that our children need the future will be their future will benefit all of us thank you director as far as the brown for your leadership on this the board will now vote on resolution 509 all in favor please indicate by saying yes saying no are there any abstentions resolution 5 509 is approved of a vote by 6 to 0 with student representative Moses Tran voting YES the resolution passes and I ask if our legislative affairs representative Courtney Wessling can communicate the Senate resolution to our congressional delegation on behalf of the board thank you so next we've had a request from the Portland Association of teachers president suzanne cohen to address the board so i'd like to ask president going to come forward [Applause] Thank You students parents teachers and community members have come together tonight to voice concerns about the start of the school year and I have to say that I'm concerned about public
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comment being moved to later in the evening because the same reason that I came and signed up to use this time is knowledge that you had so it was using social media that meant in different groups that many of you are part of that the conversation started from a kindergarten teacher who was concerned about her students learning environments and very quickly parents started chiming in and wondering what could they do about this class size and so from then it grew on social media and it started with a kindergarten teacher saying 28 students is too many and quickly we heard from the first grade teachers that 30 was too many and it went on where middle school teachers were talking about 180 is too many so educators are really concerned about learning environments and we're concerned about our workload so I'm not sure if other people will be addressing you later this evening during public comment or a next board meeting but I do want to acknowledge that this came about from parents and teachers that were concerned and are there any people here that are concerned about size [Applause] [Music] so before I start expressing the concerns that I've heard and I actually asked people to give more input for tonight since I had the opportunity to speak I want to make sure that you're ready to listen so there might be some thoughts going on in your head right now about when you were a student your class size or maybe your own child's class size or maybe your thinking about the budget right now and and and all of these things are barriers to really hearing the impact of the decisions and I'm asking you to kind of calm those thoughts for a second and really listen not only to what I'm saying tonight but when educators come before you in the future to speak and parents about our students learning conditions and and hear them out on it so and I also want to be clear that this is not a concern over the district's ability or inability to implement a policy this is concern over the policy we have concerns that a kindergarten class size is set to be acceptable at 28 that's not okay [Music] and so in that back-to-school video yes there were students smiling and let's be really really clear about why they're smiling they're not smiling because they got a visit from the superintendent to be or the board chair they are smiling because they are excited to be back in school with the educators who see them every day and your job as district leaders is to make sure those educators can smile back so let's start with kindergarten this is one story but I I felt like it resonated with a bunch of the stories that we're hearing from kindergarten so school starts and there's a student with some pretty extreme needs they're biting they're kicking they're throwing things off the shelf punching other students so the kindergarten teacher is seeking assistance and one of the first things she's told is we don't do one-on-one Paras I'm not actually sure if that even is a district policy or not because we just read something in the paper about how some students do get one-on-one Paras but either way what you're doing is damaging the learning conditions and increasing workload so either there's bureaucracy and hoops to climb and you have to know the system to actually access these resources which is an unfair system or if you believe that oh okay we don't do it and so this is what's normal and what's right for my classroom and then she confided that last year she had a class size of eighteen and one student with high needs and and she felt she was you know it was difficult but she was maybe able to do something about it she told me that this student was only the most extreme she had four others with pretty high needs and that now her class size is 28 and she broke down and she wondered how she was going to make it through the year this also leads to special education services for our most vulnerable students and I would also say one of our most overworked staff group so there's vacancies all over the district and it's no surprise why these positions are hard to fill so early reports are showing high schools with caseloads over 40 students and then with the move to inclusion without support resources common planning time any of the things that could actually help this be successful these moves to new programs without the supports and resources is echoed through other departments so our services for English language learners specifically
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3rd through 5th grade has changed it's changed before any of the services or supports are in place before anyone knows how to do it and before any common planning time has been built in which results in an overworked general education teacher an overworked English language teacher and the end result is those students are not getting their needs met and so I do want to read you one quote from an English language teacher who actually the question was started posing like what is the ratio for us and they're wondering is it 50 to 1 and so here's the story last year we started with 58 students and we had one and a half educators this year I'm close to 50 and it's just me I have three newcomers and no newcomer classes because I'm spread very thin and then this gets echoed for our counselors so that was a position we worked hard to rebuild then it got cut and then we chose to invest money to restore those positions and our counselors one has been told counselors have flexible lunches so they need to cover all mid-day Duty needs which leaves this counselor wondering when do i do my gay-straight Alliance Club what about middle school leadership what about my suicide prevention team in middle school I was privy to an email exchange or we had two educators who had four preps and a hundred and eighty students and they were trying to in addition to all that work managed the schedule and offer things like maybe if I didn't teach this more active and I only had three preps maybe then I squeeze my body in between the chairs of my over-clouded classrooms and try to give my students the attention they need at a time where we're unable to provide students with the wraparound services and the mental health supports and the community interests that we have our students shouldn't have to compete with each other for some one minute of individual attention from their educator [Applause] [Music] I'm really glad that you're getting to celebrate the first day of school we love our students we are so happy to be with them and see them but in your tour did you meet the 4th grade teacher who the day before school was told who are the numbers you're gonna teach a 4 or 5 blend and by the way that's unsupported you've got two curriculums and no supports and no time to make this work we need work relief now you are hearing from me tonight but there will be others and we are fighting for the schools our students deserve [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so we've already had a fair amount of comment this evening on the middle school plan and in addition last week the board's enrollment and forecasting committee was presented with the formal proposal director Bailey who's the chair is also joined on that committee by directors Anthony and directors Moore and I'm gonna ask director Bailey to once again lead a portion of the meeting related to the middle school plan and also to introduce Laura Parker the chief strategy officer who spent a lot of time putting this building this plan with the community No there we go [Laughter]
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okay again thanks for being here the Lord has promised that we're going to open to middle schools next fall we have a proposal out or collecting public input to make a good proposal even better dr. Parker's gonna review that proposal with us and then it'll be up to us to ask some questions make some comments and take it from there see if we're working here so this will be a very high level overview obviously we put out a technical document we did our best to focus the document on data points that were familiar to our community as they have worked through such proposals in previous iterations we wanted to make sure that we focused on data points sometimes called KPIs that encouraged and aligned to the core values of their proposal and so we made sure to highlight those pieces as well mm-hmm so I'll give a very brief overview and then we can entertain questions and maybe I'll catch you up on your time all right so I think it's very important to recognize that in opening Harriet Tubman and Rose Way Heights middle schools in the 2018-19 school year we will immediately open access to world-class middle school programming for 1206 through eighth grade students in the first year 1200 so it's not just two schools it's 1,200 six through eighth grade students in the 1890s school year and at that same time we'll also reconfigure eight k-8 schools in decay five so that approximately 3,400 students are immediately in the pipeline to access that world-class middle school education and are being served by world-class elementary programming in their resulting k5 allowing those staff and administrators in those buildings to really focus on a strong elementary education aligned to many of our strategic areas such as our elementary literacy work I think it's important to recognize that the outcomes include an access to a comprehensive program that is integrated challenging an exploratory that will prepare students for the rigors of high school and beyond I know that tomorrow evening the teaching and learning committee will hear a presentation around the research-based middle grades framework instructional framework that has been put together over the last 15 months by PPS educators and I think you'll be excited to see you know what that culminates in and how that delivers such a rigorous experience for our students opening these two schools will also provide clear articulation to middle schools for three dual language immersion programs our Mandarin DLI program at Martin Luther King jr. a Spanish DLI program at Scott and a Vietnamese Dual Language Program at Rose City Park these programs currently serve for just under four hundred students currently today and they will grow every year as they move towards the middle grade levels the proposal also will yield a single high school feeder pattern for families in the new catchment near catchment areas so that there's stability and clarity as the cohorts move together through high school it will also relieve the facility's overcrowding that currently impacts Leigh and Scott as k-8 and Beverly Cleary on its three campus arrangement it will also yield resulting K fives with balanced enrollment in seven of the eight feeders seven is good eight would be better and it's clear and we know that we need to keep working on how to wrap our arms around Vestal and ensure a strong neighborhood catchment with a strong capture rate yielding a robust student population with maximum funding it's clear the work isn't done
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there so these are some of the high level expected outcomes of this effort it's spending a little bit of time talking about Tubman and then a little bit of time talking about Rose way heights for the Harriet Tubman middle school the proposed feeder schools are voice Eliot humble Irvington Martin Luther King jr. and Sabin will feed the pre-arranged dual assignment high school zone of Grant and Jefferson by opening Harriet Tubman middle school we will bring an appropriately-sized middle school back to the Albina neighborhood meaning that we've ensured a strong enough student population to meet all of the demands for providing that integrated exploratory program and we've also allowed space for transfers for children who have historic relationships to the Albina community Harriet Tubman will consolidate two of three middle school IB programs currently locate in RK eight schools those programs are full school programs at Sabin and MLK jr. and you'll see in the movement for the localization of the middle school framework in Tubman you'll see the design of what International Baccalaureate looks like in the middle years what philosophy is presented what the student experience is instructionally it will create a consistent high school of feeder pattern for all Tubman neighborhood students it will provide a home for the six through eight Chinese dly program coming from MLK jr. that won't start until 2019 because the program adds each year so it won't be in the first year it will come in the next year we would expect about twenty four students in the very first year it will create a racially and socially economically diverse educational setting this was intentional in many of our proposals as we look to figure out how to preserve and strengthen diversity within our school settings a value that all of our school communities hold the program the proposal does include some boundary changes and it's important to understand why our boundary change is proposed and there are a couple primary reasons one is to address persistent under enrollment of feeder schools that may leave result in k5 schools at risk of not having equitable staffing and programming and the proposal includes the chart up here that indicates the historic and under enrollment of the k-8 schools feeding into this catchment so you can see in all of those situations most notably at Martin Luther King jr. and Irvington that there they have struggled with meeting the enrollment demands needed to have the funding and staffing that support desired programming so the proposal introduces boundary changes that would specifically help to balance enrollment at MLK Jr and Irvington noting that historic pattern above just to orient you a bit throughout the proposal we indicate the current boundaries of each of the schools as the black outline and the proposed boundary as the blue shaded area so for Irving tton F Irvington were to convert from a k-8 to a k5 it would likely have a little over 300 students that's too small for our desired minimum enrollment of 360 for a k5 so we'd like to bolster the enrollment there we have an opportunity to bolster the enrollment at Irvington while simultaneously relieving Beverly Cleary one of the issues that we've proposed a boundary change between Irvington and Beverly Cleary one of the issues that questions that was discussed in the enrollment forecasting committee is the actual year by year and grade by grade implementation because for those who've been watching closely most boundary changes begin with the new
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incoming kindergarten students and so current students are grandfathered as the term is often used per board policy into staying in the school that they're currently assigned until they reach the highest grade so we wanted to provide a little bit of context as to what some of the realities would be for some of the proposed boundary changes so I'm gonna provide some of those numbers I'll come back to Beverly Cleary in a minute for MLK Jr Sabin and Alameda I hope this depiction does it justice this is person feedback that folks gave us in the community engagement sessions there's a proposed boundary change to again strengthen that enrollment at MLK Jr remembering how historically under enrolled it is a proposed boundary change between Sabin and MLK jr. and the green arrow indicates the portion of savings current catchment that wouldn't move to Martin Luther King jr. that would then leave Sabin a bit too small to offer the type of robust programming that we want to be able to offer so there's also a proposed boundary change to balance Sabin by moving a portion of Alamitos current catchman into Sabin what this would mean is in the first year grandfathering clauses would assume again per board policy be included here in the first year the new incoming kindergarten students from the portion moving to Sabin to MLK jr. would be forecasted at 19 students from Alameda to Sabin that is forecasted at 10 students so 10 incoming kindergarteners currently in Alameda are forecasted to then being Saban 19 currently in the Sabin catchment are forecasted to being king did that make sense so those are the types of detailed planning that we look at to really figure out what's possible given the constraints obviously of our facilities and making sure that the sizes that we're introducing are manageable especially when you have a situation where you want to honor the board policy letting students in their schools as boundary changes are invoked so many situations we see some of our schools growing for a couple of years until those cohorts graduate before settling back down alright so for the Tubman ketchup catchment the boundary change now having settled that I'm gonna reverse myself immediately the boundary change for MLK Jr and Sabin is proposed to begin with incoming kindergarten students only in 2018-19 the boundary change between Sabin and Alameda so Alameda portion the forecast of ten students going to Sabin would begin with incoming kindergarten students only in 2018-19 however for Irvington and Beverly Cleary due to the facility constraints of Beverly Cleary the proposal does propose that boundary changes would be implemented immediately for incoming k5 students due to those space constraints so all students that are in that catchment zone of the new proposed boundary between Irvington and Beverly Cleary all incoming k5 students that are in that zone would go to Irvington unless they have a sixth through eighth grade sibling remaining a Beverly Cleary and I imagine there'll be questions on that so we can come back to it no I keep pointing this thing a little okay there we go and that would be about 95 students since I shared the numbers earlier that would be about 95 students in that zone between Beverly Cleary and Irvington I can move on to Rose Way heights all right so four rows by Heights the proposed
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feeder schools are Rose City Park Lee Scott and Vestal with a proposed single feeder pattern high school to Madison opening Rose Way Heights middle school would bring an appropriately-sized middle school to the Madison High School cluster we're actually expecting about 700 students in Rose way heights be a wonderfully robust building provide a home for the sixth through eighth grade Spanish dual dual language immersion program coming from Scott and that would begin in 2018 the Vietnamese dual language immersion program that is proposed to be housed at Rose City Park would matriculate up to Rose way heights in 2020 it would create a diverse educational setting again honoring that core value for many of our school communities it would also provide relief to several overcrowded schools in the region beverly cleary lee and scott and it would create again a consistent feeder pattern now by opening Rose City Park as a neighborhood school that doesn't currently operate as a neighborhood school there are two grades of Beverly Cleary currently housed at Rose City Park so in this proposal we would want to shrink Beverly Cleary enough in order to be able to fit on the two campuses of Holyrood and Fernwood it's part of why we're asking for the board exemption to institute the boundary change immediately Rose City Park also houses the access program and this proposal proposes relocating the access program as in its current configuration of grades one through eight to the Humboldt facility which is the facility that has enough classrooms and availability the current tenant at Humboldt is a leased agreement with the Kairos PDX charter school and we would not be renewing that lease once it's up at the end of that of this year and that would allow us to open Rose City Park which would then us allow us to open up Rose way heights I can get to those details all right in this proposal the k4 or incoming k5 cohort from Rose way heights would move as a family with the Vietnamese do a language immersion program to Rose City Park and then we would begin a series of boundary changes and that's what I'll talk about now so again to address under enrollment of feeder schools that leave our k5s at risk of not having the staffing and programming that they need we're proposing boundary changes within the Rose way Heights catchment it's important to note as you look at the state of that Scott also has a co-located Spanish dly program all right see if you can follow this one so in order to strengthen Scott again to serve both its neighborhood k5 program and its co-located program we actually proposed a boundary change between Scott and Alameda Andrew City Park so here's how it works there's a small portion of Alameda I believe it's north of Stanton when you look at this and great detail that would move to Scott again starting with incoming kindergarten students that would be forecasted to be 8 students moving from the zoned Alameda to Scott in 2018 19 south of Stanton along that corridor and I believe this is the historic boundary this used to be the boundary between Alameda and Rose City Park 50/50 ii believe so south of Stanton a small portion of that area from Alameda would move to Rose City Park and that number is forecasted to be three incoming kindergarten students in the first year and of course it grows and there's a portion of Rose City Park I might not have drawn the error there that moves to Scott and that would
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forecast about seven new kindergarteners moving from what would have been gross city park to Scott Rose City Park Emily so this is a little bit more you're talking about the boundaries with Rose City Park I mean you have to remember that currently doesn't exist so we're talking about what was the Rose way Heights boundary that cohort again moving together to Rose City Park and immediately in the first year there's 72nd Drive which i think is right through the golf course that would become the new boundary line between Rose City Park and Leigh and so we will draw that boundary there to balance Leigh make it stronger in terms of enrollment there's also a very small portion of Lee if you look what do people what do people refer to it there's a small portion of Lee right along 84 that would actually be rezone to Rose City Park it makes that area much more walkable for those students and we would forecast for incoming kindergarten students would that are currently zoned in that area for Lee would then be a Rose City Park what we would propose in terms of implementation is that the implementation of the new boundaries would begin again with incoming kindergarten students only in 2018-19 and so that would include the boundary I just showed you between Rose City Park and Lee a small change between from Alameda to Scott and Rose City Park again beginning in the 2018-19 school year and we have an exception there of the change proposed between Rose City Park and beverly cleary would be immediately and implemented for incoming k5 students again and that would be at about 132 students so those are very high level currently in terms of engagement and listening sessions obviously we had this listening session tonight thank you again for hosting that there have been a series of informal sessions with parent groups that impacted schools and our communications department is consistently scheduling additional school-based sessions some of us for PTAs are back to school nights they're working through that and kind of a daily rate their details at our PBS net slash middle schools website there are planned community engagement sessions for both Rose way Heights and Tubman as complete catchments the last week of September my know the roadway heights one is scheduled I think we're still working out the date for Tubman there been a series of conversations that are ongoing with key community leaders and internal stakeholders and again the community engagement activities are on the website and I know the CIPA team can speak to any specific questions you might have I also know that the of forecasting committee will be meeting again on the 18th Scott we're still with that all right to continuously hear and work through some of the details around the proposal so that we can continue to make it stronger where we can so those are my overall updates I can certainly revisit specific details if there are questions or figure out a way to get some of those specific data points that you might have interested in to you we're ready for questions regarding the high school assignment of middle grade students at Beverly Cleary and when those changes would take place great so the information that we did provide on high schools is on page 42 at the very
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end but for Beverly Cleary current eighth grade students that are in beverly cleary right now if they if their families are part of the boundary change that would move them to Madison they would actually still stay at Grant for the current eighth grade and then the proposal is that any cohort after that would then move on to Madison that's how it was currently presented okay I just want to point out that with the West Side boundary changes we the decision was to grandfather all of those middle school students so sixth seventh and eighth graders at West Sylvan when those boundary changes were made so I'm not advocating one way or another I'm just saying we should be aware and thinking in terms of consistency in policy if we could get numbers and number of students affected that would be great absolutely so to make sure that we indicate sixth seventh and eighth grade students that are current six going to be staying in Beverly Cleary who have a high school assignment change absolutely Thanks this is this is like the fourth time I've seen this so I I've already asked a lot of my questions but I think we still have lingering issues for some of these things and I think the big ones that were called out during the listening session were Rose City Park being the doors open and conversely vestal being pretty significantly under enrolled and I'm hoping we can find a way to so yeah okay so I'm geographically challenged but I I think the boundary I think they share a boundary and it's 84 is that right yeah so then currently that proposes the northernmost boundary being 84 about the eastern part of that is with Lee the western part is with Rose City Park and it sort of looks around west and then there's sort of I think it's Glencoe is also in that corner so I mean I 80 4 is a significant barrier but I'm hoping we can look at that as just to see if we can find some way to relieve both Rose City and Vestal I don't have any answers here I'm just so I think for our next committee session a helpful data set would be that implementation plan with Rose City Park to show the modeling of what that looks like in year one two and three with two assumptions one the grandfathering before students move on to leave because that could be something we looked at and folks have already brought that brought that up and to make sure that there's clarity and the modeling of the Vietnamese do a language immersion program and how to grow so you just see how that grows so we'll bring that yes I guess I think for me the big one is vestal because that's that's gonna happen almost immediately it's already under enrolled and this is just going to exacerbate it so agreed yeah you know the other concern I've heard is moving the special ed classroom and I want to make sure I think we're gonna want to hear from the special ed program how that's going to work and I I
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have heard Vernon family's concerned about overcrowding if that happens I mean I'm I'm concerned about Vernon's stay in a k-8 all that being said I just want to say publicly I appreciate all the work you've done on this collective effort thank you you know you guys stepped into it well into it and and I think this is a this is a really solid plan so thank you I would agree you've put us in the position of really working around the edges and the meat is pretty solid I think one issue that I think we need to address is access and a little bit of inconsistent direction on the districts part which is we did move forward from the teaching and learning committee that a recommendation that access B grades three through eight it was not that was not formally adopted by the board but that that was be recommended as a best practice based on when the district sponsored testing occurs of students also a lot of reasons but it fits with our equity policy and terms of making sure that all students across our district are tested to see if that's the right program for them we I mean there are no great solutions there because we are we don't have a lot of empty facilities we're in right sized facilities where we could locate that program but there is one option that I would like to encourage looking at again which would be co-locating in Jefferson High School which is something that had come up years ago it's a large facility I know especially in the early years of the middle college program there was a real tendency to you know put anything else there now that you know that program is more firmly established I mean I just think it's incumbent upon us to see if there are any other programs that might be able to find a home there and maybe access great so um thank you for that clarification and believe our interim assistant superintendent of teaching and learning might reach out to you regarding just that clarification of how we work with that recommendation so I appreciate to move forward what needs to be move forward because currently we're planning on moving the configured the grade configuration inclusive of first and second grade and so I'm hearing a potential amendment to that and thank you for exploring the solution with colocation the district's policies and I guess support of you know under the Tubman certainly plan here we talked about we're working with the director Warren myself currently are working with the community on a right to return policy for students that have historic roots in the Tubman area so as we consider Humboldt and that space isn't the right size for access then perhaps allowing Kairos which is part of that community and children that have been underserved in the past to remain in that building so I want to explore some options are there ways to coexist with not necessarily co-locate but coexists with being able to maintain humble as they are accessed as well a lot of this the basis of the work is good I think that for me some of the most some of the problematic pieces is Rose City Park so I'd be interested in Jeri Vincent's view of the facilities when I was on the board before Rosie Park was closed because of the condition of the facility and frankly it only got reopened because the Marysville fire and they needed to be able to
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relocate the Marysville to another school within five days and the school that was open and available with Rosa Parks and I don't think there's been substantial improvements made since then but it was a really it's a beautiful building but it was not a very safe place for kids so I think before we sort of bank on it being sort of this anchor school whether it's a neighborhood school or for access that we look at that do you want to speak to that okay and then just conversely I would like to sort of draft off of some of the just the thinking about a little bit out of the box thinking that maybe director constan had better outbound kairos so when I was on the board in the early 2000s it was right after Humboldt and Jefferson High School had both been reconstituted so the only two schools and the Portland School District that serve predominantly African American students that were read all the staff were fired or moved and so that community has been through a lot and I I can sympathize with families who live nearby and can't send their kids to their historic a neighborhood school so something so I'm interested in what can be done there that doesn't displace a community yet again and let's see the other thing I guess I just books just raised and it's been referenced already but just the if if we don't solve or do we don't address Vernon and vessel the issues now are we just going to be in two years gonna be changing boundaries again and that you know I think sometimes changes have to be made I went to a consolidated High School here in Portland but doing it over and over again is destabilizing I think to school community so the more that we can minimize multiple shifts so I'm sure the community can be thinking of some things so they're just some concerns I have and I would at some point want to hear from Jerry Vinson on the sound of I just want to call out some things that also need to intersect with this that are not necessarily boundary related or even facility related well some of them are facility related we need to get some real clarity around focus option programs and their location and what the plan is I think it's especially critical for DLI programs and we're making some assumptions about colocation and we're DLI programs are going to feed to for the foreseeable future and I think we need to get some real clarity on that because I'm not I I am NOT a fan of colocation I think it's been demonstrated over and over and over again that it it's really difficult to manage and yeah so I worry about replicating that and and even continuing colocation in areas that are that are already experiencing difficulties so so I would you know what you're you're doing the boundary and feeders and all that stuff we also need a bunch of things coming out of the academic side of the house and so I'm hoping that we can sooner rather than later get some real solid information about plans you know what are we doing and what do we plan to do in the foreseeable
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future report and that's a start that will be helpful but certainly I mean I think the discussion potential just the conversation stopped I'm not sure where that decision was made or where we're at on it but I still think that that's worthy of investigating yeah so let's continue to gather information on that I wanted to add to read this point about the focus option work and how critical it is because when we look at like the conundrum with access and Kairos that is before us right now with this work when the options were evaluated for access it didn't include a broad survey of all the facilities that have focus option programs in them it just included the facilities that were available or that we knew were soon to be available and so we really need to cast a broader net to see if there if there are any alternatives other than humble because to echo Julie's comments I mean I think it is a very compelling call from the community to to face our interest in having a right of return policy for Tubman and potentially Jefferson while at the same time potentially uprooting a successful program that is serving african-american students in that community even though it is a charter program you could certainly say that it be it was born because of our the district's inability to serve those students well so we are part of that whole cycle and those are our kids so so ask a couple or just a point of clarification on the the needed board process so that we make sure that we meet these needs and deliver this kind of information I do know that our interim assistant superintendent has just you know put together kind of the last several years of DLI plans and and and growth and I think is looking for an opportunity to make sure that that gets shared since much of it has been through intersections with the board and the teaching and learning committees over the years so that's one piece good evening what members memories dr. Chong interim assistant superintendent of teaching and learning and throughout this process we really look at the economic side and wish program to offer middle school and what does it make a solid successful program for how students at the same time with the boundary changes we also look at do I feel the pattern so our team has put together two presentations and we presented two direct reports this morning so that with new board members I'm sorry with new during the quote members we want to make sure that all of us on the same page so we already have those presentations ready and we also would like to have some time to present it to the board members as well so we have that but the district plan I'm sorry yeah that's a point of clarification because we have an agenda set already for tomorrow and that is not part of it but I had our team put it together so that in case their questions and you can link what happened then we can share it out so that's but we have halogen that tomorrow I was at preset we can do that and then we can drop one agenda item from the for tomorrow maybe the instructional framework we can drop not a middle school frame with the k-12 framework
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instructional framework because that was on there Jenna so in particular what's can you bring us up to speed on Bridger because they have a strand that's growing and from what I understand they don't have room enough currently to accommodate the full growth of that strand so can we bring that forward with the right agenda I just don't have it in front of me yes we could discuss that tomorrow because I think it's part of the presentation but tomorrow and thank you DLI yes is a concern but also I just if you move into Southeast they are very few neighborhood schools between the river and 82nd they're full of focus option schools whether it's I mean you can just go down the list but from the river to 82nd and Gleason to division it's there's very very few it's one of the few parts of the city where it's there's focus options programs all over the place which they're not the same problems as do I but they do create some of the same dynamics within us within a school community so I would just if we're gonna look at D Li there's some nuances that we should look at with some other schools as well and I think this is part of the add options committee conversation because exactly what dr. director agreement wishes said there's a lot of neighborhood students who have pulled out from a neighborhood schools to go to option schools as well but that's a need I'd like some clarification about whether changing a lottery practice if that takes board action or can just be administrative action the board can always overrule administrative actions so sometimes it's desired to have board support for something you know especially if it's a it's a policy that's driving the the change yeah I'm not sure if its policy if it's practice that a board resolution could urge along Judy do you wanna weigh in I'm talking about the focus option putting some kind of cap on how many kids from a neighborhood school and there so most things but if I don't sit I won't say long most of the actions that are in the lottery are governed by board policy certainly a board through resolution could say we we want the policy to be different and then we would go through policy change through a more routine cycle but most of the so things that impact the lottery the priorities the Preferences the order is all in board policy it would take an act of the board to modify those okay thanks I'd like to give more information about the IB middle years program and in particular okay I don't remember if the in this iteration of the plan there is still the possibility of middle graders in Vernon shifting over to Tubman we have not included that we did include some discussion on Vernon and the opening of the proposal to indicate some of the questions and challenges we have out there and that was one of the ideas in order to allow for that consistency and IB programming a potential solution for Vernon down the road would be those students who wanted to take advantage of go to ten Tubman but we wanted to open Tubman and let it settle and see what the numbers are and you know get it oh
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wait before making that somewhat unique decision I mean I I have I have a question and a concern about that but the question is I'm familiar with I be at the high school level I'm not familiar with it at the middle grade level so I I would like some more information about that but I'm also we seem to be making some decisions based on that basically it's a focus option program or it's a it's a focus program and I want okay I'm just gonna spit it out I want to know like is this a for-real program and is it how much are we spending in additional resources and what are the kids getting out of it so what kind of outcomes are we seeing and if we're gonna be having the the middle grade ID program drives some decisions I want some assurance that that it makes sense to do that my concern is if Vernon stays a k-8 with with the option of students to shift over to Tubman at middle grades but top but Vernon remains a k-8 that's virtually guarantee that that's a recipe for a real problem yeah and again that's why okay no decisions on Vernon were introduced Agera because there's a lot of nuances and questions and proper planning and proper listening to the vernon community to really come to those those determination we managed to convert eight schools here and when I want to get to a plan so sure for Vernon but you're airing all the reasons why we didn't is the Stabbin planned on being partly you have to be an IB school that's no partial oh my I be school so it's a three year process investigation education and you have to get the teacher to train and so we are prepared to present that tomorrow as well Oh questions and Moses you're next it's concern as I've said before is Vernon it has to be addressed fester and I would just add to that you know continued conversation with the community about the KA program there and you know what would it need to be fortified I wouldn't because there are a lot of supporters of that within the Vernon community now and so I think we can't just assume that leaving it as a k-8 is lesser than the opportunity to be part of these one school these new schools so if it does remain what is that community telling the district that they need great I think we need to create the space for that proper conversation and long term planning with that community so thank you for that Moses questions concerns brickbats bouquets relocating any special education classrooms those the kids that obviously don't do the best with changes and just looking to see that we in our thinking as well are looking at the facilities and configuring ways in which they're really kind of a central part of a school community those classrooms we did discuss a bit in the fao committee and the configuration of classrooms potentially to serve the identified special ed programs but it sounds like there's interest for an update on the inclusion model work that the special
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department has been leading with that comprehensive continuum of services truly you need to move some classrooms from their existing locations again it's really tough for the kids yeah and that's mostly out of just the grade configuration change so taking an elementary level classroom so like like the one in Rose Way Heights for example serving elementary students would want to be in a k5 that's not what happens when it's reconstituted it's actually all the staff are required to go to different buildings and they completely repopulate the school so it hasn't doesn't anything to do with the quality of the teachers there it's was one of the No Child Left Behind options I just want to make sure that I clarified that but that's what happened in two schools Jefferson but I'm just saying you know I think the the scars are deep you know when you had Jefferson being completely reconstituted and nobody knowing any of the systems or practices or having anybody who had been in the building one year to the next do you have any thoughts about addressing the vestal situation and since initially floating this proposal any any directions that have emerged that you guys are following so the vestal capture rate is low it's 50 to 53 percent right now so it's not just about creating a bigger catchment we have got to support that school community wrap our arms around it and ensure that the capture rate strengthens we did attempt to create a bigger catchment area and ran into a variety of barriers typically that weekend other schools so in looking we'll certainly go back to the drawing board again and ask for some considerations around other planning other decisions other policies that might need to be made in order to let us move geographically in the direction that we probably need to move towards the south thank you again a huge constraint because you're trying to do everything within a constrained boundary and that's where we are in the process I think with vessel we might look at you're making some may be going moving outside of that boundary I don't know there's an elegant term that's I'm missing right now my vocabulary but looking at some other options to get that job done what I believe those discussion around maybe having like a student group come in and talk discuss about like their educational experience I was just wondering if we're still doing that and like when we want to set up that meeting because my first super SAC meeting is next Tuesday so hopefully I'll be able to tell talk to those high school students to contact their feeder middle schools and maybe get some students just it's more about setting up the date and time so I can communicate that in the plan of the implementation to actually a group of students thank you and I welcome that and I want to point out in Jason's testimony referencing a lot of input we got from students earlier in the process saying a lot of k-8 students saying where's our options okay middle create students but the more the merrier when it comes to
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student input two final things one it would help to have we talked to the families of the kids in the self-contained classrooms at Rose Bay Heights if we heard from them no we have not and again I want to check and work with my colleagues and special education to figure out what kind of the regional continuum of services is and how complete that plan is and what their communication strategy would be because they have those relationships okay and second thing is given all the testimony and letters we've had around the grandfathering issue and her tonight it might be helpful to have a document that we also share with our principals that goes out to schools that that says if your child is here the proposal is for that here and and and that just might really help clarify for a single document like that would really help clarify for our families thank you yes translation should be up on Monday I know that the Communications Office has been working on a stakeholder community plan I think what we saw tonight was a high level of interest from all our school communities in following the discussion and knowing when there's gonna be more opportunities for the board to listen to community voice but also especially if any sort of adjustments are made that we need to be really transparent about about those so I guess I would just really request that the committee work closely with the communications team so that people have as much lead time as possible about things that looks like they really care about so which is great but I want to make sure that we don't surprise people and I guess just along those lines I would ask the committee and staff to start thinking about when is the point in time in which the board is going to act and build the plan back map it from there so that there's a sense of when decisions are going to be made it could be that there's intermediate decisions made and then final decisions but I think we need to start sort of mapping that out for dates and times what somebody said earlier in the listening session about many of some of our communities the families not feeling safe to come to one of our listening sessions sessions at a school sim wondering about some outreach of having some listening sessions at some of our community partners locations is that in the plan Harry Caray's I know we'll take any suggestions again they're scheduling them consistently so yeah i really suggest that our team work with our key brac co-chairs because d brac has historically had a pretty good plan for outreach to the community and building on that international in making sure that we listen to our group of parents who are usually not heard so we have a lot of parents here tonight but they do not represent our parents who really do not have time to opportunity to come to yeah we're we're thinking on the same ones that as part of the community engagement plan we've had a couple of those already and we've got more that we're trying to schedule thank you so um we're gonna move on to our public records policy so last week the board policy and governance taskforce met and discussed the second round of revisions to the policy based on some feedback by the task force members we also had some substantive feedback from the Society of Professional Journalists and also from some community members everybody's packet tonight there is the
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policy we originally this was gonna be a first reading but because we made some substantive changes we decided to bring it back one more time essentially I could sort of walk through the changes but we added a sort of basically a no retaliation clause and also a prohibition of conflicts of interest that was based on the community feedback we also clarified the way that the policy was written at the very beginning it implied that we were creating exemptions in law when in fact we we of course weren't reading exemptions law but the way it was worded and applied that we that's what we were doing so we've rewritten it to make that clear there also was an the policy included language that essentially had the public records requests being processed in the order in which they were received while the intent of that was to make sure that it so there was an appearance of being arbitrary of whose records requests got responded to apparently some the reporters who came and spoke to the task force said that this is a tactic that's used a lot of times to delay the release of records that they get they make you get in the queue and then you never get in the queue and there's hundreds of requests so we have removed the direction that they are processed in the order in which they received for example if there's something that's relatively easy to respond to that takes a very little amount of time and could be responded to in a day or two that might get processed before something that came in even if it came in before but that is a takes longer to process also the other issue that they raised the board built into the policy an additional step that under under the law if your records request is denied you can go straight to the mulberry County DA and we felt for a lot of people that would be intimidating and they would decide not to do that so we put in a mechanism by which go the superintendent the board and there's a mechanism that the board doesn't disapprove then you automatically get your records you can still go the route to the DA but there's this alternative route that's probably more parent and community friendly and the journalists were concerned that it appeared that we were trying to make it harder to get to the DA and that wasn't our intent and I think we've clarified the language to show that there's two routes if you want to go straight to the DA you can or you can go through this other route so that's the essence of the change and I actually had two things that I'm just kind of raised with the board that I'd like to have addressed and that is on number nine and ten the retaliation it includes students and I don't see how students are gonna be retaliating against people who have public records request so I'm not sure it's appropriate it looks like the students were added into this retaliation clause just because we copied and pasted somebody else's language but in number nine I would remove students and then the other and this is more of a question we have maybe for the general council there is a mechanism for appealing a denial of a records request but actually sometimes we produce records that don't say anything at all they're so heavily redacted and so my question would be do we need to add redactions in addition to just not denying public records requests so you can you could request a record and get it back and it's so redacted that you actually well it may comply with the it might make apply with the law but it doesn't comply with the spirit and as I read our policy you could only appeal an actual rejection of you're not going to get the request versus I got something
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that was so redacted that it was meaningless so I'm wondering if we need to add in the that you could appeal the redaction as well usually the redactions are medical in nature so it could there would be nothing wrong with appealing in the redaction as far as I'm concerned as long as we're not giving them that we have to comply with with redacting medical items personal social security numbers etc right I think the general practice right now is for example if something had been written by the district's lawyer the entire email is redacted versus just a surgical reaction right except for this policy we're we're saying that we are assuming things our public records unless there is significant legal physical and business harm to the district students and staff instances where the generally when the attorneys information is redacted is when they're giving somebody from the district their legal opinion and possible alternatives that is usually redacted and there's the attorney-client privilege that's usually redacted although I believe we are doing that on a case by case basis but if there's actually legal advice being given that in which case even though business harm to the district I guess what I'm concerned about is just something that doesn't you get a completely non-responsive response because everything's been redacted and you don't you don't know whether it's legal advice or something else and you can't appeal it to go and give if you're going to have a document like that we actually give the reason as to why it was redacted was it legal advice was it a medical item so I'm gonna ask if we can have some language added in there because that seems like potentially it just significant loophole potentially in our policy overly redact and so an appeal we get a second set of eyes on it to confirm that somebody didn't go overboard in order to protect over protect right okay yeah I I think I'd support something like that okay I'm just anybody have any objection doesn't okay any other questions because otherwise the two changes around number nine taking out the students will add some something related some language related to the reduction when would a student be involved here and so I was letting my imagination go wild if there was something to do with student harassing another student or a staff person and there was something around a public records request on that and would that be a possibility of some retaliation around something like that I mean that's that's the only thing I could wrap my head around where where this might come into play but it's if I may the the one thing I would say on retaliation and I haven't seen the final language that made it in there but there is a technical item with the way an appeal is made from the DA and technically you have to sue the individual to appeal it so that should be something that if it's not clear that
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should be made clear if you're going to appeal the DA's decision we have one right now where the law is not clear so we need clarity from the court as to what was meant by it because either way whichever if we give it we're going to get sued if we don't give it we're going to get sued so an appealing of DA's decision should not be retaliation somebody was like you were like nodding your head vigorously around something and I don't know if that's oh absolutely this this is actually the student doing the retaliating the language here's the student doing the retaliation not being retaliated against if these policies are supposed to sort of live for the ages I think it's theoretically possible that a student could retaliate against somebody so is there any problem leaving it in I would change the language because it says up to and including dismissal you'd probably want to add in a phrase that's appropriate for students at that point something around the redaction and will have something other than dismissal that's appropriate for students okay so the next time we're gonna see this is first reading thank you it was great and i'm staff were very responsive and very fast and and the quality of the work was great so thank you everybody so we are at the public comment back to the public comment period pal do we do we have public comment and I'll read the we do okay beep before we read the names I'm just going to discuss are the guidelines for community comment the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and staying so late and provide your comments the board we value public input as it informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts concerns and reflections our responsibilities aboard to actively listen with our electronic devices turned off board members will not respond to comments or questions during public comment but our board manager Rosen Powell will follow up on the issues raised during public tests he guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration of others complaints about individual employees should be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter you have a total of three minutes to share your comments please begin by stating your name and spelling your name for the record during the first two minutes of your testimony a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when times up a red light will gone and when the buzzer sounds we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments so with that missus about we have Mia Pathan oh and Josh de Christi go ahead okay hello my name is MIA mi a pizanno P is a n o and I thank you all for being here and for your stamina you're kind of amazing I'm here again to bring back to this new board the issue of Franklin High School's use of the name Quakers which we all know is the name of a religion as the school nickname and team name I represent a group that includes Franklin High School parents students alumni PTSA members and also community members which includes Quakers like myself over the five years so far that
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we've been requesting the district to take action on this issue an extensive file of documentation has accumulated and is in the possession of one of the district's senior directors it's I think it's a little bit of a hot potato and has jumped around but Leslie Odell is I think who had it most recently this file is really thorough it can tell you everything that has been submitted and documented about this issue so far and so I will not recapitulate its contents I gave each of you a document that outlines the policies and administrative directives that are relevant in this situation the first section shows the board having ultimate authority over names and also shows the specific exclusion of religious names the second section defines the various aspects of what constitutes a school over the naming of which the board has authority the third section is an administrative directive on religious symbols in schools the second page details the uses of the name Quaker at Franklin that fall clearly within these definitions and finally there's a summary of some of the contents of the file that the district already has and I can easily provide copies of any of this information that are in position so to get to the heart of the matter people who are fans of the Quaker nickname say that at Franklin High School Quaker doesn't mean Quaker and so it isn't religious because Quakers doesn't mean Quakers it means football or it means a clock tower or oatmeal or earthquakes or a historical figure who wasn't a Quaker but who lived in Philadelphia Benjamin Franklin the argument is that when they say Quaker they don't mean Quaker and so it doesn't mean Quaker and so therefore it's not religious really we can do that we can appropriate the name of a religion to use it for football at a public school could we call the team the Jews or the Mormons so if that is the justification for the use of a religious name for the sports team for our public high school then we need the board to show us legal judgment authorizing the district to appropriate the name of the religion and to show us legal judgment that these policies I've listed here and directives do not apply in a situation or alternatively the board can immediately initiate the process of changing Franklin High School's team name to something that is appropriate for a public school thank you all very much good evening I'm Josh de Cristo I'm a parent of third grader at Alameda and sixth grader just started at Beaumont I was here earlier for the listening session on the middle school things I didn't have a chance to speak to you then so I'd like to have the chance to do that now and express my concern because I live in a small pocket north of Alameda school that has been suggested for boundary change and the problem that I see there was raised earlier by another gentleman which is that it would take kids from this small section and require them to go to schools quite far away right now we live just over half a mile from Beaumont my son walks to school bikes to school skates to school and we live about eight blocks less than eight blocks from Almeida this proposed change would have my daughter when she starts middle school going a ninety five minute walk or something along those lines crossing busy streets including Fremont MLK not 7th Williams Vancouver to get to Tubman what really I guess bothers me about the way that this is unfolded is that I don't see a reason for it the reasons that were stated in the proposed boundary change were to reduce the size of certain classes at Alameda and to increase other k5 feeder schools for Tubman which is the one that I'm concerned about and rose way the problem is that when you look at the numbers
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it's 33 total students from our sector from our small area and of that there's no indication of what the distribution would be across grades presumably if it's evenly distributed you're talking about five or six students per class meaning you'd increase Tubman by about 15 students the board's policies on boundary changes seem to have been completely ignored here I'd like to read a couple of them to you the policies are to allow as many students as possible to continue together from one school level to another to promote safer routes to school by limiting the number of natural and human-made physical boundaries students must cross to and from school considering availability of sidewalks and bicycle lanes to promote a sense of community by keeping neighborhoods together to minimize transportation times and distances to minimize the assignment of students away from schools in close proximity to their residents to effect the smallest number of students as possible and to avoid separating small numbers of students from their classmates when they move to a new school level every single one of those policies is violated by taking this very small section just north of Alameda and reassigning it to an entirely different elementary school and even more importantly to a different middle school and what is the reason for that if it's really as indicated excuse me to promote smaller school at Alameda that should be handled completely differently and if it's to increase size of other schools there's a lot more effective ways to do that without carving you include your last thought thank you that's it so I would like board to consider that small section I know it's a small issue in the scope of what you're doing but it's important to us thank you we have Melissa Fran's and Greg Brown so while they're coming up I'm gonna ask Jim I'm again I'm Jim I'm gonna ask that the question about the Quakers and using a religion a mascot that we do some legal spade work about that and the justification not just our policies but just overall our practice thank you hello my name is Melissa France that's fr a ntz I think as a district just to start we need to do some outreach and some work with our families about the word equity racial and our board racial education equity policy and what that looks like and how it's different from the word equality and different from the word fair and why as a board as a district we adopted that policy I think there was a lot of discussion many years ago and we sort of lost momentum on like what those words actually mean I think it would help some of this public discourse around boundary change quite a bit if our families were all clear on definitions of those words and why we have them I want to talk to about my personal experience with PBS's struggle to hire and support teachers of color I trust you've all read studies national studies around improved outcomes for kids of color and white kids when they have black and brown teachers in the classroom and are represented but academically in emotional outcomes are improved and I just want to talk about that looks like in my house I have six kids in Portland Public Schools I have three at an elementary school and three in a middle school four of my children are black two of my children are white it shouldn't feel like they've won the lottery if they walk into a classroom with a teacher of color and right now it does this is most startling and frustrating when you walk into my kids middle school and we're nearly almost half of the kids or kids of color and the staff is startling Lea white my children have all had and continue to receive excellent instruction but they are being taught quietly but the expert in the room is almost always white as a system as a district in this system we are doubling down by on their implicit bias both from my black kids and their white kids we are also teaching them that folks that look most like them are their beloved custodians who clean up in their building after them and care for their social-emotional health as counselor school climate coordinators and through our community partners like sei and our son school I know our HR department is facing some significant challenges right now on rebuilding our staff and rebuilding their staff and I also know we've done targeted recruitment for teachers of color through Portland Teachers program and out-of-state recruitment which my kids have benefited from those programs and continue to benefit from those programs but I've seen the soul-crushing lack of support
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for black and brown teachers in our buildings through micro and macro aggressions of being the only teachers of color in their in their buildings from their colleagues from our communities from parents that look like me probably from me so as a board I'm hoping you can look at ways to urgently increase representation in the classroom and support them with clear support and mandates once they get there our systems our school systems were built and designed to Center white supremacy and I'm so grateful that as a district and a board you have a policy to interrupt that but we can't wish or hope or believe that that will magically happen unless we have a really good plan in place thank you hi my name is Greg Burrell be you are our I ll and good evening board directors teachers parents administrators and everybody watching at home I came here to remind you that raising and educating the next generation of human beings is the most important job in the world so I want to thank begin by thanking all the people that do that every parent administrator bus driver custodian secretary speech pathologist counselor the list of educators is much longer than teacher and I want you all to know that I support all of you this evening you heard p80 president Suzanne Collins share stories of unconscionable overwork and lack of support for our students now I don't have this problem but that's because I earn less than half of what classroom teachers do because I've decided to become substitute in order to love in order to be able to love my job I avoided the workload of a full-time high school French teacher prepare five separate sets of lessons fourth and fifth year French taught in a single classroom because I chose not to pretend that it's an adequate job to try and figure out how to spend 30 hours a week giving each child ten minutes of assessment for reading writing speaking and understanding French teaching 26 hours and preparing the fascinating exciting lessons for my students so I don't do any of that stuff and one of the things that I do is I'm trying to make a job that I would be willing to do so that's why I was here earlier with my Union brothers and sisters supporting lower class sizes reduced workload for teachers common planning time etc so I also want to tell you that I'm not here to complain about the way PPS is bargained with teachers while giving central office employees yet another set of raises I'm here to offer forgiveness for the past and hope for the future I am hopeful that our new superintendent will have the vision and the leadership to streamline our central office and put more dollars now spent on layers of administrators into our classrooms I would like to see administrator positions eliminated and replaced with administrative assistants whose job would be to finalize and disseminate the results of cooperative planning of teachers and just while I have a few seconds left I want to mention about educators of color I have talked to far too many educators of color who were recruited from around the country and then got here and found themselves faced with the sort of microaggressions is that Miss France mentioned so thank you very much for your comments and we have Steve fuel and Juan Carlos blacker my name's Steve you all bue ill yeah I have two off-the-cuff comments before I get into what I wanted to say first nice job on the public records Julia that was very good that's finally getting taken care of and the second was we should have probably thought along this Dee Brack stuff about doing case sixes with seven eight middle schools - solve some problems that we never really have solved but no one wanted to do that so there we go I went to the Nebraska football game Oregon
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Nebraska football game and there were 15,000 people in this stands from Nebraska all wearing red they were engaged and that showed me a lot the power of engagement which is a key issue missing in our looking at middle schools in PPS there are five things we may be overlooking that we need to think about in order to actually make quality middle schools first is engaging activities and electives sports music art hands-on classes technology makerspaces note that Jackson has woodshop and a fabulous art program I assume we're gonna put a woodshop in if I have this our program in honor of middle school since we're gonna equalize this stuff there's lots of talk about 9th grade counts or article in the newspaper or a couple days ago but really that is just because you can measure it with a simple measure or a kids on track to graduate actually seventh and eighth grades are just as important dropouts are affected by two huge influences in school can they read and are they engaged these are the first two things we should make sure exist in our schools look at the incredible correlation with activities and sports to graduation rates and participation in these starts in middle school in some cases even in grade school this engagement doesn't get to every student but it gets to enough so we can actually spend the time necessary with those kids who are struggling in their own lives it lessens the numbers to a manageable size the second important idea is an outstanding principal who can relate to middle school students and teachers they can't be someone who follows all the standard approaches that doesn't work in middle school I'm not sure we have people who will be hiring you understand the importance of this hopefully the board would understand the importance of that third we need to hire Rockstar teachers and the principal needs to understand this because we need teachers that can make school fun and interesting without this we lose kid after kid in the middle school for we need to take care of students needs the for instance ESL the older kids who can't speak English we don't do this now special ed we need to make sure the support is there tag we need to have challenging classes and plenty of people to support children whose home situation creates a need for serious support and fifth we need the resources in order to do these things my reading of our plan for Tubman particularly is that these five critical factors may all be missing it is the board's and the new superintendents job to make sure this is not the case thank you that's ju c AR l OS b l a cker i'm a parent of a seventh grade student at Beaumont we live in the Eastside catchment that's being moved for the Alameda at Beaumont and grant students are being moved to Madison and ro City Park I just want to ask you to not only consider the grandfathering that you talked about for the Westside boundary changes but also for the inside boundary changes particularly in light that Madison will be going under construction in two years after grant ends that's going to affect students dramatically who by my daughter for instance who will be starting the year that grant reopens now she will be going to Madison and actually going to Marshall because of that so something to consider just the grandfathering of all those students who have been going to Alameda and Beaumont with that they had to grant and I've been planning that for the years they were doing that to also consider giving the students and the parents that the choice to to decide which school they they go to somebody want to choose Madison somebody want to choose Grant but I wanted to add that to the discussion you're planning on having talked to me okay and we're a very small group that I think there's only three students affected total so I want to be the voice for those students thank you very much and I appreciate the work you guys did this is a lot of work so thank you so ward committee and conference reports and I think the only person I heard from who had a report was the chair of the finance at an Operations community director more yeah this will be brief so the finance audit and operations committee met just before the public
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comment earlier today we talked about [Music] essentially two two major topics first was middle school and we got an update on the budget that's going to be necessary to deliver the to new middle schools and make all the changes to the to the remaining k5s we got a line line-item budget which was much appreciated we'll be hearing more about that in coming meetings the other thing we heard about around middle schools was staffing and we got a an introduction to some of the work that's been going on to come up with alternative models to to staff schools with the specific intention of dealing with the staffing problems that come from under enrollment so again we're gonna be hearing more about this the next FAO meeting is the 26th and most of that meeting is in fact going to be devoted to going a lot deeper into the staffing models so if you're interested that might be a good a good meeting to go to because it's going to have direct impacts on what happens around the middle school implementation the the last topic we dealt with was a resolution on the sequencing of the bond work and will we unanimously passed a recommendation to bring a resolution to the full board at the next board meeting on the 26th that lays out the sequence for the the major remodeling and rebuild work under the 2017 bond so stay tuned thank you so the board will now consider its business agenda mr. Powell I just want to clarify that we no longer have on the business agenda 5506 50 507 and 5508 okay and then I'm also going to remove item 50 10 from the business agenda there's an interest that's been expressed that by board members of having a discussion about this large direct negotiation contract and I've had a discussion briefly at the beginning of the board meeting with the General Counsel that about this discussion so that will happen going forward so that'll do so where would that discussion take place the for full board and ultimately any sort of contract obviously we come back to the full board as well so with that we still have some remaining items on the business agenda do I have a motion and a second to adopt the remaining items on the business agenda there a second I have a motion from director Anthony and a second from director more this powell's or any public comment on the business agenda there's not okay is there any board discussion on the items remaining items on the business agenda okay the board will now vote on the business Jenna Genda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions the business agenda is approved by vote of six to zero with student representative Moses strand voting yes thank you to the board members that was a lengthy meeting and we still have any just a reminder to be selves an executive session before we leave so with that I'm going to adjourn and we will go into executive session to

Event 2: Board Listening Session - Middle School Process 9/12/17

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[Applause] [Applause] [Music] because [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] that welcome so just start the listening session I'm going to turn this section of the or to the chair of the enrollment and transfer committee Scott Bailey it's a great turnout tonight we have an hour we're not gonna get to everybody who wants to speak what we are going to do when we get to public comment is to go school area by school area and rotate through like that to make sure we hear from the same number of schools all the way through and if we don't get to you personally again keep your comments coming in we read them all we pay attention to them real briefly I want to say there's an old saying something to do with alligators and draining the swamp why are we here tonight because we recognize a number of years ago some of us have been working on this for many years that we have some major structural inequities in our system and we're at to fix those and those have to do with middle grades and what is offered and those have to do with schools being under enrolled and over enrolled and that's why we're here and we are the staff has come up with a proposal that we're inviting your comments on we are going to put forth some kind of proposal this is going to happen we are going to open up to middle schools next fall what I'm asking all of you to do is to help this make this a really really good
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proposal we are perfection is not possible that's just where we are the other piece of it is that this is in some ways an interim proposal because once we are have a proposal that gets approved by the board and we start working to get those middle schools up and going we are going to have to revisit boundaries because we still have imbalances in a number of areas so what we're doing now is is sort of very constricted and limited but very important piece of work but there may be tweaks in the future as well so stay tuned and I want to say one more thing about a small and important piece of the proposal so that it wasn't clear is what happens to this year's eighth graders who might be caught in a one high school to another high school move in whatever proposal goes first forth our intent is for those eighth graders to stay with their peer group but that's I'm hearing that was a concern to some of you but we heard that and went wait wait where are we clear and just want to say that's that's our intent right now so thank you again for coming out we are going to start by giving our D Brett co-chairs a couple minutes to talk and give their impressions and then we're going to go schools in alphabetical order starting with V for Vestal and I think going backwards down the alphabet and go from there so Jason and Pamela thank you for being here tonight thank you for your work they introduce themselves come here booties spasiba child care thank you Mike sign go ahead and introduce ourselves and go forth hi my name is Pamela ki Lak thank you for allowing us the opportunity to kick off the public comment and provide testimony on the reopening of Tubman on Rose Bay Heights I want to clarify that Jason and I are speaking as co-chairs but not on behalf of Deepak Deepak has not yet met review these proposals and so we're leveraging our knowledge of leading this process for several years but not on behalf of the committee yet I can say that we and the committee do strongly support the opening of both of these middle schools next year this is a really exciting prospect but I hope to spend the next two minutes talking about values framework and how this proposal fits into that so the Deepak values are equity access and environment to start with environment and it's exciting to see a target utilization of no more than 90 percent so in acknowledgment that schools both need flexibility to maximize learning and also that our district is growing and there's concerns about Rose way heights I'm sorry Rose City Park being at a hundred percent and access at Humboldt now fits but there's a potential proposal for it to grow growing a school takes three years there's time to remedy that but I want I hope hopeful that that will be part of the board's consideration on full disclosure I was access parent the other part of access access to programs so this proposal uses a letter of grade configuration to
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provide middle schools we don't know exactly what's going to be in the middle schools and we're excited to see the municipal model evolve but we're acting on faith that this is going to happen and I am sure we're that that it will but just to call out that just moving kids doesn't provide great programs but the teachers and the principals in the schools do some schools are left as K eights Vernon and vessel is under enrolled and I'm hopeful that the board will use other levers like budget to ensure that equitable access to programs for those schools even if they are not in these middle to role models the other piece about access so we've heard from students that articulation between middle school and high school of their electives is really important for them to be able to you to leverage the opportunities available in high school so - backwards map what electives are offered at different middle schools so that these students have the best opportunity going into high school I'm gonna look at equity from a community perspective and not an analysis of the framework but these are some things that we've heard from communities to contribute to them feeling like equitable they have equitable schools so one is access to information and we have translators here but our proposals are still in English and hopefully we can get increasingly good at releasing all information in all languages simultaneously so our non-english speaking community can participate we also heard a lot about how vulnerable families have trepidation about moving to a middle school model and their loss of community the ability of older children to take care of younger children and provide transportation and lastly for our undocumented families being exposed to more transportation needs to really think about how we can do parent involvement in a way that limits their need to move around the city and can really lever to the safe safer spaces of PPS and lastly there's been a lot of listening and I hope that you all can we do the listening that's been done and also listen to the quiet voices that aren't in this huge forum the community voices the non-english speaking voices the people can't actually make it here tonight and I know you will do that but just as a brief reminder there's a lot of people who aren't here and their voices by those little itty-bitty details that really make equitable implementation so good evening members of the board and student representative Tran my name is closed what mics can everyone help me now okay good evening members of the board my name is Jason Trombley and I'm also a co-chair of the D brac committee last name is spelled t ro mble y and tonight I'd like to share my perspective on both the proposal and the process wearing both the hats of deep co-chair and former co-chair of the district's enrollment and transfer committee on the process what immediate concern I raises the issue as Pamela identified of not releasing translated documents simultaneously with English only versions this issue also occurred when the original scenarios 1 and 2 were released in October 2015 by the documents being released at a later date this inherently empowers English speaking families to get ahead of the game on advocacy before underserved families tee blaq worked hard to ensure the district rectified this issue in subsequent boundry processes the action also contradicts the values framework which states on page 18 that meeting shall have language translation and documents for meetings on the proposal I believe it's fundamental to ensure that we put students at the Sun this work in addition to us knowing about the program inequities that exists between schools and grades students know that too in a previous correspondence to D Brack a Mount Tabor middle school student wrote to us about this reality especially given that her parent is also a PPS teacher she rented that she recognizes the opportunities that she has afforded a taper but students my age at the school her parent works at doesn't that school deserves to get support before mine because I have a number of programs and access opportunities students from when Katie wrote sharing her views on why a new school program for them was important in range from program opportunities to facilities elements such as being able to finally have a walker to themselves second on the proposal is the community work that has been done today and 2016 community members have convened with us to brainstorm the different elements they hope will exist in a new middle school and those packets that I'll share with you at the conclusion of our testimony all of the notes that were collected from both Harriet Tubman rosary Heights communities I hope that you'll take into consideration when assessing the strength of the pending a middle school plan if I don't know one example that staff were trying to work through at this moment the outdoor school schedule in such a way that would allow this year's sixth graders in the capable schools would bring each other before they move to the new middle school next school year I didn't particularly like to acknowledge sooner director Krista went home who's
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working on this matter as she develops PPS is outdoor school request currently moving the possible implementation work is more popular than Jerry Vincent the work will be successful but their work is also dependent on ensuring that there was both a clear definition of the middle school program and the infrastructure to not only deliver it but hold it accountable to ensure their delivery division we said we want all students to access Sackett were the superintendent's advisor communal enrollment transfers core value was and still is that neighborhoods dual schools at the heart of the community we know there are perceptions that families have about why they don't want to be bounded out of or into a given school some families try to run schools by petitioning out to attend a different school this process is important to highlight because ii learned that families of color disproportionately used this process more than the neighborhood lottery transfer process the board approved the policy to change requiring the district to develop a culturally responsive petition process that assesses these reasons per school and to lose that knowledge to ensure that plans were in place to mitigate those issues in future years information exists on how we can improve the lives of students and schools now and our infrastructure must demonstrate how it is responded to those requests your middle school strategy also existing legal compliance work with state education laws and resources for your English language learner students identified PPS is a priority district for improvement over a four-year period the law comes with strict penalties that or the Department of Education has the power to take over management of a districts elo program Oh de-identified for PPS was improving access to middle grade programs and online with high school curriculum as PPS is a three of that forty two o'clock open schools especially Rosalee Heights is one step forward to ensure that PBS addresses one of these improvement areas finally focusing on moving forward if this a process the board must plan for take the necessary steps now to ensure the district is equipped to do just that these steps include but not limited to aligning with your budget process to ensure that existing resources are accessible now so that the staff can plan accordingly to leverage educational options process to appropriately make programmatic decisions and apply the d-block values framework to those decisions excuse me focus option specialty alternative programs shall continue for that policy apply the district the values framework to ensure appropriate configuration that ensures both that the district can programmatic needs of the students that would be served by these programs for example tag for example as access well charted as a k-12 program that currently operates as a one-eighth much of the testimony indicates that it wants to remain that but expand to be three sections per grade we have programs that are other alternative programs that meet a specific student read or focus option programs the district I think should determine how it wants to apply the KA three sections per grade criteria that debark identified for neighborhood schools and assess any impacts that decision may have on neighborhood schools I hope our testimony indicates the level of us that the district has made on us over a four to five year period in five years for me there's a lot of work in process but moving this work forward fundamentally helps to achieve a lot of the fundamental goals and do an efficient matter particularly under continued resource constraints with that you know we've been given 10 minutes so members of the board thank you for allowing us to testify this evening thank you [Music] I'm sure to start that budget planning process to make sure that we forge ahead with getting the east side done the finishing the focus option study that has been started and all those kind of program work that needs to be done to get us to where we need to be for an East Side that is full of robust schools with robust populations and great
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programs so thank you for that very quickly you can email the board with your comments you can email us PPS dotnet / middle schools there's an email on the form that you got so there's lots of ways to get ahold of us we will have more of these meetings there's two that are in the process of being scheduled for early October one back in the Madison cluster one in the Jefferson Tubman cluster so there'll be more opportunities coming up for you to testify assistance and there's a screen right in the way so I can't there we go and we're gonna make it thank you for being here hello hello members of the board my name is Laura Speidel it's SPID lll and I'm the parent of a second grader and a fifth grader at vestal school I just want to start by saying I'm really glad to be here at the brink of finally opening these two schools after you know being part of this process for a really long time and I'm also grateful that the proposal that has come out is better for the Madison cluster than the one who saw last June I'm glad to see some of the split feeders go away and for Madison's enrollment to grow but tonight I want to focus on fest on kids at the Rosewood Heights middle school the uncertainty of our status as a k-8 school has caused our middle school enrollment to dwindle our staff to turnover and elective choices to shrink our kids need and deserve this middle school now and should not be asked to wait any longer however we are dismayed that no viable solution is offered to strengthen the vessel as a k5 school 260 students is not sustainable and a promise to consider funding for full staffing is not acceptable to say that the solution to our moment is to expect us to somehow convince families to set aside their biases and enroll their kids at vestal is insulting when a structural change to boost our enrollment not a PR campaign here are some ideas that we have that could actually help investors enrollment we could not open our city park as a neighborhood school we allow access to stay and grow there while distributing that the Rose Way Heights k5 students through the vessel and Scott it is ridiculous to say that students can't cross I 84 to attend Vestal clearly and Buchman all have boundaries that cross i-84 at the very least you could send some of the students from the Roe's way heights caption capture area to Vestal as well as to Scott and Lee if no changes truly can happen right now then we need to commit to a formal binding way to fund us as a fully enrolled k5 and then it just boundaries to make a sustainable during the review of boundaries for the southeast schools I guess my time zone just please commit to looking at ways to sustain vestal through this process [Applause] my name is Johnny with royal April gave me her spot I have a son and Scott when my son reached his last year preschool and I started looking at kindergarten I went to great schools org and I looked at the scores and I looked first at Scott because it's our neighborhood school and when I looked at the read reviews where parents spoke with passion about the connections and community that they encountered at Scott they wrote of a diversity of background religion national origin and many other factors that spoke to the melting pot that the United States is supposed to be they said their kids were thriving and learning I then spoke to friends who are teachers and expressed my fear of the scores and at the school's quote bad reputation every last teacher said visit the school talk to the people who work there do not base your fears on a number on a website so I did that and last year I enrolled my son at Scott and I have not regretted the decision there is a strong and diverse and joyful community of people there their support and teachers who care for the students and a strong group of active parents who are working hard to support and serve not only their own children but everyone else's children too there are many good things that Scott there are also challenges we at Scott would love to welcome our neighbors from Alameda and other locations outside all of our kids up change his heart having an expectation of where your kid will go to school and having that suddenly changed is difficult but changes it a reality of life schools
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change neighbors move teachers leave for other schools new neighbors arrive new teachers arrive learning to navigate change is one of the most important life skills there is adaptability is one of the most important life skills that we can teach our children to the board and PBS thank you for your work to make programming equitable to the children across this district the latest proposal that opened Rose Way heights is the middle school and change boundaries is a huge step in the right direction I strongly encourage you to take another look at your plans for vestal your work there is not done leaving them behind without enough enrollment to thrive will continue to set kids up to struggle and continue to weaken Madison thank you for giving us a place to speak and let's lift all of our kids up [Applause] - no - and Aaron Savage Thank You Board of Directors and parents worth taking their time to come here I'll make this very quick I have a kindergartener we live in the area that would become Rose City Park medel's elementary school k5 and I just want to make very clear to the board that the goal of this plan is to make right sized schools and when you start a school at 100 percent utilization that plans to grow to 100 percent one hundred and ten percent utilization excuse me within the next four years that's just exactly contrary to the goals of this plan and it even spells it out on page 27 of this I urge the board to take a very careful study of the actual enrollment and catchment area for Rose City Park and to fix this overutilization problem for the Rose City Park k5 my name is Aaron Savage I've taught for 15 years with Burton public schools and I've been a Portland Public Schools recurrent for one week I have a kindergarten Rose way heights I'm gonna talk just generally about middle school the implementation and trying to kind of look at the philosophy to uniform that throughout the district I think it's very important I've taught for 10 years at West Sylvan and now I have been at da Vinci so I have two very different experiences I noticed that counselors are not anywhere on there in your necessary resources and I'm going to tell you that is absolutely ridiculous last year I teach 160 students now I see 160 humans every day that I'm supposed to impact their lives I have 15 kids with 504s and I use for anxiety I had three suicide attempts last year I had three kids homeless last year I have ten students who came out as trans last year an administrator cannot do that and sms cannot do that counselors need to be written and specifically as a requirement in every single school not just schools that can fund it with an enrolment I mean with a auction or whatnot on that note principles are very important I don't believe you know who your good principals are and who your bad principles are and a principal can make or break a school and I've spoken with Scott about this there needs to be some kind of assessment process as a prince as a teacher I have to set goals I have to show you that I'm meeting those goals there's a scoring guide I'm evaluated every year every other year I don't see any process where a principal is held accountable I see Barclay green and what has happened there in the last two years they still do not have a principal the principal there was moved elsewhere I admit I do not know what happened there but like I said when you open two new Middle School's crucial to have an outstanding principal and I'm not just talking about someone who has moved over shuffled around making sure that truly it is an outstanding person to lead this transition and Cena for event I didn't my name is Francine a fog event I didn't I thought we were gonna pass a mic around so an encounter with prepared testimony but I'm here as an advocate for Madison High School and I want to say that I think your proposal is very courageous and it's finally happening and I would really like to see it be put
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in place and not delayed for another five years I want to say to the people that are scared of have concerns about their children having to go to Madison High School that I want to allay their fears that this is a great school my kids are thriving they've done really well the school has lots of AP classes it has lots to offer it has a very diverse community which I think in this day and age it's really something that we need I know that some people are concerned about travel times we travel for miles and well my kids I don't and I feel like our concept of neighborhood has expanded so instead of it being kind of East no south its East but I also want to say that because there is a perception about the school that is not true I would love it if there would be more outreach to those affected communities have them come into the school tell them about the AP classes have them have kids from Madison maybe reach out I don't know but it's a fabulous school and so I'm here as an advocate Sharon Edwards and members of the board my name is Sarah nipper and I live with my daughter Lorelai in the Portsmouth neighborhood in North Portland where I has just started her second year at Cairo speedy acts as a first grader under the incredible guidance and support of the Kyle's teachers staff and administration she has flourished in her academic social and emotional development and most importantly a perhaps being a part of the Collins family has educated both Lorelei and myself about how important it is to advocate for and stand with our community and so I'm here today as a proud member of the chorus community to ask you to please please allow Kairos to keep our home-school Kairos has been intentional populations children and families who face structural inequities and educational opportunities namely African American and families of color those in poverty and children with cognitive physical and emotional challenges the overwhelming majority of Carla's families come from inner North and Northeast Portland and losing what has become a stable and welcoming home for Kairos families would be very disruptive neighborhood community has suffered the ill effects of gentrification and displacement over the past many many years I understand that addressing equity issues is a huge priority for this board and I commend all of you for that for kids of color and those in poverty and that who understand and root for the value of using od metrics to measure our progress to say that graduation rates test scores and those secondary achievements are significantly lower the kids feel some racial and economic inequities community aiming to change these trajectories forcing yet another transition for families have had already had transition of Kairos kids who are PBS Kids to run a stay at school thank you cha-cha of Jonah and fan Kirsten hi everybody actually I'm here for to meet the board I have three kids one of the my daughter she's talented gifted program in public school but not least we know they're not in school anymore the reason we call the board we my husband come to I'm sorry can you say it again we can't understand Esmond called the school district couple of times for the kids and it's still the case wouldn't this find her we try to just resolve those kids to to bury school we can't afford the school they say you know in the dress we know in the
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border school line I don't know what to do with that school with those kids and I have to go to school because they got ask I mean my blind didn't get my blood I didn't get I didn't transfer the time for the kids because my blood to keep the kiss and homey school but I got a scholarship for Portland State I mean if we think is it's complete changing my situation I have to go full time student and I have to go to school my school might kiss the school in state to homeschooling and money work for the school I test I don't I don't need this cool close to me because they they didn't get enough education when I need they say okay look for this school and when I look for the school I need they say that you know in the school in in your address ordinary close to you I mean it's just I keep calling I keep addressing that issue nobody try to focus this issue yeah we want to connect you with somebody right here so we take care of that take care of your kids okay yeah if you could go talk to Roseann so we address that very quickly thank you [Applause] hi my name is Finney and Kirsten I'm in the seventh grade of at least 13 in two months PPS wants to change my neighborhoods to the Madison area from the gray area I go to Beverly Cleary school just across the street from very high school most of my friends are in the grant community it'll be going to Grant High School in fact my best friend allele is one block 447 but I still be able to go to school with him a three point of the grant community and even detracted field for grant high schools PIL Junior League I swear back to that pool this summer too I moved here from California when I was 11 had no friends I made many friends I've ever Lee Cleary last year I don't want to have to again I feel like being able to I like being able to walk to my friends walk with my friends to school and I won't be able to if I went to Madison I used to be the anxious and nervous put before what's very clear e I've heard some beverly cleary helped me become less nervous and more active I think I sleep for most kids in my neighborhood that we want to stay in the great community thank you for listening and good night [Applause] hany rest of our goal hi my name is April Whipple wh IP ple Shanny gave me her spot first off I want to thank everyone that worked on this proposal it's clear that you're working to address equity the split feeders and also the overcrowding of schools I stand before you is a very proud scott parent I have a kindergartner and a second grader at Scott I am excited for my students to attend Madison high school I have met with gone to meetings where the principal has spoken multiple times and I know that it's a strong school and it's a strong community I am coming to you with concerns with middle school as a former middle school teacher and former middle school administrator I feel it's extremely important that this is not delayed that middle schools do indeed open as scheduled k-8 models do not prepare students for today's high school programming it's impossible in a k-8 school especially one like Scott to provide the needed coursework consider please the following with middle schools if your staffing both the Spanish and immersion program at this new school that is going to be a resource and staffing challenge so need to be prepared to find people that can work in that environment also when you're building a master schedule board and you're trying to schedule students both into their Vietnamese immersion classes and their Spanish immersion classes along with the neighborhood program you're going to face challenges where students are going to end up being trapped into courses with the same people they attended elementary school with so please carefully design the master schedule board please consider the need of tag students at Rose Bay
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Heights middle school the scheduling should allow students to walk over to Madison to access higher level courses if need be and most importantly please consider consistency middle school should not differ across the district based on the ability of their neighborhoods to Andres please make sure that middle states have common programming and common electives thank you [Applause] my name is Galen gamble I'm a vessel parent and the PTA president Thank You chair brim Edwards and the board for the opportunity to speak with this evening I would like to also thank the vessel families who are able to attend but acknowledge that many of the families were unable to attend because of the short notice it should also be noted that a number of our families affected by the changes to daca are no longer comfortable in unfamiliar settings and we are working with our NGO partners to ensure their concerns are heard under the district's current proposal vessel would be adversely affected without equitable changes to the boundaries of vessels hard work over the past five years would become becoming a cohesive community school that serves a diverse student body speaking 20 languages starting a son school increasing parent and community involvement and changing the community's perception will all be for naught if the proposal will turn move forward it would continue the routine neglect that best all has experienced over the past 20 years by first this will be the first step in dismantling our neighborhood school it will leave vessel under enrolled by 260 students and our most valuable neural students will be unsupported with limited opportunities we're requesting that the district create a proposal with equitable ground erease to prioritize vessels desire to be an active an active healthy community school and to stay committed to having an appropriate middle school for the next year a vessel should receive the same opportunities to grow and be a neighborhood hub for the community thank you and we appreciate your consideration [Applause] Sarah Kennedy Adams and Judi Cromwell hi my name is Sarah Kennedy Adams I have a 3rd grader at Rosary Heights and a sixth grader at access I sit here today conflicted with the recent proposal one child being moved will displace the other but this isn't about my kids it's about the whole district and hard decisions need to be made I do not envy you and I will not pretend that I have the answers I can tell you that this process sucks being a parent who has attended meetings for six years filled out surveys and his attention I don't feel listened to and it leaves me unsettled this proposal first of all Rose City Park is unsafe for any kid to attend it is one of yeses buildings that is likely to fall in an earthquake has high levels of lead and worst of all it is not a TA accessible at all do to ensure this building or any building can safely occupy and be accessible to any and every child next I'd like to address access being moved to Humble we've been advocating for this for a building for years and we want to grow for 150 plus kids that have been waiting on that waiting list and for the same reason this whole process was started better middle school programming our kids don't have any so the building is a great idea right well on March 8th the school board's teaching and learning committee passed a growth plan for access that would finally expand the program to three sections of grades three through eight Humboldt can't hold that many students so what's the plan if we're put there will you add bubbles what is the growth plan and lastly I would like to knowledge that this move would displace kairos community who to serve a very was in this district they deserve a home and they deserve support my heart sympathizes with them and the schools like russell and vernon not being in this proposal please look at a district-wide solution shoot for more than two strands middle school stop funding based on population and fun schools equally at every school you can do better you need to do this right not
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for some but for all thank you [Applause] good afternoon thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak my name is Judy Kroll I have a four-year-old and I reside near the eastern edge of the boundary that's currently Alameda Beaumont and grant I present myself today as also having conflicting feelings on the proposal at issue I'm grateful for the work that has been done which clearly has been going on for which started even before my daughter was born these are such difficult issues but I feel as though this proposal in its current form does not address at the macro level not the micro level but the macro level of inequities which are present in our school district right now rather than tinkering around the edges a few blocks here shave a few blocks there it must go deeper it must be broader it must address the inequities for every student not just for a few who are shifting boundaries at the cost of the disruption that that would bring to the families we're concerned about vestal we're concerned about Vernon we are concerned that in two and three years time at Rose City parking at other schools there's going to be overcrowding and we'd like to know the plan for that going forward we're concerned at least in our neighborhood that we feel like we had no opportunity for input on this plan although I know many others have had that opportunity near happenstance that we happen to cross this proposal at all I feel that it should be I feel that for those of us who have incoming kindergartners and younger who will be most impacted by this plan that a listening session should be more than two minutes and I say this with all due respect for the time that you have allotted you feel like there was no insufficient outreach and we would also raised concerns about the fundamental foundational inequities especially considering an incoming superintendent key positions unfilled read in the water please don't tinker at the boundaries of painting trim when there's a foundation that needs to be stabilized we would ask you to go back take what's good about this but cut deeper and go broader before this goes into effect thank you and generation and justice hi my name is Angela veera simham I'm a seventh grader at Beverly Cleary school and I live on 56th Avenue since I was in the second grade we always we would go over to Grant and take a class with the high schoolers our school colors are aligned with grants when you get your clap out in eighth grade you walk into Grant breaking up a few children from our community I feel would not be fair because not the entire community would be broken up just a few kids would be picked out and since we were in kindergarten we were told that changes like middle school in high school would be hard and challenging but not if it's just a few children that are picked out to be thrown off somewhere else and I could probably count on my fingers in the 47 to 57th area the number of children that would be affected by this in the next few years and it wouldn't make a significant difference so I think I speak for all the kids in my area it's a bit shocking for us we have all respect for Madison but we've always looked forward to going to Grant and being able to stay with our community so we thank you for consideration [Applause] good evening board members and thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is Katherine Berman Skelly and I represent the 14 families who live east of 47th Avenue who have eighth graders who currently attend Beverly Cleary school and I after what Scott told us tonight about our eighth graders I want to thank you for taking into consideration the idea of peer cohorts
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which is exactly what Anjali was talking about originally I wanted to speak about the ramifications of children who would be impacted by this but I wanted to talk a little bit about the mental health piece of cohorts I'm a mental health professional and I want to talk about the importance of child cohort preservation studies clearly show that children benefit from a stable healthy and consistent peer group throughout their school careers and particularly during the Middle School in early high school years when brains and bodies are developing so rapidly we'd like to highlight the research that shows that children who lose a healthy established peer group can suffer real emotional consequences the loss of such a cohort can also be with educational and behavioral declines and I know as a mental health advocate that the changes in any supportive relationship at this vulnerable age exacerbates the risk of mental health problems into adulthood in contrast children with healthy and stable peer cohorts experience far fewer behavioral concerns overall even when undergoing stressful life events so we urge you to give the choice to students who may be impacted by their cohort changing we ask that you consider not only the mental well-being of the children in this small in this group but others facing this type of extreme change I hope that Portland Public Schools will be an example for other communities facing this challenge protecting peer cohort groups of all of our children is one of the simplest and smartest means of ensuring the success of the next generation [Applause] that's two speakers good evening thank you for the time to speak with you tonight my name is Steve Foust effe UST of a first grader at Vestal School and I know time is short so I'll be brief I just want to echo what some speakers said earlier about thanking you for including vessel in the middle school program it's very important to our families and also to ask that our school and our school boundaries be treated equitably with the other school boundaries are our children in our community deserve to have a boundary that helps our school become self-sustaining in terms of enrollment so we ask that of you thank you [Applause] hi I'm John Berger and I hope revenue but will be persuasive we appreciate all the work that you're doing and I don't envy the task that you've been given especially with without huge sums of money to really solve a lot of the problems that you guys are facing but I guess I would ask as a guest of the Rose Way neighborhood generate that you not split the neighborhood between different elementary schools and instead just have the current elementary school students from what Rose Way Heights go to Rosie [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Robin Harris good evening my name's Robin Harris I am a parent of a fifth grader at Scott School in the immersion program and I'm here I'm reading a letter written by
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Dineen berglund who is our PTA secretary dr PPS school board enrollment and boundary team and interim superintendent I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service and dedication to the education of the children in this beautifully diverse City having been a PPS parent for the last six years I've come to understand the monumental tasks associated with providing a good education to kids here especially given the lack of resources and external pressures I've been hurting for the obvious dedication of the staff and board members and their attention to the problems of inequity especially along race and class lines that have plagued our education system for decades and have led to the achievement gap and contributed to national narrative that our schools are failing and that our system is broken I've learned a lot too and they say that for myself as well being a parent at Scott and I'm richer for it my daughter attends my son attends one of those failing schools failing schools and I've come to understand that my kids school is not failing our community was failing the school by not investing our attention and energy into it because of its terrible reputation what I've learned from experience is that the reputation is based on fear and once I got over my fear I was able to join with people who are different from me and learn to see things from new perspectives and understand how my actions and beliefs impacted others especially kids I was able to see that I've been centering my own comfort my own convenience and experience when what really matters and makes a good education for my kid is to make sure that all kids are getting what they need to learn and thrive for the work to make programming equitable to children across this district it's a terrible political puzzle the latest proposal to open Rose way heights as a middle school and change boundaries to right-size K fives and to eschew split feeders is a huge step in the right direction towards closing that gap we want you to look at Vestal you can't leave them under-resourced and we support you as you deal with fierce blowback that you're going to be receiving for more well-heeled communities and we urge you to please do what's right for our kids [Applause] marry me and me James I am a grandmother of Kairos elementary did not want to come up and say anything so he told me what to say and I said I would read it to you so hello his name is Lucas he's in fourth grade Kairos said I'd like to stay in nice classrooms I don't want to move next year we just moved last year and I want to stay at Humboldt I know how difficult it is to change boundaries and so on and I sympathize with the whole idea that you have the gap between students of color and people but it's very is a school which is part of the community it's a school but was closed [Music] northeast and North Portland so I hope that you will consider seriously not moving access into that building and keeping Kairos in it thank you my name is Ned James a concerned parent from Northeast Portland and I know that mr. Bailey in your opening remarks he
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talked about the pursuit of the perfect plan and how we're unlikely to get there I want to add a different dimension this evening my home and my neighbors school district and then routed to a different middle school as well and I'm here to talk about the middle school issue to me it's a safety issue mr. administrative directive on student assignment review and school boundary changes the section of compact boundaries notes the intent is to create safer routes in the case of my family and my neighbors the route would go from 0.6 miles to one middle school to three miles [Applause] I would take my children across 15,000 Freemont MLK Williams and Vancouver at rush hour and back again among you would send your sixth grader on that route twice a day I thought you can do better than this I think we've heard a lot of comments around the the Selective application of equity at these different middle school transitions but I wanted to raise this issue in safety because I don't think that we're getting we're hearing enough about this tonight and some of the transitions that are going to affect families under this new boundary plan so with that I thank the person in the crowd with this and I hope that you will continue to think of the safety of the children in your charge thank you and raspbian let's be civil here please thank you I thank you for having me can you guys hear me my name is Heather penny and I live in Northeast Portland in the Rose City Park Beaumont area I'm the parent of a first-grade daughter in preschool son we are a two parent working household that is trying hard to balance everything my daughter is part of a very small group that will be allowed to complete grade school at our current school but then will be taken away from at least 90% of her peers to attend a new middle school in a new high school where she will instantly lose her peer community that frankly she and us as a family have built over sixth grade school years she will lose the ability to walk to a school beaumont that's very close and has safe street crossings we all know that middle schools are rough age where peers become increasingly important I have been reading about the importance of close friendships and supportive peer groups over these years I think it is very important to make sure we understand and research the implications in moving these very small groups of students to new environments without their peer groups [Applause] how does this impact academics how does this impact behavior emotional distress self-worth I'd like to thank the school board for working to optimize the educational experience of all our children in Portland and increase opportunities and fairness at the same time I'd strongly encourage our leaders to avoid splitting up small slivers of neighborhoods causing kids who have attended grade school together or middle school together to enter in a brand new system midway through their education I recommend that in these cases the kids be allowed to be grandfathered and to finish all levels of school with the peers and Families they started with thank you [Applause] hi my name is Ross Bryan and I am also the father of a kindergartner at Alameda I guess I've been a PPS parent for a week now as well I wanted to echo some of the concerns that were brought up earlier by some of the other speakers with regards to the lack of communication with respect to this particular plan I found out about this on next-door Alameda that a friend of mine came and talked to me about he's on the reason I knew about it and fortunately I didn't have to work in the hospital tonight so I could come and talk to you all about my concerns and I'd also like to echo some of the concerns that have been raised about splitting up communities what what is a community a community is is a place that we all know the people around us is where we we choose to live when we have that choice to make when we're parents and we're deciding where we're going to settle we look for a place where there's people that we understand and there's friends for our
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children and there's a safe place for them to be and if in fact the community school is at the center of the community well then why would you carve out the three blocks closest to Alameda elementary school in order to in order to shrink that boundary why would you carve off a little bit on the farther east side why would you do this I understand that the the school needs to be shrunk that it's over enrolled but it does seem like there's ways to do better than this and it does seem like rather than taking people across multiple large busy streets to a place it's far away isn't really in the best interest of the children or their peer group we chose to live where we chose to live so our children could walk to school with their friends and that also will be taken from them and so I'd urge you to at least give them the opportunity to choose where they would go to grandfather the men for the duration of their time with PBS [Music] thank you for allowing me to speak and I appreciate the honor of the voice of my voice to be heard my name is Talia Smith I think it's wonderful that children are gaining to middle schools I applaud you for doing that I also think it's honorable that the goal is to proactively address socio-economic issue issues and the gentrification and lack of programs at the K through eighth grade level and addressing the winners and losers of the school however we already have a community at my neighborhood we have a community and we already have a middle school and we are part of the area that is being shaved off in order to to I you know I'm not even certain why in order to bring us to another school so they may have more enrollment I'm not really certain but my daughter would be displaced from her historical middle school in her community and all of her friends middle school is a crucial time of development and peers and community should stay together Alameda has been our home and it's and for her to change schools at the end of fifth grade would and she'd be entering middle school further away without any of her friends and have to start an incredibly crucial time of her life not knowing anyone in this school is detrimental I believe to her the boundary changes that have you know occurred there are still socio-economic issues and the shaving off is not addressing them when you shave off areas you're actually creating a smaller bubble in some of those schools and I don't believe that that's really contacts so I really hope that you don't make us use our home and lose our home school we already have and you know like I said it's wonderful that these areas are going to have middle schools but we already have a middle school Beaumont middle school is our middle school and it's historically been that way for a hundred years I just noticed that nobody from Lee was speaking so I just wanted to put in some two cents I have no statement thank you for your hard and diligent work we have concerns about vestal of course boundary changes are hard [Music] [Applause] I love my school I love the diversity did you know that 40% of all kids in Portland lived east of 82nd [Music] [Applause] and we've got a great school except our
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middle school students are so underserved we have three classes available for our middle school students and it makes me sick they get nothing and it is so sad to see them knowing every day that they are so underserved and there's other kids and other schools that they've got music they've got computer classes they've got foreign language classes they've got art they've got this our kids sometimes get to choose between that they don't even get an elective because they have to take reading so there's no other elective forum other than their reading class a lot of our students are second language or second English as their second language we have a lot of immigrant families those kids are being underserved because they have to take reading there's no other option because we have a hundred and twelve I think middle school students in three grades they are being left behind there's no other word for it they are being left behind please strengthen those students thank you let last but not least so you guys have heard from me about four times this week's I wasn't going to say anything but I think what I will say my name is ginger Hughes er I have kids at Lee Rose way I'm finishing my practicum at Ascot so and I've been you know vocal about this boundary change since has started four years aside from Vestal and all the things that we've talked about a few years ago when we started really talking about this my main young my oldest was moved when he started school he's in seventh grade now he was moved from well he started at pre-k he was kicked out because he met special needs that when identified kindergarten here they couldn't support him so the following year they said we can't keep him here worse than immature Rose wait for their behavior focus classroom we stand there and Rose Way was an amazing place Ernie's thrived so my second child came in we automatically just wanted to keep her where he was we're a Latino and black family Rose way is not that diverse my second child didn't have the needs to be met that he had she excelled academically but she experienced a lot of colorism and things that were really harmful movies are this boundary talk years ago and things that I wanted to see change an advocate for I was on that side of my kid doesn't go to my neighborhood school and so many people that I was seeing even in my own community were at that time saying they were scared to send their kid to a different school their kid you know all of these things so that's true I took my kid a DeRose way apparently because I believe that our kids are very resilient and the parents are the ones super fragile [Applause] this is her second year at Lee she's thriving still know she doesn't have the opportunity that her brother has it Rose wait and we keep believing that it's going to happen she's headed into middle school but she has thrived it has been an amazing community that is the community that I love so just wanna tell the people who are scared who have their own community already I I've been there I've done it I've done it without you guys forcing me to do it just to see how it would work and it worked [Applause] so thank you so much I recognize a couple of names and emails in already I'm working on responding to all the ones that I've gotten I've responded to a bunch I've got a bunch more to respond to thank you September at 6 p.m. at the Blanchard educational and again looking for ways to make it better so that we get the best possible proposal moving forward taking into account as much of
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your input as we can [Music] right so again we're lining up a couple of more opportunities if you go talking about this virtually every board meeting going forward so you're free to come sign up for public input there if you've got a smartphone you can sync your calendar to the district's calendar so the meetings pop up on your calendar [Music] [Music] [Applause] because the childcare was just for the listening session only thank you again for coming out we're gonna move now to a regular board meeting we're gonna take five minutes - we're gonna take five

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2017-2018, https://www.pps.net/Page/12568 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:51.006202Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2017-09-12 PPS School Board Regular Meeting, Public Hearing

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education Regular Meeting - September 12, 2017

Event 2: Board Listening Session - Middle School Process 9/12/17

Sources