2017-12-19 PPS School Board Regular Meeting
District | Portland Public Schools |
---|---|
Date | 2017-12-19 |
Time | missing |
Venue | missing |
Meeting Type | regular |
Directors Present | missing |
Documents / Media
Notices/Agendas
Materials
12-19-17 Final Packet (8db39863537f06ce).pdf Meeting Materials
12-19-17 Meeting Overview (911fc3dd7cc5d5b5).pdf Meeting Overview
Minutes
Transcripts
Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - December 19, 2017
00h 00m 00s
the regular meeting of the Board of
Education for December 19th 20 17th is
called to order welcome to everyone
present and for joining us tonight any
item that will be voted on this evening
has been posted as required by state law
the meeting will be televised live and
will be replayed throughout the next two
weeks please check the board website for
replay times this meeting is also being
streamed live on our PBS TV Services
website as a reminder we have our PBS
Ombudsman Judy Martin she's back in the
back there 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 want or need it in
addition to being here this evening Judy
can also be reached at 5:03 nine one six
three zero four five or at Ombudsman at
PBS net also this evening we have Mary
Kane a staff attorney who's joining us
at the board table on behalf of the
interim general counsel and in addition
director Esparza Brown is out of town
this evening as this morning she
welcomed a new grandchild into her
family so she's not here we also have
interpreters with us this evening and
I'd like to ask them to come forward at
this time introduce themselves and the
language they'll be interpreting and
inform the audience where they'll be
standing during the meeting thank you
good job with Enoch we began Tom cake
vinegar with namsun Quivira Hisoka who
to circle a little geek joke with me
come on moving
when I start this Miami Lucia Cabrera
Hasani interpreting espanol Steve
necesitan waste our circle apart gracias
so badly I think I do
will Connie West Indies Peru's kiss
leave a modern period by just a pathetic
number that spasiba great thank you
before we get into our agenda items like
to provide an overview of the business
the board will be conducting tonight
after our recognitions we'll hear a
report from our superintendent and then
we'll have public comment will then
receive a presentation from an outside
auditor on our comprehensive annual
financial report and then return the
meeting towards turning the meeting
towards our schools where the board will
be asked to vote on the Kellogg middle
school master plan and also the Madison
High School contracting process lastly
the board will receive an update on the
progress of the Harriet Tubman
environmental assessment and after our
regular board meeting tonight the board
will convene into a work session to
conclude work on the superintendent's
2017-18 goals and evaluations instrument
as well as the board operating protocols
and code of conduct I would like to
start our off this evening or formal
part of our board meeting I'm going to
ask director Rosen to recognize one of
our outstanding educators Thank You
chair Broome Edwards the board is very
excited to hear that Cleveland High
School teacher Brenda Gordon was named
this year's recipient of the Oregon
outstanding biology teacher of the Year
award the award is presented by the
National Association of biology teachers
which since 1961 has honored the top
teacher in each state I was lucky enough
to have Brenda teach two of my children
biology she's an awesome teacher and
researcher who's worked really hard and
is very deserving of this honor I'd like
to invite miss Gordon to the staff table
to provide a few comments I would just
like to say that it was an honor last
month to represent Cleveland High School
in Portland Public Schools at the NAB T
conference in st. Louis Missouri it's
been a while since Portland has had a
teacher win this award so I was very
00h 05m 00s
thrilled when I was selected as one of
the one of the 50 teachers to attend but
anyway I'm very proud I'm very proud of
Cleveland High School we do some
fabulous things in terms of science
there but I have to stand on record as
saying that I am only one of many
talented science teachers in this
district congratulations
would you like to we're going to have a
picture taken with you before you before
you leave
so superintendent board if you
[Applause]
so this past week Oregon and Portland
lost aniconic leader maybe a little bit
meh Rivera Katz was a leader in the
Oregon Legislature and she definitely
was the boss of the city while she was
mayor but even with her many other
responsibilities she always had time for
schools and students we're gonna take
some time tonight to recognize the
leadership and work she did on behalf of
Portland's schools and students Bearcats
viewed access to high-quality rigorous
public education as an essential
component of a successful state and a
healthy strong Portland community she
understood that for Portland having a
strong public school system was
necessary for ensuring that families
would choose to continue to live in an
urban environment Vera's work to enrich
public education which would benefit all
children was sustained through many
years of service
she led in the legislature where she
served as the Speaker of the House and
as mayor she continued this commitment
she understood and used the bully pulpit
to advocate for high quality schools
Vera appreciate the use of data as an
active member the leaders roundtable in
the Portland OMA progress board and she
monitored the ups and downs of student
achievement sometimes to the chagrin of
school superintendents and school board
members
she was really focused on that data she
also hired a staff member to focus on
education and be a leader in the
community that person was Carol Turner
who's Carol's here tonight and Carol's
was also a former Portland school board
member Bearcats had the ability to
understand the complexities of the whole
system and the importance of building
partnerships to ensure that needs were
met for students she focused on early
learning programs with the county and
city commissioner Jim Francis Konishi
helped build the son programs she
partnered with PCC and also PSU to build
really a strong seamless pre-k through
20 education system here in the city and
of course Vera was a realist and knew
that success required stable and
adequate funding while passage a ballot
measure 5 occurred in 1990 there was a
change in school funding however but
initially there wasn't a big finance
impact on schools due to the growing
economy despite this Veera knew that
really the state needed to address its
funding issues post measure five and she
helped initiate and seek funding and
supported the coalition for school
funding now a statewide nonpartisan
group made up of parents staff business
people really advocates to keep the
pressure on the legislature to
adequately fund our schools this is when
I first met mayor Katz I was at the time
an active parent with three young kids I
was swept up in the coalition's work as
was director Rosen and director Bailey
and then in the early 2000s the
recession hit and at the time I'd run
for and was serving my first stint in
the school board so as the recession
rolled on the financial crisis increased
mpps faced the possibility of cutting 24
days off the school year which would
have been the shortest school year in
00h 10m 00s
the nation and as you see from the
students berry cartoon for a week Gary
Trudeau highlighted the really
predicament that Portland schools were
in because of the financial crisis and
it was something like doonesbury and
just the energy of the parent community
that really got very energized PPEs at
the time had less than a million dollars
in reserves and I think the other school
districts in Portland and city of
Portland there's four other school
districts were in a similar situation
and midway through this school year the
state legislature continued to reduce
our funding our that year funding levels
so not only did we not have any reserves
but also we ended we're ending up the
school year with about a twenty to
thirty million dollar operating deficit
so leading up to that we had not a lot
of money and we also had sort of
impending negotiations with the teachers
union and there was the potential of a
major strike we were looking at closing
down schools for five weeks
but fear was not going to allow that she
wasn't going to allow Portland Public
Schools and the four other school
districts in her city to really be the
be the district's in the entire country
that had the scores short of school year
and whose students were hit hardest by
the recession
so she brokered a deal that averted a
strike teachers at the time for those of
you were here they voted to and they
volunteered to work for ten days for
free and also at the same time Vera
decided that we really needed to bring
the community together because even with
the teachers working for ten days for
free and a business income tax on local
businesses there still was a pretty
significant hole so she brought together
a coalition and the result of that
coalition and included the count the
County Commission but also parents
business people teachers and other staff
people to really put together a solution
which would preserve our school year and
allow us to sort of bridge and past the
recession so with mayor Katz at the
Helms joined by teacher and school staff
and parents which would included
director we were younger than Rosenman
and Bailey and thousands of other
parents around the city built a
grassroots campaign and passed the
country's only local income tax
surcharge with a 58 percent rate and
this that passage of the local income
tax and the brokering the agreement with
the teachers that Association teachers
to work for ten days for free was just
classic Vera she could bring people
together in a room and she organized
cajoled prodded she got her elbows out
and she had pretty sharp elbows if you
run the receiving unto them but she was
determined that under her watch as the
mayor of the city
that she was not gonna let our schools
fail
she was energized and passionate about
public schools and as a parent and board
member I feel really lucky to have had
an opportunity to be a parent in
Portland Public Schools and a board
member at a time when we had a mayor who
viewed her responsibilities not just to
the city but also to our schools and our
students and you know she knew
fundamentally that the city's success
was linked to the success of our
students and our schools and time and
again not just in the 2000 recession but
you know year after year she thought of
ways in which she could help our schools
be better and also wait different ways
that the city can support him so with
that I'm going to ask Carol Turner just
come up briefly and make a few comments
and I should say as Carol is walking up
here all those things that Vera did on
behalf of education there was a person
in the back of the room sitting behind
her and that was Carol who was sort of a
steadfast and patient advocate for our
schools in a really difficult time Carol
thank you it's a real privilege to be
here and yes we're all younger in this
building for many years but my car
seemed to know the way it's just like I
was on autopilot thinking about the rest
of the week and it somehow made that
trip that I've made many times for 12
years as a school board member and then
00h 15m 00s
the mayor and I welcome our new
superintendent I know it's good to see
all of you so just one more bit of
history Joe you did a great overview I
do think the her leadership on the
Oregon Education Act for the 21st
century House bill 3565
really was a watershed for the state I
mean it was controversial it's evolved
it was affected by No Child Left Behind
but really for the first time in our
state I think it's set very high
challenging performance standards and
itself
are quite high for the state and that
was pushed for all of us how we dealt
with it can be debated but I think it
was a real important leadership aspect
of Faris so it is a privilege to have
worked with her and respect I respect
her greatly and I've thought a lot about
this last week about her leadership
capacity and I think a lot of it is that
she holds she had really core values
that she held true to and they really
guided her actions and she was also
capable of keeping her her ability to
keep her vision for Portland always was
in front of her so it kind of maintained
her core ability you referred to her
ability to be quite strong but she knew
ultimately that success would never just
happen because City Hall wanted it that
it required committed partners and that
that takes a lot of work and a lot of
time to build and maintain those
partnerships and she had the capacity to
bring out the best in people especially
in our other local leaders in the
business community in the neighborhoods
education government nonprofit and so on
but I also think I've reflected on she
really had the best she could bring out
the best in citizens and we are very
lucky in Portland to really have
citizens who are committed who want to
contribute to our city and to our
schools and she could do that she could
really kind of on power people from all
aspects of life to contribute and even
sacrifice for the larger community and I
think we want to thank her that thank
her for that but I am absolutely
confident at this point in time that we
also have other leaders and other people
in our community in in this community of
Portland Public Schools who have those
same talents in those same skills who
can really bring forth the best in
people so that everyone will step
forward to really work for the common
good and for the good of the whole so
with that I wish you all the best thank
you so much for your work it's so
important it's so complex as you all
know but it's so important for the
future of the children of Portland which
is what they're here
so deeply thanks Thank You Carol
[Applause]
anything else from other board members I
think it's interesting to just look at
the different relationships that cities
have that large cities have with their
urban school districts and sometimes the
structural relationships are very
different where city government actually
has a certain degree of control with
school districts but also just the tone
in here in Portland I think the the tone
of that relationship and the content of
it is very discretionary so it's
individual leaders and mayor's can
really take very deeply very different
roles in terms of how they see the
children of the city and the welfare of
the children and what that means the
relationship of the city should be with
the school district and I think as Carol
was saying you know Bearcats saw that as
inextricably linked and and each of our
mayor's has has seen it seen it
differently so I think it's incumbent
upon us to always engage with our
leaders in city government about the
future of our city and the future of our
children and that we are not this
autonomous Enterprise over here on the
other side of the river thinking about
how we're launching all these kids off
into their successful futures but like
Carol said that we're all working
together really on that same mission and
and we should we should do everything
that we can to enhance that partnership
and she's she's just a really shining
example of what can be done when those
when people are working together it
would have been easy for her to just
take a pass they had City had its own
issues to deal with but she didn't and I
believe we were at a huge inflection
point in the early 2000s where this
district could have gone the way of many
other urban districts and because of
Vera's leadership
00h 20m 00s
in partnership with many others that
didn't happen so we are fortunate to
have had her as a mayor for 12 years and
all the good things she did for Portland
Public Schools
thank you again Carol for coming tonight
next this has been a busy week before
the start of the winter break and I know
the superintendent has been out out in
schools and working hard once you share
with us what what's new and what's
updated good evening everyone I very
much appreciate the comments and the
celebration in recognizing our former
mayor because it also reminds me we are
celebrating an untimely passing of
another champion mayor I've coming from
the city of San Francisco who also lost
its Mayor Ed Lee who was a tireless
advocate for children youth and families
who I had a fortunate opportunity to
work very closely with who understood
that a positive relationship between
city government and its public school
system can only benefit everyone so my
hats off to to Ed Lee as well well
tonight's the last meeting of 2017 and
even though I've only been here about
three months I thought I would take the
opportunity to reflect on a few
highlights to remind us of sort of in
retrospect the good work and
accomplishments that continue to happen
all across the Portland Public Schools
there's an extraordinary collection of
individuals leaders educators support
staff students and our families that
make up the Portland Public Schools we
just recognized Brenda Gordon of
Cleveland High School who's been honored
as outstanding biology teacher of the
year I've seen three of our teachers
gelda Van Patten of da Vinci Lilian
Greenberg of Marysville Sarah Brown of
Ainsworth when teaching awards from the
Oregon arts Education Association we've
observed matthew bacon brenes of Mount
Tabor
middle one Oregon Teacher of the Year
award all of these folks have just
become wonderful ambassadors for our
public school system and our students
are extraordinary students our student
athletes continue to excel in sports
Alex slannen of Wilson won the state
championship in cross country are mighty
Jefferson Democrats begin their chase
for a repeat state championship in boys
basketball and we're proud of all kinds
of efforts across the organization we're
proud of our efforts and sustainability
Nancy bond won a Lifetime Achievement
Award from the intertwine Alliance and
Woodlawn led by its students became one
of just 94 schools in the u.s. to attain
green flag status from the National
Wildlife Federation and just yesterday I
was proud to announce dr. Yvonne Curtis
who was just as announced as PBS's new
deputy superintendent of instruction and
school communities who I am looking
forward to partnering in our work ahead
it is my intention to continue
identifying a leadership team and the
best talent for our school system that
continued to help us address our work in
front of us I also continue to enjoy and
be energized by my school campus visits
most recently I had the opportunity to
visit classrooms at rosa parks school i
got to a chance to hear a performance by
the orchestra class there as well as
visit classrooms from across the grade
levels I also paid a visit to Grant High
School at the Marshall campus last week
was impressed by the lessons I observed
and the level of discourse in which
students were engaged and I'm continuing
to work towards my goal of visiting
every school in the district by year's
end we're committed to continue working
and ensuring every one of our schools is
a safe and supportive teaching and
learning environment and so we're
proactively continuing to work at making
sure that our drinking faucets fountains
are flowing with clean safe water for
our students to drink safe drinking
water is now flowing at 11 schools
including Applegate Atkinson and Chief
Joseph where the faucets were just
turned on
this past week and there remains much
more work in front of us we will of
course keep working overtime to open
Harriet Tubman and rose way heights
middle schools last week district
leaders and myself along with four board
members met with the Pioneer community
to listen to their concerns and their
questions we want to thank everyone who
turned out and provided input after the
winter break we will continue to hold
meetings to address the ongoing facility
and programmatic needs and will identify
opportunities for the community to
continue voicing their concerns and to
00h 25m 00s
hear more specific details as they
develop staff have also continued to
meet with affected headstart families
currently located on the Applegate and
rice campuses and we look forward to
meeting with native families in our
headstart program at those locations as
well I want to acknowledge that these
campus moves and transitions are
challenging all of our students deserve
the opportunity to thrive with our
dedicated board of directors our
administrators and most of all our
talented and determined teachers and
staff will continue the task of making
PBS great urban school district as we
pause in the coming days to celebrate
with family and friends I wish everyone
a happy holiday thank you thank you so
next we have public comment I just want
to view shortly quickly review our
guidelines we want to thank everyone for
coming we appreciate the opportunity to
hear public input as it informs our work
we look forward to hearing your thoughts
reflections and concerns our
responsibility as a board is to actively
listen and have our electronic devices
turned off board members and the
superintendent will not respond to
comments or questions during public
comment but our board office will follow
up on board related issues raised during
public testimony guidelines for public
input emphasize respect and
consideration any complaints about
individual employees should be directed
to the superintendent's office as a
personnel matter presenters have a total
of three minutes to share your comments
begin by stating your name and spelling
your last name
during the first two minutes the green
light will be on when you
down to a minute the yellow light will
be on and when three minutes is up the
red light will appear and we'd ask that
you just respectfully wrap up your
comments at that time and so with that
I'd like to ask miss Houston for the
first two members of the public who have
signed up Michael Hoadley and Mark bond
my name's Michael hull see it's HUL sey
and I'm here about the after-school
programs and I know there's a couple of
us here I don't know all of you um since
I only have three minutes minutes try to
get this going quick cuz I have a lot to
say in three minutes it's not a lot of
time as you know PBS will no longer
allow for-profit and nonprofit
organizations to utilize PR for
communicating with or marketing to
parents one of the reasons PBS gave for
abandoning peach jar is that it's the
district responsibility to ensure
resources are focused on student
achievement this is a quote from a
parent's email that the board were
received yesterday EG robotics was CCD
on it I quote eg robotics offers an
after-school program at Capitol Hill
elementary school
my son participated for two years and
loved every minute of it his enthusiasm
for robotics grew and his interest in
STEM related careers increased with the
emphasis on filling the stem career
pipeline it would be a mistake to remove
the ability for parents to learn about
such programs
end quote this is just one example of an
after-school program contributing to
student achievement we program providers
have received dozens of emails and
support not just for our programs but
for a direct communication channel
between us and parents in fact we put
out a survey last week and over 600
parents responded nearly 100 percent
said that they respond excuse me that
they prefer email fliers not one parent
answered that they did not want to hear
from us unfortunately the PPS flyer
distribution process Review Committee
did not put out any surveys they do not
ask parents students or program
providers to give their input this
decision was made by a committee in the
span of one month over four meetings
there is a growing cynicism directed
towards school districts and its leaders
not including the community in the
decision making process might be one
cause of this cynicism the second ring
the second reason that the district gave
four discs in discontinuing peach jar
was that there are inherent equity
issues with regards to the communities
targeted for events and activities from
nongovernmental organizations fliers are
not being translated for our non-english
speakers and the bulk of fliers coming
from non-government organizations are
going to schools with higher
socio-economic population
this statement is true but I'm
completely baffled at how doing away
with PGR will help resolve this issue
since this doesn't change where programs
are offered all it does is make it more
likely that programs and enrollment will
suffer which will force us to go out of
business which will mean even less
opportunities for a lesser number of
kids is that equity I'd like to read a
portion of another parents email that
was sent to the board yesterday I quote
all kids everywhere should have the same
opportunities but because all kids
everywhere don't PBS says let's make it
really hard for any kids anywhere to
00h 30m 00s
hear about opportunities that are
available if equity is the issue here
why isn't the emphasis on why isn't the
emphasis on requiring external providers
to advertise and offer their classes in
more schools in more neighborhoods or
similar remedy that opens up more
opportunities to more kids rather than
shutting down opportunities that already
exist thank you I actually have a seat I
just have a suggestion can I wrap up
with that it's definitely not one
sentence more than once maybe you could
email it to us if it's one sentence go
ahead I'm gonna I do want to respect
other people's time but I will email it
to you guys it's a suggestion to replace
PTR with a nonprofit that will act as
piece jar but give it's been a revenue
she has grants and scholarships to get
more people involved in more schools
involved so it's a solution it's not
burying our head in the sand and it's
not just ending this you know because my
program is going to end thank you and
please send it to us I'm up I'm Mark
bond
I am the college and career coordinator
at Alliance high school some of you may
not know about us people in the
community not knowing is somewhat
understandable yet within PBS it is not
and many still don't we are Alliance
high school a PBS high school at the
meek and Benson campuses we are not
osebo a community based organization
that we often get lumped in with them
the students I support comprised the
least represented and most underserved
in the city my students are amazing
they deal with hardships many from the
comprehensives cannot remotely fathom
they have often been discarded by the
schools that they come from they have
many issues but also numerous gifts and
strengths a couple of years ago in this
room a now former board member referred
to my students as those students it is
my privilege to serve and support those
students and they are your students one
highlight our FAFSA completion rate and
it's a really big issue these days
within the state and the district and
for many years our graduates have been
in the 90 plus percentile completion
rate and they just want you to know that
we are not our students don't just fade
away I want to talk about the latest
construction bond we were on it and then
we weren't
bear in mind meek is a former elementary
school and our Benson campus if you can
call it that is located in a CTE wing
and that is the travesty we deserve our
own site with full wraparound services
speaking of CTE three years ago there
were 19 programs in all of PBS Alliance
had four of those programs - full time -
half time now the district has 65 Plus
that is great and yet we still have four
only one of which now is full time our
cafetorium had the highest level of
radon of any room in the district only
now two years later are the levels
acceptable and that is unacceptable I
coach our basketball team but we have no
gym our school deserves a gym for
practice but more importantly for PE for
all of our students on a slightly
lighter note my friends and family been
very generous and donating to the team
but if any of you
we'd like to make a contribution to our
team please let me know and I will get
you a tax letter posthaste
and lastly Alliance high school being an
afterthought for many years is an equity
issue and PBS has let these students
down time and time again and that is
shameful I ask that you please do not
forget about them thank you thank you
[Applause]
next we have Edith Starling and Jim
Jimmy Apple hands
is this darling here yep okay great
00h 35m 00s
Kelly Rundle are you ndle hello board
hello superintendent I'm here today to
speak on behalf of the intensive skills
students at pioneer and how your recent
decision to move pioneer to rice and
applicate impacts them I have been an
intensive skills teacher at pioneer for
the past seven years the majority of my
students are on the autism spectrum and
many are nonverbal I would like to give
these kids a voice today when I think
about the move to Applegate I tried to
envision my students there one of my
students is a refugee he's nonverbal has
experienced a great deal of trauma in
his young life for this student sitting
for five minutes in the classroom is an
accomplishment it is essential that he
walk frequently otherwise he bangs his
head bites and cries and hits death he
had he can't handle being in one place
for more than a few minutes and he likes
being around kids and adults holiday
works for this student there are lots of
places for him to walk and many
different directions for him to take at
Applegate he will he will walk a single
hallway and it will be impossible to get
his sensory needs met holiday works well
for all of my students because of its
unique design and spaces outside of the
classroom which allow for quiet spaces
to calm and get sensory needs met spaces
that are outlined in my students IEP at
the holiday Yongsan building my students
are able to take long walks inside on
rainy days and are able to take long
walks outdoors while still remaining on
the school grounds taking long walks is
a de-escalation strategy from for many
pioneer students Applegate is a small
school at the single hallway it is not
fenced has no playground in no gym
Applegate isn't is in very close
proximity to a park and a busy street
many students a pioneer a runner
and many students over the years are
placed in my classroom for that reason
the holiday young some building has a
large grass area with with no trees when
a student starts to run during recess
staff has line of sight and is able to
run after the student prior to them
leaving them leaving the school grounds
unfortunately Applegate has very little
grass area or school grounds if a
student happens to get out of sight at
Applegate they'll head directly into a
public park a busy street strangers in
many places to hide
Applegate lacks essential school
components such as a gym playground
kitchen and library if you want to
include our kids in neighborhood schools
they need to be at a facility with the
basic components of a regular school to
practice skills for inclusion my
students practice library skills weekly
and learn essential skills such as
appropriate volume sitting while stories
being read and learning how to find
books that interest them one of my
longtime nonverbal students loves it
when our librarian reads to him he sits
next to her he helps her turn the pages
and smiles and giggles with excitement
as she reads mine honorable student
thank you you can finish your sentence
okay you are favoring the students with
advantages over students who have little
to no advantages in life I have visited
the Applegate campus it is not suitable
for Pioneer students your decision needs
to change
[Applause]
hi my name is Jimmy aplans Appl a che in
Z I would like to thank the Portland
Public School Board of Education give me
the time to speak tonight this is my
third year as a school bus driver for
Portland Public Schools and I have a
combined total of seven years of
experience as a school bus operator I'm
speaking to you tonight to continue the
dialogue started by my co-workers of
Beth and Tim who have addressed you at
previous board meetings although our
next negotiators from meeting is set for
the first week of January we have not
sat down to negotiate since the
beginning of November which means that
our message is still the same a proposed
contract rollover with a wage freeze set
forth by your negotiation team is
frankly not going to cut it one of the
biggest concerns brought to us from our
co-workers is the increasing cost of
living in our city compared to our pay
scale our wages are not keeping up with
the sharp rental increases the city has
seen in the past years a report put out
by Oregon Metro gov last year stated
that between 2006 and 2015 rent in the
Portland metropolitan area increased 63%
our wages have clearly not kept up with
this right now the average cost of a
one-bedroom apartment in Portland is
00h 40m 00s
$1,500 a month based on the 12-month
wage a driver with 14 years longevity
takes home less than 1300 a month with
these wages a driver can't even afford
the cost of a one-bedroom apartment soon
as special needs bus drivers we will not
be able to live in the communities that
we serve
another concern brought up by some of
the drivers is that the dollar 67
increased per hour given to everyone at
the beginning of this year might have
increased new hires coming in the door
but it has disenfranchised the
experienced and capable drivers due to
the fact that it equals a smaller
percentage increase in wage the longer
you've been driving for Portland Public
Schools
I prepared a handout and I think you'll
beginning
afterwards to check out it gives a rough
estimate of the total average cost to
train a new driver versus giving a race
to the experienced drivers the bottom
line on that is the the it is more cost
effective to give our senior drivers a
wage increase to encourage new drivers
to stay with Portland Public Schools
many of our drivers have left for better
wages at trimet DHL UPS and FedEx the
cost of training new drivers only to
have them leave for better paying jobs
is staggering and I want to close by
reminding you of a discrepancy that has
brought been brought to your attention
before that a newly hired truck driver
delivering food to our schools gets paid
on their first year of service more per
hour than a special needed school bus
driver who has been working for Portland
Public Schools for 24 years let me be
clear that I'm not trying to say that
these truck drivers do not deserve this
pay I am saying that we as special-needs
bus drivers deserve better than what you
were giving us now thank you thank you
I'm giving miss you Senor if you give
miss yu-san your information she'll get
it to the board thank you our last two
speakers are Jenny brixey and Sydney
Roberts
hello members of the board my name is
Jenny bricks eBRI xpy I'm a parent from
the Applegate headstart program
my daughter currently attends the Native
American classroom she graduated from
the Native early headstart classroom
last year
Applegate is home to three other
classrooms there has been community
built here the loss of this Hester is a
hard blow to the community off too
familiar with displacement I want to
thank you for your commitment to keep
our two Native classrooms together this
in a generational learning environment
and continuum of care is an essential
piece of native pedagogy these
classrooms on our children's identity as
indigenous people they keep our
community connected Portland is the
ninth largest urban Indian community in
the United States the Indian relocation
Act of 1956 which encouraged Native
people to leave their reservations to
find work in cities is one of the
driving forces of this the native
classrooms are critical for our
indigenous students and families as it
provides an early learning experience
that is culturally responsive and
trauma-informed it helps families
connect with one another and the larger
Native community these culturally
responsive programs value cultural
identity and education and honor it as a
resiliency factor community is how we
keep our culture alive in an urban
setting despite gentrification and other
systemic oppressions these communities
Applegate have continued to thrive when
dealing with communities have who have
been impacted by the trauma of boarding
schools forced relocation and
displacement and over-representation and
the child welfare system Trust is
essential transparency and open
communication builds trust not backroom
closed-door decisions parents Applegate
were blindsided with a letter left in
their children's box not knowing if our
native classrooms will be dissolved and
our children assimilated into other
classrooms
I want to voice the frustration of other
Applegate parents grandparents and
caregivers who are trying to teach their
young ones that they matter and the
difficulty in that when the education
system is telling them that they don't
this trickle down effect of displacement
tells us who and what your priorities
are it's disheartening to see our
children so low on this list that they
didn't constitute a mention during the
process or the last board meeting not
even an acknowledgement of their very
existence for some of our Head Start
children their classroom in school is
the only constant in their lives right
now we have unhoused families who ride
the
from shelters or different friends and
families couches to bring their little
ones to Applegate because they know it's
a safe place they have a family service
worker they can trust and a community
who's ready to support them we want our
children to have access to quality
educational opportunities so that
someday someday they too could have a
chance at being in a tag program or
going to a school like access our native
children are brilliant vibrant and
resilient and destined to do great
things that we give them the chance I
want to thank you again superintendent
00h 45m 00s
and board for your support of our native
Head Start and Early Head Start
classrooms good evening my name is
Sydney Roberts our OB e RT s and that's
Sydney with two y's I am the proud
parent of two students in PPS a freshman
at Madison High School and a senior at
Alliance at meek almost exactly two
years ago I participated in a focus
group as an alliance parent because the
PPS Board voted to take a new building
for Alliance off the bond vote move
Alliance ed Benson out of Benson and
create a plan for a new alliance like
many others I offered my testimony about
what I as a parent see as a necessary to
meet the needs of my son and other
students like him today two years later
there has been little to no progress in
addressing the needs of both Alliance
campuses while the middle schools and
the more traditional high schools
continue to be updated and or relocated
meanwhile Alliance at Benson is on the
verge of eviction and the Lyons and meek
lacks the space and modernization that
the students are so deserving of many of
the students that either of the campuses
are already at risk and here we are
achieve them as if their school is not
important not deserving of being updated
modernized not worthy of complete school
building to themselves what message does
that send to our students when they
enter lanced the students often find a
breath of fresh air a new beginning and
their motivation and desire to be and do
more academically and personally they
are not overwhelmed and overlooked due
to student-teacher ratios
the Dilla sense of belonging and
accomplishment yet the environment in
which they are being taught is dark
outdated and depressing this impacts the
students and the teachers morale
negatively was it what is it going to
take for PBS to realize that Alliance at
meek and Benson is just as important as
Franklin Grant Roosevelt rose way
heights
Harriet Tubman Rose City Park access
Academy and the many others what about
the Alliance campuses when is it their
turn they are people they are also our
future and they deserve an upgrade thank
you so thank you everybody for the
comments this evening and please feel
free to contact our board manager Rose
Ann Powell who's there if there's
anything specifically to followup with
the board in addition I know lots of
people instead of testifying choose to
email or write the board and I know that
we're getting lots of mail and reading
it so thank you for expressing your
points of view and your perspective and
your concerns and whatever way you're
most comfortable but and we appreciate
the feedback from the community next I'm
going to turn to the comprehensive
annual financial report one of the
board's primary responsibilities is to
review and approve the school districts
budget and oversight of its fiscal
reports tonight we have an annual
comprehensive financial report that was
recently presented to the fao committee
or the finance audit and operations
committee and I'm going to ask Vice
Chair Moore to introduce the topic this
is the comprehensive annual financial
reports affectionately known as kefir
and as the name implies this is an
annual audit of the of the operating
budget for PPS it also includes a
special report on any federal grant
funds and how we are managing them
and I'm gonna allow you to go through
the details I just want to say two
things
the FAO Committee has unanimously
recommended that the board approve the
the audit and accept it and the second
thing I want to say is this was a
difficult year with a lot of changes and
tkw which is the company that's doing
the audit has been very accommodating we
ended up having to reschedule a couple
of times at various for various reasons
and and they've worked very hard in the
last couple of months to to meet a
December 31st deadline to get this thing
done approved and delivered to the state
00h 50m 00s
and I I want to thank you for for being
so accommodating and for all your hard
work and and and also Meili who came in
sort of in the middle of all of it so
thank you both for all the work great
thank you very much introduce our our
support in this annual process our
outside auditor of course it's been a
pressure working with the staff from tkw
auto fan and team Gillette is the other
partner on the engagement and we've been
working with this firm for many years
great thanks May hi I am Tim Gillette
from Talbott kohrville one Warwick or
more commonly known as tkw as I'm not
sure why everybody left when we're just
getting to the good stuff here but as as
board member more said
we remember more said I went through
this all with the FAO committee a week
ago today in some detail so and about
half of you maybe more we're on that are
on that committee so I will go very
quickly again as I usually do before the
red light comes on and if there are any
questions I'm always happy to spend more
time or answer any questions but
otherwise I will will move pretty fast
it's a big document it's a hundred and
fifty some pages my parts are pretty
small really may and her staff have done
a great job putting this all together
the independent auditors report my
document is page 14 through 16 and to
cut to the chase it's an unmodified
opinion or the so-called clean opinion
from your auditor says we believe in our
opinion the financial statements are
fairly presented hey it takes three
pages to say that but but that's the
bottom line it was into some detail
about how much responsibility we take
for which parts the report and so forth
but I'm not going to go through that
unless you want to my reports followed
by the management's discussion and
analysis MDNA it's a good overview of
the financial statements if I always
encourage everyone to read those even if
they don't read all 150 some pages in
great detail the the statements
themselves there's not a lot of new
things this year the the basis of
accounting has not changed there's no
new pronouncements that change anything
in the statements which is kind of a
nice thing a little bit unusual there
was one new pronouncement that took
effect this year governmental Accounting
Standards Board statement number 77
which meant you had to disclose tax
abatements that effect the district
that's the only new thing this year
that's for a requirement for everyone
all municipalities in the United States
nothing special for the district but you
do disclose those if you're comparing
this this year's Kaffir to the previous
year's that's something new
I'll skip all the way to the back page
152 also our report in accordance with
Oregon State regulations the state of
Oregon requires us to report on certain
things there's a bullet list of some of
those things there was nothing unusual
on any of those things except for a
small finding on reporting of teacher
experience which is an extremely
difficult thing to get to get right I
think we have we find something almost
every year it's it's cleaned up
considerably over the last few years and
that's about all I have to say about the
kafir' itself we do also audit and
report in accordance with uniform
guidance on your federal grant awards
and expenditures there are a couple of
reports in that document it's a separate
document you can kind of get the the
good stuff just by looking at page 13
which this summary of our of our
reporter says that it's an unmodified
report on internal control over
financial reporting there were some
issues identified and then on federal
awards there were there was an issue
identified there but it's also an
unmodified report on the schedule of
expenditures of federal Awards the sefa
and that's followed by more details on
the findings that we had and also
follows up on prior your findings and I
can say that you know everything is
currently being addressed and there's
actions in place to address those things
so again happy to take questions I went
pretty fast but again I've been through
it with the fao committee a week ago and
in more detail so we had kind of
excruciating detail during the committee
and I probably don't need to do that for
00h 55m 00s
the general audience but could you could
you talk briefly about what the findings
were I mean there were a few findings
could you touch sure that on the
financial statements there were we had
three findings one had to do with
essentially what we would call a cutoff
issue there was a an invoice that came
later in the year was a August invoice
but it was for work done prior to June
30th it should have been recorded in the
June 30 17 fiscal year but but was
missed and so was not the amount was a
couple million dollars so it was not
insignificant but we did get that
corrected so the financial statements
are corrected for that we found the in
what I call the topside entries where
you get from your your trial balance
your general ledger the accounting
records that the district keeps to the
entity wide statements that are prepared
for this which is a one once-a-year
process there are some things that
happen just that one time of year used
an outside contractor to do some of
those calculations in particular for a
governmental Accounting Standards Board
statement number 68 which has to do with
pensions it's a little bit complicated
there was an error made in that
calculation where the contractor picked
up the wrong number from a report from
pers and so there was an 18 million
dollar correction made for that then
there were a couple of other things also
in the topside process there were some
things that were there was an error in
the deferred interest calculation on the
deferred interest bonds actually it is a
complicated calculation but that we
picked that up that was about six
million dollars five point six maybe and
there was a classification error in the
net position of I think thirty two
million dollars so so those were the
financial statement findings that we
found the compliance finding and the
federal grant findings if you will was a
matching issue on the gear up grant
there were some calculations that
weren't done quite right
there was some documentation that was
missing and a few other little things
but but less so than last year last year
we had I think seven compliance findings
this year we had one compliance finding
so the district has done a lot of work
on the gear up grant it's difficult to
get that matching handled completely I
know that work
continues and me and I have had
conversations about things that are
going to continue on into this this
period in this future to clear those
things up
director constant her statement it is
significant to not have material
findings on a budget of this complexity
and also in our FAO meeting we did have
considerable discussion around what
process improvements our staff has made
in response to the small findings that
were brought out in this spot it so
thank you very much it's continuous
learning it's a large complex
organization and there has been change
in staff and leadership and so it's not
unusual to find a few things I think we
have a new superintendent and three new
board members since this is the last
school year's budget so I I just had a
question just to go to the findings so
while it's an unmodified there also was
there were material weaknesses
identified and going through here if you
go the the 2.5 million and the 8 million
misstatements and I'm just wondering in
the 35 million as another one so are
those at the end of the year just a wash
or do we have 35 million less than we
thought when we have these five is just
a reclassification so it's between
accounts on the financial statement so
it doesn't it's I guess you could say
it's a wash but it's in different
categories it doesn't mean you have that
much less the bottom line there's not a
material an understatement
it's that there reclass in different
different categories set for that
particular item yes that's correct we
look through here says that we have
things that works have all been
corrected for these items so what you're
seeing in the seat
sar is a fair presentation so if you
read it the lay person would to read it
and it said that we have an
overstatement of 18 million dollars it's
an overstatement in one category and
01h 00m 00s
shifting it would be a different
category it's not that we overstated our
overall financial position 10 million is
it it's different from the 35 I'm sorry
that the 18 was a deferred outflows that
wasn't there so that that does affect
your financial position your net
position at the end of the day so that
one does change the bottom line if you
will so that's an 18 million dollar but
but the 18 million was put there in
error so it and like I say it's a
topside entries an entry made after the
fact it's not in your actual books and
records it's in getting from the books
and records to the final year-end
financial report so the fact that it was
done incorrectly doesn't change the
reality at all or even it's just the
numbers you've been seeing during the
year I just wanted to point out that we
had discovered that the staff had
discovered the gear-up discrepancy I
think prior to the audit beginning so
that was reflected in the first budget
amendment that we passed in September so
I think I think going forward that kind
that issue has been addressed and we're
not going to see that kind of
discrepancy in in future so I'm glad to
see that it was you know taken care of
questions comments mr. Anthony anything
thank you right I think there's it's
worth noting one thing I asked a lot of
questions about this cuz I'm I
misunderstood it when I read it so if I
remember correctly in our because of our
per site account right
we have spent 20 million
twenty-something plus million dollars
less than we would have otherwise
correct yes okay
so this is one that we we have previous
boards to think for the foresight in in
starting those accounts what 15 years
ago yeah and Jim sure stinger discussion
the board will now consider resolution
number five five five one accepts
instant approval of the comprehensive
annual financial report reports to
management and report on requirements of
the single audit act and OMB circular
a-133 do have an emotion director
Anthony moves and director constant
seconds the motion to adopt resolution
five five five one miss Hewson is there
any comment on this resolution is there
any for further board discussion board
and I'll vote on resolution five five
five one all in favor please indicate by
saying yes yes I'll pose please indicate
this a No
student representative yes resolution
five five five one is approved by a vote
of seven to zero with student
representative Tran voting yes thank you
both for your work and the diligence
that you brought to this task appreciate
it thank you very much I'm sorry the
record stand corrected we're all so
squished in here it seems like we're the
same number
let's see
so Kellogg middle school master plan so
last May our community strongly
supported the passage of a capital bond
to make critical health and safety
safety improvements and rebuild three
high schools and one new middle school
in Southeast Portland to replace Kellogg
middle school which was closed in the
mid 2000s as a resident of Southeast
Portland I'm excited tonight that will
be considering the Kellogg master plan
and this is another step forward to the
district's efforts to provide a more
equitable middle school spirit
experience currently students in this
part of southeast don't have access to a
full middle school experience so
tonight's kind of kicks off the formal
part of the board's work and I'm going
to ask director more to tell us what
happened in the fao committee and what
01h 05m 00s
the recommendation is so the fao
committee got a very comprehensive
presentation on the Kellogg master plan
and and and we approved it we had a lot
of discussion and I think superintendent
Guerrero is going to introduce the staff
members to come talk to us yeah well we
have a lot of important facilities
related items tonight and I trust that
our CEO Gerry Vincent could could speak
all night about this but we want to mix
it up so we're going to invite a few of
our senior staff who are closely
connected to this work to come up we
have Dan Jung senior director of school
modernization and Steve F Rose senior
project manager who are going to provide
this portion of tonight's reporting
we might add one more person to France
who is with no planning and design who's
the lead architect on the project the
more the merrier thank you for the
opportunity to be here tonight I'm Deb
France with a Planning & Design we've
gone through several months of master
planning Kellogg middle school with
numerous stakeholder participation
including groups within PPS such as
facilities security safety food services
it's a it's a long list we have a design
advisory group that we've met with now
five times and they've provided great
input and we've met with the toeses and
the office of teaching and learning the
outcome of that is that we have a master
plan that you've reviewed and that is a
one hundred thousand square foot
building actually it's one hundred
thousand four hundred we are looking at
some budget challenges we've identified
those and we've set some targets to try
to align the budget as we move into the
design process I'm happy to answer any
questions that you might have receive
the materials that went to the FAA last
weekend is roughly 500 pages I'm sure
simple to absorb all that information
but the meat and the potatoes there is
the what we call the area program so the
board the district has an educational
specification for middle schools that
has been approved that is one of our
fundamental documents that we we start
with and we aim towards and so we're
here tonight we have a document that
shows what those requirements are and
how the master plan meets those
requirements so effectively that's
what's being approved and that's what
we're gonna move forward with their
design I'm not on the committee so
this is my one chance to ask questions
really appreciate all the information I
think it gives a sense of what a
comprehensive middle school with
equitable offerings its its gonna look
like in outer southeast I had just two
places where I just had questions that
I'm sure you have answers to one it
looks like there was some value
engineering already to look some cost
control opportunities and one of the
things being potentially removed is a
computer lab and is that is there more
than one or is it that it's being
removed because the concept is every
classroom that is got it embedded in in
the classroom the logic here is that the
computer labs were dedicated when we
didn't have devices in every classroom
the middle school of the future and and
I'd like to remind us that this is a
building that will be opening in 2021
we'll have devices in every classroom
the idea of a dedicated computer lab
that would be used even for testing at
this point in time is not supported by
the toeses or other members of the
committee and then my other question is
if your if it's being built for six
hundred and seventy-five students and
now that we have middle school after
school sports for all of our middle
school students just from a title nine
standpoint I know when my kids were in a
one gym or one court middle school that
really there was it turned out there was
in equitable opportunities for kids to
use the courts are these built as if
sort of in the post title night you know
it's been in existence for abut forty
01h 10m 00s
something years or thirty or forty years
that you'd have enough time that and
space that you could have both boys and
girls and multiple levels of teams using
it we have looked at the scheduling of
the gym it's divided into two sections
with a possible curtain so two classes
could be participating at this
time the gym actually is serving as a
classroom there's even media support in
the gymnasium for that function we have
a dance space which can serve as an
ancillary space and we have an outside
covered play area so the long answer to
your question is that we do believe with
the input from OTL that the physical
fitness needs and title 9 needs have
been met follow up on that the buildings
being designed for 675 with an optional
overflow capacity to 810 now by my count
that's going to put that the smaller
number PE classes at 48 students piece
and at the higher 58 students apiece I
like children very very much but that is
an awful lot of 12 to 14 year-olds have
we looked at our actual ability to
conduct adequate PE programming at that
kind of enrollment just to talk on the
the space numbers what are we using for
calculations for students per classroom
students per classroom is a baseline of
30 the classrooms are sized to ramp up
to 36 but our baseline is thirty seventy
five the theoretically the state
requirement is that we offer B every day
yeah every child so two classes at the
same time in one gym that gives you at
675 48 students a pop I see okay or 58 a
Bop
we're just going to add that I think the
assumption and the educational
specifications is that the covered play
area is a third space so the idea is
that you can actually have three
sections running concurrently
and dance as well that's right the other
question I have it's similar but a
little more complicated I see you want
to take the cafeteria size down so that
you'd be offering a three one three
period lunch instead of a two period
lunch I'd like to correct that oh thank
you
actually we have done the reverse the
cafeteria size as part of our proposed
master plan is much lighter larger than
the EDS backs so that we can go from a
three or four period lunch to a two
period lunch oh that's good news because
that's really been a big issue yeah I'm
very happy to hear that I do want to ask
again I know you're planning on 675 what
does that do to lunchroom capacity if it
goes up to 810 it actually does work out
at 8:10 with the size of the cafeteria
in the document is that an inspect that
needs to see you change that's a good
question I mean there's been some
conversations with the middle school
that spec is being updated right now our
team is not in charge of updating that
but we've been involved in that process
that's something we can follow up on and
see if that is something that's
anticipated to change we did have some
conversation in our FAO meeting about
the dialogue between the ED spec
development process for the middle
schools with our work on our middle
school curriculum framework as part of
the opening of the other two middle
schools to make sure that Broz both
processes are talking to one another and
making sure that our inspects informing
the Kellogg design process are
reflective of the best practices that
are coming forward through the middle
school framework work
can I ask about the updating of the ed
specs do do we have an ETA on that do
you know I don't know offhand the you
guys do if you're working directly with
them the real estate offices is managing
01h 15m 00s
that process I know they're actively
working on it like said the teams and
working hand-in-hand might have to
follow up on that schedule
okay we're keeping them in the loop on
our process specific to Kellogg so that
they're engaged with us I think I don't
know if they're officially updating it
as we go but I think the understanding
is they want to track what we do
throughout the design process so that
they can get the latest and best
information for Kellogg because the
intent is that it's kind of a more
Universal Middle School space so that
it's program should be reflective of
what a middle school should be so using
this example with the cafeteria since
directors are bringing it up when you
look at the ed specs for cafeteria it's
four thousand two hundred fifty square
feet in the middle school specs when you
look at Kellogg's plan page 32 it's at
over six thousand so the two ads have
definitely contributed another 1,800
square feet to that cafeteria so it
should should accommodate the need and I
at the committee meeting the the point
was made that this design process is is
is being much much more closely
coordinated with the with the academic
side of the house then previous designs
have done so I think that's a real
that's a real strength of this design in
particular and and I think it's it's
sort of showing the way to how these
things should be going in the future as
well so that's very good thank you
this design is shooting for a LEED
Silver in terms of sustainability so
sustainability for the school
as well LEED Gold oh sorry yeah oh I was
I was thinking second but I forgot about
platinum but I must be so pertinent to
the building itself but also the
construction process and the materials
and recycling and all that so that's
great that's where we want to be so just
one last question back to the no
computer labs because it's all embedded
is that is it at all wireless system but
there's also there's data hard wired
data in every space yeah so we're not
relying heavily on one or the other okay
and then I'm just a director of konstanz
point about the sustainability I noticed
that there is a large amount of Salvage
this is gonna happen that's great yeah
next next steps more dag meetings and
then you'll come back for a presentation
with the design yeah great any other
board questions before we get to the
resolution just one of the challenges we
face I'm gonna bring this up because
it's part of our bigger picture thing is
that because we don't have feeder
schools determined because we don't have
the whole Eastside plan when we were
talking about ideal places to put bike
racks because we're not sure exactly
where kids are gonna be biking in from
and there's there's pieces like that
that are you know well the day cuz I
think been helpful around that the
without that certainty and it's a little
wrinkle there one of the other things
we've talked about that have come up in
our facilities is the location of the
intensive skills classroom and that
balance of having easy access to getting
kits in and out and a
and having a room that has access
directly out of the building with
integrated into the life of the building
as well and I think we're in a pretty
good place there but on the education
side I don't think we have a best
practice of what exactly do we do how do
we design school life so that there's
it's more than having where a class room
is located it's it's integrating
community with those kids and I think
that's that's a piece that we can move
forward because if we had that piece
then that does then the location would
tend to kind of drop out more I think
you're gonna like the answer
so the intensive skills classroom is
01h 20m 00s
right at the connection point between
the two four-story classroom wings and
then the two-story gymnasium and Commons
wings they all connect and that's where
the integrated skills classroom is
intensive skills um it does have outside
access it has direct access to the
Commons it has direct access to the the
stem lab and the art classroom and the
music space so it's really a central
location they have their own restroom
right there and then on the floor above
we have the resource Learning Center and
it's in the same exact spot so they have
a relationship in the building right at
the anchor point director Rosen and I
have been going to the DAC meetings and
they've been really really constructive
great community input and feedback which
is really helped help things along and
yet the location I think it does does
well but it's also how educators make it
work so that it's oh well the classroom
is right next to it and our other
relationships built up
between kids across the whole spectrum
so that's more than the point I'm
getting out there but yeah certainly we
want the building the facility to
support you know what a thriving school
community looks like you know and that
that's an important part of the process
and to answer the bike question I
believe there are three different
locations where bike parking is
scheduled to be including some covered
bike parking so there is some thought
going into you know spreading that out
transfer committee chair so if we're not
sure what the patterns will be what
communities do we are we engaging that
know that they're gonna be there or is
it my question is if we're not sure
who's going to be in the building how do
we know in advance which communities
we're supposed to be engaging on the
design so I think you've kind of taken a
general southeast clearly we've got some
K eights
that are that are close by so we can
make some pretty educated guesses in
terms of Kristin our leader Marysville
all being so do we have engagement from
staff and families from all those
schools to be a part of the Dagg process
including the senior director who is
over that entire area to again not
knowing but to try to get a mix from
everybody and accepting everyone who
expressed interest in being a part of
the committee yeah and and it's nice to
see there's a middle grade middle former
middle school teacher at the old Kellogg
who is on the committee and it's nice to
have that kind of continuity and input
it's the board ready consider resolution
55:52 if so we're the board will now
consider the resolution authorizing
Kellogg middle school full replacement
master plan as part
the 2017 capital bond program do I have
a motion second director Anthony moves
and director Bailey seconds resolution
five five five two is there any public
comment we have go ahead and take your
seat will we may call you back but you
may come back but take public comment
first good evening board members
wouldn't end up my name is Steve Buell
bue Hill and I'm here to follow up on
what Paul was talking about on the PE
this building that you're building is a
hundred years that's how long it's
supposed to last the PE aspect I got
interested because they said it was
gonna be 20 feet from Powell but it's
not as 20 feet from them from the border
of the property line and so it's
actually 40 feet from Powell so I kind
of lost interest in that and started
asking some questions about the
gentleman who was helping me was doing a
very good job and he said I started
asking them about the PE your PE is not
workable
you have Paul's absolutely correct if
you use the two halves of the gym you
come out with about 46 48 47 kids if it
01h 25m 00s
all broke down perfect that means you
might have 55 and you might have 42 but
those are not numbers you can do and
when you when you ask about okay where
the other areas of PE one of them that
they talk about is outdoors now when I
asked about that they said well go over
and look at the nice things that we have
at fabien so on my way over here today I
did I went over and looked at farming's
outdoors
totally no one could teach PE in the
middle of the winter out there it just
does not work and if we're if we're
going to meet the state standards which
we talked and talked in this district
about how we don't meet the state
standards over and over again but we're
gonna build a building
that's gonna last a hundred years that
isn't gonna give every kid in middle
school physical education regular daily
physical education which is the state
standard it's 225 minutes 45 minutes a
day and so that doesn't make any sense
to me and the obvious thing that you do
is that you put in of oxalá an auxilary
gymnasium with a little bit of seating
because and that does more than just
correct the PE problem which is a which
this is nobody would teach PE outside in
the middle of yesterday how what do you
like to VIN I went over and looked at
those if they had the or the covered
area and it's all wet the wind blows in
the wind blows in you're teaching PE out
oh yeah that all that oh that's really a
great PE and so we made some mistakes at
Roosevelt early on because the board
didn't get involved enough and looking
at some things we made a couple pretty
big mistakes but let's not do that with
Kellogg let's put in that gym not only
will it fix all the PE but it will also
give that community in Southeast and we
all know how South East you go far out
South East I taught out there they don't
have a lot of areas where people can
actually have good recreation things so
they can use that gym out there to make
sure there's a little bit of seating and
and then it'll work what you have now is
not excellence it's getting by I guess
maybe but not if your PE teacher thank
you very much thank you
is there any board discussion let me
follow up and clarify then you all said
there's a dance space that can satisfy a
PE credit and you can 30 kids can fit in
there and if it's a dance space it could
also be used for other purposes as well
you could probably do some tumbling and
there or something like that
kind of gymnastic stuff you could
probably do yoga in there for example so
we've actually got two halves of a gym
plus a third so that gets us closer to
from 48 down to 32 I'm doing the math
right so what I'm in yeah I'm gonna ask
is this I mean we're gonna move ahead
and vote on this tonight but I would ask
the fao committee to go back and look at
that issue I do think the issue is you
know here we have an opportunity to
actually build a building that will
allow us to comply with state law that
we should just make sure it works before
we move ahead with the building I
appreciate former director Beal bringing
up the point can I make a request of the
dag can you guys look at this
and and then come back to the committee
what what exactly the standards are and
then we can come back and explain
exactly how the proposed plan would meet
those standards
okay because I I think it would be I
think it would be better for the design
group to to be working on this rather
than the committee so the only thing I
would say is I want to make sure it gets
addressed
I don't coming back and I have the same
yes yes there I'll put it on the
calendar and we will I would just offer
similarly if the ad specs outlined for
middle schools of 6,800 square foot gym
we would want to know what that might
look like if we were to set up a
hypothetical schedule to to provide for
PE activity taking into account dance or
outside spaces during certain portions
01h 30m 00s
of the school year when we think it
might realistically be used but it might
be helpful to see a sample schedule of
how that space would be maximized
dr. Anthony yes just one other request
as as long as we're making them here on
the cafeteria I really appreciate the
news about the size which is wonderful
as you're looking at design I hope
you'll also be looking at how you can
actually get 400 students through in
time to be able to eat excellent thank
you
great the board will now vote on
resolution 55:52 all in favor please
indicate by saying yes yes all opposed
please indicate by saying no soon
representative Tran yes thank you
no abstentions resolution 5552 is
approved by a vote of six to zero with
student representative Tran voting yes
thank you for your work and we look
forward to you coming back all right so
just to continue on our facility our
schools facility evening next we have
the the board is going to recess from
its regular meeting and continue as a
local contract review board as earlier
referenced the voters approved ivana May
and authorize the rebuild to three high
schools one of them being Madison high
school as we work as we prepare work for
the mat for the work at Madison the
first of three high school rebuilds for
this 2017 bond we need to consider an
exemption from public contracting
requirements Oregon law authorizes the
board to exempt certain public
improvement contracts from the jew's a
traditional design-build bid competitive
procurement process staff requests at
the board of education as acting now as
the contract review board approve an
exemption for the Madison high school
modernization project staff submitted an
extensive report for the board with its
findings and recommendations and
presented that to the Finance odden
Operations Committee director Moore
would you please introduce the item and
tell us the recommendation from the
committee the fao committee got a
presentation on this about I want to say
three weeks ago and the the committee
you nan
honestly recommended to the full board's
approval of the resolution and
superintendent Guerrero
do you want to invite people we're gonna
have Emily coordinate our director of
purchasing and contracting to come up
and give a high-level understanding of
why we're seeking the alternative
contracting proc process for Madison
modernization project many of you know
that our public contracting rules
require for public improvement contracts
a standard design-bid-build process
where design is completed fully and then
we put the work out for bid and it's
been on a solely a low bid process that
isn't a very workable option for these
very large very complex projects so we
are asking for an exemption to go
forward with a cmgc which stands for
construction construction manager
general contractor excuse me
process what we do there is we do an RFP
so request for proposals that's fully
competitive where we evaluate not just
price but experience and expertise and
compliance with our equity goals and we
so we have a full evaluation committee
and proceed as normal with our RFPs then
we award the contract and that early in
the design phase for the contractor that
works very closely with the designer and
that you know allows for value
engineering it allows for ensuring that
our design is buildable and makes sense
it allows for cost savings and many
other benefits so every every school
bond project every major rebuild or new
construction has had one of these
exemptions correct
so right for for grant
for Franklin and for Roosevelt yes this
is exactly how we've proceeded okay so
this is sort of standard operating
procedure for a project of this size and
scope of this size and this complexity
particularly it makes sense for
modernisations so just off of that I
think it's worth getting in the public
record cuz I think when when people hear
that there's going to be an exemption
01h 35m 00s
exemption from the public contracting
process just to be clear that it's
theirs this is going to be a fully
competitive RFP process absolutely right
so that's an exemption we still are
gonna have a competitive process it's
simply an exemption from a pure low bid
process where we don't get to look at
experience expertise compliance with
equity goals and absolutely fully
competitive in in addition to those
we're also able to look at the quality
of the work and the kinds of materials
that are going to be used in evaluating
the bids so at the point that they're
proposing there's there's no completed
design they're proposing early in the
design period so what we're looking at
is their past experience we're checking
references on prior projects and they're
yes everything that would suggest that
their contractor is able to take on a
project of this scope this is a question
for Jerry what is your sense of how
having an SCM GC contract affects the
bid climate the number of potential
bidders sure a great question
I think you know what the materials you
have talks about the benefits of cmgc
for scope or schedule budget for a lot
everything is probably the number one
benefit in this particular case specific
to competition for general contractors
is this type of work you don't see
traditional hard work is very possible
if we attempted to hard bid this we
would get no bidders I think that is not
really a point that
in a company's portfolio as far as
subcontractors by having a general
contractor on board early they're able
to do a lot of outreach early on the
process so we can maximize our
competition we also in court encourage
in our RFP contractors to propose as
partners and that worked well in the
grant
cmgc process where we ended up when they
understand coalesce and and that's a
good example we also find it to be much
better opportunity for minority-owned
small business partnerships to be able
to form that relationship with the GC
right so I'm just gonna draft behind
that point so by the way this staff
report I thought is excellent laid out
really clear the question I had about
the alignment with the equity policy
that one of the things the staff report
says the benefit of this using this
method is that it enhances the
district's ability to include evaluation
criterion that RFP to ensure selection
of prime contractor was strong command
to use and demonstrated success and
using certified minority-owned
women-owned service disabled veterans
and emerging small businesses I'm
wondering if we use what sort of success
or what sort of track record do we find
with the projects that have already been
completed with Grant Franklin and
Roosevelt did we find our contractors
who actually came into the RFP process
with a track record of that did they
have they actually did they actually
follow through or what sort of data have
we seen so the procurement of the
Franklin and Roosevelt contractors
predated me and was very early on in the
implementation of our equity policy if I
had my computer in front of you I could
pull out their exact utilization numbers
and how many what percentage of the
dollars on those projects went to
certified firms but I believe we met our
18% goal on the Roosevelt project we did
not on Franklin and then of course grant
is still early in construction but we
are hoping that we do say grant looks
like I mean early on we think we're
going to be able to exceed the 18% the
reason that Roosevelt largely was able
to exceed that is because we used an RFP
process for subcontractors as well which
we're allowed to do with this team do
you see that we can't with our way we
can with our dead so we're able to do a
similar process where we can evaluate
with additional criteria for the prime
we can also do it for the subcontractor
so that was really what God is there was
received a lot of attention in our
lessons learned process in terms of our
contracting procedures because I think
the reason that we didn't meet it there
is because there was a anticipated
dependence on one larger minority-owned
subcontractor that ended up not panning
01h 40m 00s
out as a partnership for the general
contractor and so you didn't have then
the underpinnings beneath that of a
number of minority-owned businesses
doing different subcontracting work so
we did make some changes right in our in
our process to make sure that that kind
of thing doesn't happen again yeah we
were always looking to improve or
continually improving all of our
processes including in this area and in
that particular case yeah there was
actually two contracts that they had
anticipated and anticipated getting and
worked towards of ultimately neither of
them worked out so it was an unfortunate
situation
it said the 18% is an aspirational goal
so we asked them to propose how do you
plan on meeting that and then we
basically hold them to the actions of
what they what they said they would do
we make sure that they do those actions
and then in some situations that really
didn't get us to the 18% there's no
penalty for not meeting the 18% is there
is there something just from a lessons
learned that we would do differently
there's no penalty per se and I'd and
it's a good question
we have done a lot of things differently
again we've we've improved and the way
that we evaluate when someone comes and
proposes we try to be much more clever
and how we evaluate that and sure that
we're Kanta they can they can provide
what they're saying that they can do but
we don't have a mechanism to say if you
don't meet that exact percentage then
there is a penalty in place but it is
also really important metric for the
bond accountability committees that
they're on their quarterly basis
routinely reviewing and so if a project
is is not meeting that benchmark you
know they're continually new op
subcontracting opportunities and they
can turn the heat up we had a meeting
with the BAC last week to do exactly
that to talk about one specific project
about this specific topic I think my
memory is that that 18% is much higher
than typical for local governments in
the area it varies some local agencies
set their goal by contract so to sort of
address what's available in a particular
scope of work and that 18% goal is a
board policy goal that was set when our
policy was initiated back in 2012 I
believe right so it's it's a little
higher than some but it's not out of
range I know that other agencies
struggle to reach it
miss Houston if there's no other
questions or comments from the board
miss Houston do we have anybody signed
up for public comment so I'm now gonna
close thank you thank you I'm now going
to close the public hearing on the cmgc
exemption ask the board to consider
resolution number five five five three
Madison High School modernization
projects exemption from competitive
bidding and authorization for use of the
construction manager general contractor
alternative contract method do I have a
motion second director anthony moos and
director bailey seconds the motion to
adopt resolution five five five three is
there any further board discussion on
this item the board will now vote on
resolution five five five three all in
favor please indicate by saying yes yes
yes all opposed please indicate by
saying no student representative Tran
yes resolution five five five three is
approved by a vote by six to zero a
student representative Tran voting yes
the board will now convene back
reconvened back in its to its regular
board meeting but we were going to
continue on the topic of facilities our
final facilities agenda item tonight
relates to our middle school openings
and the comprehensive environmental
assessment at Harriet Tubman and I'm
going to ask the fao committee chair
more to again introduce this item so
we're getting so in case you haven't
notice the fao committee is the place to
be you look at that yeah well and we're
getting regular updates on the on the
Tubman project and in particular on the
environmental issues and mitigation
strategies and we we we are have we have
01h 45m 00s
been meeting roughly every two weeks so
we met last week two weeks last week
okay the weeks are going by very fast
and we got an we got an update this is a
very very fast-moving process with lots
of moving parts so I anticipate that
we're going to get new news tonight and
superintendent Guerrero can you invite
people I I would invite dr. John Burnham
to make his way down here and a
supporting role jaring Vincent but I
just want to underline what director
Moore has brought up this is obviously a
very important project to us there's we
share a lot of concerns from the
community around Tubman middle and it's
moving both in an accelerated fashion
and the work and the discovery and the
updates are happening in real time so
tonight's another opportunity to hear
the latest looks like this is going to
be a team effort we have a we have a
PowerPoint if they can start that up
from the back and I'm told that the
remote for it is with the chair good
evening as director Moore said we are
moving fast so tonight the goal for
tonight was to bring a consultant
forward to help us put a draft action
plan together to have it discussed we're
not voting on anything tonight it's the
goal that was tasked of the consultant
was to have it all inclusive of all 14
items that the board put in their
resolution that they would like to have
studied what I'd like to do is invite
Sonoma to come on up John I'll move to
the outside they're the ones they're
gonna be doing presenting they're the
ones you're going to have 95% of your
questions do so I'd like them to come up
please and we'll get right into the
criteria
hi I'm Hilary Hafner with Sonoma
technology I'm born and raised in
McMinnville and went Oregon State so
it's lovely to be here see you
I'm Paul Roberts from Sonoma technology
and I'll be giving the first parts of
the presentation I can understand so
this is to address the company air
quality component of the comprehensive
health study that the board asked for
and at Tubman school and really that
that addresses kind of three or four
things what is the current air quality
what glutens are of concern and you had
a long list of of those to consider and
we'll talk about that in a little bit we
have experience with school HVAC systems
and measuring efficiency of them in
removing some of the foods that are most
important here and so we'll make some
recommendations to the contractor that's
selected to do the HVAC design based on
two studies we've done in Las Vegas and
Salt Lake and then there are various
other mitigation measures that should be
considered and will help provide some
guidance and input on that
you know it's especially important after
the mitigation measures are done to
evaluate the effectiveness of those
mitigation measures especially the
filtration systems in the for the
classrooms and that would happen when
the kids show up the students show up in
August and September there's also a
component of educating stakeholders and
teachers and students about air air
quality air pollution near roadway
pollution and we have a component to
look at that that that could be
considered by the board there was also
discussion about coming back two years
later and evaluating whether the systems
are still working correctly so
could be on the board's list as well so
the kind of approach that then could be
done really involves four different
steps one is looking at what's going on
right now near roadway near near i-5
that's mainly outdoors the indoors can't
really evaluate it now the students
aren't there and the HVAC system HVAC
system is not adequate to to protect
them and we might as well not spend the
time doing that in Phase two could be
the evaluation of the mitigation
measures especially the indoor/outdoor
filtration systems a Phase three could
involve stakeholder and student-teacher
outreach we'll talk about that in a few
01h 50m 00s
moments and then the follow-up
indoor/outdoor study that might occur a
couple years later just to make sure
it's still working properly so we'll go
into a few details on the couple phases
that how things might be addressed there
have been APA and state measurements
made here
there's also emissions inventory of
there by sources besides the roadway and
some measurements near roadways in other
places in in Portland and other places
so we need to evaluate those things and
use those to guide the study that would
be done and then to do the comprehensive
outdoor measurement you would mainly do
that during school hours there's no
reason to be monitoring overnight if
we're really trying to evaluate what the
effects are would be on students EPA in
various states have established criteria
for health effects for these various
pollutants we'll talk a little bit more
about a couple of those that are a
little more difficult but in general
those criteria are set to at levels
where there may be effects on students
or adults so and you would take
measurements and then compare them to
those so they're national ambient air
quality standards for some pollutants
and then there are toxic levels of
concern for others
and in the phase one then you would use
the data you collect to evaluate and see
which ones are most important which ones
have the highest potential toxic effect
relative to these criteria as I said
we've done work with designing and
modifying filtration systems in five
schools in Las Vegas and five schools in
Salt Lake City that's useful information
to give to the evaluators the designers
of the new system at Tubman and there's
a lot of literature and practice on
other mitigation measures sound walls
vegetation how effective they are and
what you can do for outdoor protection
as well as indoor protection you know
one thing that's important to do in
making measurements like this is make
sure you do good quality assurance this
has to do with calibrating your
instruments doing duplicates sighting
instruments properly
things like that EPA in the States have
guidance on how to do that and that's
really important so that when a
scientist comes back and tells you what
the results are there's some confidence
in the quality of that data so we always
do those kinds of things those are very
important most of the modern instruments
can be run fairly autonomously remotely
but you still need local technology
techs technicians to come visit the
sites occasionally those are kinds of
things that were from California but we
typically hired local local employees to
to do some of that operation and train
them to do that so that's something we
would
we've been proposed here if we were to
selected let's talk about the species
for a second so the the board talked
about a long list of species that were
used in the EPA 2009 study and others
that involve volatile organic carbon
compounds those are things like benzene
toluene formaldehyde
aldehyde etc and metals other toxic
chemicals so those should be on the list
if you want to evaluate all those okay
now we know a fair amount the community
knows a fair amount about the levels of
most of these compounds and how
important they are next to near roadways
so if you want to be comprehensive and
make sure that none of those are affect
we should do some measurements of those
at this site however there's a number
that are really should should be the
real focus and we expect them to be the
focus even if you do this comprehensive
evaluation at the beginning the criteria
pollutants are the ones that EPA has
established national ambient air quality
standards for there's an no2 near
roadway standard for example but none of
the sites in the whole country including
the one in Portland right next i-5
further south exceed those standards
than one in Portland's quite low and in
addition special studies have been done
research studies have been done in
Portland on no.2 for example that all
show that's below standards so some of
these could be eliminated or done in a
more simpler way because you have some
information about how important they are
on the other side of things many urban
areas and in particular there's been
01h 55m 00s
good analysis in Salt Lake and in Los
Angeles on what is the contribution of a
range of air toxics to the total
toxicity of the air in an in an urban
area I'm not talking about near roadway
right this second just general urban
area and in general in Los Angeles all
areas in Los Angeles and in Salt Lake
City diesel particulate matter is about
80 percent of the air toxic contribution
so it's obviously very very important
and you can look at i-5 next ton men
where it is and you know something like
15 to 20 percent of the vehicles or
trucks and these are in general not all
latest standard
controlled trucks so that's that's the
likely the highest priority pollutant
here to be concerned about for the last
10 or so years 10 or 15 years ultrafine
particles have become a big concern as
well let me back up a brief moment on on
diesel particulate matter EPA has not
established a standard method to measure
diesel particulate matter or even
properly define it in the chemical terms
that the criteria pollutants have been
defined in general we use black carbon
as surrogate for diesel particulate
matter that's like collecting the
material on a filter and looking at how
black it is due with a scientific
instrument obviously but so in addition
APA has not actually set a criteria
health standard for for black carbon or
diesel particulate matter state of
California has that's one microgram per
cubic meter
other states have not done that
as of now however most people use the
California standard criteria as the
measuring level for levels of concern
for diesel particulate matter ultra
fines are the particles much much
smaller their sort of particle matter
smaller than 10 microns that's pm10
smaller than 2.5 microns that's PM two
and a half and then ultra and and in
general to the PM two-and-a-half is
considered the respiratory fraction the
part that you breathe in in general the
particles larger than PM two-and-a-half
are removed in your nose or fallout
because they're large just in the
atmosphere in general because of their
weight in size ultrafine particles are
in general defined is smaller than 0.1
microns okay they're included in PM 10
or PM two-and-a-half in the mass but
they contribute very little to the mass
of particles
however the
number of particles in ultra fines are
quite large ten thousand two you know
two thousand sorry
ten thousand particles per cubic
centimeter
for example they contribute very little
to mass but they contribute to
visibility reduction potentially but
potentially health effects EPA the
health effects Institute and other
bodies have looked at the literature the
health literature for Ultra finds and
find that there isn't yet enough
evidence to say how damaging they are to
our health but they're concerned so this
is a level of concern this is a
measurement that you should be making
there may be a health standard in the
future but people are very concerned
about these these are such small
particles that they can be captured in
the your lung and potentially
transferred to your bloodstream they're
that small so those are the two most
focused materials that are probably of
concern here PM two-and-a-half would
also be one that would surely be
measured here polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons are mixed up in all this
they can be part of diesel particulate
matter they can be attached to the large
surface area a diesel particulate matter
and diesel particulate matter is also
small too so some of the things that are
measured as ultra fines are actually
from diesels so these are overlapping
definitions okay and wood smoke tracer
might be on the list because if you're
trying to understand is all of this
pollution you might measure at a near
roadway site from the roadway or from
other sources so if people are doing
wood burning in their homes for example
02h 00m 00s
that is contributing to wood smoke and
to black or brown carbon
normally called but it's still an
absorbing material similar to black
carbon similar to diesel particulate
matter in general that might be mostly
at night when the schools not open and
might be lower priority because of that
kinds of locations in phase one we're
not you wouldn't be proposing measuring
indoors yet but the students will be on
the playground ultimately and that's the
park just north of the school that's a
good place to monitor the near road
pollution now understand what that
contribution is use that as a measure
for later when you do some mitigation to
see if trees sound walls or whatever
kinds of other mitigation measures
outdoors can reduce that pollution so
somewhere on that field probably on the
west side closer to the roadway but not
under the trees that's a bad place to to
monitor obviously that's going to be
have to be coordinated with Parks and
Rec you should also consider doing some
measurements on the roof of the building
where the air inlets gonna be and
another part of something you might
consider is the EPA has done wind tunnel
measurements small scale models of near
roadway pollution different different
configurations of the roadway with an
elevated roadway a sunken roadway in
this case one side elevated one side
sunken and it would be good to try to
get them to do some Windtunnel modeling
and and detailed flow modeling to
understand the flow up that slope over
the building where is it coming down
where is the highest concentrations of
pollutants from that roadway when in
general the winds are from the Northwest
across the roadway towards towards the
school so you might do some measurements
in this pre study to understand if
that's a hot spot or not
from from measurements on the left is a
picture of a trailer if you're gonna do
the comprehend some kind of monitoring
that you've asked for that involves
quite a few instruments you're gonna
have to have an instrument rack and your
conditions shelter-rite things like that
if you were in the the picture on the
right shows some of those instruments in
iraq controlled space inlets coming off
the roof etc it also shows a on the left
of me illogical tower to understand the
wind flow at the time you're making the
measurements that's very important to
make sure you understand if it's coming
from the roadway or from somewhere else
at that time if the pollutant lists were
reduced you could probably get away with
a smaller shelter than this so that
might that might be an attractive thing
to do we won't go over the detailed list
of the way to measure all these
pollutants but you know we would
recommend focusing on the ultrafine
particles and the black carbon as a
surrogate for diesel particulate matter
PM two-and-a-half as a standard
measurement some of them are continuous
some of them are integrated samples that
have to be collected on filters and sent
to the lab there is a continuous measure
instrument to measure metals company
here in Portland does that Cooper Cooper
environmental so those are the kinds of
instruments and you can look over that
list and we could talk more about any of
that if you want it's important to
understand the quality of the data
you don't just collect it and throw it
out there you quality control that you
compare the calibrations you made of the
flow rates or the instruments in date in
detail and then look at graphics and and
statistics of that data and then you
should compare those with the existing
standards or criteria that the agencies
have set up as we said the black carbon
would be compared to the California
criteria that they've set up and there
would be a report and a summary of all
this now
one thing this project is on a very fast
track things are going on in parallel
the HVAC design team has to be doing
their design while the measurements are
being taken so there'd likely it would
likely be good to have a preliminary
assessment of the data after a few weeks
to make sure there's nothing unusual
02h 05m 00s
that should be fed back to the other
design teams like the HVAC so you don't
later say well if you'd told me that
earlier I would have done something
different so I think that's important
too that might be an informal kind of
kind of transfer of information not a
formal report and of course the PPS
would put these reports on the web for
for the public to see and be presented
to you as a as a board as well phase two
would would be focused on when the
building mitigation measures are done
and the students are back in class and
there might be concern of staff and
teachers and the general community about
well is that safety even hat go back to
school at that point so there are
sensors small sensors you can carry
around that are fairly inexpensive that
you can measure PM particulate matter or
say to particular matter less than two
and a half so you might use some of
those and Hillary I talked about one
than in an education program later to
help the faculty understand what the
concentrations are inside and outside
just with that in relative to what they
are right next to the roadway so that
might be part of a process you might do
but the real focus would be on indoor
and outdoor measurements outdoor
measurements where the air goes into the
building and what are the indoor
concentrations then in the classrooms
and what are the concentrations on the
play field okay when the kid students
are outdoors and you know if there are
mitigation measures installed at that
time or at some future time it'd be
important under
how they affect things the sound wall or
trees the current trees by the way at
the at the playfield are fairly open if
you stand in the play field and look
towards i-5 there's big gaps down low
and gaps between the trees that that
doesn't that isn't on the recommended
list of being a mitigation measure they
but you don't expect to get super high
efficiency removal from vegetation ok
the measurements for an HVAC system in
the building can remove 90 plus percent
of diesel particulate matter of black
carbon okay outdoors you're not going to
get anything close to that probably 20
or 30% at best okay
removal of those kinds of particles
that's what the literature says you know
if you do a comprehensive evaluation at
the in phase one then you would select
the most important species and those
will be the ones to focus on in Phase
two if you pre focus on that then the
Phase two might be the same species as
phase one in either case you know we
would recommend diesel particular matter
and ultra finds and PM two-and-a-half so
you do them outdoor monitoring at the
same location so you can pair the data
with current conditions and you would do
the indoor monitoring at a number of
classrooms there's at least now there's
three HVAC systems in in the building
if that's the way the new design is you
need to evaluate each of the three
separately and you need to look at
several different kinds of classrooms
standard classrooms there are larger
classrooms for science experiments and
things like that that might have some
extra ventilation for doing experiments
in a hood or something and then there
could be art classes and major classes
and things like that there might be in
different type buildings different type
classrooms that might be different size
and
should should be evaluated as well again
in the phase two data analysis you would
look at the Quality Assurance data you
would do graphics and statistical
summaries you would compare the
concentrations in the classroom and the
concentrations outdoors with these EPA
and state criteria you would
specifically evaluate the HVAC
filtration effectiveness on on the
important pollutants and compare that to
what the literature says you should be
achieving and make sure that you are
doing that and summarize that and make
it Republic if you have any comments on
that we're gonna switch gears a little
bit here in a second so if there are any
questions on this so far maybe we can
try to answer those thank you very much
I have a couple of quick questions now I
appreciate you saying that an HVAC
system optimally could pull out about
02h 10m 00s
90% of the diesel particulate matter is
there some reading is there some point
as you're measuring the outside air that
you would come back and say this is too
much there is no way that an HVAC system
of any reasonable design could possibly
make the indoor air safe well the the
criteria for diesel particulate matter
is not as well-documented and the time
resolution of the exposures are not like
OSHA requirements for eight-hour
exposures or the National ambient air
quality standards so there's also
comparison with what is going on in the
rest of the urban area okay we live in
an urban area an example is all urban
areas in the u.s. exceed the benzene
standard that EPA has set that's mainly
from gasoline okay from gasoline
combustion
so you can't expect that outdoors at a
school next to the roadway or not next
to a roadway would be lower than that
general urban concentration so that's
another comparison that you would make
and part of the judgment because what I
hear your question being is you know how
much worse is this is this similar to
the rest of the urban area or is that
much much worse so we would at that time
you would have the concentrations from
outdoors at the at the play field for a
couple months when when conditions are
as they are and I would expect those
concentrations not to be higher than one
or two micrograms per cubic meter okay
that's what might be measured at at some
near Road sites some the traffic on i-5
in this location is high but it's about
half of the highest traffic in other
places in the country okay have 200,000
or 250,000 vehicles a day this one has
more like a hundred 150 thousand so you
would expect that the concentration
would be not as high as the 405 in LA
for example or the truck 710 in LA
that's mainly a truck leaving the ports
concentration so if the concentration is
of that magnitude several mic grams per
cubic meter then reducing that
concentration by a factor of ten takes
it below the one microgram level indoors
so that that's what you would expect and
if it were a lot different than that
like you weren't getting ninety percent
removal then yeah we should be concerned
at that point but the studies that have
been done have been have been able to
demonstrate that that that kind of
efficiency or better has been done in
practice so the concentration will not
be ten micrograms freaky meat or
outdoors and therefore the indoor should
not be
higher than one so that's that's what
the science says we you know that's part
of doing the measurements is to prove
that for you and for the students and
their parents and the teachers and then
a process question between you and dr.
Burnham and mr. Vincent who is going to
be advising the board as to whether or
not it's safe and we should proceed or
it's not and we shouldn't this is going
to come from an advisory group which
will be populated by a couple of DQ
specialists by Sonoma
if whoever the contractor is you know B
we don't have a contract yet obviously
by project managers here because they
this needs to be coordinated between the
work that's going on the building as
well as this work and then myself and we
also I've talked work just this week to
a couple of specialists one with EPA on
the East Coast who's a specialist in
vegetation screens and sight and sound
walls and so forth he's willing to chime
in as an ad hoc when we need his advice
02h 15m 00s
into that group or for that matter into
contractors to provide input their only
issue with him is B availability because
he's a busy person and I've also talked
to a professor at PSU it's not Linda
George
it's another professor who is familiar
with indoor air quality as a PhD in
civil engineering in that area and he's
very willing to also provide ad hoc
advice about what the data says and so
forth so
the UQ will help in terms of looking at
what's going on advising technically
they will look at the data they won't
participate in a final decision that's
going to be a group decision by the
committee but I'm gonna provide it the
contractor who are they are will provide
it so that you'll get a lot of
information from a lot of PhD people
I'll put it that way can I ask about
that so at the last FAO meeting
it sounded like DEQ had had not been
willing to make any promises about any
level of support that they might be able
and willing to to give on this project
has that changed support to inform the
decisions of that that group that
advisory group to be on that group and
inform the decisions of it okay so they
would be full-fledged members of the
advisory group yes okay and what kind of
ta do we know what kind of TA would be
involved the people who are involved
know I mean if they're willing to give
technical assistance do do you have some
sense of what that would entail
it'll entail giving advice about past
monitoring the monitoring that we're
proposing there our knowledge of past
their knowledge of current monitoring
procedures and anything that that the
contractor would recommend so they're
willing to look at all the monitoring
issues so I think what what my concern
is and maybe Rita and other board
members is who's going to do the health
risk assessment who's going to tell us
that if you have X level in the outdoor
air it's safe for kids to be there or
not and it seems like the two likely
suspects
the EPA rdq and it seems like TQ and EPA
backed out of that responsibility that's
comparing the data to benchmarks the EPA
and existing PA DQ benchmarks that's
what that's talking about the only
locate the only one of these agents that
doesn't have a benchmark or a health
level is the ultra finds but my
understanding and I've asked that
question two or three times now as a lot
of people there are benchmarks there are
standards there are clear health levels
screening levels for everything but
ultra finds so we already have that the
benchmarks but we already have
significant amount of data that's on
each of these the 2009 study does have
screening levels that we've likely used
to so there are safe levels for exposure
of schoolchildren outside of schools
near high-traffic roads for everything
except ultrafine particles you're asking
if there are criteria for saying that
I'm asking if there's a standard for
safe level for children's exposure in
this situation for everything except
ultrafine particles and the ultrafine
particles is that covered by the
California standard no it's not so there
okay there is there is no so well I
think there's two things so we we don't
do the health risk assessment part there
are people that do that the school
district has somebody that is a risk
analysis person so they create a health
risk we have a health risk Assessor
that's employed by the school district
risk Assessor you don't have a health
risk Assessor right so but those people
have set these these criteria have been
set with health studies and health so
measurements in health studies and
measurements of health of
and those levels have been set but one
02h 20m 00s
thing to understand most of these
pollutants have no level below which
there are no known effects that's not
the case we have we have to just admit
that we live in a world with so so there
is no level where you can say there's no
health effect from any from any of these
pollutants okay and EPA says this this
is not me I'm just repeating what they
say so
so we have to ask your and we can't
really answer your question in the exact
way you posed it I'm sorry that's that's
just the way the community the way it is
well that's why I gave the example of
benzene you know we live with the
potential health risk from benzene all
of us okay and there's no level at below
which there's no effect
EPA keeps lowering the PM two-and-a-half
standard for example and the studies say
well we can't find a level where there's
no health effect there's levels where
there's minimal health effects or
whatever they want to define as okay so
that's that's why the questions a little
difficult well so let me see it
differently
so are there ETA or DEQ standards that
say there are acceptable risk levels for
these contaminants in this exposure
situation yes that's that's what we're
talking about with these benchmarks or
criteria or whatever we want to call
them they are levels that that those
agencies say are minimal risk level
that's what you're asking
that's acceptable risk level you know
and you know new permanent new sources
in your area or internet if they blow
one-in-a-million okay
kinds of things so those that's what
those levels are set relative to okay so
yes door is potentially a problem okay
and it's potentially a problem
especially during rush hour but if rush
hour on that roadway lasts a long time
that's during school hours
okay so that
that is an area of concern and you know
the students may be outside for an hour
a day so you know these that's the
difficult place I think I think the
indoor particulates of problems can be
solved properly so you know one other
thing just just in general about health
effects is that commuting on busy
roadways contributes an awful lot of all
of our exposure if we do that so if
these students are coming to school on a
busy roadway as opposed to a
neighborhood street they're getting
exposure there too and so so how do you
evaluate an extra hour on the playground
relative to in a school bus or on a
freeway coming to school those are
difficult problems and and you have to
add those up and and try to see what the
overall exposure is and we you know if
you do these kinds of measurements you
have the concentrations in those places
to evaluate against these benchmarks
does that answer your question sir yeah
it's difficult it's it's not a it's not
black or white that's part of the
problem Mike's question so these
thresholds to the extent that they exist
about acceptable risk are those
calibrated for kids or for adults and
does it matter well many of the health
studies are being done on children okay
there's a study now 25 years going's
called the Children's Health Study in
Southern California it is doing these
kinds of Health Studies on children of
you know sixth grade to high school okay
and understanding initially their lung
function but now a lot more kinds of
things and how they're affected by
pollution so those are the kinds of
health studies that are used to set
these benchmarks in some cases there are
separate
benchmarks for the most vulnerable which
are the youngest and the oldest in our
population okay
your lung capacity goes down
significantly when you get older and at
that point you're more susceptible to
some of these challenges okay um I had a
I have a couple questions for PBS staff
but also some questions so let me let me
start with you with some questions about
what we're testing for so we came up
with a long list of things to test for
02h 25m 00s
with the possible exception of Mike I
don't think any of us can actually claim
any expertise in this area so we came up
with a list of that list how many other
things how many of the items or you're
calling them species that compound
species okay they're they're a mix
actually okay I mean everything is
important but in order for us to get the
greatest value what would you recommend
that we focus on what could we
potentially delete from the list with
relatively with limited risk I mean what
would be your recommendation for a short
list of species that we're looking at
okay well I so the slide presentation so
we have that it would be helpful to get
this slide presentation
so this this other list is probably
better so you know all this is the list
of compounds and species that were
measured in 2009 and might be measured
in a total air toxics monitoring site
the the state runs for the EPA okay so
there's all these volatile organic
compounds benzene butadiene things like
that metals and then the criteria
pollutants but the major focus the
highest priority ones would be diesel
particular matter first because of what
I told you about urban areas eighty
percent or so of the time air to air
toxic toxicity is from that altar finds
because of their big concern and yet we
don't know what the issue is there and
PM two-and-a-half so those would be the
biggest focus if if you are concerned
about what's happened in the emissions
on the roadway is the cars have gotten
much much cleaner over the last few
years
diesels are being controlled in some
places in the country and not in others
California and Washington have strong
controls especially around the ports we
do not the organ does not so so part of
the issue is the interstate trucks going
through an i-5 may be a lot cleaner than
the than the local trucks on i-5 as
pollution has come down small sources
have become bigger issues so break break
where particles which are metals have
become a bigger issue just because other
things are getting so much smaller that
that's part of the major contribution so
that's why some of the metals are on the
list they're also industrial facilities
across the freeway that was what
contributed the cadmium in the previous
study thank you very much for that and I
wanted to jump in on metals as director
Moore said fundamentally we don't really
have any idea what we're talking about
the issue of metals has has been raised
to me I suggested several of those do
you mitigate for those in the same way
so that we might not have to look at
them or do we do things differently if
we find that they are higher for
instance you know you know do we need to
be mopping down the interior of the
building on a more regular basis if the
stuff is in on the floor I'm just making
that up I don't really know but I want
to ask the question thank you well maybe
the analogy is letting gasoline
they can't when we had LED and gasoline
that came out as large particles out of
a compile type and eighty or eighty
percent of it or more fell within a
hundred or two hundred feet of the
roadway okay so they didn't really
weren't the small size particles brake
wear and tire wear that are generating
some of the metals are mechanical
processes they're not combustion
processes that generate small particles
like ultra finds they should be of less
concern for the for health in general
okay
so if that's where the metals are coming
02h 30m 00s
from if there's a metal processing plant
metals on the other side of the freeway
that might be more concerned because the
metals and the particles from that would
be formed at high temperature and could
be very small particles and travel long
distances and be ingested into your lung
so it depends on which of these sources
you might be concerned about and that's
part of the reason that you might do a
more comprehensive analysis initially is
to make sure you understand what the
sources are in the area not just the
freeway but other kinds of things thank
you very much for that distinction I
appreciate that very much yes I believe
that we do have metal smelting going on
across the freeway and more and you
could use this metals monitor it can
20 medals at the same time and you could
it runs continuously you can get wind
direction data during short time periods
when Peaks might be high for given
metals and evaluate that if that's a
concern continuous with with meteorology
it really helps you sort of segment
where the high concentrations might be
coming from it helps you kind of
actually point back to the source
sources and so that can be really useful
um this is a relatively new kind of
methodology in the last few years that
allows us to actually do those
measurements on an hourly basis time
check I'm an ask director bayleaf you
had a last last question and then I
think the conversation can continue well
I I don't I don't think we're gonna have
the Sonoma folks here okay the next step
any meetings so that's the pleasure of
the board
take advantage we we also have a couple
more slides to talk about there's a
couple more parts there's another
separate part to educate but if you have
questions on this part we're willing to
try to answer them I did hear one other
winner there part of the question here
that I didn't answer which which was do
you mitigate the same way for those
metals as you would for some of the
particles and if they're from combustion
and very small and of the same size as
diesel particulate matter like they
might be from metal smelting then yes
the mitigations processes are the same
they're the same size particle that's
what's really going to determine the
effectiveness of the particle removal
okay so the break where which might be
mechanically generating larger particles
you know they're well removed in the
filtration system they also fall out
faster smaller particles have weeks and
even months of lifetime okay in the in
the atmosphere
so I think that answers the second part
that I didn't that I missed sorry why
don't you continue with the presentation
then we can you're all gonna have a PhD
in air quality now by the end of this so
one of the things that's really
important if you're gonna set out some
monitoring near a school people are
gonna have questions what are you doing
what do you you know what are you
measuring what does that mean like
you're like you're asking us and so it's
really important to conduct you know we
really care about making sure that
people understand you know what what
these measurements are and so we thought
it would be really important to have
stakeholder teacher-student education
and outreach you know to make sure that
everybody knows what's happening
you know there's that's very transparent
and and you know that there's some
explain the science behind it
and so you know we'd like to you know
talk about air pollution air quality but
what the measurement program is why
we're measuring certain things how it's
being measured and then also leading it
into how can the student reduce their
exposure and their contribution to air
pollution
you know maybe that's how they commute
to school or something like that and
then also can students get engaged in
trying to help change things in their
community like an anti idling program or
something to reduce emissions so that
was something that you know I think be
really useful in this kind of endeavor
there's also a program that we've we
developed called kids making sense and
it's a stem based curriculum for middle
school and high school students it's
also next generation science standards
meets those and what it does is it
allows us to you know teachers to
provide environmental education provide
them with students with the measurements
this and I realized I left it back up in
my in my briefcase
02h 35m 00s
thanks and it allows you know basically
you teach in the classroom you then send
the kids out for you know to do some
measurements with these small sensors
they discover things that they hadn't
thought about before and
and you know oh it's dustier when
there's a you know soccer game going on
or something and then help helping them
interpret the data and one of the one of
the most fun things that I've actually
done as a scientist cuz I think it's
really important to get out there and
and you know and teach and teach
children about is the interactions that
we've had with the students we do Google
Hangouts with them as you know I was a
scientist they can ask us any questions
and just how engaged the students get
with air pollution and exploring various
laboratories or some lab experiments
there's curriculum you know the guidance
to the teachers been handouts to the
students and this instrument called an
air beam and when it's paired with the
phone you can see what the concentration
is as you walk around and it provides a
map and it goes up on the internet and
you get to see where you've been and
we've conducted these programs in across
the across the world actually Thailand
and and other locations multiple schools
here in the US and seeing the sort of
the spark of the students as their hands
on and see you know wow when I'm stand
behind a bus and that big black smoke
comes out it really shows how high
concentrations they're learning that
sort of linkages between those things
and then also working with the teachers
and seen the light go on with them to on
different scientific methodology and how
do you know what can you control for and
what can't you control for as far as
variables it's it's a really exciting
program that we've been involved with so
sorry very excited about it so
potentially you could come I'm gonna
skip now to the science again but we can
because we're almost done you could come
back after a couple of years and see it
to do some other measurements to make
sure that your mitigation measures are
still working I know that in a project
that Paul was involved with they came
back and the wrong filters have been put
into the system and so it was no longer
as efficient and so that was caught and
then corrected and so there's some
things just keeps make sure that the
system is operating properly you know so
your mitigation is still working again
we talked all the deliverables that from
this kind of project would be made
available to the public
there's a post scheduled here basically
trying to get started as soon as
possible and initially you have some
discussions with the HVAC as we as Paul
was mentioning HP deceit HVAC design and
then also a little ways through we do
some interim results we're not going to
wait till you know six months later and
tell you what's going on because a lot
of this data can be collected
continuously
so we have a very good handle on what's
going on and we can summarize that and
have an interim you know discussion
about what we're seeing and that that
can then again as you were asking an
Australian that how do you you know how
do you how does that inform whether or
not are we going to get low enough
levels and so that can be answered
relatively soon in the process and then
there's a you know later reporting at
the end but this just sort of shows that
this is a long haul here you know cuz
then today we have everything ready
before before school starts and then do
the measurements while schools in
session so basically there's a you know
we've talked about this comprehensive
air quality monitoring indoors and
outdoors making recommendations on
mitigation measures outside and also
with the HVAC filtration system and how
would we have measurements that would
look at the effectiveness of those and
then bringing in an educational since we
are talking about school bring in an
educational component that engages the
classrooms in looking at air quality
around their school and in the school
two slides now that one right there yep
so at what point on that timeline do you
have enough data for someone to make a
recommendation about whether the
mitigation is enough or how we should
proceed I think there's a couple points
here one one is the outdoor measurements
that in the school field before the
this early early 2018 so if those are in
ranges that one might expect are the
mitigation measures indoors expected to
to achieve the result you want so that's
one thing I talked about briefly on
black carbon is an example you know the
outdoor what are the outdoor
concentrations compare those to other
outdoor new road monitoring sites are
they way out of line or they add or
below more relative to the traffic at
02h 40m 00s
this location so that's that's your test
early on qualitatively but if it's way
out of line with something that you
found we found other places we and
others I'm not in that case the
community what's published if it's way
out of line on something then that that
would cause you concern at that point so
that's if you started monitoring in
February that might be by March that you
had preliminary results that were way
out of whack I wouldn't expect that but
but that would that could raise the bell
if you were higher concentrations than
other places where they really shouldn't
be higher this might be a conversation
for another time but on the circumstance
that Harriet Tubman is deemed the air
quality is unsafe would we would we do
analysis of other schools in our
district that are also similar in
similar situations like Benson and
Lincoln are next to major highways and
Cleveland is on PAL pull-apart which are
also right next to highways and
industrial areas similar to Harriet
Tubman because then we're talking on
like a district wide issue except for us
for the board that's a great question
yeah I think we'd be looking to staff
for a recommendation based on that
so the answer the answer is yes Moses I
think we would ask for the
recommendation so we we've got I'm
learning we've got a fair amount of
information already about the air
quality some of it from previous EPA
study some of it from research that's
being done by other people how I guess
my my question how much more info do we
need what like what value-added would
there be for doing this the study that
you're suggesting how how and I don't
even know how much we're talking about
in terms of money but I'm guessing it's
substantial so I I guess I want to know
like how much more info is this going to
give us beyond what we already know well
I that's a good question I guess I would
divide it into a couple pieces one is
you're gonna design a new HVAC system
with filtration in this school does it
really work like it's supposed to be
designed that's I would I would say
that's what you want to be able to tell
the students that it does and the way to
do that is to is to make measurements
and to prove that so the indoor/outdoor
measurements for the classroom on a new
HVAC system that's being designed here
should should be should be evaluated
okay so that's that's the phase two I
guess under under this program phase one
you know it depends what the board wants
to be able to tell the community the
stakeholders the students from IBO okay
you know do you want to say you've
tested everything that's been looked at
before and the only things of concern
are these two or three or four and and
we're working on mitigating those or do
you want to say we use scientific
knowledge and understanding to eliminate
some of those from past studies and you
know that's that's a question of what
confidence you want what confidence the
scientists can tell you okay you know
the traffic may be slightly different on
this freeway than another freeway is
that of high enough concern to to do
some more measurements since 2009 the
traffic's gotten worse on i-5 controls
have gone in on light duty vehicles that
have cleaned them up
so there's counter producing things what
is the balance between the improvements
and the higher traffic okay so you know
do you want to use scientific judgment
on that or do you want to do
measurements those are really the
questions I think to try to address I
think you can eliminate some of those I
don't think no.2 you don't need to do it
02h 45m 00s
doesn't dicks it's not going to exceed
the standard at this location it doesn't
at other locations okay for example but
in your opinion are there any categories
there on which we have no relevant data
ultra fines and very limited at this
location or these locations around here
on black carbon on diesel particulate
matter I mean there's there's the site
further south on on i-5 that's a news
site that's been in operation three
years two years two years two or three
years that has black carbon as a
surrogate for a diesel particulate
matter so similar traffic to what's up
here the challenge to us I think is that
this is a very significant testing
protocol that you've outlined and I
understand absolutely
just responding to you know what the
board asked for in terms of scope
potential scope for testing but the
degree of the scope of the testing is
directly related to the resources that
we have to directly invest in mitigation
and so to my mind we need to be as
judicious as possible in our testing
protocol and make use of information
that is already available and really
focus our efforts on the mitigation
follow-up question on that you've tested
at a number of states number of
conditions is it fairly predictable
based on traffic flow what the results
are in terms of parts per million or
something like that well if we take
diesel particulate matter as the example
and it's the one that contributes the
most to the toxicity
you know the existing data matches the
number traffic of diesels on the on the
roadway fairly well with concentrations
nearby so there's the 7/10 this is a
free a newly-built
well it's now a few years old but a
newly built free way to relieve other
freeways of truck traffic leaving the
ports of LA and Long Beach going north
it has 30% or more trucks on it okay the
concentrations measured next to that
roadway were significantly higher than
we measured in Las Vegas that had 12%
okay and this freeway here has something
like 15 to 20 it's likely to be in
between but it's several years later -
so there's other like I said earlier
there's other factors that are raising
or lowering that effect so in general
yes
but you know if you're getting a minute
if you're gonna prove that the endure
mitigation works you have to measure the
outdoor anyway okay so is that answer
your question demand in in part yeah I I
don't understand the part about the
indoor I mean wouldn't you know the
indoor work because you measured the air
quality indoors and so you'd know what
the concentrations of the species were
right so if you measure indoor you can
compare the concentration directly with
criteria that are established all right
if you measure the outdoor your
understanding number one what the
students are exposed to when they're
outdoors for their play area and you're
also calculating the measurement
efficiency of the filter and comparing
that with the literature as well to make
sure it's as efficient as it should be
if that's only sixty or seventy percent
efficient even if the indoor
concentration may be acceptable it's not
doing as well as it can okay well yes
but maybe there's an operational
procedure that's built in that's not
working right or maybe the right filters
are being used or we get substantially
so you could do better than that so
that's part of that too you're saying
you know the question was asked how low
can you get well if you can do better
without much more cost just doing it
right you should do that so that's why I
think we recommend measuring the outdoor
at the air inlet and the in classroom
02h 50m 00s
concentrations both second question is
what are the outside mitigation measures
that can be put up in a relatively short
period of time and roughly how effective
are they
the results for mitigation of by
vegetation this is maybe stands of
bushes and trees that are dense is mixed
in the literature okay
somewhere between five or ten percent
removal to twenty to forty percent
removal of particles up window downwind
in concert with sound walls it seems to
be better but the experiments are still
limited in scope and in fact EPA and
California Air Resources Board are
funding new studies to to further
understand what that is planting trees
next to roadways near sound walls
without sound walls to better measure
what that effectiveness is it's not
going to be 80% it's not going to be as
good as indoors so so a sound wall is a
wall that makes noise well the simple
the simple explanation of what a sound
wall does is the sound wall yeah so
these were originally designed around
freeways just to drive the sound up
instead of it going into a community the
deal is if it's 20 feet high say it in
general dilutes the pollution by a
factor of two of that so it forces the
air to go up over that and then that
dilutes it because now the air is from
40 40 feet down so it sort of dilutes
the air a factor of two right at the
point of action and concentrations of
pollution downwind of that show that the
concentrations are lower than if no
sound while were there but it's it's
just dilution it's not any physical
other physical process than than that
okay so combining a sound wall and
vegetation that might actually absorb
some of the pollution
or filter it in a way like being
filtered in in the HVAC system can
remove more than just the sound wall
would so those are the strategies but
the you know the research is is mixed on
the performance of these outdoor
mitigation measures another mitigation
measure which may not work here in Las
Vegas the traffic was much less in the
middle of the day than it was a rush
hour so not having the students outdoors
on PE at 7:00 a.m. when the school
started when the high school started is
is part of the mitigation measure that
you can have so part of the purpose of
doing the measurements here is to really
see what the diurnal pattern is and see
if that's a potential mitigation measure
not to have PE early in the day now this
roadway is backed up a lot of the time
during the day does a but the atmosphere
acts differently during the middle of
the day than it does in the morning it's
it's restricted by inversions in the
morning and during the middle of day
it's not is that enough to dilute the
concentrations during the middle of the
day such that it's much safer to be
outdoors in the playfield those are the
kinds of things you would learn from
this phase one study that could help
design mitigation measures other
seasonal differences as well their
season sure they're seasonal differences
- there's more inversions in the
wintertime there's more mixing in the
whole atmosphere during the summer and
during stronger wind time periods so it
depends on wind speed and and the
general weather patterns as well
and a final rhetorical question if it
was the State Highway Department that
crammed this highway through right next
to a school
sixty years ago why are we the ones that
are having to deal with it
kind of similar question about would it
I guess almost be worth it about
contacting the city or something because
we're talking about how the Oregon
regulations are more relaxed and less
tight and it's gonna be such a
significant issue to our students and
being the largest urban School District
in Oregon would it be worth our time to
contact the city about doing that
because if we're truly an educational
02h 55m 00s
institution then we want to be able to
preserve the future for our students
that they can make their impact later in
life because it seems like it's a pretty
significant issue that we've been
talking about for like two hours it's
part of the presentations um you know
vironment Elad and some science lessons
we could incorporate to understand it
but we skipped over talking about what
things the adults could do to try to
talk about the root cause of these
issues like trucks in Oregon and the
standards that we have for their
emissions for instance and it makes a
lot of sense what our student leader is
saying and also I have to say the very
real fact that they only plowed under
majority minority neighborhoods it was a
brutal displacement so I I think if they
always gonna be continuing to track this
roughly every two weeks and I think as
we look ahead to a legislative session I
think it might be it might be worth our
time to craft a a letter to Governor
Brown and do tea and the city and
anybody else we can think of to start
talking about the issues at hand and
what kind of assistance we could use to
to help with not only with Tubman but
with all the other schools that where
this is an issue
so I wanted I know we're way over time
but I wanted to ask one more question of
the cinema folks so I understand you're
going to be doing a lot of testing and
out of the testing results there are
going to be some we might we might be
able to design mitigation strategies as
part of your proposal making those
recommendations for mitigation
strategies certainly advising and making
recommendations on them yes but there
are other people that can do that too
that's why rich Baldauf what might be
from the EPA might be on the technical
advisory committee and others as well so
you know it wouldn't be us exclusively
there are others that have some
experience in some of these areas that
could could advise on that okay but yeah
we would wait you know anything we know
we want to help provide because the
ultimate goal is to reduce the impact on
the students and teachers at this school
oh I just well I just had a couple of
quick technical questions if that's okay
just make sure I get this right
so for DPM there's a California risk
level okay correct and then for the PM
2.5 epa has a risk level well they have
a national ambient air quality standard
okay that's what we would use okay and
then but for the ultrafine particles we
don't have a regulatory level isn't
available that's correct
so it is is anyone putting together risk
data to set a level for ufp I mean where
would we go for that right well the
health effects Institute hei did a did a
report a review of all the data on ultra
fines I think two years ago and
summarize that and they're gonna do it
again and EPA is doing it as well so is
the betty-ann that so there are there
are so risk Assessor could help
with that right there are processes
going on to do that if there's more
health data on ultra finds then they
will review that and try to evaluate
whether that helps set a level so then
just two more quick things
so the HVAC will take out the ultrafine
particles well it will it will I mean
the the diesel particulate matter is a
major contributor to Ulta finds okay
okay so if we say the experience at La
schools and Las Vegas schools and Salt
Lake schools is ninety percent plus with
a well-designed system that's including
a lot of the oil Truffaut's okay now
there haven't been super detailed
evaluation of individual particle sizes
okay but but these both measures that we
have they've done quite well on and then
what's in the ultra fine is that metals
or it's just we don't know most of that
is organic carbon ish type combustion
these are from the compose Duty and
03h 00m 00s
diesel contributor you know combustion
processes that produce these particles
but recognize this is like a highly
porous material that can collect
anything on it so it can collect gases
that absorb on it it could it could do
metals if there were metals in the
combustion process etc so we don't the
health studies don't really have the
perfect measure of these that's why I'm
saying these aren't compounds or species
these are measurement defined compounds
I have just a couple questions about our
own process here and determining our
scope and protocols for testing so this
is one contractor who has responded to
our request
what is our process for getting other
perspectives on what the appropriate
scope of testing and potential
mitigation
might be and then how do we get a sense
of what the costs might be so that we
can weigh it relative to the overall
because this all falls under the
umbrella of what we've authorized for
the Tubman over all right we would not
be authorizing individual contract for
testing firm who we've talked to and
they're putting something together by in
a week and then we have a third firm
entity that we'd like to sit down with
and ask them what they would do in some
comprehensive or some components of it
they might be able to deliver and that's
here in Portland area so we're gonna try
to get this part done by end a week
early next week we're moving fast on
this my concern with the if you look at
the schedule I'm glad we're stuck on
that slide our next F a o is January 16
is it not or is there one more in here
or do we need to ask for a special okay
because otherwise but our first blue dot
will be late in terms of getting
equipment and getting it going
roseann we're probably gonna be looking
at the first week in tangent January
okay and so there we would get cost
estimates and we would have a discussion
around the scope of our testing I think
we're gonna hear closest to apples and
apples all right so we'll have three
areas of you say cost estimates but
they're they're gonna be proposal
dollars for each of the what if we did
the top area species you know there's
the comprehensive all 11 that's in your
it's in your board resolution and I
think we'll get better aligned with to
the three different phases and possible
methodologies will align that with the
other one or two and bring something
that the FAO can take a look at and give
some give some approval so we can move
forward and get some equipment ordered
and get it placed because I would
definitely like to see you know a few
different scenarios for scope with
projected car
attached to them and at the same time a
expert opinion about the data that
already exists that we don't need to
replicate so that we can focus our
resources on mitigation okay thank you
board's process moving forward we would
expect a recommendation so it looks like
you're doing your due diligence and
you've got an advisory committee that I
hope that you would come in January with
first a recommendation to the FAO
committee and then bring it to the full
board but we don't need to talk about
right now because we're already late but
I think I would like to get more
information about the advisory group and
who is who is on it it sounds like right
now you're looking at a number of ad hoc
people and I think given given the speed
with which we have to move on this
I think ad hoc is tricky and I think
there are I think there are resources
locally who would be willing to
participate on a on a regular basis so
when we talk in January it would be it
would be great to hear who great you
know who we've nailed down for okay we
have a pretty good bubble diagram with a
lot of that I did not want to present it
tonight because we haven't gotten around
to everyone and also I want to enough
03h 05m 00s
background each one not just their name
so you understood their pedigree and
exactly what they do and what they're
bringing to the table so would have been
a little too presumptuous to put that up
here tonight but we'll do that if I can
if I can fast forward to next fall and
we get all this done and it's amazing as
we're entering into the budget cycle for
next year
these filters 90% 92% whatever they're
only as good as our maintenance and
operations budgets and staff can change
them out or they're gonna back out at
jury
and and they're gonna and they're gonna
back up if we don't stay on top J coming
up from Southern California we change
them out at least twice twice a year we
have two people who change them
throughout the district what kind of
dumb they go back they change them out
again that means so it's that second
remember what those gunked-up water
filters look like that's exactly right
so secondly we are at any time 3250
custodians short not just our
maintenance folks on the filters so
right now our level of cleanliness in
any of our sites is a disappointing
moderately dingy and our custodial staff
and union doesn't appreciate that either
so if we take care of all this outdoor
and we fix the indoor we're gonna roll
right back to the again I just have to
put that out there thank you and
superintendent Guerrero are you aware
that moderately dingy is a real term
great thank you all very much for the
informative discussion and mr. Benson
for those of us who aren't on the fao
committee if we get the slides yes
thanks thank you thanks to Sonoma too
for the work you've done so far I
appreciate it
so we're now we're going to board
committee and conference reports
vice-chair more has already more than
adequately reported on what the finance
audit and operations committee has been
working on director Anthony you had a
report I have a couple of brief reports
here last week I attended one of the
semi regular meetings of the local
public safety Coordinating Council which
really does go by the acronym lipstick
it's convened by the mayor and the
county chair it involves the DEA the
Chief of Police the chief police for
Gresham Multnomah County Sheriff
it's a cast of thousands it usually
involves more than a hundred people and
I wanted to let you know that Multnomah
County's comprehensive gang assessment
implementation this is the first year of
it and it's going very well it's based
on a program the US Department of
Justice came out with in 2009 comes with
a very long pedigree
they have been compiling considerable
amount of data on the community and law
enforcement demographics and community
perceptions and resources and they are
starting to make very good use of that
information particularly in conjunction
with Portland Public Schools
unfortunately superintendent guerrero
they had a meeting for all of the
superintendent's in the county three
weeks before you started I think it
would be very good to be able to get you
an update on that and I do especially
want to call out our domestic violence
prevention course boys into men
continues to get just rave reviews it's
absolutely wonderful
recruiting for vacant SRO positions is
going unprecedented ly well the Police
Bureau is just shocked at both the
number of people who are applying to be
SROs and how passionate they are about
working with our young people which is
just terrific finally it was drawn to my
attention that Portland Public Schools
needs to develop and implement a policy
for Nate making no locks alone I'm sorry
I didn't say that right naloxone readily
available in our schools naloxone is the
emergency medication for treating opioid
overdoses
unfortunately opioids are becoming so
ubiquitous and they are beginning to
appear so frequently in public spaces as
03h 10m 00s
uncontained powders the chances of
inadvertent accidental overdose are
becoming unacceptably high the
consequences for delay are potentially
fatal I've been in touch with some of
our school nurses the EM ESD and with
the Oregon Health Authority there are no
legal or outside policy barriers to PB s
making naloxone available other than
implementing a policy and providing for
training we simply have to take the
initiative we would need to address
questions such as in which schools to
stock it whether our high schools our
middle schools or k12 whether to Train
just school nurses or SROs or school
secretaries or other faculty or office
staff and where it should be stored I
think that they should probably go to
fao for a recommendation to staff so I'm
just a question is that a policy with a
big P or more of a this is an
operational just I think not say a board
level ideally it would be with a small P
and an operational issue
I want to make sure that we get
something done so if having it come from
the board would help superintendent
Guerrero I think we should do that if
not hey great well I appreciate you
bringing attention to this director
Anthony that it's obviously a crisis and
a lot of cities everywhere actually but
especially if we're talking about our
youth and there's something we can do
that could be you know help in a
situation hopefully that we don't
experience in our schools but I'd be I'd
be interested in working with our
general counsel to see what we may need
to do and in the way of you know is this
just a practice that we do it is just
part of our typical health efforts or
what a policy makes sense in this case
it's also important to think about you
know it also helps to sort of set the
example as well because we have a lot of
smaller districts where I'm hearing that
this is an issue especially in our rural
communities I know as we've gone around
meeting with a lot of leaders out in the
broader community especially in the
health sector and I know that our senior
director for strategic partnerships is
here Jonathan Garcia I know that there
would be people who would be very
interested in partnering with us in an
effort like this so this is this is a
great one for you to highlight this
evening good thank you this is the same
drug that's so extraordinarily expensive
that the Multnomah County is currently
suing the federal government over it so
something we'd want to talk about with
our school-based health centers but even
MoMA County can't have it doesn't have
it to the extent that anywhere near that
it's necessary thank you very much I
appreciate that I have some good names
and contact information for you also
I've got some vignettes I will share
privately also this last week I was at
Portland Community College's safety
meeting at the Cascade campus and I did
just want to highlight one fact and an
ask of the superintendent in Portland it
is illegal to go into the oncoming
to pass a stopped bus this is starting
to be a very serious issue for students
from Jefferson High School they are
being placed at very great risk and it's
it's very topical for me because it's
right in front of my home I would be
very interested before I start
complaining to the police bureau do we
have this as problem at school and if
you could ask the senior directors I
would think they'd be the best source I
would really appreciate hearing and then
very briefly final thing all of the
board members received little holiday
cards from the standard insurance
company and I did just want to mention
the standard is our provider for long
term disability for our teachers and
staff coming in 2018 we are going to see
a pretty fabulous employee mental health
program coming out of the standard they
are actually the best most cutting-edge
mental health care provider in the
nation they are they are really I'm
sorry the standard is the standard and
we very much need that so there will be
some good news coming in 2018 Thank You
03h 15m 00s
director Anthony just represent friends
did you have a report tonight nope
director comm stam do you have anything
Bailey
any committee meetings serve no we were
scheduled to have enrollment and
forecasting last night but staff
requested that we put it to the new year
to give them more time to prepare around
the proposed regular Scott issue
and then I would just say the policy and
governance task force there's a meeting
set for January fifth or revisions to
the complaint policy this is work that
was started previously and also an
update on the public records policy and
potentially a review of a nepotism
policy so with that is there any other
board business so we're gonna now turn
to the business agenda I want to just
have a couple the business agenda
actually has substantive issues in it I
just want to specifically call them out
first there's a memorandum of
understanding with the Portland
Association of teachers this is settling
a grievance we reached this tentative
agreement as part of the mediation
ongoing mediation process and we need to
vote on it tonight so that we can
implement January 1 there's also an
increment of funds for Miller Nash
pending a more comprehensive plan to
diversify our internal external legal
capacity this was brought forth this
amount was brought forth in consultation
with the interim general counsel and
will allow for coverage of some ongoing
cases well at the same time stepping
down the amount and providing space for
this more comprehensive plan to be
rolled out in addition there's on the
business agenda an additional hundred
twenty-five thousand dollars for the
investigation team for the Whitehurst
investigation the scope timeline and
budget to complete the investigation was
discussed last month by the board and
just as a that 125 will allow the
completion of the witness interviews the
analysis of all the PPS documents and
policies so that they can make their
recommendations and conclude their draft
report in addition there is an item that
said approval of a third party sales
that this is the topic we discussed last
board meeting that we needed a waiver
for in addition we also discussed the
Hillsdale market last time
question about whether we had full cost
recovery and district staff I think
Jerry's gone but district staff assures
us that there is no costs to PPS for
hosting the market there they do all the
cleanup setup so there's no cost to the
district it's just a standard lease
agreement so we have some set of items
in our business agenda I'm gonna ask the
board members if there's any items you'd
like to pull for a separate discussion
and vote if yes let me know okay miss
Hewson are there any changes to the
business agenda do I have a motion and a
second to adopt the business agenda
second moved by director Anthony
seconded by director Cranston miss
Houston is there any public comment no
there's not is there any board
discussion on the business agenda
everybody's talked out okay
the board will now vote on the business
agenda all in favor please indicate by
saying yes all opposed please indicate
by saying no yes yes knows
representative Tran yes business agenda
is approved by a six to zero vote with
student representative Tran voting YES
so we're following this going to have
what I hope is a relatively brief work
session but on behalf of the board I
want to wish everyone a Happy Holidays
happy new year and this meeting is
adjourned and we won't meet again until
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)