2018-02-27 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2018-02-27
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - February 27, 2018

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this regular meeting of the Board of Education for February February 27th 2018 is called to order this evening we're holding our board meeting in Cleveland High School as part of the new boards commitment to holding our board meetings in the out in the schools and the community versus in the school districts administrative headquarters so Cleveland High School serves about 1600 students and has a second largest enrollment of PBS high schools Cleveland is proud of its award-winning performance arts programs and has one of two Portland High Schools which has an international baccalaureate program it's also one of two high schools in the Portland Public School District to see receive an a on its government report card based on students tests and SAT scores I'm happy to identify myself as a parent of a Cleveland alum and I know director Rosen and director Moore are as well so we're rel represented and I want to thank that Cleveland's students we're gonna hear from them in a minute but the Cleveland students who before the board meeting shared their experiences with us and their perspectives about not only their experiences but just in general in public school so thanks thanks for your insights we're gonna first run through some meeting information and the last Cleveland principal and some students to come forward and speak to us so for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by law the meeting is being televised I believe there earlier was a problem for streaming so if that continues it will be video recorded and replayed later I'm check the board site for replay times and also director constan is unable to attend tonight's meeting and we also have with us this evening the PBS Ombudsman Judy Martin who attends all their board meetings Judy she's right over here so specifically Judy will year to listen to public comments and if appropriate provide additional support to families who want or need it Judy can be reached at five oh three nine one six thirty forty five or Budds Minh at PBS net we also have interpreters with us this evening and like I'd like to ask them to come forward at this time introduce themselves in the language they'll be interpreting and form the audience will they be located should anyone need their assistance of catch a movie that will be confirmed it will give exams in kwibi themed circuit on the Queen live in am she could be seen come on good but also Bridget what facility news artist possible mono my entire gonna need to German hospital tomorrow Bethenny hi dr nei [Music] da hai Kong so you know how you go hoping a CIO for the one God taught young oh you see I'll call you the bouncer the one cortina be in the CIO oh great thank you so to kick off tonight's meeting I'd like to ask the Cleveland principal Aishah Freeman come up and provide a welcome and introduce the students our who are here with you tonight thank you I'm icon yes welcome everybody I'm eisah Freeman I'm the principal of Cleveland High School this is my first year as principal of a comprehensive public high school but my 22nd year working in a large public high school and I'm truly honored to be here and to be welcoming our board and superintendent Guerrero to Cleveland High School I am also truly in my dream job I absolutely love what I do and love working with young people every single day just brings so much joy to me what I particularly appreciate about Cleveland High School which we had some time to talk about with our board tonight is that where we are an IB Diploma world school we're also an avid school and we're also growing or career technological education program we're expanding it quite a bit next year we have over 60 clubs including six different culturally specific clubs and a Championship Speech and Debate team as well as a constitution team a Model United Nations team when I first landed here at Cleveland High School on July
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1st I was here for just a couple of days actually I think it was after the July 4th holiday and here walked in our student body president Terrance Paul and his vice-president to meet me and I have ever since felt so welcomed and well received by our students as well as our staff at Cleveland High School so I'm going to turn over the mic here in just a minute and let them share a little bit about themselves and I think you'll feel the same as I did I'm Terrence Paul is our student body president 12th grader he is an IB student and also an avid old student you will be going to PSU next year and he works full-time on the east side at kingpin and you go out there to go bowling by the way you'll see Terrence Kira Swint is a tenth grader she is our elected Co class president she is an athlete a lacrosse player and a cross-country player or runs cross country and she is very passionate about student governance and leadership and may sit here with me for a little while tonight James Paredes aghhhhhh James is a 12th grader will be moving on or graduating and wants to become a mechanical engineer James is a immensely talented musician I think I've seen him in every single band that Cleveland has and he is in our award-winning brass quintet which will be going on to state and then last but not least is Michael and she's a junior she is a full time full I be diploma student and today it is just unbelievable my clan is here because a day board members all of our juniors took the a CT and our juniors are a little weary today from spending how many hours was it it was like five hours of taking the a CT so I'm really appreciative especially for my clan for being here but I'm going to turn the mic over to Kiera alright hello all thank you so much for being here um so I just wanted to share a little bit about my experience here at Cleveland in particular being the youngest one out of the four of us I'm going to talk about my transition from middle school into high school and what it was like here at Cleveland so what I like to highlight most when I talk about my transition is the Academy system so right away I was brought in to Chinook Academy here at Cleveland and I made friends right away I got connections to my teachers and I got a connection to my counselor right away and now I have a great bond with her and I can go to her for any support that I need and then the second thing I like to highlight when I'm talking about my transition is just getting involved and being able to feel like I'm a part of the community so I got involved with leadership pretty early on I joined the freshman class cabinet and that allowed me to make some friends get to know some more teachers and then it kind of carried me into my sophomore year so now I am the current co class president of the sophomore class um that was really helpful and then after that as I've transitioned into a sophomore I just feel like here at Cleveland I've been able to build my identity and so I think just high school in general it's a great time to find find out more about yourself what you're interested in and just who you are and so I think Cleveland has provided great opportunities for that so I'm involved with sports like lacrosse and cross-country I do CrossFit here at Cleveland during the day and then I'm involved in leadership I'm involved in class cabinet I mentor for a freshman class so there's just so many opportunities to get involved to find out who you are and just to expand and challenge yourself which has been great for me okay here's my plan hello I'm Michael Ann and I'm a junior here what I love about Cleveland is I'm able to challenge myself a sophomore year I was making this decision whether to do full I be and I decided to do full I be obviously because I'm doing it now but I find that it's really gonna be hard my senior year to do full IV because there's a lot of things I have to do before I get to my senior year right now I'm taking eight classes and stepping out of my eight classes or IB classes so it's pretty hard and there's a big workload along with that there's 150 hours of casts which is 50 hours of creative service active service and community service so that's a lot to do by my senior year as well as an extended essay and the testing for all of those classes I think my senior is gonna be the hardest because I know many of my friends are only taking about five classes the minimum and so when I see them with all their free time I'm probably gonna have a hard time with it because I'll be trying to look over my workload at them and see them having fun but it's nice to challenge myself and I find that Cleveland gives me a lot of opportunities with the clubs and all of the classes I'm having such a
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great time in leadership helping out the community and just being involved hello and welcome board members of PBS I am James fisic I'm a senior here at Cleveland High School and something that I'd like to highlight is not only here at Cleveland are you able to learn and grow academically and scholastically but you're also able to learn and grow through creative uses or arts and crafts and in in my case I'm a I'm a musician and I've been playing the trumpet for the past seven years of my life and it just becomes something that I can engrossed myself in and without Cleveland do that so that is just something that I've that I preach to as many people as I can because I know that it changed my life and I think that it can change many others Cleveland has bands they're great you can learn many things from them things that you can't learn in a Scholastic class alrighty good evening board and the superintendent I just want to close out Cleveland our students as being the elective student body I don't have much to say but I can go on and on and on about my Cleveland so great so one of my peers to speak as they represent not the whole student body but just what kind of Cleveland has to offer I do want to say that we do have some CHS gear for you and one of them being 100 or 100 years old about Cleveland 200 years old 2016 so they're right your disposal when you need them just think again for coming to my home and I'm hope you guys have a good time tonight thank you so much for being here tonight sharing the positive things about Cleveland that you've experienced and I'm sure with the broader community but also before for the board meeting for engaging us in a discussion about what's happening here we appreciate the new swag I think director Rosen in year 2007 sure it needs a little updating so thank you and principal Freeman thank you as well for hosting us at your school tonight really appreciate it and if there's any Cleveland staff here or teachers thank you also for the work you do every day for the kids here we heard a lot in our the dinner session with the students about how they're engaged and really a pretty amazing wide array of activities and classes and oh each student here has a chance to excel and something that they're good at so thank you supergirl did you want to say anything I'm gonna gush about Cleveland during my remarks a little later in the meeting because I definitely want to congratulate them on a number of highlights perfect okay wait for the gushing so next I'd like to ask director Anthony you had some good news about another leadership position for the pts board thank you yes people who have been following the board meetings regularly will recall that Rita Moore has now stood twice for a position on the OU SBA's legislative policy committee and I'm very very happy to be able to say that she is in she will be sitting on that for the coming year and congratulations this is a tremendous opportunity for Portland public to make its voice heard and to leverage the opportunities that the OSB a gives us in Salem where we certainly need to have a stronger voice so thank you very much for what you're going to be doing great congratulations director Maura there was a hanging Chad involved somewhere there so other good news Portland is Public Schools is the House bill 41:17 which makes changes to school financing but provisions has passed the House in the Senate and it's on its way to the organs governor for her consideration this is really a result of some pretty outstanding effort by our government affairs team led by Courtney Wessling and also by the finance team at PBS for shepherding and leading the legislation to the process we also want to thank representative Barbara Smith Warner and Senator Kathleen Taylor to
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legislators from the Portland area who were instrumental in moving the bill through the house and the Senate before we get into our agenda items I thought you just gave a brief overview of our agenda to this evening we're gonna start with remembering the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School the board will also conduct its first and teachers thank you the board will also conduct its first reading of four policy revisions followed following by public comment the superintendent will have a report and the board will vote on the resolution relating to open enrollment and an and an initiative called returned Albina will then hear from the multiplication service district and vote on their service plan and then after this meeting the board has an extended executive session on a variety of issues so that's our I would probably have a lengthy board meeting tonight I want to start I would like to the president of the Portland Association is a teacher Portland Association of teachers to come forward you know in February 14th yet another horrific tragedy happened in our nation and once again it happened in one of our schools and I know that parents and community members since the 14th have been looking for ways to remember the students and staff and also to think about how we can take collective action to make our voices heard to address this so with that I'd like to ask Suzanne Goin to speak thank you words cannot express the tremendous grief that our nation is experiencing following yet another school shooting and the latest tragedy took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine's Day and as a community and a nation we mourn the senseless loss of life and our deepest sympathies go out to the victims and their families and friends the educators who risked their lives to save others Erin Christopher and Scott and then the 14 high school students 14 kids Elena Alexander Alisa Cara Carmen Gina Elena Jaime Joaquin Luke Martin meadow Nicholas Peter please let's have a moment of silence to honor the 17 lives that were taken too soon these students went to the same high school that I went to but their experience is very different than mine they are a part of the mass shooting generation a generation where everyone seems to accept these tragic events is one of the risks that comes with getting an education the responsibility lies with adults like myself who didn't grow up doing active shooter drills teachers like myself who didn't start our careers by pulling blinds and teaching students how to hide in closets we didn't speak out when these practices became normal but we have to speak out now I know that this is personal for me because I went to school at Stoneman Douglas but if we don't act it's only a matter of time before it's personal for everyone we will all know someone or know someone who knows someone usually after a tragedy we hope things will get back to normal at least as normal as we can bear not this time complaints in C and normalizing tragedies like this is how they persist we can no longer normalize or accept mass shootings we also have to reject so-called solutions that fail to address our problems or create schools that are unwelcoming when schools start to look like prisons we know we're headed in the wrong direction we need solutions that keep our students safe and keep them safe everywhere kids also go to movies concerts and clubs all places where mass shootings have taken place I know that talking about common sense firearm
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safety isn't normal for educators or for school boards but in addition to discussing preparations like our active shooter protocols or preventive measures like adding school counselors we have to talk about policy I am past the point of debating whether or not gun violence is an education issue it is when kids are afraid to go to school that makes it an education issue when our society can't deliver on the most basic promises to parents but their children will come home from school alive that means we have to have this conversation when active shooter drills become a part of standard teacher training educators must join the debate and so I'm very grateful that we are working together on events for March 14th like wearing orange and spending 17 minutes outside together to honor the lives lost in parkland Florida I stand an absolute solidarity with the survivors from Stoneman Douglas never again Thank You Suzanne and I want to let you know I appreciate that in the aftermath that you reached out to board leadership to the superintendent two other staff at PBS and asked us to join you and teachers to make a difference to take a stand and looking forward to working with you and the members at p80 and all that all the staff in the schools and parents across the city to recognize that we've got to do things differently and I think as you mentioned it's really adults responsibilities to make things different for our students and at the same time I been really inspired by students sort of finding their voice to tell adults what they need and I and what I think as parents we all expect the students should have when they go to school every day that they're safe and that they're going to come home so thank you and we look forward to working with you and the rest of p80 and other school staff so as we move forward the next couple weeks anticipated March 14th I'm going to ask a couple board members to be on point to be working with the superintendent and the rest of the school community how we will voice our we'll lend our collective voice to broader action in the country and your own community so one of the board's primary responsibilities is to serve as a policymaking body the district tonight we have four for first readings of revised policy a first reading is a formal presentation of draft policies that we share with the board in the community and it's the start of a 21-day comment period two of the policies the Diploma policy and the cash management investment policy have relatively small changes one of the policies which is the naming of school district property policy has some fairly significant changes and then the last one the public assets access to district records policy is a complete revision we're gonna start it board members in your packet you have all of the draft policy revisions and these are also uploaded on the district website the first policy that we're going to have for our first reading is relating to the naming of school district policies and this revision as a result of several board policy and governance committee meetings and came as a result of a complaint filed by a group of parents regarding the nickname at Franklin High School the district's view review of the politic employee found that our school district property policy needed to be updated and clarified so the naming of our properties and other representations of our schools reflected our school districts values so based on our assessment of the policy we've recommended a number of changes this comes from the policy and governance committee director rosen and director Moore serve with me on that committee but in general we explicitly make
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explicit that the naming policy applies to not just the names of the school's programs but also school mascot symbols and other images in addition we state very clearly that any names of our properties or schools or mascots that consideration must reflect our commitment to eliminating systemic discrimination and its impact on student learning and educational activities we names submitted for consideration also shall not be the name of a religious group or member and in addition we make some technical changes to the policy around school convergence conversions mergers and reconfigurations and that's probably relevant given the formation of two new middle schools this year and [Music] then the last change that we are proposing in this particular policy is that there be an exemption to the fiscal impact requirement when the party can show that the change is being made to address discrimination so currently if you want to rename a school property it's the proposer of the wreath of a renaming is responsible for coming up fiscal impact and we're going to be waiving that if they can show that it was as a reason the changes being made to address discrimination so not a wholesale rewrite it was I think a fairly thorough policy as it was but clearly there was some gaps missing we wanted to update it so this is being formally first read this evening and it is as I said drop up on the district website and there's a 21 day public comment period after 21 days if any revisions are recommended they'll be considered by the committee and will either have a second reading and adopt the policy or we will if the revisions are substantial we will then have another committee meeting update it and potentially have another first reading but more likely on this one have another second reading does anybody have any questions or director Rosen or more do you have anything else you want to add on about this particular policy we're having first read tonight it's just a general comment along with these policies so the board is responsible for policies but the implementing documents for that's going to spell out how the policy will be will play out on the ground how it will be implemented is called an administrative director directive so those will also be revised going forward to to conform with the these policy revisions and I I'm going to be paying particular attention to the administrative directive around gifts this is this was a point of some discussion during the committee meeting and I just want to make sure that PPS remains true to the to the ideal of being a public school district and I'm gonna be working with staff to to make sure that we have appropriate guidelines in place so I'm looking forward to that you should clarify the the gifts relates to the naming and that for significant gifts there could be property that could be named after the donor which is in existing policy so my question is for you know current mascots and names and such so how is it decided whether a term or name is discriminatory is that is it brought to us by the public and that's a way that that names that have that potential discriminatory nature would be highlighted or potentially changed somehow so great question strong they lay out so criteria for names and at the very end one addition we have is the Board of
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Education as the ultimate authority determine if the criteria in this policy has been satisfied so ultimately we have a set of criteria and the board is the judge of whether the criteria has been met either for keeping a name or making a decision to rename something names stay until there's a complaint about it and at that point it goes through this process are we gonna look systematically across the district for potential discriminatory meaning so another great question I think this policy gives us a framework to have that discussion we had because an issue had been raised in the Jefferson community about the name of that school by some community members and having a desire to have it changed in the committee in our policy and governance committee we talked about having a more systemic review which is I mean consistent with other what other public institutions and both in the state and the country are doing right now in the next sort of the sprint to the end of the school year I don't think we'll be able to do that we will adjust have time to adjust the policy and then I expect that will be in the 1819 work plan if that's what the board and the district staff agreed to so I had the same concerns as director more expressed and a clause that's left in it's on the last page Roman numeral 7 section 4 says the name change must be supported by the school community and the community is that supposed to be the community at large and how do you determine that that seems really what what do you mean by school community had a what do we mean by school community and how do we determine that the school community and apparently the community at large the way it's proposed supports the change so there's a couple different ways we could address that again at the end of the day it's the board's discretion however we may get guidance perhaps in the administrative directive on what might be some measurements of how we might measure that and particularly if there's a name that is seen by some to be discriminatory and others not it's we're bound to have a split opinion on that and if there's no consensus then there would be no change I think according to this class I think if there's four votes that will be a change so the name change must be supported by the school community that's in our policy right well and that is anyway okay well we great we should take a question maybe there's a better way to word it and so we can maybe wordsmith through that so we don't have them digua t yeah great so I'm gonna next go to our next first reading which is the investment and cash management policy this was reviewed in yesterday's finance Aden Operations Committee the board's required to annually review and approve this policy there are a couple of minor revisions and I'm going to ask director Moore who's the chair of that committee to introduce ippolit at sea and any revisions that were proposed this is a this is a policy that's intended to ensure that we have strict controls and accountability for for the the district's use of money its investment policy it's it governs where we what what what kinds of financial services we're using and stipulates some some some guideline guidelines on on how investments need to be structured it's it's a pretty dense policy it's pretty long most of it the vast majority of it has remains unchanged from past policy there are only two changes one of which is on page 1 under the in average size
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of the district's investment portfolio and the the high and the low and there have been a couple of changes in the numbers and then the the other chain is is really a copy-editing change it deletes a sentence that is redundant apart from that the the policy remains unchanged Thank You director more any questions comments I should probably add it's came before the finance audit an Operations Committee yesterday and we unanimously recommended adoption great so just like the other the last first reading there'll be a twenty one day public comment period and depending on the comments we get back either will move ahead or make revisions once that comment period is over and then we have we have yet another first reading this again is a relative with some relatively minor changes it relates to the Diploma policy in regards to veterans and I'd like to invite Mary Kane the senior legal counsel to introduce this item the amendments to the Diploma requirements you can see in Subsection 5d it's in response to the organ legislators changes to the statute relating to high school diplomas for veterans the there are some additional requirements around the diploma for veterans the gist of the policy generally is that individuals who served in the Armed Forces and who did not weren't weren't able to complete their studies because they were in the service that school districts can present them with diplomas and so it's my understanding that this adds some additional requirements and also some addition so if you resided or are currently residing in a district you can petition for diploma so pretty change but we have to go through the standard first reading policy so thank you miss thank you and I have a just an additional question for our general counsel when I just was looking at the the overall policy on page 1 and page 2 there's some references to diploma requirements for the class of 2010 and class of 2011 it seems like while we're making revisions we could just eliminate those from policy great okay so we'll do some clean up while we're we're in there any comments or questions okay so our fourth again that'll be it's posted online 21 days to comment so our last policy was the one that has the most extensive revisions you'll see in your board packets or online that the current policy is three paragraphs and we've pretty much done a complete rewrite so there's a new version of it in our board packet this this is a priority for the board and as you can see from the current policy and compare it to the revisions we've really tried to insert in the new policy sort of our beliefs about our work as a public institution and that the public has the right to be able to see how business is conducted so the current policy is relatively short fairly vague and defers most policy decisions to the administrative directive which is something that can be can be changed rather easily so the revised policy before us tonight as a result of mini meetings of the board policy and Governance Committee again that's director Rosen Moore and myself and it was created with the input of community members members of the media the Society of Professional
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Journalists our public records officer a general counsel and other staff so I want to just walk through just some of the major provisions of the policy because it is but with one exceptions all new so it starts with the statement that in order to promote transparency and provide inaccurate and County the district carries out the public business that public records will be disclosed Curtis Lee and a consistent with state law so this is a reoccurring theme that our policy is anchored in state law and the definitions from state law carry over into our policies and our practices so another provision is that there's goal is to provide records at no or minimal costs when the records are not lengthy and do not require a significant time to locate again keeping the threshold low for our community to be able to see how our business is conducted in terms of sensitive and confidential information about students staff and families will follow state and federal law when there are instances when information may be considered exempt so there's a number of exemptions in the public law but when we count those exemptions the policy said the district will shall construe the Public Interest liberally in the favor of disclosure so we're gonna just to be clear those are the conditional exemptions thank you exemptions but we're going to the districts going to sort of default to the side of disclosure and then the public there's a very specific set of provisions relating to the public records officer and that they have the responsibilities I'm sort of the day-to-day administration of the district's records policy the values of timely responses transparency of work and minimizing costs the public are part of the policies guiding principles we've also built into it an appeal to the school board if the requester believes a record has been inappropriately withheld so currently requesters can go to the moma county district attorney and request an appeal and we've added in a school board level appeal so that if somebody didn't want to go to the the DA that there's a very accessible alternative requesters still retain the strategy Tory right to request a review from the from the DA but this just gives an additional opportunity that hopefully is an onerous that's accessible in addition there's a provision on against unlawful retaliation against individuals who make public records requests and there's consequences for those who engage in the unlawful retaliation and finally to avoid conflicts of interests no employees shall make the final decision on the application of exemptions if they're named in the request and agains was designed so that they can assist in the records if they're named they can assist in the compilation or helping the district respond to the records requests they just can't make decisions around what's going to be released or not so we tried to build in and that that was at the suggestion of the Society of Professional Journalists journalism journalists we tried to build in mechanisms in which we didn't slow down the process we kept the process moving but also tried to create some sideboards so that there wouldn't be either the perception or an actual conflict when records were being handled so many of the provisions in this policy including the last one I just mentioned were based on suggestions from community members individuals who have made public records requests in the past also members of the media commented on most of our drafts of the policy and I think we have after a lot of deliberation come up with a comprehensive approach that hopefully will make our business more transparent any questions from the board or concerns director Bailey first just housekeeping line three of section 10 if an in-house PPS attorneys there's there's next bass in there it says it should be attorney that attorneys first line of section 9 first it says nobody
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can engage in unlawful retaliation which of course in my mind well what about lawful retaliation which is then addressed in the next sentence but it seems like we can say shall not engage in retaliation unlawful or otherwise which is the intent I'm more than happy to entertain that but I because that was something that was wordsmith by in consultation with counsel I want to make sure that we're not changing the meaning but from a lay person's perspective and I think we're clear on the spirit and I will talk about the exact wording whatever works anything else the end of the third section it just says will follow the state federal law which we've all also said it seems like to ensure confidentiality is protected or something along those lines would make it a sort of complete the thought but that's really getting nitpicky so for what it's worth well I think in the spirit of this is 21 days not only for the public but if you weren't on the committee for other board members to provide suggestions and I think we'd welcome them so and thank you for all your work on all of these it's a lot of work I've been through a lot of drafts and so I think about the public records officer and also the general counsel for providing a lot of assistance and guidance on this thank you to the Society of Professional Journalists they made some really critical suggestions that I think made it both stronger and more doable so it was really very helpful agreed all right so those are our four first readings we're gonna have another first reading of it yet another policy the next board meeting but next I want to turn to the school calendar which I know lots of parents and families are waiting for word so after the ratification of the contract staff began working on the 2018-19 school calendar superintendent guerrero has built a student-focused calendar these change some changes started about two years ago to really shift start shifting the calendar and this year's calendar I think is even even better so thank you superintendent Guerrero you want to provide we all have a copy of it and it's going to go to a committee tomorrow but you want to provide some highlights I'd like to preview that there I think a few features and the recommended calendar for school year 1819 our board has it I know it's hot commodity and we've had a lot of phone calls an interest and wanting to make sure the calendar gets posted publicly as soon as it's approved which of course we will do but I do want to highlight a few features as you've mentioned share Prem Edwards hopefully well people will notice is that this is a much more student focused family-friendly school calendar we solicited input from many many stakeholders which gave some strong feedback about how we might evolve the school calendar I'll call out a few features for 18:19 the elimination of school late starts and early dismissals for instance in order to maintain five full instructional days as a matter of practice and really that was a driving force how do we maximize uninterrupted whole weeks of instruction wherever possible new to the district I would constantly hear about this no school November sort of slogan and so there was a lot of interrupted instruction there and three and four-day weekends so for the committee's and the board's consideration is what would that look like if we had a full Thanksgiving week off for families to be able to plan around so that is a feature there certainly we wanted to make sure our semesters and quarters were balanced out with with required instructional time we wanted to make sure and build in our bargaining unit contracts and our recent a collective bargaining agreement with Portland Association of teachers so those are features in there and there were a few other considerations like making sure we try to stay lined up with our local higher Ed's calendars as well just because we have so many university student in terms that also serve in our schools and also we have siblings where families are also wanting to think about that and we want to maximize instruction prior to a lot of end of your assessments like Advanced Placement
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International Baccalaureate and and other assessments and we wanted to avoid ending school and dear Tuesday will of course designate a few snow days should we have to make those up at the end but we look forward to reviewing those details with the committee at the appropriate time and I know we'll be back with the board for approval that's very exciting and I know lots of people in our school community are anxiously awaiting that we're going to refer it to the teaching and learning committee and chair Esparza Brown has a meeting tomorrow I believe five o'clock that they'll be considered so and then that will come out of committee and be referred to the back to the board for final vote superintendant Guerrero would you like to provide your report well I think I mentioned since we're at Cleveland I want to take the opportunity to highlight many good things here at Cleveland but especially some some recent events that I think are very much we want to celebrate starting with congratulating the Cleveland dance team and and coach Burgess for winning the league championship this past weekend congratulations I also had the chance as a former grappler myself to head to the recent wrestling team tournament and congratulate the Cleveland warriors and coach zhurba for winning the pil championship for the seventh consecutive year congratulations girls soccer team with first year head coach Emmeline Megan nan for winning the pil title in the fall also is something I wanted to mention want to congratulate Cleveland jr. Malcolm Asher the state honoree of the Prudential Spirit of Community Award malcolm founded art pass a nonprofit organization that helps hospitalized kids on four continents make and share their artworks as part of a healing process and we have some fantastic educators here at Cleveland want to congratulate in particular Cleveland biology teacher Brenda Gordon who was named organ biology teacher of the Year by the National Association of biology teachers I think we've mentioned it before but we're proud to be able to mention that again as well I'll move to some some highlights from some of many of our other schools and programs starting with students from our community transition programmed who recently traveled to Salem to testify about the benefits of the transition program in support of SB 1520 to which revised to Senate bill 20 it would have taken transition services away from students who graduate with a modified diploma we encourage folks to check out their testimony on our web page as part of our pulse e-newsletter the same program the community transition program recently received a $5,000 grant they plan to use those funds to install a commercial kitchen on the green thumb' campus and this will be used to expand their student-run business want to congratulate Oakley green 7th grader Edith Creber who's winning artwork became the official poster for the PDX jazz festival which wrapped up over the weekend and definitely want to congratulate the Jefferson High boys basketball team and coach Strickland for winning the league tournament best of luck at state and a big THANK YOU to the Trailblazers especially star point guard CJ CJ McCollum and Mo Harkless who took a break from their recent winning streak to sponsor a trip with many of our high school Black Student Union students to see the new Marvel blockbuster Black Panther the players paid for tickets bus transportation and popcorn and we had a great time this past Sunday afternoon well we had some interesting weather last week four days of weather events Tuesday we called an early release a Wednesday we closed schools we were up through the night and an early-morning Thursday we decided to go with a two hour late start which we community commune in all of these days did our best to try to communicate our decisions and try to keep instruction as preserved as possible while keeping student safety foremost we learned some lessons around transportation and how to make sure those snow routes were clear in cooperation with the city I want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding sometimes these decisions are a bit unpredictable but I think we did okay and we got through those so I want to thank everyone who was staying up late and getting up way before sunrise to make sure we were making the best
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decision possible on behalf of the safety of our students the general feedback was rather positive that we got it right this time International Youth Leadership Conference last Friday I had the chance to attend and share a keynote message at this annual event celebrating youth leaders hosted at Portland State University want to thank the organizers of that for making this annual event possible for many of our students of color new hires at PBS we continue to build our leadership team out we have now working amongst us three financial experts a returning former PPS superintendent interim CFO Jeff Jim Scherzinger who's with us interim budget director Ryan dutour is back for another tour and supported by Ashley Gunter of the Gunther group from serving as a senior financial strategist as well we're also adding capacity in our communications department with bringing aboard Stephanie Cameron who will be working as Senior Director for communications starting later this week and I also want to congratulate dr. Elise Valentino who has accepted the position as our permanent chief academic officer he will continue to work with the team focused on articulating a curriculum scope and sequence for this coming school year so thank you to the new team members who continue to build our capacity as a school system and I too didn't want to end my report today without also reflecting outloud on recent events we heard earlier from p80 president suzanne cohen and I very much echo many of the sentiment expressed and I feel like we we have to say and do something about these recent horrific shootings that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and how we as a district are intending to respond and process and give our students a forum and our educators an opportunity to reflect on these occasions no student no educator should ever feel unsafe or fear a danger that understand a danger that coming to work or to school could result in anything but a positive teaching and learning experience we are witnessing just how important also at the same time student voices can be when they are raised in this case to promote non-violence and to speak out about factors out there that are really infringing on their education and and a general civility various groups in response have begun to discuss and schedule marches and other possible student actions in some cases surrounding the specific issue of gun violence in schools we are definitely proceeding in a spirit of collaboration and working on suggestions so that we might offer guidance and guidelines to share with our students our school leaders in our school communities and families starting with any proposed activities on March 14th which been identified as an opportunity for schools around the country to reflect on and to think of how we might make a statement about the importance of Safe Schools so we are encouraging schools to find ways to respect and support student voice in in this process we are encouraging our educators to take this teachable moment to engage in classroom discussion to allow students to reflect on this important issue and the impact of gun violence in schools with an eye towards solutions and actions we will encourage our schools and our leaders to take a visible action certainly for the 17 minutes proposed in honor of the 17 high school students and educators who lost their lives we anticipate that parents and families many of whom who have written me recently to join in on any school-wide activities that demonstrate our commitment to non-violence and school safety and I look forward to working with our teachers association our board and community stakeholders and how we intend to demonstrate our commitment to schools free of the danger of violence thank you Thank You superintendent Grove
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so next we have our public comment period and I'd like to review our guidelines we appreciate the community coming this evening and sharing their perspectives and their concerns we value the comments that we receive as it informs our work the responsibility the board is to actively listen a quick reminder that the board board members in 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 comment guidelines for public comment emphasized respect and consideration of others complaints about individual employees should be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter presenters will have a total of three minutes to share comments begin by stating your name and spelling your last name for the record and during the first two minutes your testimony a green/white will have appear when there's one minute remaining a yellow light will come on and we're time's up everybody a red light will go out on a buzzer will sound we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments at that time so we appreciate your input and with that I would like to ask miss Hewson sorry I can barely see you for to call the first two individuals for public comment I'm gonna apologize in advance the just difference in height it's just I guess what it is first two speakers Kate O'Malley and Trayvon broswell thank you for having us my last name is spelled OMA ll EU I and good evening school board directors and superintendant Guerrero my name is Kate O'Malley and I'm the mother of two Portland high school students with very different learning styles one is at st. Mary's Academy and one is at mount Scott Learning Center and oh the reason I'm here is I just would like to thank all of you for supporting contracted educational option programs like Mount Scott for students who don't always fit the mold it's super important I might just go over here I'm sorry in advance but I couldn't trim anything from here but so my son's high school experience began at Lincoln and even though he's quite bright and in a tag program um he was giving it his best effort but he was just sinking into academic whole and emotional on the outside everything appeared fine but on the inside he battles with slow processing speed ad D and anxiety and you know what can take one student an hour can take him three hours and so these factors were just compounded deteriorating self-esteem surrounding himself with others that were struggling and it turns out that you know being gifted with learning differences you know it can create the perfect storm for just dysfunctional academic environments in the public school and so you know I did my research and after I was wait-listed at Edison high school I was just super grateful to find Scot and they offer educational options for students with built in modifications they have met his academic level they've met his pace and it's proven just to be a winning combination he's making great progress he's heading credits his confidence has increased he's self advocating on a regular basis and in the classroom he benefits from smaller shorter workloads lots of engaging class discussions and he's also not under challenged at all he's taking high level classes like physics and economics and trigonometry probability statistics something that had a bigger faster more accelerated school would have outpaced him and mount Scott has also been very supportive of his credit recovery process by encouraging his attendance at Summer Scholars the staff there Lenise is one of the transition specialists and she even called him at
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home a night before was there to greet him and other students on their first day I mean just amazing staff so your full statement for all of us to read yes I meant very very very answer just wanted to say that they do Mount Scott does have one of the highest retention rates in the district of over 90 percent of their seniors are graduating and that's a figure that can't be achieved without these contracted educational option programs and just please keep supporting programs like Mount scott and stay true to your public mission to support all students in achieving their very highest educational and personal potential thank you hello my name is Trayvon Braswell let's be Ras wel I'm a proud graduate of Mount scott learning centers and i want to thank the board and the superintendent for supporting successful contractor education programs such as now scott my childhood left me fighting for a character i could label as my own as i had no father in the picture and my mother was gone working doubles daily to support my brother and i and as high school came around i had little to no confidence and no self-image and i would mirror anybody i thought was popular in my environment the majority of those people happen to be those who were in gangs it's it's truly a surprise that I was even able to pass my freshman year and a big surprise and accomplishment as well that my mother got to watch me walk as I got my diploma as a student I was already below my average as my work ethic was little to none I didn't know how to ask for help I didn't know that I had a voice or at least one words being heard and I never believed my ceiling for potential was was even there until Mount Scott showed me that I was standing under the wrong roof and that my ceiling it had no limitations since leaving Mount Scott with the confidence in CEO mind said I needed to succeed in life I've been working different jobs from serving to being an assistant acting teacher I've been taking courses at Portland Community College and from the unmotivated scholar I once was they helped me shift my mindset and I have transformed that work ethic and gone from a 2.6 GPA in high school to sitting comfortably at a 3.7 in college also in my second term in college I got to go and travel India for three months in a study abroad program I would've been in had it not been for a counselor at Mount Scott had the school not been able to push me to stretch my comfort zone I would have never embarked on a journey that they honestly changed my life in the course of where I was 80 when it comes to finding a career I want to work with youth who are walking and she was similar to mine and inspire them it's like my mentors at Mount Scott did for me but also you're into travel more in my life and I wish I could have my mind set on just one career but I honestly believe that's because the amount Scott that I'm able to dream bigger and see myself doing more than just one thing in closing I want to thank the board and the superintendent for allowing Mount Scott mrs. O'Malley and myself to come in here and have our voices heard and to share our testimony so thank you I appreciate you thank you both for sharing your stories next next we have Huck Wilkin and Stacey Stenzel thank you good evening thank you for your time board members and superintendent my name is Huck Wilkin WI L ke n I'm a 7th and 8th grade middle school math teacher at Cesar Chavez in North Portland after nine years of teaching middle school math and Title one I have some ideas on completely revamping the whole educational experience but I do only have three minutes I'm here just to give you some feedback on the CTE program the career technology exploration program
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from the ground level this is a program if you're familiar it's every seventh grader in Portland public gets to go for four hours a day for three days and they go on a field trip to a hands-on stem oriented experience where they are participating creating something I've been on this from the pilot stage I believe for the last three years I have seen some amazing things students who slept right through it my math class and their eyes just opened wide when you turn on a bandsaw I've had students who could not stop talking but just go speechless at the Northwest Film Center when they saw a blue green screen so and kids who can't sit still in my class they would stand at he drone grinding they're welding for an hour just so these hands-on experiences are amazing we get to see a side of students we don't get to see off and they are they're actually doing something even though they're at school so the the career technology exploration is exceeding and providing a much needed hands-on educational experience however its lost on our students for several reasons the first one is it's three days out of three years our students need daily exposure to hands-on stuff like this it actually disconnects education from hands-on we got to go take a field trip to get our hands on experience okay it also disrupts the whole rest of the school other classes get one day on either end you get an hour at each it just is a week that's gone I would like you please prioritize middle school hands-on opportunities call it stem call it makerspace call it whatever call it shop but our students need daily exposure to tactile project-based education thank you hi my name's Stacy Stenzel last name spelled ste n ze l and I'm here this evening because I am the mother of two 9 year olds who attend Portland Public Schools and one of them has exceptional healthcare needs we use the label cerebral palsy generally to refer to her and if we don't talk about things that aren't going well or aren't working then how can we ever expect them to be any better and one of the struggles the she has significantly faced in being able to attend school is related to the care that she needs that is supposed to be provided by M est it was decided about two years ago that she needed one-on-one nursing in order to be able to attend school safely and I said great sure okay let's do that then and that works out pretty well if the nurse shows up but unfortunately in the second week of the school year this year the nurse fell and broke her foot because she's human and that happens sometimes right and so I called MSD and the receptionist said oh I don't know we'll have to get you in touch with the supervisor and I talked to the supervisor and the supervisor says sorry we don't have anyone who can support your daughter we're short-staffed so my daughter can't go to school unless somebody else goes and assumes the liability of her care which that somebody would be me because MSD failed to hire enough people or managed their staff to be able to support my daughter and so as then I faced this challenge of how I'm gonna get my daughter to school safely without me going and cramping her style she I started talking to other people and I discovered that my daughter is not the only child who is not being able to attend school because of their medical needs and the failure of management or hiring to employ people to support children at school because of
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these medical needs and so that's really why I'm here because too often we just get upset at that supervisor we just get upset at that receptionist and we don't effectively complain we don't draw attention to the fact that it's somewhere there has to be some accountability in order to help these children be able to attend school thank you [Applause] [Music] so of note later this evening we're having a presentation by M est so it's very timely thank you our last two speakers are Stephanie chase and Nura Elma we know where to come now good evening my name is Stephanie chase that spelled CH ASE and I'm here tonight to talk to you about the probe the proposal to effectively close the pioneer school program at past meetings you've heard from many pioneer parents and staff none of whom agree with this plan I am also a pioneer parent you heard my son Henry an eighth grade student at Pioneer speak at your January 23rd board meeting tonight though I want to bring the unique perspective I have to this discussion and that's of a bureaucrat as the Municipal Public Library Director for the city of Hillsboro I have for much of the past 17 years occupied a position equivalent to your superintendent including reporting to a board I understand that constant tension between organizations chief executive and the board as the board must allow that chief executive to lead the day-to-day operations of the organization and must trust that the chief executive will carry out the strategies approved by the board but I also know that the ultimate fiscal responsibility of an organization relies with the board and that the board is also charged with overseeing the work of that chief executive I ask you as someone familiar with the position you are in as board members to step in now and provide the check and balance needed to your organization the decision by PPS to remove the pioneer school program from the holiday Yongsan campus is short-sighted and fiscally disastrous you are proposing to remove at great cost to the most vulnerable population in your district from a building that was originally designed for students and retrofitted to suit the current population the list of what makes the holiday yongsan campus unique is long and I know if you receive that list from us pioneer parents but I just want to highlight a few items wide hallways for the safe passage of staff and students if a student needs to de-escalate de-escalation in therapy rooms window set low to the ground with non breakable glass the wide circular shape of holiday yongsan which allows students to move independently and yet remain supervised large bathrooms with line-of-sight and which include adult sized changing facilities there is no question that it will be expensive to even begin to replicate the elements of the pioneer program that are unique and even if the district intends to survive the sufficient budget to replicate that program in to new buildings there is not enough time to do so before the start of the new school year our students will be returning to class in six months and we are supposed to believe that Rhodes City Park will be ready the holiday at a young s'en campus will be ready and that Applegate and Rice both of which needs substantial improvements even without the retrofitting will all be complete we have yet to see a budget for these projects and I've worked in municipal government long enough to know it would be a miraculously fast pace to get any one of them done in six months never mind all four it would take more time than I have to even begin to address the other incredibly expensive and much more difficult of this plan the increase in staff needed to maintain the federally mandated continuum of services to students I serve nearly a million people a year in my libraries and do so in an institution beloved by many and for whom most people have a passionate and sentimental attachment I understand how difficult it is to balance the wants of multiple public of multiple competing groups but I also know that I would be failing in my job if I placed the wants of one group over the needs of a vulnerable population and I expect my board to step in and tell me that decision is wrong thank you thank you [Applause] good evening my name is nur L mcbari's last names e LM a gba RI and I apologize I can't feel my fingers so like I said my name is Norma Bari and superintendant Guerrero and board thank you so much for
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having me tonight I'm a mother a teacher and a director of the Portland refugee support group I'm here tonight to share with you how absolutely excited I am about the new and much-needed Arabic immersion program and to tell you that you have my full support as a community leader and advocate for minority populations as someone who works very closely with the Arab community refugees immigrants and others I can tell you firsthand that nothing is more important than the ability to communicate with and understand each other language is essential to coexistence and given students the chance to learn a language as profound enriches Arabic is an amazing opportunity for children of all backgrounds I can think of two current cases I am working on that would have benefited so greatly from this program one an immigrant mother who last month lost her husband to the flu she struggles to communicate with her daughter who's Arabic is very limited and is more comfortable speaking English mom speaks no English at all it broke my heart to see mom asking others to interpret between herself and her daughter if the child was in a program like this these hardships could have been avoided the second an 11 year old Syrian refugee who speaks Arabic but is struggling to learn English he has begun to show aggressive behavior towards his classmates the teacher told me that he was doing this because of the frustration he felt not being able to express himself to the other children we have seen the success of other immersion programs here in Portland and I truly believe that we will have the same results with this program we all know through evidence-based research that children who take part in immersion programs are more likely to achieve high academic success they possess greater cognitive ability longer attention spans greater memory recall and amazing problem-solving skills in addition to developing a greater understanding and appreciation for their own native language I have seen the success of dual language programs firsthand and there is nothing more mind-blowing to me than seeing and hear a child eloquently expressing themselves in one language and then like with the flip of a switch speak in another language as if he or she was born with it thinking about the future of our country I can only imagine how wonderful it would be if we were able to offer more programs like this and open the doors for our children to learn as much as they can about the world we live in simply by learning another language I'm honored to be here tonight to share my message with you and I look forward to the amazing work and outcomes of this program as a children of immigrants here in America my native tongue is Arabic and I struggled with it all my life and fought to learn it and thought to myself if only I had a program like this when I was a child I would have loved to learn my own language in a way that was fun and with other children who could appreciate me and I could appreciate them thank you thank you thank you everybody for coming this evening and sharing your stories and perspectives and concerns so next at the last board meeting the board received a presentation on the open enrollment process and we highlighted the possibility of board action at the last meeting director Bailey as the chair of the enrollment forecasting committee can you introduce this topic Thank You director rim AdWords so we're talking about resolution five five seven six so I'm gonna wait a second if people are leaving okay in 2011 the state legislature passed a law that allowed every district to have an open enrollment period the districts need to decide by the 1st of March whether to engage in this and what this does previously for students in one district to be able to transfer to another district both districts had to agree to it and that's the way it is through most of the year but state law now provides for districts to have an open enrollment period which in which a student from another district can apply to transfer to that district without approval of their home district it requires a couple of things including that if they transfer into a program
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that there would be room in that program that no student for example in Portland Public Schools would be displaced by that it's only for extra room Portland Public has done that at least once in the past and that was to allow students to transfer from other districts into the Vietnamese immersion program and the Russian immersion program so what we're what's on the table would allow or would be the approval of Portland Public Schools having an open enrollment period this spring it would last for a month in which students from other districts could apply to be in select programs and schools in Portland public it would include by the way we lose about a hundred students a year to other districts through them having an open enrollment process what's being proposed is for 50 slots at Harriet Tubman middle school and 25 slots at the Jefferson middle College as part of our return to alibi an initiative and in addition 25 slots at the Kelly Russian immersion program and 20 slots at the Rose City Park Vietnamese immersion program and again if students from other districts apply for this there will be a lottery we would be current Portland public school students would have first dibs at those programs and only extra unfilled spaces would be open to schools from other districts and I'm gonna ask director more to talk a little bit more about the return to buy an initiative which she and the director as far as a brown have been working on with community members so we we have been speaking with members of the African American community representing communities that have been displaced because of gentrification from the Albina district and our goal was to establish a mechanism that would align with some and other initiatives that are happening especially around housing through poor the portland city government that would allow families with historical ties to the Albina district to take advantage of the new opportunities at the reopen Tubman middle school and then articulate into Jefferson High School and I'd like to invite Roni Herndon who can speak to the efforts that the community members have made it's been I think a really a really great partnership that I hope will kind of just be the first step in a longer term continuing good partnership as we go forward so would you like to speak last name Herndon h er n do n is this what it looks like we try to get into heaven up taking notes checking your book thank you for the dress rehearsal we appreciate the opportunity to speak in support of this effort and for me it's always an important as a preamble to distinguish between gentrification and redlining the gentrification means that you have the dough to go into a community and buy property black people have moved out because of redlining specifically that the the instruments of financial instruments that were available to those in the white community to purchase property or the upgrade poverty were not made available in the black community as a matter of fact the Portland's Realtors code said that if a realtor sold property outside of a very prescribed area to black people they would lose their license so this is not just gentrification this these are racist policies that were put in place to confine the black community very specific area and they were not able to get the resources that would allow them to own property to develop equity and moving forward we congratulate the effort of director more direct response of Brown in trying to develop this policy and and additionally the reason that I feel it's extraordinarily important is at the same time that redlining was occurring Portland Public Schools was dispersing
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black children they were the only children in this city who were bused mandatorily for certain academic purposes so the number of children we hope that can come back will increase but we certainly do support the effort as it is now and look forward to working with you to work out the details and certainly certainly do appreciate the support that superintendent guerrero has given to this effort and his public support of this effort so thank you very very much Thank You mr. Herndon I think this was it was our first board meeting of the new board that you and other community members came and asked us to do this work so it's gratifying tonight that we can at least make the down payment on the first part of this effort thank you for your continued efforts because I know this has been a decade decades-long work by you and others in the community so thank you there was a study just very recently released from across the nation looking at lending practices around housing to people of color and found just major discrimination still exists and it's 3040 years after the community the CRA was passed and here we are and can I just well I just I just want to sorry I just want to point out that this is a very short window for people to apply the application period starts tomorrow not tomorrow much first which is day after tomorrow and ends March 31st so anybody who is interested or knows anybody who is interested or would be interested please make sure that they get their applications in on time and there is assistance available and filling out the forms did you want to say something Julie okay so the board will now consider resolution number five five seven six which is for open enrollment transfers of the 2018-19 school year do I have a motion so it's been moved by directors bars around and seconded by director Bailey miss Houston is there any public comment there's no public comment is there any further board discussion on the resolution if not the board will now vote on resolution five five seven six all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes he knows student representative Tran yeah the motion on resolution five five seven six passes by seven to zero vote with student rep Tran voting YES so we're looking forward to the community they continued partnership at this time we are now going to have a presentation by one of our partners I'm going to ask director Anthony to be on point for this agenda item each year the board is asked to approve the Multnomah education service districts local service plan the M ESD is its function is to coordinate services and purchasing for all of the districts in Multnomah County in particular the local service plan governs the many many alternative programs the mesg coordinates including Helens View High School it deals with our school nurses and many many many different types of purchasing including IT and a great many of our IT services I'd like to invite Sam Breyer the superintendent from the M ESD to provide a report on their 2018-19 plan keep talking yeah it'll come on if I can thanks okay good evening board I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you about the local service plan as it's coming up hi I'm Sam briar I'm superintendent of mull no medication service district I'm in my second year as superintendent there prior to that I was superintendent in Centennial School District work in assessment and school improvement it was an elementary principal and a teacher and prior to that which is why I get the long list
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I actually was trained and worked in the area of economics and I share that because my work at MSD is kind of a perfect marriage of my two passions of financial fiscal efficiency and making sure kids are supported to success as much as possible in my new role at superintendant mes D the question I am most often almost immediately asked whenever I introduce myself in that way is what exactly is it that you all do and I appreciate director Anthony and his brief explanation of that my goal tonight is to quickly describe the mission of ESDS so you understand talk about how M ESD implements those practices and how it directly applies to Portland public and in that be incredibly clear how the local service plan in front of you comes to be and what it means for you and I hope to do all of that in less than 10 minutes because I know you're very busy and would be happy to answer any questions so ESDS exist in state statute they're an evolution of the old county school system in the state of Oregon in the statute ESDS have a very defined mission of providing equitable high quality cost-effective locally responsive services at a regional level in that we are tasked with providing services in four specific areas which are programs for children with special needs including those who need services in special education or are at-risk technology services school improvement services and administrative services there's also a clause in there that we can and should provide other services that are identified as critical to the region we do that through a process that is collab with our component school districts we serve eight school districts in Multnomah County including of course Portland Public and there is an annual process to develop the services that we offer in those areas and that's a constant ongoing process with our component school districts including representatives from Portland Public where it is presented to us the services that the region needs we explore our ability to offer those be transparent about costing and produce this document so the document in front of you is the ongoing work of multiple practitioners working through this around regional need this is an ongoing document that we revised annually and this is the first phase in the local service plan process at this point to the Board of mes D which is a publicly elected board must approve the local service plan and then each of our component districts must approve technically the statute says at least 2/3 representing the majority of students that you serve should approve but we go for a hundred percent for obvious reasons within that this then leads us into the second phase which is where we start being the budgeting process we have a meeting for example tomorrow with regional business managers to be transparent about what we believe the costing will be so our districts can feed that into their budgeting process as part of that I want to be transparent about how we as an agency are funded so it can help inform your choices we do we are part of the local property tax system which feeds money into the state and then esds are allocated a percentage of the state school fund to deliver services to the region we and Multnomah ESD and this goes back to the economics we operate in almost a market system it's not quite because we're given the money but we distribute that money out to all of the school districts for them to choose how they would like to use it with us or not so the local service plan that is in front of you is actually the representative of an entire menu system by approving this does not mean you have selected any of these services you as a district can choose to select as many or as few as you would like in addition to that that compromise that composes about 60% to two-thirds depending on the year of our funding and service but we also offer those services to district outside of the area and they pay an additional 10% fee which we use to lower the costs for you and create economies of scale we also operate state contracted services for at-risk youth for example incarcerated youth students who are in long term care and treatment programs or students who are served in hospital programs all those students have right to educational service while they are not at their home school we administered those contracts as well the third thing that we are working on as we as I've stepped into this role is making sure that we are supporting regional conversations so that we know that many of the students in Multnomah County move and operate between our school districts it's the benefit of all of us if our school districts are cooperating on that and so we're convening those conversations regularly and I did want to represent to the board that as he's come on board I've appreciated superintendent Guerrero's engagement in those conversations and his push to make sure that we're spending our time regionally talking about how we create
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the best comprehensive education program for our kids so I know you're hearing that within your district but also across the region it's a really important piece quickly in summary for what all of that means for Portland Public we did prepare a simple one pager here which I believe you have one side of it and if you don't I have copies okay this was an attempt to just capture in very short form what it means for Portland public so on one side you will see the financial information what this basically summarizes is that as a district simply by mes D existing you have access to an additional almost twenty-two million dollars worth of money to spend on services to students your district this goes back to the menu approach currently in the current year spends about thirteen point three million dollars on services but also takes eight point five million dollars in cash directly out which you then allocate within your own budget cycle you'll also see there a three year trend as well as a breakdown of the where you spend your money on services and the percentage thereof on the back side is a quick summary of the programs and I will not read it to you but just a few highlights Helens View High School was mentioned earlier you do have currently 123 students attending there and I did want to let you know that school has undergone significant work to increase the quality of the offering for students to make sure they're remaining engaged and we did recently receive a CTE revitalization grant to increase the Career and Technical offerings there so those are students who are pregnant and parenting teens or have experienced dropout or chronic absence or behavior issues and so having them embedded directly in career technical experience is incredibly valuable and we're seeing positive outcomes from that additionally we do offer a number of special education services across the region and Portland Public does take advantage of that school health services is your largest service purchase area and Portland Public actually in recent years has undergone some really innovative work around how to best offer school health services in your schools recognizing the increasing complexity of medical needs for our students and implementing the school health assistant program which is really a model that other districts are starting to look at because it aprii tsa's the coverage and support for students experiencing medical needs at schools while also recognizing that it's impossible to fund and support at this time unfortunately a nurse existing in every school finally just the last thing I would mention is we do offer technology services and we are in a consortium called the Cascade technology alliance with four other ESDS including the three largest ESDS in the state representing more than half of the students served and that allows us to provide high quality services at scale technology it makes sense that increases the ability to buy efficiently and more cheaply rather than each individual district having those condos contracts so an excellent example of that is a student information system rather than each district contracting we do purchase that regionally and it lowers the price and we are speaking currently with Portland public about some potential other offerings there that would help you operate more efficiently in that area as well so that is my quick speedy overview of what we offer in front of you is the longer narrative version and I would be happy to answer any questions the board has about services presentation or the local service plan itself so I don't know if he were here earlier when we have public comment yes I fully expected that question to come out so I just didn't want to assume so I I can answer in the general and will pledge to you that I will look into the specific immediately upon returning to the agency tomorrow so the first thing I would say is we do offer the most robust school health services in the state we're recognized for that because we have an extensive nursing support that schools and moma County experience that they experience almost nowhere else in the state one of the challenges of that is we also are experienced and critical shortage of school nurses and so the staffing in that area has been something we've been working on through out the year and so it's not surprising that we had a staffing experience however it's unacceptable that we've had a staffing challenge that has kept a
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student out of school for an extended period of time so I acknowledge that to you and pledge to you that I will look into what's going on there and make sure that we fix that thank you yes follow-up question this is you provide an incredible array of very complex services so thank you for that just curious are there services that other ESDS provide that you don't that's a great question because of the local nature of the local service plan and the local service plan each region looks at the services that is most critical to their district so as one example in many areas of the state the ESD does payroll back office services for districts we serve five of the 20 largest districts six of the thirty largest districts including the largest district so that's not a specific demand here however through the cooperative work that we do if another ESD has a service that we don't provide we attempt to link our districts to that to make sure that they receive that and then we as I said mentioned earlier provide that for districts in other regions for example there are some services we provide the Clackamas ESD doesn't provide and so their districts are able to contract with us and I want to recognize the geographic diversity as well Florence isn't in Multnomah I appreciate you calling that out so that is a budget complexity in order for us to spend money on something it has to be reflected in the local service plan and the state contract that we hold to serve incarcerated youth includes facility in Albany at Oak Creek Correctional Facility and a facility in Florence so that's how that came to be you and finally at some point I think it would be educational for me and maybe for other board members as well to see what what are the services that we take advantage of what are the areas that we do in-house and also in terms of a lot of the services you provide our around students with special educational needs we've talked about our continuum of care in that area to how M est is a partner in that with us conversations around as he as he mentioned earlier soliciting the local superintendents around what is the array of services that we want to enhance and the more we've been diving into this topic about supporting our students and their varied needs you know we want to make sure and see if there's a central way that we might avail ourselves of a service that as I talked to my peer superintendents in Multnomah our challenges for them as well so some readiness to learn issues some health related issues you'll notice that over the last couple of years are certainly our school health services commitment with M ESD has gone up significantly and yet there's still a greater need still so you know that this is part of the process and will continue a voice in sort of our need for for that kind of continuum of services really know the kinds of unique placements for students that haven't been successful in other in our schools so I really appreciate the array of services and in particular that population of students have successful that school has been in getting kids to graduate and and to think of their future you know to give them skills for that too so good work thank you that I'm pleased to represent an incredibly dedicated staff yeah their heart is in yeah filling in those gaps for students who haven't been successful in other settings and glad to be in partnership with districts in that detailed question they only actually not have the answer to I will take notes and get you the answer and it's it's based on what you just gave us um so the outdoor school program which by the way probably got my kid through high school so it's listed as 36 96 students PPS students does that include the high school contingent or just the middle schoolers that's an excellent question I believe it is just the students who experience it not necessarily the counselor and the high school students who supported it but I can confirm and get that information back to you um I think that I think the high school contingent is really important
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my kid is not the only one I know who was essentially saved by outdoor school it was like the only activity that engaged him even slightly and he learned an incredible amount about himself and he developed skill it was a great experience and I know most of his friends did the same thing so I think you should take credit for that to him I appreciate that and I mentioned earlier the most common thing I am I'm asked is what exactly is it you do the second most common thing I get is oh you guys do outdoor school that's what everyone knows and is incredibly important to people just as a very quick comment to give a greater sense of urgency to our need for more school nurses and if there is any way that the board or the district could work with you to get more we would get love to know that the burden that that lack puts on our students our teachers especially on our counselors is normos I absolutely agree and we're working aggressively on the recruiting side of that and I actually do believe your school health assistant approach in that program that your district has created has been an innovative innovative way to deal with at least a portion of that challenge but I appreciate the offer and we will connect and do work closely with your staff on those issues that will continue to be an issue as I have a daughter who is a nurse and you know when they think about their their financial outlook they have many other options rather than school nursing so again anything educational it's really looking for how we can advocate and look for a better funding for our professionals and think outside the boss and and come up with some solutions for partial part of the problem absolutely we're even working with nursing programs to embed the concept of school nursing in their programs because typically what we experience is people who have not appreciated the hospital lifestyle entering school nursing there's no midnight shifts at school nursing exactly office or the board office manager to provide the responses we appreciate it absolutely the ones that are outstanding thank you for your presentation thank you will now consider resolution number five five seven seven the annual MST Rose district resolution process do I have a motion second it's been moved by director anthony seconded by director bailey let's see miss houston is there any public comment it's not any board discussion it's alright then at this time we're gonna vote on resolution 5 5 7 7 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed student ran the motion passes on a vote of seven to zero with representative I'm sorry six to zero with student representative Tran voting yes thank you then the next item we had on our agenda was board consideration of a step three complaint we are we've mutually agreed with the complaint that we are going to defer the vote on whether we're whether the board will hear the complaint to them we're deferring it to the March sixth board meeting and it'll be a regular agenda item on at that time so this evening we will not be hearing that issue so next up we have the board committee in conference reports and the student representative report so since we last met we there's been of host of meetings I'm going to ask we've had finance audit and operations committee a health safety and accessibility community meeting and at policy and Governance Committee meeting the policy and governance committee we the first readings tonight were really the product of that committee's work so I'm not going to cover any of that director Rosen or director Moore would you like to provide an update on your committee
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finance audit and operations committee was scheduled to meet last week but we were snowed out so we met yesterday afternoon we received a preliminary overview of the school staffing and we and you'll be hearing more about that as time goes on we also heard about transportation and nutrition services we've experienced some some real improvements in the transportation services and and we're looking at how to how to continue the improvement going forward we're in in discussions with our current contracted service provider and we're looking at at all of our options nutrition services we got a report about the community community eligibility program provision which is a federal program that allows the entire school under certain circumstances to be considered eligible for free and reduced lunch and if you people may remember that at the beginning of the school year we a lot of a lot of schools were notified that they were no longer eligible for that so we've had to use the more traditional free and reduced lunch process and it's looking like given changes in district demographics that more schools are going to be are going to be losing that designation so the affected schools will be hearing later this spring about what families need to do in order to maintain free reduced lunch for for their students and the the board will continue to be kind of kept current about all of that and direct more could you clarify and this is something that came up in the committee meeting the difference between the school-wide and individual students at the school receive being eligible to receive meals right the the community eligibility provision is is based on a school reaching a particular threshold established by the feds for for students who are directly certified that who are certified using the address certification process which is which means students are students families are receiving state aid in particular food stamps and therefore would qualify for free and reduced lunch status if a school population it exceeds the established threshold then the entire school is allowed is considered eligible for free and reduced lunch if a school loses that designation individual students continue to be eligible to receive free and reduced lunch the difference is that if you lose CEP status individual families then have to apply for for frame reduced lunch eligibility it's it's somewhat more cumbersome it's it requires that the the schools be much more kind of proactive in reaching out to families to make sure that all of the eligible students have submitted the paperwork that allows them to continue to receive the benefits but I guess the takeaway is no student who qualifies under federal regulations for a free or reduced lunch will lose that status it's incumbent on the district and schools and families to to follow through on the paperwork to make sure that all the students who can receive benefits do did that make sense
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director Rosen so just a quick update we met on February 15th and we got an update on the individual health safety and accessibility elements like lead and water and paint and asbestos and that whole remediation process seems to be going well we're looking forward to the bond stakeholder advisory group being brought back together sometime in the month of March I'm thinking it's probably the end of March to look at the health safety and accessibility strategy and we're meeting again on March 14th we'll probably be looking at the health safety and accessibility strategy hopefully and we'll also beginning a presentation on potential health effects of exposure to Wi-Fi thank you because of the snow I know both the Charter Committee that director Anthony chairs and the teaching and learning committee committee here in meeting what we have been at least the tnl committee has been rescheduled till tomorrow at at 5 o'clock so we'll have another group of items coming to the board after that committee meets I'm director Anthony do you want to just provide an update of what was going to happen on the Charter committee and the sort of path forward for those charters the Charter committee members have received the superintendent's recommendations for charter renewals we were going to be hearing those and then discussing them in in the event we really I think had a unanimity of opinion and have dispensed with that particular meeting the recommendations will be coming straight to the board with the committee's unanimous recommendation that we follow the superintendent's recommendations so maybe one thing to add on that is I think one area that the committee looked at is the question of sort of the diversity of the student populations in some of those charters and they don't necessarily reflect the diversity of our overall school populations and there is a weighted lottery option that's available to charter schools and to date we only have one charter school in Portland that uses a weighted lottery and that's Kairos so one of the things that we're going to be continuing the conversation with the other charters is you know how they may might be able to use that tool that has been provided them by the state and I think our legal department might be weighing in on what's what gets weighted in that that income you know I just got well its interests the interesting thing in the discussion is there's not a lot of information so I just got Kairos weighted application this afternoon but I haven't looked at it yet but do you know what's allowed to be weighted by the law it is essentially the same process that universities that have been historically trying to pursue affirmative action have used proxies for race so income geographic location other historically underserved status and the issue that we have is that the legislature made provision for doing this however the Department of Education has given no guidance other than to say that each charter should individually engage council and come up with their own process which may or may not lend them in litigation and it really gets my goat because it just doesn't seem remotely responsible or or fair to any of the charters in the entire state so we are going to be looking at options
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and perhaps doing a little bit of lobbying so the only other committee at the board level is we did have a a budget committee meeting which is a committee of the whole board the other day and we had a presentation from the superintendent and the crack finance team that we now and but it seemed that we now have on on board and received an overview of the school staffing report allocation report and also the guiding principles is that are going to guide the staff and the Alec in the allocation process of our teachers and other support staff and administrative staff across the schools and then we also set the calendar for the budget process with we have a couple items that are still being set but pretty much I think the frame the framework is all set for us to do our work over the next four months so it is an exciting time especially if you combine that with the passage of the piece of legislation so we looking forward to aligning the our budget behind the priorities for the district and thank the superintendent for his leadership on that front superintendent student representative Tran do you have a student student rep report okay so at this point the board will consider the remainder of the business agenda we've already voted on resolutions five five seven six and five five seven seven are there any other items that board members would like to remove from the agenda to have a separate discussion about miss Hewson are there any other changes to the business agenda to have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda so moved second it's been moved by director anthony and seconded by director bailey let's see there's no public comment any additional any board discussion nope so the board will now vote on the business agenda all those in favor say aye as opposed student representative Tran so the motion passes on a six to zero vote with student representative Tran voting aye for the for the board I want to just note that we have a executive session immediately after this the good news is we're ending forty minutes early so maybe we'll get out of here before 11:00 so report to the I believe so thanks the board members thanks for the community members who came tonight the next regular meeting the board will be held on March 6 and a meeting is now adjourned and thank you to Cleveland for

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)

2018-02-27 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - February 27, 2018

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