2017-09-26 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2017-09-26
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board- September 26, 2017

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this regular meeting of the Board of Education for September 26 2017 is called to order welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers any item that we vote on this evening has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks so please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PBS TV Services website director comm stam is absent this evening as is interim superintendant Awad we do have director anthony who is traveling on board business but he is calling in is present with us by phone this evening as a reminder we have our PBS Ombudsman Judy Martin attending all of our regular board meetings specifically Judy will be here to listen to public comments and if appropriate provide additional support to families who need it she'll be available at the back of the room after public testimony if you would like to share more regarding any concerns she can also be reached at 503 nine one six thirty forty-five or at Ombudsman at PBS net and Judy she's up there in the corner so if anybody needs anything additionally she's our Ombudsman we also have interpreters with us this evening and I'd like to ask them to come forward at this time introduce themselves in the language they'll be interpreting and inform the audience where they'll be located in auditorium should someone need their assistance welcome bonus tardes me llamo Lucia Cabrera's Celine turkeys in espanol yo esta el fondo Simha necesita gracias 13 years of a Tiana's live emotional skip Irrawaddy I put aside the terms to do the proper jollity meeting with him hey hello neo-noir Needleman funding was in coca which I wanted to wait for my home 1/4 you a child could be that we become gvm sympathy they like south we tune I think I'm on groovy thank you so we wanted to start off this evening with a couple things that I've note that happened over the last week and I'm gonna first ask we're gonna start with the reconnection Center program and I'm gonna ask director Bailey who participated in some of their in project reconnect to kick off this agenda item I was checking my calendar to remember which day was Saturday September 16th a number of PBS staff and community volunteers came out on Saturday to try to reconnect with students who we expected to come to school but we hadn't found in the first 10 days oftentimes that's because there's some situation where they're not feeling welcome at the school they're currently assigned to and so we tried to reconnect with them to help them find some other pathway in to finish their education of Portland Public Schools so I'd like to have a Karina Wolfe and come on up and tell us more I think there's also a video as well we're we were gonna start with Karina and then go to the video hi good evening director broom Edwards and fellow directors my name is Carina wolf and I'm the senior director of multiple pathways to graduation and I'm excited to share some about the reconnect to your future campaign this is their seventh year of the campaign I also want to acknowledge director Moore thank you also for knocking on doors or appreciate that so this is our seventh year of the reconnect to your future campaign we engaged more than a thousand last year it was a thousand 79 students and we touch and become in contact with more than 2,000 in any given year and I'm gonna turn it over to Matt 8e who's the administrator for reconnection services to share just a little bit about this year's event good evening so reconnection services
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helps students who've disconnected from their education get back in school and get back on track to graduate as Karina noted sort of last year and consistent with the last three years we had over 1,000 students referred to us because they disengaged or on the process of disengaging from their education and to date we've been able to help almost 600 of the students re-enroll in a comprehensive or alternative school or program but we also know that not every student who disconnects ends up being referred to us and so with that in mind our annual outreach campaign is one part of a large effort to connect with those students especially those students who aren't on our radar because they haven't been referred to our program so with that in mind we targeted 565 students to go and knock on their doors on September 16th based on data that we received in an early lever report and then on the 16th over 40 volunteers from across PBS and the Portland community spent a Saturday knocking on strangers doors we were able to reach we were able to go to 302 of these doors we spoke with 126 families and we left 132 door hangers on the doors of families who weren't home on a Saturday more than they are probably at soccer now when we knocked on the doors we asked has your student been able to find their way back to school and if not how can we help some of the families told us that their students had rien rolled either to a private school or they left the district or they gone out of state so this is really important information for us and we're using it to update the data that we received in the early leaver report but families who did ask for help they're currently working with our outreach coordinators and more specifically right now we're in the process of following up with 241 families who indicated that they needed some help or who weren't home or we were unable to reach because we didn't have enough volunteers to reach all 565 of those doors so it's it's too early to say how many of those young people will be able to get back into school but I can say that this will be the first in many efforts on the part of our program to reach out to these students and families let them know that we notice you're not in school we care and we want to help you get back over the last three years we've been able to successfully re-engage between seventy and eighty percent of the students referred to us and we're hopeful that these two hundred and forty-one families will be able to get all hundred percent of them back into school so with that in mind I believe director Bailey we have a we have a video volunteers went door-to-door this morning with the goal of encouraging students who have disconnected from school to come back to class more than 50 people fanned out across Portland to do this and they looked for students who left comprehensive alternative charter or community-based schools and have not been seen in school since this year started they invite students to go back to school and they give them resources our success rate ranges between 80 65 and 80 percent of the students that we connect with we connect back to school really a lot of smiling faces we've seen Annie and even if it turns out their child has already connected somewhere else and that's why they're not in our numbers it's like wow great somebody's looking after kids each year the district's reconnection and outreach services works with more than one thousand students who leave school without graduating and I just want to say thanks again to director Moore and director Bailey for joining us thank you I will say thanks to both of you for doing great work and to all the volunteers who turned out on Saturday we got a we got some great exercise besides doing some wonderful things so director Esparza Brown I want to thank you also for your work that's personally very important to be out of town the last two years I'm so sorry but my question to you have volunteers in multiple languages and if you're gonna do it again let me know and I've loved it we have volunteers thank you we appreciate
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that and we do it every year and we have volunteers in multiple languages and all of our information is in multiple languages and all of our information is in language specific to the student so it's all coded and we had multiple great thank you for that thank you for not only that one Saturday but the work all year round you know it makes a big difference thank you so just in the other things that have been happening with the start of school we had a very important visitor to Portland Public Schools last week at fabien the school district hosted the governor for the bill signing of four bills and I'm going to we're gonna three bills you're the expert you were there we're gonna have a video from that but also then I'm going to ask director Esparza Brown who was the board representative at that event to share briefly a little bit more about the bills that were signed and the governor's visit we'll make sure we'll leave a penny for the school it is incredibly inspiring to be with our governor who is very child and education focused and equity focused and the fact that these bills are all about really improving the outcomes for kids through teacher quality through having all of our students reflected in our curriculum through ensuring that English language learners will have teachers with the right skills and knowledge to help them meet to progress in language and literacy and meet their full potential so the energy in the room you know was amazing and to be in the space that is really unique in the nation that combines a Graduate School of Education and a k-8 school is amazing and the fact also that was exciting to see children watching from the stories above us to hear about how we are taking care of them in in Oregon we're taking care of our kids as we work to increase support for educator development and improve student learning we must be laser focused on equity I like to say that equity isn't the icing on the cake it needs to be the flower in the cake it needs to be very important part of the infrastructure and every child must know that regardless of where they come from the language they speak the color of the skin their skin or how they identify as a person they are valued I think that pretty much does it it was a very inspiring visit to Fabien which if you haven't been there I invite you all to visit it's an amazing place that coat locates a College of Education in a k-8 setting and the governor got to see the programs that are for children from six months old it really is is cradle to career as they say three to PhD she got to see a native Montessori classroom and interact with the kids it was pretty incredible the bills that she signed as stated in the video have to do with improving the services for English learners for resources for helping to fund teachers to receive their national board certification because we know that teacher quality counts and having those resources will help many of our teachers be able to pursue that advanced development and the last was for ethnic studies that was really spearheaded by upon ou students locally so we're really proud of those three bills and I had a wonderful day with the governor thanks thank you for representing us at that the last piece of exciting news we had this past week is that PBS is very own Matthew bacon Brennus was chosen as Oregon Teacher of the Year mr. bacon Brenna's teaches Japanese immersion at Mount tapered Middle School see here would you like to come up first of all we want to congratulate you is quite an honor to recognition [Music] [Applause] [Music] maybe you could come up and just share a couple plots what's your secret sauce because they're
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my sister who's your little schoolteacher you know I I'm talking to you I guess I have sat here for the last 15 minutes and I think I heard all about the secret sauce I am so absolutely proud to be a part of the Rican well I'm not part of that and I know I'm not out on the streets reconnecting students to the schools but I'm so proud to be a part of a school district that embraces everybody that and that captures that idea that governor Kate brown what's out there that equity is it needs to be the flower in the cake and I I'm not only proud to be a part of that I'm extremely extremely grateful to this district I began working with courageous conversations and the work around racial equity many years ago and it really dynamically transformed what I do I went from the icing I think I'm still working at it but towards putting that is in as the filling as the flower as the whole package I'm also super proud as a language person to witness at the opening of this thing that we have five different languages that this is translated into and there's somebody who has endured not understanding in multiple countries for long many years and tried to participate in meetings where I didn't understand I am delighted so I say this and I say this because I'm very excited to represent this district represent Mount Tabor represent the amazing staff I work with I I my when I was at the Assembly last week it was kind of a Portland Timbers Diego Valeri speech you know it's like there's no way I stand up here alone nobody does good stuff alone and I think we just witnessed that in the first 15 minutes here and I'm spreading that message so thank you very much for having me here this evening I'll do what I can congratulations we're very proud of you and we know you'll do an outstanding job representing not only Portland Public Schools but our state Thank You Julia [Applause] before we move on to agenda I wanted to take a moment to ask Jerry Vincent to come forward to talk about a campaign that were we have underway it's a project giving hope it's running from September 25th through the 30th following the devastating tropical storms in Houston and Miami Portland Public Schools is helping lead a community-wide effort to help students families and educators in those areas I want to thank Andre Jackson who was the PPS partnership coordinator for organizing and coordinating it and then I'm gonna ask Jerry Vincent to come forward and just talk a little briefly about how either individuals or businesses can engage you see can we come back to them sure we can come back to them so come back so next we're going to have public comment I'd like to review our guidelines for public comments the board wants to thank the community for taking the time to come attend the meeting and share your viewpoints and perspectives with the board but before you do that we've found Gerry Vincent so why don't you give us I gave you a great lead-in we thank Andre for all the work he's done and why don't you tell us briefly about project giving hope and how people can other people can help our fellow school districts in and students and families in Houston and Miami and Puerto Rico sure so obviously we learned about the devastation through Council of great city schools in terms of not about it but about the outrage that occurred Portland Public Schools as a member of that organization we were tracking what other districts have been able to provide we sat down and had a thought about what can we do here as portlanders we looked at all the different one of the large things was Footwear and socks we already had a couple districts you really attacked the backpack type thing and school supplies we said we're here in Portland there's 70 different Footwear companies around here so we think that we can help out in this way
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so Andre did what he does he has all this connections with the starbuck locations with the print media and and television and so we've set up drop boxes here they're just out here all day long and then it's Starbucks we're gonna have at least two rounds of collecting things bringing them back to the warehouse here and then next step is how to get them in some type of vehicle and you know 18-wheeler whatever it is been and what we get and get them down to both places we might even be able to drop ship you know whatever so with very positive received we have a lot of the the unions are on board and p80 you want them wants to be part of a lot of folks want to be part of this you know we always think about what we don't have or like we could we could use a little bit more right but when you have something like this here that this magnitude these are folks they have nothing absolutely nothing and so we have people just personally giving of their time and effort in doing their part and they're very excited to do so and we're excited to accept that great thank you so not only at Starbucks but in the lobby here you could also go to the project giving hope webpage on the PBS website is another way thanks to the partnership office and the COS office for that so back to public comment so we want to thank the community for coming and sharing our perspective this evening we value public input as it informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen with our devices electronic devices turned off board members do not respond to comments or questions during the public comment but our board manager Roseann Powell will follow up on the issues raised during public testimony or Judy Martin the Ombudsman so guidelines for public input emphasized respect and consideration for others complaints about individual employees should be directed at 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 last name for the record during the first two minutes of your testimony a green light will appear when you have one a minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when your time is up a red light will go on and the buzzer will sound and at that point we'll respectfully ask you to conclude your comments or say your last sentence we appreciate everybody's input and I'm now going to ask Miss Hewson for to call people who have signed up for public comment our first two speakers are Jillian Murr and Amy Sajak [Applause] thank you I'm Gillian mer mu RR I have given you my speech on copies of things that I'm submitting to Franklin tomorrow I'm a meeting although I'm a teacher in the district I'm coming to you tonight as a concerned parent well I know you've all most of you have heard my cries about the inequalities and seclusion happening at Franklin and the spud classrooms I feel it's important for me to make public comments the PPF special education mission statement is as follows as a department we are committed to reversing the trend of isolation and segregation of students with disabilities by ensuring all students have access to high-quality instruction responsive to their needs and delivered by effective and culturally responsive educators within the least restrictive environment while everyone's talking about the modernize Franklin going down to the spent classrooms feels like you're going back in time I think most of you have been there and seen for yourself the location does nothing at all to reverse the trend of isolation and segregation as a parent how can I believe the mission statement you just built a brand new school that has isolated and secluded spread classrooms I would take the old school over this one any day for my son I have four years worth of students at Franklin who know my son yet they don't see him in the halls this year last week a group of freshman students came to visit me and one of none of only one of them had seen my son none of them know where his classroom is this year they did last year the mission statement also ensures all students have access to high-quality instruction responsive to their needs yet you have 28 students of varying academic levels and needs and two classrooms that Proc estar approximately 1,500 square feet the district's own specs say it should be 1,200 square feet per 12 students teachers must physically move furniture when my son in his wheelchair enters the classroom how are these wound students with extremely high needs and complicated IEP is able to access high quality instruction when they can barely
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move in the classroom many students in my son's class are learning very basic life skills needs yes yet the district has given them no room to do so these classrooms cannot deliver responsive instruction to the students they deserve the same level of robust support for success now enjoyed by the Jetta and population at Franklin most concerning is the location of the classrooms in regard to the safety the area doesn't have too quick emergency rooms out that don't involve stairs the mode mill the mobility needs of the upcoming courts will grow and to assume otherwise shows haphazard planning and is just plain dangerous I feel my concerns have been dismissed or minimized most concerning was being told that students would be shuffled to evenly distribute them in the two small classrooms regardless of whether they fit their needs mission statements are just words what are we teaching by segregating and isolating spread students well this is a good lesson for the planning of future school modernization what about the Franklin students now I understand and agree that making radical changes this year would be hard and ultimately not benefit the students but what will be done now so that these students can enjoy an amazing year like other Quakers and then can you wrap up these things and then you need a plan for the future to meet the goals of the mission statement the safety of the students and show the community the district is committed to what they say my son and his peers deserve better thank you thank you and appreciate the material you've provided us and we'll ask one of our committees to look at it with that works on facilities Amy Zajac za j AC I consider my child a success story he is doing remarkably better than he was a year ago through constant advocating working with outside support and along with my school team we have set up a system so that he can successfully access his education my child is impacted by an invisible disability his brain processes information differently things such as making eye contact playing with other children understanding social inferences and nonverbal cues are hard for him my child is in a least restrictive environment with additional support from a paraeducator my child also has an outside ABA therapist to come into the classroom ABA is behavioral therapy it is more specialized than the PBIS systems currently in place that many PPS schools ABA therapy is considered medical and behavioral treatment the goal of ABA therapy is to generalize skills across all environments including school the special education department is rolling out a new district policy that directly affects my child and also other children impacted by autism I have provided copies of the old and new policy to board members along with a list of parent concerns from multiple families per mr. Williams this policy was written by mr. Cantwell and mr. Baker mr. Williams gave the reasons for implementing the policy unfortunately mr. Williams was not familiar with my son his situation my school team or how well the old policy had worked at Woodmere my principal is supportive of my advocating for my son I asked my principal if she was comfortable with my asking for a waiver from mr. Cantwell and she was I have reached out to mr. Cantwell and I have also reached out to the Ombudsman there are many issues with this policy but the one I want to highlight is the one that is my biggest concern the policy is asking for the ABA therapists to observe and collect data only and not interact with my child at all this is not ABA therapy this is a consult as I understand that the district has autism consultants and no ABA therapists Kindergarten started off at Linn without any of the supports or accommodations in his IEP being utilized by staff staff at his old school told me they had no idea how to work with him or to get him to do anything he regressed and we were considering repeating kindergarten or even pulling him out for the remainder of the year through petition we transferred to a more stable inclusive school his ABA therapist was able to come in work with the team model to the parrot and set up a very specific behavior plan some staff have suggested that ABA should not happen at school only after school if school ends at 3:00 and you add in the drive time of one and a half hours along with the two-hour session my child does not get home until 6:30 this leaves very little time for playing relaxing or even homework I like being involved with my school but I arrive late to PTO meetings because I'm picking up my child from an ABA session the board wants to be optimistic about moving forward with change and new leadership I share your optimism and I commend the board with the direction they are moving in right now I'm respectfully asking for the school board members to review this policy there is a history with other families behind this policy and how it evolved therefore I strongly believe that this policy needs
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to be examined in great detail while taking into account parent input along with the input of other stuff thank you for your consideration and thank you for providing the information we'll followup with Judy Martin our next two speakers are Gina Leung and Joshua dick Krista hi my name is Gina Lundy LUN de and I'm also speaking about the new APA policy so my son is four he is an amazing little boy who was also autistic and the way that he functions in the world is greatly influenced by his autism and my son isn't even severely impacted but even still before he started ABA therapy which is the evidence-based treatment for autism he had some troubling behaviors like bashing his head into the floor when he was frustrated or not being able to speak other than repeating your words back he couldn't make his own sentences and after only eight months of ABA therapy in conjunction with being in a mainstream preschool he is now interacting in many ways at or almost at the level of his peers and he is happy an adorable child and this year his therapists are working with him in his classroom and he has arriving he receives about 15 hours per week of therapy right now through our insurance and it seems like a lot but it's play-based he loves it and it's working really well so PPS as you know has just made a policy change that they are no longer going to allow ABA therapists in the classroom to support children in school they will allow them to enter the classroom for two hours a week to observe and collect data only no interaction my son is going to be in kindergarten in two years and he and many other children are going to be directly and irreversibly impacted by this policy and I'm asking you that you ask PBS to make a policy that addresses their concerns without removing access to care and I'm going to give you a heads up because if you speak to the special ed Department you will most likely be told what I was told which is that if you don't know about autism therapy might actually sound like a convincing argument but that we have autism specialists on staff and that they're highly trained but they are consulting with the IEP team about once per month and not working directly with the children so if your child is struggling with reading or something how effective would it be for a reading specialist to observe them and consult with the teacher once per month and never actually read with your child that's the difference and it's a truly ridiculous argument to say that that is an acceptable alternative we also participate in therapy outside the classroom but one of the traits of autism is not being able to generalize across different contexts so because appropriate social behavior is an unavoidable part of school and learning the support often does need to take place at least partially in the classroom for the child to learn and to be successful in therapy so there are many ways that we thought of to address their concerns other than a blanket ban on therapy which i think is cruel arbitrary and uncomplete ly unnecessary it targets a population that already has so many challenges and a lot to contribute to our schools and to their community and it also hurts your teachers which benefit from having this assistance in the classroom and training so I'm asking that you stand with us and get this help us get this policy change thank you my name is Joshua de cristo de CRI sto I'd like to speak to you tonight about an issue facing those of us who live in Northeast Portland specifically the boundary changes that have been proposed for king school saving school and almeida school it's always humbling to come to a situation like this in here everybody's experiences and so I'm hopeful that the board will pay attention to this issue and not necessarily try to categorize the importance of these numerous issues that the board is dealing with but we'll take a few minutes to consider this issue on its merits specifically what my concern is number one the data that has been provided to the board by PPS regarding enrollment at King is extremely inconsistent in the board's materials that were provided by PPS the enrollment figures for k5 students at King has
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indicated at two 99 that's inconsistent with all of the other data points including specifically the data prepared by PS use population Research Center which is what my understanding is PPS is supposed to rely on and I encourage the board to look at that data because it's much more than is indicated in the proposal it's the proposals also inconsistent with other data points relied on by PPS at various times over the last year and before even considering any boundary changes it seems like the board should be well aware of what the data is actually saying even more importantly I think the data points indicate that under the proposed boundary change both Sabin and King would actually have lower increases in enrollment that seems very inconsistent with the objective and I think that without accurate data the board should not move forward with any proposed boundary changes between King and excuse me between King and Sabin in fact the data show from PSU at least that both Sabin and King will have in excess of the minimum 360 students for in vibrant k5 program within five years moreover there's no indication anywhere in the proposal as to the effect of this proposed boundary change on title one funds at King the proposal indicates that it would drop the free lunch eligibility percentage of the population in the King catchment area to something pretty close to 40 percent and having already identified numerous inconsistencies in the data I think that that should be of concern and the board should consider what effect that would have I have many more data points like this that I think the board should consider without any accurate information really should not move forward on that proposed boundary change thank you for your time thank you [Applause] lastly we have Colin neder corn and zaleka gardener Collin neder corn in Edie er ko ORN so thank you to the board for your service I wanted to provide some comments on the Tubman and rose way heights feeder pattern proposal my family's not in the school system yet we have a six-month-old and the reason I'm here speaking to you rather than at home is I'm pretty concerned about the process that's being used to to implement these pretty significant changes that will change the way school works for you know a large swath of the population in in Northeast Portland including my son I am really grateful that one of our neighbors put a leaflet in my mailbox and let me know about it you know I I wonder if all of the families that are affected by this know that this is actually happening whether they're in it you know not in school yet or currently in school the plan and the timeline for the plan has many red flags for me it's really concerning as a parent that PPS would pursue this so aggressively without properly notifying the public and allowing time for thoughtful public discussion and comment without considering the views of D Brack I you know looked look when I learned about this I kind of looked back in time and I saw D Brack had a draft of boundary changes that they in their June 1st 2017 meeting that are pretty different from the PPS boundary changes and I watched the board meeting from August 15th where the boundary changes weren't presented but the board asked hey was was D Brack consulted on this and the answer was no and you know it seems like there's not there's not a lot of time for you the board to consider this this pretty significant change thoughtfully either and lastly and importantly we have an incoming school superintendent who starts in October right around the time that this change is supposed to be voted on and they'll you know they'll they'll be responsible for implementing it and it'll be their legacy even though they're they're effectively not involved in this decision and in the time that I spent to understand this proposal it seemed like there's even some collateral damage that that wasn't wasn't considered like you know what whether it's Kairos or access or the fact that lots of parents are pitted against each other now talking about
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these changes I think that you know what I would encourage is that PBS slow down so that we can allow adequate time to make a good decision and really unbundle whatever decisions need to be made that are driving this aggressive timeline and that we engage stakeholders in in the proposed solution not just you know hey here it is we're gonna vote on it and that we consider all of the impacts of the decision and ensure that the change actually improves the education experience for all the affected students thank you thank you completed our public public comment period there are other points in time and the board meeting when we have votes that there'll be if you've signed up for public comment on those those points will call on people but for now we're going to move to board resolution 55:14 the Board of Education recognizes that dyslexia has significant educational implications that need to be addressed and we're designating October this resolution would designate October 2017 as dyslexia Awareness Month about a month and a half ago we had some individuals and parents and the community come and ask us to do this so we're moving ahead tonight I'm going to ask director Esparza Brown to introduce this resolution background on the importance of our teachers becoming knowledgeable supporting students with dyslexia it's important to know that it's a widespread issue one in five students struggle with reading this highlights the importance of our teachers being knowledgeable about how to serve these students since every teacher in our district is likely to be responsible for teaching children who experience reading challenges or dyslexia dyslexia is a neurobiological II based learning disability that is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent reading word recognition and poor spelling and decoding abilities recently or again passed SB 1 zero zero three requirements school districts to ensure that at least one teacher in each k5 school risa have received training in identifying dyslexia and students beginning fall 2018 so this legislation also requires higher education to incorporate dyslexia standards in all licensure programs so as a district therefore we have both a legal and a moral imperative to serve all of our students effectively highlighting dyslexia through this resolution will allow us to do this more effectively and raise awareness for supporting all students to become successful readers thank you thank you the board will now consider a resolution number five five one four resolution to designate October 2017 as dyslexia Awareness Month to have a motion jab second second director Esparza Brown moves and director Bailey seconds the motion to adopt resolution 55:14 miss Houston is there any public comment on resolution 55:14 yes we have two Meg Hagen and Lisa Lyon well good evening members of the board my name is Lisa Lyon lyo n on behalf of decoding dyslexia Oregon I want to thank director Kahn stamp for recommending that the board vote on a resolution tonight to recognize dyslexia Awareness Month at Portland Public Schools before I begin I'd like to ask permission to recognize those who are here to support the passage of this resolution okay can you all stand up great awesome thank you right [Applause] recognizing in October is dyslexia Awareness Month would be a great first step for families who have been trying for decades to get appropriate evidence-based instruction for their family members we have heard stories from multiple families who have shared their disbelief that their grandchildren are still unable to receive appropriate intervention for their dyslexia much like their parents and grandparents before them they remarked that they would never have believed that they
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would still be fighting for their grandchildren's right to be taught to read so many decades later oftentimes dyslexia is a generational struggle because of the impact of family genetics we believe the tide has begun to turn and dyslexia advocates no longer need to convince you that dyslexia is real or that dyslexia is a meaningful descriptive and useful term that should be freely used in schools and at IEP meetings now that there is agreement and recognition about using the word dyslexia after it has long been shunned it is time for the real work to begin there are still too many teachers through no fault of their own who have never been educated about dyslexia or the foundational building blocks of literacy to unpack the daily reality that most children with dyslexia have not been identified nor are receiving evidence-based instruction at PBS school teachers will need training and sustained mentorship Senate bill one zero zero three requires that one teacher from each k5 building attend an eau de approved training on dyslexia although the completion of this training is not required until July of 2018 more than 95 educators from various districts have already completed this 30 hour professional development I was delighted to recently learn that PPS has recently made arrangements to have their educators trained in April see many PPS parents and educators are eager to be informed of these details we are encouraged that school based communities are beginning to form around dyslexia parents are hosting meetings and are connecting and educating other parents about to navigate this journey called dyslexia schools are providing space for meetings to be held allowing bulletin boards and libraries to host displays and dyslexia resources are listed on their websites awareness is growing and slowly the shame that has accompany dyslexia for so long is being brought into the light lastly I invite you to increase your personal knowledge of dyslexia by attending a session in November the 11th that's the OSB a conference titled things I wished my school board members know thank you for your time and your willingness to support this resolution declaring October dyslexia Awareness Month hi my name is Meg Hagan h a gan good evening members of the board on behalf of more than 7,000 PBS students who have dyslexia I'd like to thank you for voting on the resolution to recognize October as dyslexia Awareness Month at Portland Public Schools along with this vote I challenge you to take action during your terms towards helping our entire school population to learn to read at grade level if a student does not read at grade level by third grade they have a one in seven chance of ever becoming a grade-level reader and have a four times higher chance of dropping out of school or a 13 times higher chance if they are economically disadvantaged 85% of all incarcerated juvenile offenders are functionally illiterate take a moment to think about how your life would have turned out if you had not been able to read fast and accurately how would you have felt as a student sitting next to peers who took notes with ease as you struggle to get one word on the page in the time that other students wrote 10 what if you are never able to finish an exam in the same amount of time that it took your classmates or if you struggle to spell the words you spent hours studying only to be told that you need to try harder next time it's an arduous journey through school when one has dyslexia and awareness is needed how do we help the kids who are at most risk for reading failure whether it be from dyslexia from poverty or from I ll research shows us the answer is providing a systematic explicit program of instruction that includes the five components of reading to all children and training our teachers on structured literacy a year ago last spring this board approved a new k5 literacy adoption one that took six components from five companies and combined them into a unique reading program reading and writing program of its own while seemingly progressive it's also Cavalier the effectiveness of the suite of materials is unproven and requires greater skill and judgment by teachers to pick the right lessons and the smartest sequence for skill building are we leaving it to chance that our student population will learn to read data is important it can guide decision making have you been provided with data from the schools that have been using the new curricula I implore you to contact the office of teaching and learning to ask for the data did s back easy CB m and Dibble scores improve in the schools that are using the adoption is project Reed being used with fidelity as a tier 2 intervention in every one of those schools please publicize this data on the PBS
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website and allow education reporters access to this data it's imperative that this board follow up on the literacy rollout and confirm the data the rollout began as 43 percent of Portland's third graders including 70% of blacks and Latinos fell short of the s back reading standards the repercussions of not reading at grade level are too devastating to leave it to chance thank you so much for considering our proposal and the resolution thank you both and thank you everybody for coming is there any board discussion on this resolution director Esparza Brent yeah you can comment on the resolution or you can comment on you can comment on whatever you'd like to comment okay this is my own discussion so that is a topic for teaching and learning I have been trying to collect the data for like mid-year and spring data from last year and then the year before so kind of a pre and post for the new pilot as well as a spec data we are still collecting that I'm gathering that as well as an outside evaluation that we are still waiting for so that data is ready and I think that's on the teaching and learning agenda remember next month or the following month watch for that too in which we will carefully look at the data I look across schools look across student groups and learn you know if lessons learned in what we need to do to tighten it and in particular to make sure that we are addressing the five components of reading it is a somewhat of a chance taking to bundle disparate programs together certainly so we will we are monitoring and working to monitor that most closely so our goal is for everybody to be a reader and to have all teachers learn to teach all students thanks so much for the teaching and learning agenda should be posted on the website anybody else want to comment the resolution so the board will now vote on resolution five five one four all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution five five one four is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative Tran voting yes thank you board members and thank you to everybody who came tonight to share your perspective and advocating on behalf of it we really are glad to see you here [Applause] so in July there was a board work session discussion about the sequencing of the modernisations for the 2017 health and safety bond projects and then in addition on September 12th there was a presentation and discussion by the finance audit and operations committee of the board and tonight the board is recommending a resolution relating to the timing of the projects not just the modernization but also the very important health and safety components of the bonds I'd like to ask the chair of the Finance on audit and operations committee director Moore to introduce this item as director Prem Edwards noted the finance audit and operations committee considered this resolution that lays out the sequence of the bond work going forward in addition to ongoing health and safety and accessibility work which will account for at least a hundred and fifty million dollars of the 2017 bond this resolution proposes that the sequencing of schools being either completely built or rebuilt and modernized would be as follows Kellogg middle school Madison High School Lincoln High School Bentsen Polytechnic high school and the target date for our students to occupy the new Kellogg middle school is August 2021 completion of a modernized Madison High School is anticipated to be August 2022 target date for students to occupy
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a new Lincoln High School is August 2023 and the target date for students to occupy phase one of a modernized Benson is August 2022 and there will be additional phases of the Benson high school modernization project beyond that that the committee voted unanimously to recommend approval of the resolution so just a point of clarification that while there's very clear sequencing for the modernizations it's full steam ahead with the health and safety components of the bond and that's that's it's the assumption is that's going to starting from this the summer's work continued on til it's done but it's so it's not like it's see coincident with the other modernizations it is sequential well it's in many cases it's concurrent I'm sorry yes that's what I meant okay so the the health safety and accessibility improvements have already started they'll continue throughout the school year whenever possible the the health safety and accessibility will be bundled for these four schools the work will be bundled together so that they can happen at the same time but throughout the district the health safety and accessibility work is going to be rolling out in in phases we're gonna have update on that shortly and two agenda items but it's ongoing yes I just want to make sure it's not after no it has already started do I have a motion for this resolution so second director so director Baylor Bailey moves and director Esparza Brown seconds the motion to adopt resolution five five one five miss Houston is there any public comment on this resolution no no public comment is there any board discussion on this resolution just do it the board will now vote on resolution 55:15 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed was indicate by saying no any abstentions representative Tran yes resolution five five one five is approved by a vote of six to zero with student representative Tran voting YES so the resolution is adopted next we're going to have the first reading of our public records policy when the new board was installed in July we made it a priority to there had been a significant amount of work already done on the revised public records policy we made it a priority to continue to move it along we want to thank the Communications Office for all the work they've done - on this policy and support the board's work we actually last board meeting had brought the current version of the first reading of the board the public corrects policy at that meeting but we had had some fairly significant input from essentially two sources one some some community members who had a significant experience with our public records policy and also some significant input from the Society of Professional Journalists and we incorporated all of the input and had a good discussion at the both the board level but also at the the taskforce level as well and because there had been significant changes we didn't want to have the first reading without people having an opportunity to look at the new changes so tonight's really the official first reading although this this version is the same version that was that discussed at the last board meeting we just want to let people to have time to absorb all the changes we made there was a question of the last task force meeting about one additional change and that was that if there had been a request for public record and it had been supplied but that the redaction was so significant to make the record production useless we had a discussion about whether that was something they could appeal to the to the superintendent and board and
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eventually to the DA or go straight to the DA and after consultation with and we could so we considered whether we should add a provision that would allow for the appeal of a redaction but we haven't made that change and we didn't make a change because there's already a mechanism by which individuals can appeal read actions so it would just be stating law the law in our policy which isn't necessary so we did not add that but people should individuals should know that there is appeal process if you don't if the district rejects a public records request but also if it's so significantly redacted that there is a peel pastas for that as well so really we have the same policy that we had several weeks ago and this is just the official first reading a version of the draft policy is posted on the PPS website under board policy and then draft policies the public comment period is 21 days with the last day to comment being October 17th 2017 contact information for public comment will be posted with the policy and the board will hold a second reading of the policy on October 24th 2017 at that time if we have public comment either from the community or the bargaining units we will consider that and we there potentially could amend the policy or if there's not significant public comment that the policy that would lend to changes in the policy then we would have a second reading and approve the policy is there any questions or comments from board members just thankful that we're doing this Oh dr. mark in between sneezes I want to thank the staff the staff work on this was great it was it was fast it was responsive it was hugely collaborative I mean this was great thank you great so that's the first reading and we'll be back to us on October 24th next I want to ask director Bailey who's the chair of the enrollment and transfer committee to introduce the next agenda item which is okay sorry we're actually going to go to the next facility issue and then we'll get to middle school planning so in May of 2017 Portland voters provided strong support for the PBS school bond that was designed to address both urgent and long-term needs of our district facilities so our students have safer healthier and modernized facilities and one of the things the board has done just because this is something that is a very high priority for the district and we know for parents in the school district as well that we have a board committee to provide oversight and our chair of that committee is I director rosen so dr. Rosen give us an update so the health and safety and accessibility committee is getting underway with a meeting tomorrow morning and the focus is keeping the promise of the may 2017 bond to clearly articulate by December 2017 a short and long term strategy to all currently identified health and safety and accessibility issues the oversight and public transparency will be shared with the community under the umbrella of again keeping the promise the committee will meet on a quarterly basis and work closely with the superintendent and district staff to share the work already underway in our buildings we have at least 150 million dollars to spend as specified by board resolution 53 94 which states that the board has a clear plan on how at least 150 million dollars of additional health and safety investments will be spent to first address all high-risk areas as a priority for lead paint lead and water fixtures and pipes radon exposed asbestos and a minimum level of acceptable fire protection with the rest of the remaining dollars to to address other health safety and accessibility issues the board should consider increasing the amount of additional
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health and safety investment in this bond to ensure issues of LED radon exposed asbestos and high-risk facility issues are fully resolved so the works beginning with our first board meeting tomorrow and I just wanted to introduce Jerry Vincent our chief operating officer who is really in charge of the work and he'll be working with us hand-in-hand so thank you I thought he just wanted to say thank you thank you you know thank you one thing we had discussed is having a sort of transparent plan that parents in the community you can see when their schools are gonna be up I know in late August the first of many fixtures was replaced and I'm wondering if you could just share give an overview of the schedule at least for the lead in the water fixture replacements and then how it is that parents and I know this would be in concert with director Rosen's committees but how it is that parents will know sort of when their school is scheduled on what timeline peak latitude so first of all we're referring to this process as the water quality because the focus on the lid we're also testing for copper and other things as well what the same testing because that would come up second and third and fourth hey you got the let out but what you do about the copper what you do about so it's our water quality is what we're calling this effort right now in the improvement so we're excited we have everything going at one time all the plates are spinning so while we're hiring up on the people we have the first bit of 15 schools that's out schools 16 through 90 we prioritized we've taken it through two departments for some vetting and we have one more I need to meet with tomorrow morning on we MoU with equity we met with funded programs I want to get with sped tomorrow and find out is there anything we're not seeing and how we're rolling these out everything's going to the web so what we're gonna be doing and we'll talk about more and the commedia Morrow we're bidding them out in 15 that seems to be all the plumbers contractors are available can handle at one time so it'd be six groups of 15 it's a rolling start every six to eight weeks as we start award the bids we get on the street we do job walks on the process and then we award the bids they start the projects and then halfway into the prod they're finishing we start testing we do the flush protocols and the testing all of this is going to be in a matrix that will be on the website that will update each Friday so people can see this in process group two is now onto the street bidding group two is going to the board for a ward so you can see when it's coming 90 is a lot of schools but they'll roll out in like an eight week program says that and if we run and run into no secondary issues where it's partial pipe replacement in the walls or our trenches out to the street this thing this all rolls out into next June this is ninety schools this is fast overall but careful and and with the process because everything is involved in a flush protocol to make sure the results come out correctly with the testing I will say and so it be on the website a directory members and so they'll be able to see exactly in real time where that's at it's just like what we did the same transparency after did water test last July in August those took a delay to be there because everyone in the city Parks and Rec city everyone was testing their water with the same consultant firms so we were told a two-week turnaround in it being about 12 weeks so it got there but there was a delay well that's not the case now so we have four firms on board but be able to get those results back and post and roll it's a rolling start on all the water quality just like we are with the bond projects that you just talked about so we have an agenda to go through tomorrow we've got some exciting things we have an infographic that tells pictures what we're doing because there's a whole lot more detail to it we'll talk about tomorrow and we have a contractor scheduled at one point we're meeting with director Rosen and the group and it'll come back to the board the board needs to decide technically you'd think this would be a no-brainer we need to technically decide on what a drinking fixture is versus a faucet and that's important not only for the drinking fixtures that we swap out and tests but literally for EPA and Healthy Schools programs you have to come back and in time intervals down the road and keep testing them so we're gonna roll all those out TIA like I said ring some play and it starts tomorrow with our with our committee and we'll start to get things up on the web I'm thinking a week or two on the
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outside we were short people so it's not it's not not wanting to it's just we got to have all the folks in place and I will tell you this we attended a WebEx our water team all of us did last week it was New York City talking about how they tackled their water issue and and and they're led in the water and luckily we're on mute because we a lot of us we looked at a lot of times are listening to them and up on the screen and we're either doing everything that they were doing and they had to do it and learn as they went we're we're ahead of them and we're doing more involved in a deeper and depth of what we're doing than what they were doing and in the end they said boy you know what really wish we could have done this and this will probably have to go back and do that and that's already part of what we're doing on the front end so we've got some great consultants by people working you know hard on this and we even have people going out at the sites you know 1:00 in the morning to check on the work and things like that so we think we're moving through it quickly but carefully and so that's we would want the board in the community to know I just a fine point on the communication so it was just a massive undertaking for the obstacle modernization and facilities to get the three neither new or remodeled schools opened you know on time and on budget and just now that now that you've thank you and you know I think there's a real expectation and the parent community that we be communicating really clearly now what the cycle is and so if it would be possible maybe for the committee tomorrow to get a schedule of when things will start getting posted every Friday because I think that'll be a great tool and it'll give our community and parents confidence that very large bonding package they voted for is going to be delivering on the promise well that's what we want you know I mean the these beautiful big structures are important but but this is a safety thing right and so it's it's just this amount of money but it's it's right now it's of this much importance in terms of the whole bond and we want the community to know that so the communication part is actually taking longer than the construction part right now the flush protocols so we do it right and then communication you've got to rebrand that yeah I know yeah so it's just it's it's how you roll it out and it's how we it's how we cover it so it's important because you do one little slip-up and your readings are way off and you go back and you're doing the whole process again so yeah thank you director Rosen and we're looking forward to your next your next report now we're going to go to middle schools so director Bailey and directors Moore and Anthony have been quite busy recently and we wanted to provide it an update and I think as we've said before that middle schools this is going to be on the board agenda for the next several meetings so that there's an opportunity for there to be sort of continuous information flow to and from the community so director Bailey thank you so Portland Public Schools is as it's been for several years starting to take on two major structural inequities one of those are the k-8 schools that were implemented about 10 years ago and almost from the get-go there are issues in terms of how we provided services to students and so now we're undoing those last year we opened Oakley green and we're on schedule 2 for next fall to open Rose Bay Heights and as middle schools that requires adjustments in our second inequity which is that our boundaries we haven't had a and ongoing program to adjust our boundaries to match school populations with the size of the facility going back to k5 and Mill Schools means we have to do boundary adjustments as well and staff has put together a thoughtful proposal on how to do that for these two middle schools will likely have more work to do for several years and especially and it'll be three years hopefully when Kellogg gets opened and that will help us complete that transition from k eights to K fives and middle schools but we've have a proposal out we've had a lot of public input and
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hairiest Eva's here to update us on what we've heard so far and the process going forward in terms of future listening sessions and how and in our timeline for decisions and Laura Parker is here as well to report him thanks Thank You chairman woods and directors Moses I'll I'm gonna give you an update on what's been going on with our community engagement I'm happy to report that community engagement on the to middle school proposal is well underway and I'm gonna say again for those of you who are either current or former D Brack members this is been going on for a while but now we're back at it you had a robust listening session last night which is the second of two such sessions that you've had and there is still a lot more to come which I will detail in just a bit and I'm also going to spend a little time giving you a breakdown on the kinds of responses that we've had from those two listening sessions but also from some other sessions that we've had and approximately 300 comments that have come in either online through our targeted email system or written comments that were given to us at the board at the listening sessions but first I just want to talk for a few minutes on why we do this just so everyone understands can be engagement sessions are held for I would say two main reasons there's probably others as well but one is to inform the stakeholders what we're doing so that they have the information base that they can you know react to and then the second primary reason is to get the response that ultimately improves the proposal that we've started with and so that's why we're doing all this and that's already happened in some of these sessions we're starting to see comments that have come in that are affecting the proposal and I'm sure that's going to continue I want to give you just a little bit more background the proposal to open these two mental schools that Harriet Tubman Rose Way Heights has been the subject of district conversation for you know certainly more than two years maybe more than three years and back in the spring of 2016 d brock that district wide boundary Advisory Committee I forgot what the R stands for review held a series of community engagement sessions on enrollment balancing and the Jefferson Madison grant areas and with the idea of opening those two middle schools in time for the 2017-18 school year we know that didn't happen at the time deep represent a 20 page memo to then superintendent Carol Smith on community response so there was quite a bit of response to this idea of opening these two middle schools back then but that work was put on hold by interim superintendent Bob McCain following the departure of superintendent Smith the work was restarted in 2017 with an emphasis on the middle grades framework the idea that we want to start you know not just opening schools but opening exemplary at middle schools that would be a model for the rest of the district and then the work on feeder patterns and boundaries was made a priority of the office of systems and planning performance they devised an initial proposal for feeder patterns and boundaries that was vetted through superintendent direct reports through D Brack through a group of principals and senior directors significant changes were made after input from those groups and that's resulted in the kind of proposal that you that everybody has before them now so once we felt that we had this well thought-out and vetted proposal we restarted the community engagement process to date we have had the following engagement sessions upon old leadership gave input regarding the placement of Vietnamese DLI we had a meeting on oh I'm sorry can you explain what that acronym is for those who aren't I don't know you know I've only heard it referred to as upon oh but Asia Pacific that's one of those ones I can bring it back to you is it I do a quick google - I'm gonna ask you that at some point to have a whole summary so that we can capture that for the community of what all the feedback and listening sessions and groups that we've had and we should just yes and make sure that we spell out the acronyms I think you've got it yes I thought was good much more realize this complete update in addition to that we had a meeting with Rose way Heights area parents and principals to discuss cake conversions boundary changes and other issues we had a meeting with super sac the the group that the student group
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that advises the superintendent to talk about the middle school experience and kind of the aspirations for the new middle schools you've had the two board and listening sessions one at Madison High School and one here to try to get different communities involved in the discussion D Brack had a work session last night to do a kind of fine point look at the pros and challenges of the current proposal we have minutes from that meeting that will supply - you had some interesting observations and additionally there has been testimony in front of the enrollment and forecasting committee and before the board at regular meetings in addition to the listening sessions we have solicited community input online and through a targeted email account that I mentioned earlier and today we have received nearly 200 comments online 38 con months submitted on paper forums and ten emails to the targeted account those are in addition to the more than 70 people who have spoken to you during your listening sessions I've read all the comments almost all this last batch I haven't quite got through from last night and I've been to all the listening sessions and so I'm going to just give you kind of a broad look at the major themes that I've seen come out of this and when we present you with that document that you're looking for I'll try to organize it in that fashion but there according to the day of the comments that I've seen and heard there's broad sentiment that the district is doing the right thing to open the two schools relocation of Kairos has prompted a lot of concern thus the relocation of the access program needs to be re-examined a vestal capture rate and current size is a concern there are many who think that this proposal is courageous and they ask you to stand firm against detractors to it there is some confusion over sibling and grandfathering policies that I think could be probably straightened out with not too much difficulty there is some sentiment among a group of families that Tubman is too far to go including crossing several busy streets for some families who would be redrawn out of the Beaumont area there has been a number of statements that we should understand that students are resilient and handle changes better than adults might think parents at least got and vessel are an MLK and Martin Luther King are excited about the opportunity for their children to attend middle school and I'm sure there's those were the most common comments but I'm sure that there's parents at other schools that are also excited to know that their students would be attending on middle school there's some question about whether the additional resources to ensure newly-formed the newly formed K fives that were k RK H now would have robust staffing depending on their size there are some question about who goes to Madison versus who goes to Grant High School and concerns around that and then there's there's a desire to keep the K for students at rows away heights together as a cohort but there's also kind of other side concerned that keeping that cohort together isn't necessarily equitable and then there's many many other discussion points but these were the ones that kind of left out at me as as as very common themes so I want to let you know that the community engagement is continuing at a pretty rapid pace we've got two community community meetings kind of large committee meeting scheduled one at Madison on October 2nd and then two for the Roseau Heights community and one on October 5 at Sabin for the tub committee community to notify people about that we done our email phone calls and we'll do reminder phone calls but we've also and this is in response to some comments that we've heard including tonight were mailing postcards to every resident in the affected area so that thank you and that's a process that it takes lead time and it's also you know takes it's somewhat expensive but we're doing it so that those should arrive any day and they get explicit and they're also translated in all five supported languages and you know we do have interpreters at each session and childcare and food as part of those two meetings were we're getting some outside help some facilitating from coraggio group which has worked with PBS before they're gonna help design these so that there's more than just kind of the standard stand up
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and give your comments for two minutes which which we've had but more you know potential for a small group problem-solving talking about boundaries but also about what we you know want to see in these schools and you know what kind of students that we hope that they produce and so forth so that there's some would get some community engagement in that as well get started on that we're also planning culturally specific meetings we have one set for October 9th at Scott for spanish-speaking families we've got one scheduled for October 10 at Rose Way heights for Vietnamese speaking families there have been meetings with leaders of the African American community already but we're also trying to work on setting a date for African American families to me that I think we're close to getting that done additionally our planning principles have been working really hard they've been scheduling their own meetings with PTAs with site councils Peter schools sei black parent initiative and others to get their input on the plan and so I think even though it's been a tight timeframe probably not what we would consider ideal for community input we are getting a lot of it and we will provide the board with summaries as well as copies of all the comments rereceive will also highlight where community input has influenced the plan I think Laura might be talking about that a bit and I'm happy to answer any questions you have thanks for a great overview questions just a question on the format of the second and the fifth so so it sounds like it's gonna be small group facilitation so just to be is it there's no public comment period so people should be prepared to come and participate in small group sessions or what will be prepared for okay that's not completely I think there still will be time for public comment as well where we're meeting with our consultants the next day actually tomorrow to just start working on that design that they're going to spend some time talking to two people here about what would be the best way to do it but there's just some thought that there should be more than just that sort of public comment aspect to it so I absolutely agree I just wanna make sure that people know sort of what the format will be and I'm can one thing I'm concerned about is so the most organized communities getting all the the time the time slots so I would hope that if there is public comment time period we'd do it like the first listening session that was done which sort of spread around to the different schools instead of just hearing from one school community who was super organized but hearing from across the schools I hope we'd do it that that way yes I agree and I think that's that's in works yeah I'd really encourage a bias towards the problem-solving I think that's much more productive use of our time right now and you know we've had a lot of comments of oh this is pitting one school community against each other getting to into a problem-solving mode I think helps people recognize that it's a systemic issue and that we have to recognize multiple viewpoints and I think that's I think that's much more helpful at this point then and I said it last night at the pub at the public session it's great to hear people say no don't do this but recognize that if you say no over here that mean that has implications over there and you have to take those into account as well I appreciate that dr. Ben so two other things for your timeline probably should be noted that I think that's speaking for the board we've all received probably hundreds of individual emails so that's the other way that information is coming in I also think if we're gonna be memorialized in timeline it's really important to start at the time period in which these inequities started because I think there is there are a number of people who are focusing on sort of the here and the now and this is just a new problem but this is a this has been a very significant equity issue for almost a decade and I think that should be noted because if we're asked to slow down there's lots of people in this community who want us to go full speed ahead because we've had you know a decade of kids go through schools without getting an F to be experienced
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so I think that's important to note in our in the the timeline yeah somebody totaled up the Jefferson cluster kids who had gone through K eights and it was a multitude and that was in that was 2016 that's the number of kids who went through K eights as opposed to a middle school experience with your under-resourced so that's not Madison that's not just southeast area that's not only not having a robust core curriculum or robust set of electives but it's also there were schools that the middle grade students actually were shorted two to three weeks of instructional time because they they're ending time end at the same time that elementary schools and I just think it's important that we recognize that that has happened and that's what one of the things were working to correct and for the those who were on the receiving end of it it was a long time coming for us to fix it can I just add to that for for some of that the last 11 years some indeterminate number of students were denied access to even core curriculum so it's not just electives it's not just athletics it's not just the fun stuff this is serious and I am hoping that the debate becomes more more cognizant of the choices that are going to need to be made there are no easy easy solutions here and we are pitting okay I'm not gonna put it that way this is very complicated and it may it may be satisfying to think that there are simple solutions out there but there aren't and every time we do something there are consequences for somebody else and the debate needs to needs to acknowledge that thank you for your passion and advocacy directors I'd love to add a few more details about what we're doing with all of this feedback in terms of bolstering the proposal so in terms of what the proposal includes we've heard from many advocates to move forward with a proposal that is inclusive of boundary change changes with balance which balance enrollment in the resulting k5 feeders while not overwhelming the size of the resulting middle schools in terms of the application of grandfathering and sibling clauses several of those implementation details were presented and discussed at the last enrollment forecasting committee meeting on the 18th for the purposes of determining some clarifications those year by year cohort by cohort details will be shared and host it as an appendix to the proposal within the weeks of there's clarity and that's a lot of nuances but it but it matters right to individual families so we'll provide that clarity within a week as an appendix to the proposal inclusive of the high school theater pattern discussions that occurred in terms of program location as part of the implementation plan the biggest call to action for alternative solutions is quite clearly around the future location of to choice programs operating inside PPS district lines the access program which is a PPS focus option choice program which the proposal indicates would new access is not a focus option program it is it is an alternative ed program for tag identified students which for those who meet the admissions criteria have the choice of enrolling in or the choice of staying at their neighborhood school so but it's not it's not a focus option that every focused option is term about I apologize for that but but thank you for making me clarify that is clarity both of these programs excuse me so the proposal indicates access would move to Humboldt and the Kairos charter school is a public school choice program currently leasing the Humboldt facility both of these programs serve Portland families and PPS students and while the primary objective of the proposal was to drive thoughtful planning for Tubman and rose white Heights identify feeder patterns and convert 8 k 8 into K fives with necessary boundary changes that stabilize enrollment identify capacity and utilization the location of these two programs access and Kairos has emerged as a question from almost every direction so in the engagement process
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with both internal and external stakeholders an extraordinary number of constituents have asked for an alternative that would not require Kairos to vacate the humble facility so at this juncture we are actively pursuing ideas that have been brought forth from a number of stakeholders specifically instead of access being located at Humboldt many stakeholders have asked to examine alternative solutions that would result in one of the following one a better understanding of what happens if access remains at Rose City Park yet still open Rose way heights and the impact of this is significant on several neighborhood schools but stakeholders have asked for clarity in those details to a to site location for access with colocation of the elementary program and colocation of the middle schools program those are the two different types of ideas and on solutions that many many stakeholders have asked us to examine so again given all of that community feedback that's coming from every direction those are ideas that we're actively examining and pursuing so both of those would have Kairos sting at Humboldt that is correct I'm going to ask about the colocation and and over to sites then does that allow I think one of the issues for access has been growth opportunities so with the co-locating yeah the two programs like allow for growth future in question and so that's one of the factors and desirable outcomes that has encouraged us to examine this step so in looking at those options we're hopeful that this would be a step in the right direction of being able to open up more tag services and more accessibility to tech services within within a variety of locations so yes thank you there have been a number of other suggestions that have been made by some of us and also some community members that I think we'd also like to explore and we can talk about it offline if you want but okay well one of them is and I don't know about the viability of of these things I mean we some of us got together and did some back of the envelope calculations so I mean one possibility is co-locating access and the Vietnamese DLI program at Rose City Park and not opening Rose City Park as a neighborhood school so I think that falls into the bucket of solution bucket number one a better understanding of what happens if access remains at Rose City Park so there's a series of configurations around that options such as the configuration you mentioned now okay and what those numbers really are hmm another possibility would be expanding the boundary of the area that's under consideration so expanding itself to look at I mean especially the the issue of vestal being under enrolled so so it's expanding though what which boundary so the current plan is is basically using the current Jefferson and Madison high school catchment areas some have suggested that there are some real dilemmas in in trying to resolve this issue using those existing boundaries and it is it possible by looking at expanding going beyond the boundary of the current boundary of Madison High School catchment area that perhaps we could we could make some adjustments some boundary adjustments there and I don't know I don't know they're talking about it going into the Franklin it's actually still in the Madison area but it would be south into the Harrison Park so it's not the Madison High School boundary it's the rows rows by Heights I'd like to see clarification which we can do offline I thought that at the last enrollment forecasting committee it was asked that
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we explain the different scenarios that were examined for a vestal inclusive of shifting the boundary south into Harrison Park but we can visit some of those details and additional ones if that doesn't meet your needs yeah I mean one of the issues is that vessel has a low capture rate in large part due to focus option programs it's not a boundary issue per se in terms of having too small a boundary it's our current policy around focus option enrollment that is really the heart of the issue there and that's if we expanded the boundary and then change that policy we might have too many kids and catchment area yeah there are 590 k5 students in the vestal catchment today 590 and I believe the capture rate will grow I think there's stellar leadership stellar staff a wonderful school community and other questions so to be continued what's our target dates for bringing up proposal to enrollment and forecasting and to the board and when we've our target date for approving of the board approving a proposal so scheduled meetings are there's a board meeting next week obviously on the 3rd there is a board work session on October 16th presumably a final will be out before that board work session director Bailey we have not yet scheduled an enrollment for a casting committee so I yield the answer to that question do you but I'm sure between the 3rd and the 16th it will be scheduled for finalization with the hopes of an anticipated board vote on October 24th so one thing I guess I'm just an ask of the committee and staff and you know great work thank you so much I think there will anybody who has a thought about it will have had an opportunity hopefully to to share it if we're going to have initial additional changes or refinements or anything related to the refinement on the sibling and grandfathering that we really need to try and get those surfaced sooner rather than later in sort of a concrete form so that people have visibility to them before we get to that actual actual vote so if one of these options that you discussed it would be great if we can get the data and make decision or may have a recommendation and make make decisions so that the community has a chance to yeah thank you again for all your work I know you guys have been working incredibly hard thank you the next item on our agenda is the organ School Boards Association nominee vote and it's a little bit complicated so you know the mic Julian don't like sorry this is a little bit complicated so there's nominations open for the School Boards Association Board of Directors and the legend several seats on the legislative policy committee so I'm going to ask for first for any nominations for the OSB a board of directors positions 17 or 18 and in this process you're a nominee and then there is a vote I believe by OSB a but this would be be a nominee from this particular one of these particular seats and then the full that would be a membership gets to vote so we there's two seats I'm looking at Rosanna there's two seats is that correct and we have in advance we didn't hear of anybody who was interested in those two seats although we did hear of interest with legislative policy committee so I'm gonna ask and this doesn't we're not required but I'm gonna ask if
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any board members have an interest in being a nominee to the OSB a board of directors I think we got plenty on our plate yeah just thought I'd ask okay so here you know interest and I think just a director Bailey's point we do have a very full agenda at the district level and I don't want to deny anybody else an opportunity for leadership so now we get to the legislative policy committee there are two seats and they are seats 18 and 19 and currently director Const M is in seat number 818 and she has indicated an interest in serving or being nominated for that seat again and then in addition we have there's the other seat which is 19 so I'm going to first ask if there are any is there any interest from board members to participate to be nominated for seat number 19 for the legislative policy committee yes I'm interested anybody else and then for the seat and we're eighteen director constan is interested is any other board member interested in that seat okay so the way we do our OS be a voting is by voice vote so first I'm gonna say all those in favor of nominating director Khan's damn for the OSB a legislative policy committee seat 818 please say yes yes yes any opposed will advance her nomination all those in favor of nominating director more to serve on the OSB a legislative policy committee seat 19 please say yes yes Nia post that that nomination will be forward as well thank you board members and thank you Rosanna in advance for affording those nominations on next we have our I'm sorry we've you've been you could have voted are you in favor okay so all sorry I didn't separate it out because we thought so next we have board committee and conference reports and the student representative report so I know that director Moore has a committee report and I don't know Moses if you have a student rep report next week okay okay so we had a finance audit and operations committee meeting just before the board meeting and it was a very full agenda again and lots of details to be had but I'm going to cut to the chase on several of these things the first item that the committee talked about was the final numbers on the state school fund and are the revenue estimate and because the state legislature ended up giving us giving the state school fund more revenue than had originally been proposed there has been a lot of speculation that that was going to produce something of a windfall some unexpected money unfortunately because we have some because we made how do I put this because the enrollment estimates that we made for last year and this year proved to be too optimistic we have we have seen as a decrease in the number of students enrolled in the district and because our
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budget is based on our projections of student enrollments we actually have less revenue than we anticipated in and in addition to that the state school fund is divvied up based on total state enrollments all of across all school districts so if some school districts in other parts of the states have a higher than expected enrollment then that's going to negatively impact our share of the state school fund bottom line no windfall so we're not in deficits or at least any more in deficit than we already anticipated but the the the anticipated pile of cash isn't there such as the question is was erected an actual decline or was a decline in in Greece it was an actual decline I believe Joanna from last year the question is a decline in enrollment was it the client last year was a or is it just less than we thought it was gonna be increasing yeah it's it's the latter so it's it's increasing its increasing less than what we expected yeah there's one more piece I'd like to add read that I didn't I didn't do a good job of emphasizing before in a piece that the adjustment as well is how much we collect from a local tax point of view as well and Portland generally speaking you know good for us tends to do better than the rest of the state generally speaking so often times in the past couple years been you know better than anyone's expectation that reduces our our take as well yes it's the wonderful world of measure five that's right so there's an upside and a downside to everything and it's mostly downside yes burns in Port Orford probably really appreciate it yeah okay so the other we we got a briefing on level threat assessments which is a new a new safety process that we're going to be adopting it's already in the budget so it's already underway and it's part of the the budget amendment number one that we're going to be considering later tonight and then the last thing we talked about was the we went into some more weeds on new staffing models and got a lot of great information and hopefully the staff are continuing to work on that and and you'll be getting updated kind of as things develop okay is there any resolution or anything coming to the next board meeting from your committee we-well we have a recommendation on the budget amendment and we also have a recommendation on another item in the business agenda so those would be two items that will come to the board next week tonight oh there's the one tonight but the budget amendment will be coming next week the budget amendment is coming next week sorry okay then I'll give you a preview yes the the committee the committee unanimously recommended that the full board approved the first budget amendment details so we've already heard from the nola transfer committee either a few two so the teaching and learning committee met last week we looked at we have three agenda items one was just clarifying the committee's mission and a work plan for the year then we had an overview of the middle school framework so the middle school frame the reviewing the middle school work the rollout will be an agenda item for much of the year as we're looking at kind of the five pillars of the the foundations of that middle school plan so last week was kind of the overview of the entire framework and the next few months we'll be looking at each of the components of that so this month we'll be looking more specifically at the the curriculum area and with the goal again of you know what does the middle school plan what is the district-wide middle school core look like so we'll do a deep dive into that we also looked at the dual language aspects of the middle schools and the feeder
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patterns there had an overview of also talking about the proposal for IB program at Tubman middle school there was a vigorous discussion about that and they'll that will continue to be discussed I think that just if the conversation was how we aligned that we're ensuring that we're learning middle school IV programs to high schools and aligned with elementary so that it you know we have there's a reason for having the middle school program and the elementary programs and I think the goal of it's one of the points of discussion was you know is it equitable if only some schools have that and I think the issue is we're really looking at starting the work on this and needing to examine if this is something that we can continue to roll out across the high school high school clusters and again I think that there's a lot of benefits to IB programs so that will be a continuing discussion in teaching and learning and then the last piece was access we looked at the new criteria for enrollment access and I think there were kind of that will also be a continuing discussion looking at eligibility and kind of percentages of students that qualify so I think those will be some consistent themes upcoming will be literacy adoption the rollout of the elementary adoption looking at that data and continuing a look on focus option programs thank you director Arthur Brown and director Rosen with your community meeting tomorrow I'm sure next meeting you're along beyond the list Moses at some point I'd love to hear it be great to hear more what the super sack thought about the Middle School plan so I don't know if that's something you want to discuss next week but I think it would be great to get an overview of what the discussion was so that we can sort of student voice present through you yeah at the board table just real briefly um I sent everyone home with the middle school plan the little packet and I told them hey like take this home and pick a few points that you want to discuss it at the next meeting so October 3rd which is our next meeting we're gonna take a brief moment to like collectively say like this is like what we thought about the missile plan and then I'll it can quickly jump that up before the board meeting starts thank you is there any other board business that anybody wants to raise I'm a little upset that were five minutes ahead of time behind schedule okay well don't speak too soon now now we have our business agenda and in our business agenda actually there was a placeholder and our general practices all resolutions or things that the board's going to vote on needs to be in the packet that is mailed out and has posted several days in advance we did have an exception this week that we're gonna allow this one time but to allow it we are again this isn't a practice we're going to encourage but we recognize there's a need to vote on it this evening apparently so I'm gonna ask for a present just a brief presentation it looks fairly administrative and dry but I think because it wasn't hasn't been posted over the last several days that if you could get provide a brief overview of what's in resolution five five one six before we have a discussion about the business agenda that would be appreciated sure yeah yeah and see I take the ownership for having bringing late we had the numbers done the analysis done this was prepared at probably 90% level about a month ago so it was that last 5% over the finish line so I apologize but it is what we're bringing in front of you is it is what we expected and and briefly what this is when we built the budget we need to put in an assumption for interest for our bonds we assumed intentionally we assumed a little bit high on the high end because making a change for the amount that's going to levied to bring that down is relatively straightforward it's basically asking you to approve that new levy amount in the event that our estimate would have been low it's it's a much bigger effort obviously to to notice that and to and to increase that levy so what we're doing is truing up that interest placeholder that we put in the budget and and really this is the form that will file with the with the counties that will levy the assessment for all the tax payers for our bond payments so we had put a placeholder in there of 124 million three hundred
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thousand we're changing that to 121 million 497 548 and we had asked one extension knowing that you know waiting until our bonds had sold and now that that's all done we just need to we need to ask you to approve this and then we'll file this tomorrow do any board members have any questions about that I think I know the answer but unless the question is this going to have any impact on taxpayers small no pipe I would say not noticeable if if you if we assume you have set the assessment of market value or the assessed value for the property is consistent with what we assume to be relatively small print not really noticeable and and if it's even present it would be on the downside it is a less than absolutely yes and we have a cap that was in the in the language on how much we could assess per per thousand okay and we're under that cap and we got a deal on interest rates so yeah we are our sale went incredibly well so our interest rate was just right around 3% depending on which number you look at and which was better than a lot of the other bond sales that had gone on recently and been better as we mentioned if they owe better than the Lycos we goes and we actually have a our bond rating is a little bit lower than Lincoln sui goes but we got a better rate and good good competition we have pride five or six bidders for each one each a sale so and in practice what's that mean for our bond budget well so being there a couple different things it means and generally speaking that they're trading off the DePrima the bond premium they pay up front versus the rate and we just saw our debt service cost will be less than they would have otherwise been it's competitive competitive sale and people love the Portland tax base and they love the appreciation we've had here and they love the fact that passed by 66% they love our catchment rates at PBS so it's all those all things that work into PBS is advantageous yeah glad somebody loves us less money for debt service means more money for actual well so because this money is levied directly to the taxpayers there's no there's no change in terms of our general fund if that's the question you're asking yeah just goes directly to taxpayer yeah that's a win oh yeah absolutely absolutely questions nice nice job and thank you for staying in providing the explanation I think thanks for doing this under duress Thank You Gordon burrs are there any other items there are there any items you'd like to pull for separate discussion on votes but agenda miss Hewson are there any other changes to the board agenda do I have a motion a second to adopt the business agenda so moved director Bailey moves the agenda and director Rosen seconds the adoption of the business agenda miss Hewson is there any public comments there's no public comment is there any important discussion on the business agenda so the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor including the student rep please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the business agenda is approved by a votos I'm not sure it's director Anthony still on the phone no I I bought it yeah okay I just want to check thank you for hanging with us the business agenda is approved by a vote of 6 to 0 with student representative Tran voting YES and a half an hour early the meeting is adjourned

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)

2017-09-26 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board- September 26, 2017

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