2018-03-20 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2018-03-20
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting - March 20, 2018

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this regular meeting this regular meeting of the Board of Education for March 20th 2018 is called to order welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers for tonight's meetings any items will be voted on this evening have been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will the replay through the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live for our PBS TV services website as a reminder we have our PBS Ombudsman Judy Martin attending all regular board meetings Judy can you raise your hand right back there and the audience specifically Judy will be here to listen to the public comments and if appropriate provide additional support to families who need or want it Judy can be reached at five oh three nine one six thirty forty-five or Ombudsman at PBS net we also have heard interpreters here this evening I'd like to ask them all to come forward at this time and to introduce themselves in the language that they'll be interpreting and inform the audience where they'll be standing please come forth the joke will be now kuvakin Tombigbee River dams in kwibi they fizz out for two second key page of a still camera movie when I started Miami Lucia Cabrera's interpreting espanol simi necesita moisturizer elaborate convenient oh hi second someone who don't want oldest iconically I may show you points almost immunity status Turan is provost Rene the proper shot at meeting mr. vamonos on be reborn Orozco music upon us tonight et - promise tyrannosaurus paseo brochure thank you so before we get to our agenda items tonight I'd like to provide an overview of the business of the board that we'll be conducting tonight we'll begin with a recognition of our PIL state playoff basketball teams and then hold second readings and votes on proposed policies relating to cash management diploma requirements and school property naming will also consider amendment to the non-discrimination anti-harassment policy and provide an update on the public records policy revisions the board will know then hear a report from the superintendent followed by a student and general public comment we'll have an update on our to middle school openings and other program transitions a vote on the Lamont charter school renewal hold the discussion on the 2018-19 budget and consider for step three complaints following the conclusion of this board meeting the board will have a two-part executive session so to kick off our evening this night the country may be transfixed on March Madness but we had our own March Madness here in the state of Oregon and the pil was right in the middle of it it was quite a month the basketball for for the PIO for PBS schools represented our district in the Oregon state 6a basketball championship tournament the board and all PPS were proud to see three boys teams Lincoln Grant and Jefferson and the Benson girls basketball team qualify for the 6a state basketball tournament I'd like to ask our district athletic director marshal Hoskins who has his own pil basketball credentials as a Jefferson Democrat to individually recognize our teams director Haskins so there you are we're gonna Marshalls going to provide some background on each team's journey to the state tournament and then we'll have a picture and provide them with certificate first I'd like to say thank you to the board for your support of extracurricular activities both athletics and activities and state tournaments of culmination of some times for three or four years of work but also certainly of a whole years worth of work and all of these teams also are outstanding academic students many of them will be going on to college to play college basketball so I'm proud to represent them here today I'd like to begin by having the principal Wilson and the Benson girls basketball team come up please [Applause]
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I like to take a moment to talk a little bit about their season and their coach and I guess I'll begin with just publicly saying thank you to coach Knox what many of you don't know is coach Knox apply for the boys job at Benson and coach Wilson I saw something to him that he didn't see in himself and so we twisted his arm and proudly say we strongly encouraged him to be the girl's coach and the risotto that is what we have in front of it which is a second-place team of the state tournament of Oregon Vincennes the girls team had a historic run this season they finished twenty three and six finishes co-champions to grant High School in our league they hadn't been to the state tournament since 1994 so this is the even greater achievement considering I think in Eric's first season they won two games in first season so three is out two years later they're here and other accomplishments three the girls made first-team all PA all junior Taylor lied a seer Ellington and Mackenzie Porter at the state tournament tournament Tyler Taylor was one of the two players who was unanimous first-team and Mackenzie was also first team all tournament so in honor of their season we the school board and district athletic office would like to present them with a certificate to go in their trophy trophy case of Benson this says that 6a state championship Benson high schools congratulate it for their phenomenal achievement and the girls basketball presented by the school board this was got a lot a political [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] and what will go down as maybe one of the most phenomenal athletic achievements the PIL boys basketball for the first time ever plays first second and third in the state tournament has never happened to gag I've seen it by this period I like I like to have the Lincoln boys basketball team come down I think San Mae Lee and coach albumen are here to represent Lincoln and their team we guys come down go cards a Lincoln finish this season I think 19 and 10 and you might think 10 losses seemed like a lot for a third-place team the problem is that four of those losses came to jefferson of benson five of those losses came to Vincent in Jefferson and then for the four more of those losses came to other teams in our league we end up with seven teams in the top 30 in the state so it
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was a very hard league to be in I want a public think think coach element for his tremendous coaching a Jessica Russell for the support and Shawn for support the Lincoln team was number one in defense in the pil top ten defense in the state top ten assists per game in the state they actually beat three teams eight league champions so again we talked about how tough our league was Lincoln beat the Mount Hood champions the Metro League champions the three river league champion which is a phenomenal feat in itself Bryce Sloane was one of two players to be unanimous voted by the coaches for all tournament this is the third time in Lincoln's history to vote to have a player voted all tournament unanimously and again they finished third in the PIO which is a very big deal but more importantly a part of a phenomenal year of being one two three in the state for the pil congratulation Lincoln Cardinals [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] the second part of that unprecedented finish in this state of Oregon was the Jefferson Democrats led by coach pass Strickland athletic director Neil beard administrators Margaret Calvert and Ricky ala can you guys come down please [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Jefferson over the last two years has a record of 53 and five and only one loss in the last two years to a state of Oregon team which is a phenomenal feat [Applause] unfortunately for them that one loss came in a state championship game by one point however they had a they had a tremendous season hats off to the team all they did didn't reach their goal of winning a state championship they had a great year the team wants to send a special thanks to student body of the school administration in the Jefferson Community for all the support this year again they were last year they were state champions this year they came as second in a state two years prior they won state so this is the kind of what Jefferson does is represent pio in a tremendous manner and in honor of their accomplishment this year and success they've had for the last couple years the board and the district political office would like to present them with one other thing before that also in the state tournament is the first time that one league has swept all of the all tournament awards and that was led by Quebec ahem comic Komaki HEPA and Khalil Chapman being all tournament so congratulations to Jefferson High School [Music] [Applause]
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[Applause] can we have the grant generals come down to the front please [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the generals so in terms of grant high school they had a record of 25 and for this year I've had a tremendous season and I think about their season I think of unprecedented because of the one two three but also think about persistence and perseverance grant actually three of their losses came to Jefferson by a total of five point six points total they lost the Jefferson three times by a total of six points combined but more importantly as grant generals would say we won the one to count it the most correct all right so grant a great job great season coach key did a tremendous job of making the kids together the other word I would use is trust the process coach had a plan he stayed with it came if you wish and after three years and he won a state championship liked also before I recognize the individual players just give a shout out to principal Carroll Campbell hard things the phenomenal principal and did a great job of helping put this together including hired coach key so principal Campbell good decision I say that because I was a part of that committee and we have some deep discussion so we made a good decision and then they're letting director ray who believe it or not bought these t-shirts a month before the state tournament that the kids are long they will win so it's a ray this confidence good job ray I like to three days it sounded better thirty to thirty days son of veteran ll to zero I also like to acknowledge ty Rankin Kelton some more and errand aloni for tremendous play at the state tournament and being named all tournament so congratulations to you guys for that the school board and district office has individual certificate speech of one of you will give you those rail give you those but in honor of we have two things so in honor of your success the school board and district athletics would like to acknowledge you with a certificate going to your trophy case and then the board has a proclamation for you that so at this time I'd like to ask director Kahn's damn to read the proclamation and assistant coaches Anthony or Michael q4e Russell millage bebek sold for arias are and team captains errand aloni Kelton some more and Damon Hickok and whereas they went into the state championship with a 22 win for loss record and went to games to advance to the championship game and whereas the grant generals prevailed in a hard-fought competitive game with a final score of 63 62 and whereas we recognize not only the coaches the team
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captains and the entire team for their outstanding performance it is fitting to also recognize that community as a whole for supporting the Portland Interscholastic League therefore the Portland Public Schools Board of Education do hereby recognize the Grant High basketball team for winning Oregon's 2018 6a state basketball championship [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Applause] [Applause] so the PIL has a long and proud tradition of athletics a group of PIL alums myself included and Marshall Haskins who's also a PIL Elam recently created a new entity the PIL foundation to support teams and student-athletes in the PIL as its inaugural action and the PIL foundation has committed to purchase for each of the teams a state playoff banner for their gyms to March each of their accomplishments so to all the PIL playoff teams in the grant champions way to go way to represent and congratulations chair I just like to make a comment which is it was really incredible to be at those games and see all the community support the child Center was absolutely packed to the gills with a lot of alumni from all of our schools it was such a community happening so I hope we keep it going true true even the day games it was great so I'm just going to briefly I'm gonna skip an agenda item it's the board agenda and the road map we're a little bit behind schedule so I'm going to go right into some of our readings I'm going to come back after the public comment to the road map agenda item so the board policies tonight we have revisions to three board policies to consider in vote on and one policy to amend in advance in the process and also an update on an outstanding policy first our first second reading is going to be the investment in cash management policy a first reading was held on the proposed policy On February 27 2017 after 21 days of being open for public comment and receiving none the board is ready to vote on the investment cash management policy director Moore is the chair of the finance audit and operations committee would you like to make any comments about the policy and provide a recommendation to the board on this resolution I gave a little spiel at the first reading of this this is a very minor technical revision to the existing policy the most important revision is that it raises the the amount of money for for the cash on hand and otherwise it continues the existing policy and that the fao committee unanimously recommended approval thank you the board will now consider resolution number 56 16 resolution to adopt the cash management policy eight point two zero point zero one zero do I have a motion okay moved by director Anthony and seconded by director Rosen miss Houston is there any public comment on a resolution five six one six is there any board discussion on this I should note that director Bailey obviously is absent this evening and so is our student representative so our votes will be all with just six members so no board discussion that board will now vote on resolution five six one six all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes
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all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution five six one six is approved by six zero vote and representative Tran is absence thank you board members so next we have a first reading first reading was held on the diploma policy revision relating to veterans diplomas the first reading was held on February 27th 2017 after 21 days of being open for public comment and receiving none the board is ready to vote on diploma policy revision relating to Veterans director Esparza Brown is the chair of the teaching and learning committee would you like to make some comments and provide a recommendation sure this resolution responds to the 2017 house built on 2220 removing certain requirements for veterans to meet prior to receiving on high school to play so these young people left high school in service of our country and sacrificed much in the name of freedom so after their service though many veterans were unable to return to finish their high school for various reasons so a North addition of their outstanding contributions this resolution is one gesture of our gratitude for their service we also did some cleanup in the resolution by taking out prior year diploma requirements this is a second reining in the board leadership the committee recommends that we approve this Thank You director Esparza Brown the board will now consider a resolution number five six one seven resolution to amend board policy four point two zero point zero four to deployment requirements to have a motion move by director anthony and seconded by a director spars of around miss houston is there any public comment on resolution five six one seven there's not is there any board discussion resolution five six one seven all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any absent sanctions resolution five six one six is approved by sixty or vote with student representative tran being absent this evening so the third policy that we have under consideration tonight is the naming of school district property a first reading was held on the proposed naming school district property policy on February 27th 2017 after 21 days being open for public comment the board is now ready to vote on the naming School District property policy so I want to provide some background on the policy changes that we're considering tonight in September the district received a formal complaint regarding the use of the word Quakers as the Franklin High School mascot the complainant asked the superintendent to review the original decision and superintendent found that further policy review was necessary regarding naming policies for all aspects of schools in Portland this issue was referred to the board policy and governance committee and the committee has worked on this for several months the existing policy actually is quite comprehensive and fairly thorough but there are some gaps that needed to be closed and updating that need to be done to make it better and more reflective of our values as a school community the policy and Governance Committee I'm the chair of it director Rosen and director Moore also served on the committee recommended a series of changes to the policy and the changes just I want to summarize them so that we have that on the record is we clarified the provisions of this policy applied to mascots and related images and symbols in the criteria for evaluating names we've specifically added language that quote all consideration must reflect our commitment to limit eliminating systemic discrimination and its impact on student learning and educational activities in addition we've added that in the criteria for evaluating names names shall not be a person location or character whose primary identification is of a religious nature or be a name of a religious group or members we've clarified the process for naming when two or more schools emerged and what is the process for renaming and waiving the fiscal income impact statement and that might be relevant this fall when we open some new middle schools we for renaming it discusses a deliberative process that should be that should not be done in haste and indicates that such decisions must take into account the district's focus on eliminating systemic discrimination its impact on student learning and educational activities it also specifies an exemption to the fiscal impact statement requirement when the party can show that the change is being made to address discrimination and finally the board the board has the ultimate authority to determine if the criteria for naming or renaming has been satisfied so those that's a summary of the changes to this policy so we're gonna vote on the second reading tonight on those policy changes after after we vote on that those policy changes
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there's going to be two additional items that amendments that were or going to be put on the table and introduced that will then be open for a 21 day comment period and these are ones that aren't actually related to the issue that were sort of foundational to the complaint but other issues that came up as we reviewed the policy so can I ask a question point of a verification on process so why would we not just consider have a first reading again of the policy with the amendments which seems to be much more clear for the public rather than having a second reading of the original policy and a first reading in a subsequent second reading of the amendments which is a bit confusing so the so we've had the the the current first read policy with the changes have been posted for 21 days and I'll go back to this is an issue that was raised in September and we as a complaint process and it went all the way through the complaint process we reached an agreement with the complainants to suspend the deadlines so that we could work on this policy and they graciously agreed to suspend to a time certain the time line so we thought it would be and as the chair of the committee I thought we should advance the policy which goes to the heart of what the complaint was about and the two other issues are have merit and they just were introduced later in the process so we're going to adopt the policy that had we're going to vote on the policy that we first read and then we'll have the second reading after people have a an opportunity to comment on the amendments at the next meeting so we're then going to be in a position of deliberating on a complaint that is that pertains to the policy without having had the opportunity to consider the policy as a whole and adopt the policy well no we're not we we're you haven't yet scheduled the bringing the cocaine back to them to the board okay so we will fully adopt the policy before we have a vote on the when we bring the suspended appeal back to the board so the policy work will it be completely done by that time that's good it's it seems to me that we should tonight consider the policy of go back to a first reading of the whole policy integrating the proposed amendments so we're addressing it in one fell swoop other than the knife rotated process it's just a judgment call and because of the length of time that this is this is actually a multi-year process the complaintants have had and gone through so is an attempt to move the process along so it's just a call by the chair on process it could be I consulted with the general I consulted with the general counsel and either Avenue was appropriate to take and so as the chair I'm moving the second reading of the policy but just might help sorry but help me make sure that I understand something how does this move the process along because I think you just said that we won't consider the complaint until we have actually heard the whole policy with the amendments it takes action on the section of the main section of the policy that is this at the central part of the complaint it can be done either way and again I consulted with the general counsel and also the one of the amendment carriers who director Moore had an amendment it wasn't completed by the time we voted out of we added voted out a committee so we moved we moved ahead with the policy so that we are moving ahead with the work of the board so just a little persnickety but I'm a little concerned about establishing a precedent because it is confusing to do it this way do you have a recommendation and recommendation as large I know that it's legal I twice in our but do you have a recommendation I understand either is technically acceptable I think either is acceptable and they've been walked through I think it's it's the judgement of the board about which path it wants to proceed but I think both both certainly work do I
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have a motion so director Rosen moves and director Anthony seconds the motion to adopt resolution five six one six miss Houston is there any public comment on resolution five six one six I'm sorry Hey first off I'd like to thank you for having me and allowing me to give my perspective as a student my name is cliff Carlson I'm a senior at Franklin High School and I'm here representing our Student Senate which is essentially a group of club leaders brought together to convey to faculty the ideas and concerns of the students being that I'm here on behalf of the student body and I'm not necessarily here to give my own opinions as an individual I'd like to express that we do not all agree on whether Quakers should remain as our mascot name many see the apparent religious affiliation as an entanglement of church and state while many others see the mascot as too much a part of the school's identity Chidester race there is a consensus however in saying that if you decide the mascot must change our our new name should be picked via student vote say what you will about Quakers but it is certainly unusual and I believe that has value one of our biggest worries with this process is that you the faculty and maybe a student a few student representatives will walk into a room and come out to tell us that we're now some generic creature like the Wildcats that would leave out the many voices of people who make Franklin what it is a student vote is the only way to ensure that the people making the decision are the people who will eventually be affected by it obviously any vote cast for something that doesn't meet the already established guidelines regarding profanity or otherwise offensive content would be immediately disqualified and even with these conditions met you might be worried that students would choose something goofy or meaningless well in 1986 that same so-called worst case scenario happened at UC Santa Cruz when students voted overwhelmingly in favor changing their mascot from the sea lions a moniker selected by faculty without significant student involvement to the banana slugs yeah since then the school's mascot has become an immense point of pride among both students and alumni and has received widespread positive publicity including being on ESPN's list of top 10 college mascots Franklin's alumni will always have been Quakers no matter what happens with this vote but because current and future students are the ones who will have to live with a change it might as well be a change that they are comfortable with allowing us to pick our own mascot is not only the fair thing to do but it's also the best way to find something that will excite people students are most likely to have the creative and relevant ideas and no matter what they pick students will be far more supportive of a choice that they are involved in thank you hello superintendent directors thank you very much for having me my name is MIA pizanno P is ano and as you know I am very very proud to be a parent of a Franklin High School alum and a current student and I'm also proud to be a Quaker by virtue of my religious faith not my affiliation with Franklin High School I am here to urge the board to approve this revision to the policy on naming school district property this proposal does strengthen the district's commitment to eliminating systemic discrimination and provides a more accessible process for addressing issues of discrimination in naming of Portland Public Schools property I also am just delighted to support wholeheartedly the students request to be a part of any renaming process that would move forward at Franklin High School the current students are the future alumni and in this and in so much that
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we see right now the students of today are ready to move forward with their courage their integrity their energy for positive change and I will be so encouraged at Franklin students will if the board chooses to move forward on this revision have an opportunity to represent themselves into the future in their future identity as Franklin alumni so thank you very much for considering this amendment and I urge you to approve it thank you very much thank you both is there any board discussion on the merits of the resolution or the in the changes what about yes based on the merits of the resolution but I am concerned about just the not the not clean governance and setting a precedent I think we should really try to pay attention to that moving forward that when we bring something forward we have all the amendments we consider it in total so that it's easier for the public to track and just more clean yeah what just on that comment I would just say that we have one thing about our policy is policy should be continuing continuously evolving and while this set of amendments even the ones we adopt next week or the previous policies we consider that we should always look to them too that they are potentially going to evolve with time so I don't think anything's set in stone so I just in terms of the discussion I wanted to just briefly comment on the process moving forward so we would be bringing back at a certain point to the board the appeal of the complaint and then assuming there is a change there is a very clear process laid out in the administrative directive of any renaming policy and I want to sort of assure clever cliff Carlson that there is a role for students and the process is organized by the communications department and I've already had a conversation with Stephanie Cameron about how we make that an inclusive process and and transparent so that all those individuals who feel passionate about Franklin High School and its legacy have an opportunity to participate in in that process so we welcome students engagement in that is there any other board discussion so the board will now vote on resolution five six one five all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions the resolution five six one five is approved by a five to six to zero vote with student representative tram being absent tonight so now on to the amendments and part of the also the reason discussion about the amendments at a certain point they were considered non substantive and it was a close call so because we felt they were substantive changes we're going to first read them tonight and then vote on them after the 21 day comment period the men notes were included in the board packet and posted online I'd like to ask vice-chair more to introduce her - one amendments and then I will introduce an amendment on behalf of an issue that director Bailey raised director more so my amendment is to section 4 gifts paragraph 1 and the amendment reads the board acknowledges that it has the authority to accept monetary or in-kind donations from individuals and entities in exceptional circumstances consideration may be given to naming locations within a school or non school facility for a significant gift as determined by the board in consultation with the superintendent the that last sentence is the one that has a couple of revisions to it and the revisions are taking away
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the possibility of naming a new school or score non school facility in in return for a gift and then any any naming of a location within a school or non school facility will be done in consultation with the superintendent the rest of that paragraph remains unchanged any questions or discussion about director mores amendment so that the second amendment that's labeled the Omnibus amendment or the director Bailey's amendment in a different packet there were two issues that he flagged and director bailey noted that the criteria relating to community's role in a renaming was vague and a subjective standard so this amendment clarifies that the community's input will inform the board's deliberation and decisions it also makes clear that we're waiving the fiscal impact statement and requirement of paying for a name change when the change is based on discrimination so given that director Bailey is traveling I'm introducing this as the Omnibus amendment to the policy any questions or discussion about that amendment okay so both of those amendments will be posted as required and open for public comment and assuming we receive public comment and we don't have further changes we'll be voting on a second reading of those amendments at the next board meeting okay so thank you board members through three policies are next Paulette the next issue we have before us isn't a introduction of an amendment and this is an amendment to the non-discrimination anti-harassment policy revision at the February 27th board meeting we had a first reading of revisions to the non-discrimination anti-harassment policy since then board leadership in consultation with the committee chair constan have drafted a clarifying amendment to the first read policy I'm going to ask director Const am the chair of the legislative and I know governmental Committee to introduce and explain the ration for the amendment director Const am i excuse me but I don't think I have that amendment but I'm happy to explain the rationale thank you I don't need to read it so basically what we are bringing forward is just to make clear in the policy that there is right of confidentiality for complainants and this is something that was already codified in the administrative directive that was attached to the policy but it just wasn't made clear in the policy and it was an area of some concern in the community and in fact a deeply held value I think of our of our board and so we wanted to make sure that that was transparent to the public that that was part of it do you want me to read this or maybe just read the one sentence that was added it's the me it's just all complaints regarding sexual harassment and sexual violence shall go to the title 9 coordinator complaints may be made anonymously and that was not in the original language of the amendment so that's the meat of it Thanks so it's just adding a sentence just to clarify Thank You director cons damn do I have a motion to adopt the amendment to the non-discrimination anti-harassment policy been moved by director of spars of brown and seconded by director Anthony is there any board discussion on this amendment okay the board will now vote in the amendment all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions the amendment is approved by a 6 to 0 vote with student representative Tran voting not being present so the amended non-discrimination anti-harassment policy will be considered this will be considered a reread first reading at this board meeting the amended policy is will be posted for 21 days and at our April 10th board meeting will be scheduled for a second reading vote thank you board members so the last piece of business in our board policies tonight is an update on our second
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reading the public access to district records so this originally had been scheduled for a vote this evening so I want to provide an update about why we're not having a vote on it and I'm going to read it because I want to provides the context in which we where we why we are at this position where we are right at this moment so as background the board started to work on its revised public records policy last summer in an effort to increase accountability and transparency build trust with the broader community and comply with revisions and state law we had a first reading of this policy on September 12th 2017 we were in mediation with the Portland Association of teachers regarding our collective bargaining agreement with them and work in the policy was suspended until after contract ratification due to PA T's assertion that a change in the policy at that point in bargaining was an unfair labor practice once the contract was ratified there was a second first reading at the February 27th board meeting to incorporate substantive changes that been recommended by members of the media and board members and community members the district shared the required first reading of this policy as is our practice with representative our employee groups and started a 21 day public comment period so that was back on in February 27th ordinarily the March 20th board meeting would be the meeting that we would consider public comment that been submitted and have a vote on the second reading on February 27th the Portland Association teachers made a demand to bargain which they are allowed to do under organs collective bargaining law this starts a process not to exceed 90 days for the district to consider issues that p80 has raised about the policy and bargained to the extent required by law there has been staff level bargaining about PA T's concerns and I expected the board's policy and Governance Committee meeting this week there'll be a report on the progress in bargaining we will not have a vote tonight in the second reading as we are still working through the process for policy adoption we'll continue to provide updates on where we are within the required process if there are any recommended amendments to the current revised policy the committee will forward recommendations to the board for consideration we'll have a vote on the revised policy at a future meeting within the allowable timelines so that's the update on where we are with public records so five policies gone through tonight superintendent Guerrero do you want to do your report or would you rather wait till after public comment you could you you can choose okay please good evening directors Privett congratulations again to our student-athletes and coaches on their winning seasons I enjoy done and I know many of you also did these very exciting final games and congrats to our grad generals speaking of grant grant Magazine our student journalists for the fifth year in a row have won the National Gold Award for student publications student and staff members traveled to New York to receive their award and participate in a national student journalism conference I wanted to make sure and acknowledge their accomplishment as well on March 13th I had the opportunity to address several hundred business leaders leaders from other work sectors and students at the annual Pacific Work Alliance breakfast held at the Convention Center was a great opportunity to connect with leaders who are in positions to help our students explore possible career paths offer internships and possibly become mentors to many of our students over the course of that day over estimated more than 6,000 high school students traveled by school bus to the Oregon Convention Center to take part in this career fair students had the opportunity to talk to talk to job recruiters and participate in some practical hands-on career trying looking up utility lines operating and industrial nail-gun using high-tech medical equipment and just kind of exploring what some of these careers and tools look like just got back from trip to DC along with several fellow board members I won't say a lot about it because I know we're gonna have a formal report out but we attended the Council of great city schools legislative conference at the nation's capital so we had a chance to interact with congressional no staff on some key legislative topics including school safety and I know you'll hear more details in a minute or later in the program March 14th I wanted to make sure and say a little bit about that as folks are aware schools across the district participated in a range of activities one to honor the victims of the mass shootings in parkland Florida and to advocate for safe violent free violence free schools overall this turned out to be a very successful and instructive day in the school district generated a lot of student-led advocacy and organized activity and some very important discussions there was a lot of media
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coverage both nationally and locally for the most part positive included a lot of interviews with our students covered Governor Brown who joined us on the field at Roosevelt High along with many of us who were there to support their organized activity there was a lot of really positive footage some aerial shots of some of our elementary students forming rainbows and peace signs and just turned out to be a really good day and the way we envisioned it to be a teachable moment we did have some middle school students who elected to leave school grounds on that day but just so families know we did have our Emergency Operations Center up and we were able to keep families staff and Police Bureau informed in real time but all of our students did end up returning safely for their afternoon classes so thank you to the many staff our teachers and families who made this a positive day we were able to publish a reflection on the day board members and myself if you haven't had a chance to read it that's also posted on our district's website as well speaking of democratic activities on that same day March 14th there in addition to all the Safe Schools activity nearly 700 of our high school students and staff traveled to Seattle to see a performance of the Broadway musical hit Hamilton this was made possible by a generous grant from The Herald and Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation I want to director constan senior director of strategic partnerships Jonathan Garcia who joined me in making the pitch to mr. Jordan Schnitzer who was very happy and gracious and generous to support this activity that helped make the trip possible transportation and tickets etc and the students didn't just get to watch the musical they actually had to participate in a curriculum it was had an educational component connected to it many of our students were featured sharing some performances that they prepared on stage for the cast of Hamilton so it was really a unique opportunity and rather than say anything more about it I think I'll just stop there and show you a little video clip of the day [Applause] morning get up early for this well you know it's the hottest ticket in town and we're just so excited that you know almost 700 of our own high school kids are gonna get this opportunity so proud of you guys getting up too early taking our US government students I can't think of a better opportunity to make US government come alive than an opportunity to see Hamilton on stage [Music] pretty awesome to be able to see how theater education can impact other classrooms because we know how important it is to get students on their feet and actively involved in their education and this is a great example of that way to get students involved I am very excited we've been counting down the days for the last weeks it touches on a lot of things that the history books don't and it provides like a fun way to understand why our forefathers went through it was early in the morning but like I guess we're getting closer and closer he's just how amazing this little like quit so there's gonna be about 20 of you guys that are gonna be like my responsibility honestly I was really shocked it's just amazing to learn that you get to go to this big very very popular musical are you guys ready coming up next from Vinson Polytechnic high school give it up for three Underwood I shot a man but never again I don't know why he saw me into the tree I just got to let it be because I've won the battle between Hamilton and me open is this gonna haunt me these kids I'll study this era the same eras Hamilton and do projects whether it's a song poetry or wrath and gets a performer here on the stage I'm really excited to be here it's gonna show there's so much good stuff about it we were also asked to prepare some kind of art piece like a poem or a song [Applause] so I wrote a sonnet about the whiskey rebellion said I did some research on it and it's pretty interesting to survivors when home and again the Constitution
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upheld this clash of armies made our political parties how much did you know about the founding era before being part of this production I know a lot about each individual didn't know a lot about the infighting like I didn't know that Jefferson hated Hamilton so damn much so there's things like that those little things like I didn't know that stuff yeah the cast all looks forward to is the cast and crew everybody is so excited about these days because these kids are so on fire just got out of Hamilton and it was amazing cool I like it a lot of emotion it's fun to see the historical documents that we had to analyze in class like come to life in a modernized way I think it was amazing like the music that acting the whole vibe and the energy was this spectacular so when my mother and I heard that Portland Public Schools have a chance to send 750 high school students to Seattle we jumped at the chance to partner with Portland Public Schools in helping all those kids have the same experience that we were lucky enough to have last year thank you to all of the sponsors that are giving us the tickets to go to this show there's no words that can express how thankful I am puts them and I just want to thank Terry Proctor for putting together that nice little video clip to give us a sense of the day from our communications team thank you nice way to end so right now on to student and public comment before we begin the public comment period I'd like to review our guidelines the board thanks the community for taking the time to come tonight to share your perspectives perspectives your concerns your ideas we value your input so it's all responsible is the board to actively listen with our electronic devices turned off board members and the superintendent will not respond to comments or questions during public comments but our board office will follow up on board related issues raised during public comment guidelines for public comment emphasize 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 your comments please begin by stating your name and spelling your last name for the record during the first two minutes so your testimony a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when your time is up the red light will go on the buzzer will sound at that point we ask you to respectfully conclude your comments miss Hewson will you please call the first two individuals signed up to testify [Applause] hello my name is Molly Porter port2 all thank you so much for your service to PBS our community is grateful for the efforts that you're making in conjunction with our leadership to fix some of the inequities across the district I know that you all are volunteers and I'm grateful for your time I'm here tonight to address the FTE cuts that elementary schools are facing these cuts will create unsafe learning environments not to mention that there is no way to foster academic excellence in a classroom of 28 kindergartners or 34 fifth graders you know this I know this we all know this the foundation for increased graduation rates is laid during the primary grades in increasing class sizes for these young learners is the opposite of what our students need at Chapman we're not even asking that you lower our class size which would be a reasonable request we're just asking that you don't increase it teachers believe that their class sizes would be held to reasonable numbers the preliminary decision to march straight past the overage caps and on to the max number of students per grade is inappropriate I trust every one of you knows that increasing class sizes is bad for students paying a teacher more doesn't make that teacher more capable of handling too many students more importantly it provides zero benefit for the students zero zero benefit for students I'm asking you to choose a different course any course that will provide some benefit to our students the forecasted numbers at Chapman which I don't believe to be correct show 50 percent of classrooms above the overage cap I believe a more accurate look at our numbers will prove that 60 to 85
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percent of our classrooms will be above that overage these numbers are unsafe physically and emotionally our students will suffer we need more qualified adults in school buildings not fewer this community spent a lot of time energy and resources two years ago trying to create right size schools I would hope that we could invest the same resources in to develop right-size classrooms chapman's ramona campus is slated to lose their secretary this move creates a dangerous and untenable situation for that building in my six years at chapman there has been one lockdown emergency it occurred at the Ramona I shudder to imagine how that scenario would have played out without safe staffing yet that is the current proposal asking for safety asking for safety in our buildings is a low bar I know it's complicated and I know I don't have the full picture but I do know what is best for our sweet babies and it is not fewer teachers larger class sizes and understaffed campuses earn assigning Parra's raising class sizes operating a second and currently unnecessary campus these are things that hurt our students they drive families than it can afford it into private school sector and drive out quality teachers and Paras every single student deserves to send mid right size classrooms [Applause] good evening my name is Marjorie Phillips thank you for this opportunity to testify about an issue that is very important to my family my community and I the future of our children specifically the future of the children of Applegate Head Start and the families it serves this is a heartfelt issue for me I am a grandmother of current Applegate students and my children have attended PPS Head Start facilities Head Start programs like these are indispensable to parents and both their affordability and in their Geographic practicality they were for my family in which all my children who attended are now college-educated and two on the cusp of master's degrees the proposed decision to displace 277 kids and families in the applegate program in which many receive free and reduced lunch will be incredibly burdensome in my own in my opinion only furthers the process of gentrification in my community which is not the best interest of my grandchildren and the children of Applegate darling dominoes it is an enjoyable game for many adults but metaphorically the domino effect of accommodating access families at the expense of displacing pioneer families which ultimately displaces Applegate and Nayef families is a cruel game where everybody is toppled the community involvement process of this change has been troublesome as well as for our Applegate families information has trinkle down and it should be free-flowing many Applegate parents I've spoken to Phyllis though displacement is an afterthought in this process and their voices have not been heard the only update to Applegate families occurred in December was focused on pioneer and access families and mentioned the only informational meeting was to occur in five days and that headstart will consider their community needs assessment to determine where underserved low-income children live the community needs assessment which PPS is required to undertake every three years and to reveal every two years after the assessment it's designed to provide data about the location race ethnic makeup and resource needs of Applegate's families among other factors we have some Applegate families that don't have a stable location because they are homeless and for some it would be a burden to take try meant to Kelly or vessel oh how is their truth validated can PPS say that this decision is supported by the current needs assessment well this decision likely be supported in a review of that assessment in a fil year few years will you provide specifics to applegate families and the public to demonstrate how your decision is supported by current federal regulation regulations that govern the Head Start program in short you can't depend on just census data you must authentically do outreach and involve applegate families and kids in your decision you preach equity however your actions with applegate has been less than equitable
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[Applause] thank you for your comments our next two speakers are Beth Blum Klotz and Gabrielle Mercedes Bulevar good evening my name is Gabriella Mercedes Bolivar good evening superintendent PPS Board of Education and I should probably add PPS council I am a former PPS student current PPS parent and current community member I have made a concerted effort this year to maintain a positive attitude support the new PPS administration PPS Board of Education and your efforts to undo decades have harm to our students as you take substantive action to address decades of inequity and inefficiency I understand that this is no easy undertaking it will take time and it will require valid data to make appropriate informed decisions that impact our students I do have several requests and for thoughts and perspectives some that I will share and ask tonight first many of our school communities have a history of struggling to receive effective timely and transparent communication from the district it has often resulted in communities feeling like something is being done to us to our students to our communities without consideration of who we are and who our students are in our school buildings for years many of our school communities have struggled to have voices heard concerns addressed or to receive transparent communication from the district or to be engaged by be ESC staff this often results in mistrust I believe intentional engagement consistent open and transparent communication can and will build trust between our school communities in the district I haven't asked when negative articles are published by local papers about our school communities aqua green for example we expect that BES C will defend and support our school community if the district is aware that a negative article is coming out on the school get ahead of it engage us we are in this together for our students let's find every opportunity to highlight and celebrate them everywhere every day in every school we have amazing students as we celebrate annual increases in our graduation rate is the district evaluating the root causes is it a decrease in students qualifying for direct certification have the proficiency-based grading systems impacted graduation rates our students submitted an alternate portfolio to graduate and if yes what are the demographics how are we tracking access to programming students schedules supports and how are we analyzing this data how are we tracking the student success and readiness for career and college families have voiced and reported concerns that their students are graduating with a PPI diploma and stuck in minimum-wage jobs does PPS have the data on student career inter college success post graduation this brings me to my last question for the evening what students have access to AP IB or PCC in high school how is this determined what are the district costs incurred for AP IB and PCC and how is the district determining which schools in which students in these schools have access are there inequities in Access are we tracking University preference for transferable credits for example two universities placed greater value on PCC AP or IB classes when reviewing students admissions I appreciate your commitment to whether the Epple Battle of addressing years of an equitable school funding staffing programming program placement enrollment balancing and boundaries I can't imagine the task you have before you and believe that with clear consistent transparent communication and engagement we can build a district that supports all students and communities I'd also like to shout out to Marshall Haskins because he's been an amazing athletic director thank you thank you good evening I'm Beth bloom Klotz last name BL um KL o TZ I'm a proud school bus driver for Portland Public Schools we've been without a contract since June 30th 2017 all we want is a fair and equitable contract which of course includes a livable wage even though your representatives showed up to several negotiations unprepared and declared that we should be thankful we have benefits we agreed to come to the contract negotiation table one more time which will be this Friday March 23rd at the request of our PPS CEO oh who feels confident that we can come to an agreement and we appreciate his efforts let me tell you we want to come back here and thank you we are hoping that you have seen more of our value these past seven months since attending and speaking at these school board meetings and all that we do for our special education students however the longer you delay offering a livable wage the
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more we're coming together Portland public pays new hires 21 32 an hour and shortly after 23 69 an hour for truck and food service drivers however for your school bus drivers who you also receive 70% on each dollar first having special education students you offer us and want us to accept 16.7 tea for cents per hour we we are encouraging you to ask the district and it's a representatives to at least pay the same that you pay our other drivers special education school bus drivers transport the most important commodity that Portland public school serves our children we actually have drivers who drive in this summer is delivering food and then come back to transport our children for the school year they don't come back for the pay obviously but they return because they love what they do school bus drivers transport students with autism mild moderate or complete deaf or blindness learning disabilities mental retardation physical impairments speech language or mental impairments emotional traumas our students require attention and assistance getting on and off the bus we don't just drive we make every effort to meet their needs for the 2016-17 school year 17 PPS school bus drivers transporting 603 students with special needs 945 thousand three hundred fifty miles are you listening to us the minimum credentials required to transport children to and from school here is having a CDL medical car that verifies if we pass a physical first aid CPR OTE school bus drivers certificate we are required to have professional development ongoing driver's safety trainings random drug tests in all fairness we think we should get paid the same as those who transport food on the menu this week chicken nuggets apple and celery salad are you saying that meatloaf hamburgers and hotdogs are more valuable than our children [Applause] we are not against our colleagues earning a livable wage we are not against our colleagues earning a livable wage we just want the same and we want compensation that is commensurate with the responsibility that we shoulder every day transporting the most important our students thank you our last two speakers Steve fuel and Amy Esther [Applause] I just want to point out that I'm wearing red this evening to support pioneer my name's steve byul be UEL and school board members and superintendent last June the school board passed a resolution instructing the superintendent to create a comprehensive ESL plan including an analysis of intensive English language instruction for older children the deadline to report to the board was last February first there has been no report the idea behind intensive English language instruction is to give older immigrant children enough background in English so they can enter our middle or high schools and participate in their own education right now we often just drop them into class as required for graduation even if they speak no English the predictable results are atrocious well we have some daily ESL instruction that does not include intensive English language instruction setting up a voluntary program where we teach a good deal of English in a short timeframe which allows all our old or immigrant children to have a sensible English language foundation on which to build makes a lot of sense children are taught English throughout the world did you happen to watch the recent Olympics many foreign athletes did interviews in English English the closest thing in the world through universal language is taught to millions of people in countries all over the world it seems strange that in Portland one of the most progressive cities in America we can't teach enough English so children who have a responsibility we have a responsibility to educate can get by in our schools part of the problem is that the parents of these children aren't generally going to come down to the school board or to the superintendent's office to complain if they ever did they
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would say their children need to learn English and to have a real chance to get an education and fit into a society where English is a must for continuing their education or becoming a professional actually we already have our own staffer a complaining what we are doing is neither sensible or working there are four outstanding office of civil rights complaints about our ESL program now don't get me wrong I'm not saying such things that sheltered instruction or cute L should be replaced by intensive English language instruction but I am saying that without intensive English instruction there is not enough time for older children to learn what they need to be to learn what they need to learn to be successful in our schools they must learn English we must teach it to them and I have another have another thing back in 1979 and 80 I got a resolution passed that said that we needed to have in our entryways in our schools signs that said welcome and please and thank you and we do if you look around there's a lot of them are still that left from that particular resolution and what we had before that was just pretty much you must report to the office it was pregnant and and we have kind of in a way the same type of thing here in this building we don't have any really welcoming signs and so I've brought one for you I know I'm over the time this you know the pan I thought it would be good [Applause] there's a problem there's a problem in that this says have partway down immigrants and refugees are welcome is it mr. bule you're mr. Beale your time is about before mr. bule your time is up you please to a me please no it's fine are you gonna leave that with Rick miss you senators go ahead please sit good evening my name is Amy Estep es TEP this silence represents your treatment of all the people in red shirts behind me when we have raised concerns and questions about dismantling the Pioneer programmed to inferior buildings that do not meet the needs of our students it's time for the silence to end since November 28th we have attended eight school board meetings we have written countless letters of concerns to all of you we have been in The Oregonian the Portland Tribune on OPB on the TV seven different pioneer staff have made public comments three teachers a therapeutic intervention coach a paraeducator our secretary our PE teacher and now right now a licensed clinical social worker who's worked for pioneer for 15 years we have all testified that we will not be able to keep ourselves and our students safe and Applegate and rice we have all stated that it is discriminatory to place students with disabilities students of color students living in poverty into buildings that don't meet their needs in order for students who are talented and gifted we have all said that it's not fair to solve PBS's school building issues on the backs of students with significant disabilities the most vulnerable students and our youngest early education students after all this advocacy we have still yet to be addressed by all of you regarding our concerns again it's time for you to end your silence it's time for the school board to get involved so I wonder what is getting in your way what is getting in your way of doing the right thing is that that you don't want to disagree with your new superintendent somebody you hired and have high aspirations for is it about politics is it about saving face do you truly believe that talented and gifted kids deserve a better school building a better school experience than students with disabilities students who are dealing with childhood trauma and neglect is it that you're embarrassed at this point in time that you haven't stopped the injustice that took place earlier in the process as you can see we don't understand what's going on we don't understand it seems like there's something that has other to do with what's best for students but we are here to tell you it's not too late every day at Pioneer we help students learn how to repair harm when they have physically or emotionally heard another person we teach our students how to engage in the restorative justice process in order to teach them a different way of being in the world we teach them to take responsibility when they have made a mistake and we teach them how to make things right we
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practice and role model forgiveness every day with our students after being punched kicked bit told the f off said nasty words about our family things are gonna do to us we continue to relate and accept our students with unconditional positive regard so that we can move forward and teach them math language arts science and social skills it's not too late for you mr. Guerrero and for you the school board to engage in this restorative justice process with pioneer please do the right thing let pioneer stay home [Music] [Applause] so thank you everyone for coming and commenting this evening I think we're gonna have some other presentations tonight that will address some of the issues that have been raised whether it's the school staffing model or some of our program transitions so at this time I'm going to the next on the agenda we're gonna have the middle school openings and update some programs transitions and then after that we're gonna go back to the board work plan before we go to the charters so superintendent guerrero i'm going to ask you to provide the updater calling the staff who's gonna provide the update sure i'm gonna ask our deputy superintendent dr. Yvonne Curtis is going to walk us through it we have dr. Yvonne dr. Yvonne we have a PowerPoint dr. Curtis and various staff are going to be providing tonight's update similar to our last one we have a short deck we'll be sharing this evening but I'm gonna let her sort of facilitate the presentation okay so chair brim Edwards and directors and superintendent Guerrero we will have several staff members come up and give a little more detail to what's on the slide we're gonna move very quickly because um this is just ongoing work we're just giving you little snippets each month that week um sometimes we'll have a lot to share sometimes it'll be a little bit because there's a lot a lot going on and a lotta smoothie so we will share what what's going on this last month starting with Cameron from family engagement yeah good evening superintendent and board members my name is Cameron Vaughan and I am here this evening on behalf of Natasha Butler Harriet Tubman middle school planning principal who is attending a conference at the moment we're pleased to announce at the open house at Harriet Tubman Middle School several weeks ago was attended by approximately 400 visitors future students and their families had the chance to roam the halls look at classrooms and get a sneak preview of their school before the roofing project commences people were also able ask questions of the district transportation staff as well as staff from safe routes to schools it was fun to see people pouring through the doors and kids excitedly talking about the new spaces and faces that they were going to have next year principal Butler is approximately 85% staffed and has met with middle school teachers to discuss scheduling and visioning for the next year she has been working with feeder school teachers to finalize student events for April to the last month's no cancellations of student field trips to Harriet Tubman middle school and sei we've contacted Portland Parks and Recreation to secure Lilith's Albina Park for the grand opening and ribbon-cutting at the and of August and we've begun planning for the Harriet Tubman alumni gala and an end-of-year barbecue principal Butler has ongoing meetings with parent volunteers to discuss ways that can contribute to Harriet Tubman community in preparation for the fall opening principle principal Butler met with Maurice Lucas Foundation and son school providers to discuss before and after school supports for students band instruments library and curriculum books are being ordered and we're in the process of developing a separate website just for the school our last community meeting was held on Thursday March 15th where presentations were made by chief academic officer Valentino and chief operating officer Vincent our next community meeting will be held at Irving
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Tain's school on April 16th from 6 to 8 p.m. as always a light dinner will be served and there will be child care and Spanish translation services available and all are welcome thank you and next we have Kathleen Elwood will speak about Rose Way Heights yes happy to be here the last two times I've been asked to speak I've been at community meetings and all that community engagement has actually paid off at our last community gathering this last Wednesday we had over 200 people attend community members students teachers and parents which was very exciting for the staff and for families and and we had them do the largest walking gallery if you're familiar with that strategy in teaching we're basically all over 200 people were walking around me the gym to look at facts that were posted about Rose Way Heights middle school and things that we know will be in place next year and to replicate that activity we're not doing the activity but I do have the signs up around the lobby for anyone who is interested in just learning more than I can share during this brief time but what led to that community or a level of community engagement where partnerships with our community partners we partner with nonprofit groups such as eco Latino Network and other folks who already have connections to our families and we've also done a lot of outreach and gone to our parents not just expected them to come to the school to get them engaged and so we feel that that is a reason we've we have that level of engagement we also have a very excited and a wonderful staff coming on board we were able to set up academic teams with will share students and what's lovely about those teams is that each team has teachers from three of the four feeder schools on the team it has a range of teaching experience and it also has at least one staff person of color which was really important for us because our school will be only 35 percent white so having those staff members spread throughout our student population was very important we have a lot about coming engagements going on we have parent and teacher committees that are working on scheduling student events to get the students to know one another and we are focusing instead on larger gatherings for the students we're looking at smaller gatherings where the students have opportunities to do to building and actually build relationships with one another while getting to know their new teachers so we're really excited about the upcoming work we're gonna continue working on the student events and the community events and the other thing we're doing the one last thing is we are also aligning all of our as much curriculum as possible to Madison High School we will have a steam program both Arts and Technology and engineering and currently we're setting up meetings with our staff and their Madison High School counterparts so that we can create an aligned grade six through grade 12 program for a theatre for music for for technology for engineering and in a number of other areas so we're doing that as much as possible so great and look up check out the signs if you want to know more okay thank you and next we have Eileen I sure will speak about head start good evening I'm Eileen Isham director of the head start program currently of the seventy seven children 33 of our Applegate kids are what we call returners they all have a family advocate and the family advocate is working closely with the family already to give them their first choice of a site nearby so we will be moving into Fabien two classrooms which is about two and a half miles away and then Clarendon we have six costume options there Nats around three miles away but if there is another pre-k that is closer to them we're helping them find those either through Portland public Albina and of course the vestal site after Spring Break we have plans to do a walk-through to see what kind of upgrades need to happen we have to make sure we have sinks in the classroom and those kinds of things because we do feed our children in the classroom family-style at Applegate we are going to visit that so I told you that we also went and visited Kelly Center where we have secured a classroom for the early headstart that's Native American and our PBS headstart that's also Native American classroom we've secured two classrooms next door to each other at the Kelly Center so we're excited about that the funders of that program is the OSI DC they're the people that are actually funding it and then Neighborhood House will provide the services and we're working with them
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about facility upgrades that they're willing to pay for tonight is our parent Policy Council meeting and a report will be given out to them and Deborah very is actually covering that meeting for me tonight so moving the applicant kids into Fabien Clarendon are you looking at a net loss in the number of Head Start kids that would be served next year because they're moving into some of our other existing programs or we will still have the same number so we have to serve 819 is the amount of children that we serve and there are children that like I said a returner so we will make sure they get a spot so at this point we haven't lost any of them we'll find them a place the other kiddos are going on to kindergartens and we also help them find a kindergarten in their neighborhood or a focus option school so that's a big part of our transition into kindergarten thank you I'm sorry I skip this slide I didn't mean to so ugly green polymer color our interim principal well share the update good evening and thank you to the board and Antonio's office for the continuing support you have provided to the aqua green community we feel fortunate to have the opportunity to be part of creating a positive and productive middle school that serves all students working with key stakeholders the design of our schedule for next year will in part focus on a three year elective trajectory for arts offerings with the hope that we can create a larger scope and sequence for our art program that our feeder schools can help build and our high schools can receive the benefit of having students with years of training in the arts next year we are planning on offering beginning and advanced band beginning and advanced dance choir introduction to music mock trials steam journalism and Visual Arts recently our four feeder school fifth graders visited and were provided an opportunity to see our band and dance students perform our eighth grade leaders took the students on a tour of the school and answered their questions and talked about their experience at aqua green our sixth grade team is already planning a way to welcome this new group of students to our community for next year our PTA and site council monthly meetings are well attended by our productive and supportive families both groups are highly involved in planning for ways to support our teachers and students the site councils subverts of our service surveyed our staff students and community around school climate instructional practices collaboration and community partnership some important takeaways from the survey showed 60% of our students reported that aqua green values and respects their culture racial sexual orientation and religion seventy-five 75 percent of our students reported teachers and support staff are good at giving students what they need to feel safe a proposed recommendation from the site council survey indicated that aqua green would been a from offering professional development about trauma-informed care differentiating instruction for middle school students we are currently working with the staff from office of student services on series of professional development on Universal Design for Learning UDL is an educational framework the guys said development of flexible learning environments that accommodates individual learning differences this is important as we try to meet the varying needs of our diverse population with a significant percent of new staff under three years of teaching experience this is a crystal critical component of our professional development we are working to build and improve upon our school climate and we seek out opportunities for students voice to be heard currently our student leaders have solicited suggestions from students to provide a week of spirit activity a staff and student game is planned as well as our monthly dance in an effort to build and strengthen our parent and community involvement we have been hosting and planning a variety of family nights our most recent family night focused on bullying prevention as well as the role of PBS and restorative justice at aqua green in April we are looking forward to
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hosting an avid family night and an open house for our new families thank you for your continued interest in support thank you and now our report on pioneer from Mike from Boise from Framboise from I want to give an update we actually had a community meeting held last night at the Pioneer campus Thank You chair Edwards and director Anthony for joining us we discussed the classroom plans at rice and Applegate and listened to the concerns brought to the table from the parents in attendance and some of the staff members as well today we had Rudy Rudolph come out with her team and we talked about the logistics of actually packing up being able to move things the process that the teachers would follow when boxes would be delivered things like that so we have a solid plan to move forward with that we had a meeting on the 15th with the Rose City Park Neighborhood Association and there were I don't know 15 20 people in attendance they had some questions both from our parent component as well as from the district which I think the district is getting back to them as well as the parent component on March 21st tomorrow night we're going to the Piedmont Neighborhood Association and we will lay out our plans for staffing and students in the make up of the building at Applegate for them work on Rice is expected to begin in May work on Applegate begins on June when students are out of school that's what we're at for right now yeah go ahead doctor boy before I leave you freely like your Chris we have question sorry um can you say any more about what happened at the community meeting last night last night yes yeah so just for the record a bunch of us were we're out of town on traveling for more business so yeah including the superintendent so um so we we went through what our plans were we put up a map of each building we've actually placed classrooms into them so that parents could see if their son or daughter was in room 1 at Holiday for instance they would be going to room 14 at Applegate we've defined de-escalation spaces and sensory spaces but we wanted to get more parent input on what the actual makeup of the buildings would be past that the de-escalation spaces we have to define because that would probably the bulk of the work at Applegate as far as construction goes we picked up 12 more parent volunteers to be on the Planning Committee which is good so that gives us about 20 people our plan is to then kind of break them up into groups depending on if we go with a to site model or a three site model get everyone out to see the schools and then go back to our Maps and continue to plan we also collected the information about when people are available to start doing parent tours as well as advisory tours and then working to develop student tours late in the spring follow up a bit I think so if one piece that may have been missing last night is so there's a there was a great discussion at the school level but there's some a fair number of questions that link to sort of district related initiatives whether its budget or the review of the IEP so it seems that that's a piece that needs to be linked in to the the broader planning so that was one thing that I think wasn't wasn't able to be covered because it was more school-based meeting last night moving forward is to continue with the school-based meetings as far as making a plan for actually moving the schools I think there are a lot of questions that we do not have answers to and I think the community is looking to you all for more information about that process but our plan is to continue making the best plan that we can to move the schools if and when we move so superintendent grow are we having later on this evening as part of the budget discussion a discussion and discussion about the
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facilities budget or is that a different meeting sorry certainly a budget update so a budget update around the cost related to the move wat see what our CFO has prepared for us tonight I think possibly thank you thank you any other questions we have a number of questions that we've given to staff and ask them to respond to them and we'll be hopefully getting hopefully getting a budget update either tonight or when it's ready on the facilities move so our next presentation is by Andrew Johnson regarding access good evening board and superintendent it's good to see you just recently there was a walkthrough at the Holliday Young's inside by the staff and also facilities that was in late February we also had a community meeting about 30 folks came to to see some questions around facilities and also around daycare today actually there was another meeting with facilities and IT with staff around logistics of relocation we've had two open houses on March 6 and March 8th those were really to inform new families about the relocation teachers did a really great job they presented on some program elements and some teaching strategies there and then we are hoping to have one more open house on March 22nd thank you any questions from the board so I'm gonna just go back to Pioneer I've ever questioned is based on unfamiliarity with how special ed and ie peas work so with the IEP so for students who have IEP s which a lot of the students at Pioneer have I stand corrected so are those IEP s for when the if the students were to move I'm asking the question of our district staff thank you is the school staff the one who reviews the IEP to make sure that the services that the student currently receives that this continuous service or is it district staff or is it the district special ed staff so about whatever one hundred and thank you 135 ie EPS who will be going through each of those to make sure that when students are moved that they continue to receive the required IEP services so that would be the responsibility of teachers who are working with them all the time who are familiar with the IEP to ensure that those IEP requirements are met and then of course whenever they it needs to be reviewed by the team its reviewed by the team which includes parents the staff that work with the student and then when we no questions might be coming up they need district answers to from district leadership they can be present as well so it the process of ensuring the IEP delivery of service is met is no different than it has been right now in their previous their current site they move to a different site it's the same process so will that review of the IEP happen before the before the move so so say there's a specific set of activities or a need for a certain setting or for a particular student when is it when is the analysis gonna happen of whether or not the current services are going to still be able to be provided in a different environment so that should be happening all along the way right that's why we want staff and parents involved in the process of helping determine what are those things that we need to provide at the site's also
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working with district staff on that so there's a lot of people involved and we need the input of staff who are working with the students as well as looking at the facilities what are they what do they have now and what are they doing going forward the administrators in the building in the program will also assist with that and then anytime new students are placed in a program you go through that process again so whether they they're in a current site or in a new site that part of the process is part of the process okay I'm gonna ask the audience that the that's not an appropriate response as part of our board meeting Thank You dr. Curtis any other questions from board members okay anything else this okay great thank you director Anthony I'm asked wondering if you will indulge us with just go ahead with the budget discussion before the charter schools can we change the order so there's a budget discussion that follows the Charter then we're just wondering thank you thank you so director more do you want to kick off the budget discussion that we have scheduled we had an FAO meeting last Tuesday and and we got another we got more information about the staffing we got we got a really a really nice analysis of the trends over time in terms of staffing not quite sure what's going to be in that PowerPoint tonight and what else it was a it was a lively discussion that I had a lot of info so I'm looking forward to even more info tonight I think one of the things that was important in that meeting relative to the staffing and relative to a lot of the communication that we're getting from families is that we're not there yet these are not final numbers we're still working on that it's still in process and so we just want to make sure that our school communities know that so with probably a week out from having finalized numbers for FTE and staffing within schools so there are there are several buckets that make up the school site Alec budget allocations which is mostly FTE so so we're not quite finished yet okay correct good evening my name is Brian Dutcher I'm the interim budget director and so we have just just as a kind of a plate setter so we have standing budget updates on on board agendas so our goal all along was to bring pieces of the budget as they come together rather than wait till May or June and give you one large piece of it we're giving you incremental updates all along so it's gonna probably feel a little bit less formalized and it has in the past but the goal I think for the goal for the finance audit and Operations Committee and for this way is it it's more hopefully more interactive and more helpful so and I'm certainly up to because it's for trying to be more responsive I'm certainly open to any kind of feedback or suggestions on different places where you want to dig deep or have questions and that type of thing so but but tonight what we're gonna do is really gonna give you an update in terms of where we are what we know about overall revenue and spending as we see it today and then we'll talk a little about next steps so that's kind of that's them the main focus for tonight okay so just a quick reminder on the process because this is a little bit different than we've done in the past I want to give kind of a nice picture of all the pieces that are done and not yet done and just generally speaking if we chunk the budget up into these five categories I think I can tell you where we are so the revenue piece and the main primary factors behind the revenue are obviously gonna be our ending fund
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balance from the year win right now how much money we have left our state school fund is the vast majority of the revenue forecast our Local Option revenue is a close second and then our non budget there are non FTE budget so that's the Alpha consolidated that type of thing so all those all those pieces come into the into the revenue you give us an idea of how much revenue how many resources we're gonna have for next year for the district can you explain what consolidated is yeah so the so the consult so it's um in the presentation we'll go through Staffing piece the consolidated budgets a little bit of a misnomer it's it's the school's largely get two buckets of resources generally speaking they get FTE which is a vast majority of the resources they have and they also have what's called a consolidated budget and that's a it's a small pot of money it's allocated by formula they expend on they spend on print services that's been on a variety of different kind of small items that there wouldn't normally cover in the budget and that's all in the school budget and so there's usually a little bit left over and I mean a little bit every year and that you know in years past the board is elected to roll that forward to the next year okay so I you know revenue side we're probably ninety percent done on the revenue we look at it not daily but we doesn't look at it weekly to understand how we're trending on that piece of it the school site budget so school site budget are the two pieces I just talked about it's largely FTE but it's also this consolidated budget we're probably as as director more mentioned we're probably 95 percent complete on that piece of it so the schools have the majority of their FTE allocations they have a good understanding of what they're gonna get there's still some pieces moving around on the fringes we obviously know all the teacher pay increases the retroactive pay was paid out last week and then we also know a fair amount about benefits and insurance at this point not surprisingly all these numbers are up or have increased year-over-year some substantially but we're getting a pretty good handle on all these all these different pieces that help us define how many dollars were spending in the schools and you'll see in future charts here it's the is the vast majority not surprisingly sebast majority of our budget goes to our schools and then the so we in in years past we've we've categorized what we call the central office budget has included things like special education I ll let --ax other pieces we're really 90 some percent of the department is in the schools and that what that does that makes our central office budget look overinflated and it's just it's just misleading so what we've attempted to do and this is this is meant to be very transparent all showing a few pages here how these break out these centrally managed school resources so generally speaking there's an administer here in this building special education good example you have a handful of staff here in this building but the vast majority their resources are in all the schools athletics is the same way you have to three people here all their resources all their money is spent in schools I think it's just it's a more accurate way to look at that and then you see our what's truly our central office people like me you know heating this building is you know five to six percent of the total general fund budget so the piece that pieces by 80 percent defined a lot of those are defined by by statute the piece that is not defined is the central office budget so that's the piece we're working hard on today so all the superintendent leadership team are working on their budgets we've we've had four presentations from those teams we have four more tomorrow over the next couple days I'm sorry Thursday and really the main drivers and those budgets are it's FTE spending and it's contracted services and then contingency I didn't want to say contingency is final because I you know I it's not really good budgeting to kind of do all the budget and see what ends up at the bottom should be more thoughtful about what we want the contingency to be I have some friends in here we can talk about how it's trended over time and have some of our peers budget the contingency but that's a piece we should you know and the board also took a goal to increase that to five percent by 2021 so we can be marching down that path okay so just really high-level here here's the the general fund summary so the the private piece to pay much attention to is the the bar that I've circled there in the middle so you'll see the the forecast for 2017-18 so that's just our projection about January we projected what the year was gonna look like the important piece is that ending balance and Reserve at the very bottom that's the number that will flow forward to next year that we can use for for spending next year our resources we expect to be about two percent higher so
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that includes the revenue from state school fund and all the tax resources and our beginning balance as well and then from there it's pretty simple math to say if you want a 24 24 point three percent ending balance or four percent our we can back into what our what our spending needs to be so that's really where we start we we have to balance our budget every year and that's what we started okay and since you've last seen this resources are up less than a million dollars mainly on state funding okay it's a lil bit of good news okay this is a little bit of a dense slide so I hope you walk through this so this gives the spending side then we think about spending before we had talked about if we just simply roll it up all of our spending the size of GAAP we would have and so pulley to the top of the page here so here's our resource at the top it's the same under both of roll-forward scenario and a scenario where we reduced vacancies and contracts in central office and you can see most the vast majority of these these are all of our spending line items salaries contract expenses here some additional expenditures but they'll talk about in another page if we just roll our budget forward just assume we're gonna do the same thing next year that we did this year but we know we have teacher increases we know our insurance rates went up we know a lot of these things happen regardless and we know there are some things we need to commit to in this eight point seven we end up with a 17 million dollar gap so if we if we roll forward there are a couple places we can we can really impact spending in the school district the non rep and leadership's that's generally speaking that's many people in this office and you know none represent people and leadership that number you know if we rolled it four would be 757 million this is just a scenario if we pulled it down to 52 million and it's mainly it's a headcount function we could start to close this gap and also our contract expenses we pull that down to that amount that's a pretty good chunk pretty good amount to pull it down we can get to the point we can still maintain our contingency and close our gap so that's what that's what all the Chiefs are working on you bit there in the in the details and the weeds of their org charts in their contracts etc etc but at the end of the day you know they've clearly this seventeen million dollar shortfall won't fly so that's how this is one way we could get to a to it to a balanced budget before you change the sights for the just about the principles and I guess also this non-represented staff but the principles in the buildings the savings you have there are we still work I'm assuming we're anticipating a pay increase like most of our other employee groups so with the decrease be because we've got fewer people not because we're holding the steady on the pay is that a principle specific question or a generally general well I guess there's two parts I don't know if they're treated differently you tell me if they if they are yeah yeah they're in there yes yes so um so as I mentioned before the school staffing is largely done that includes principles and how principals are allocated there is a an increase built into that into that assumption as well so that that increase is you needs to pay for it someway we've get a little of a revenue increase this if this is the PG referring to this line on the non rep and leadership that's actually a headcount reduction yeah so that's yes yes it's not people making less it's not less people it's fewer people yes it and there is an in one way to do this the column on the Left assumes and we have a lot of vacancies in this building in this district one way to that the common left assumes we fill those vacancies obviously one way to there is to not fill those vacancies and that's it's a bit of a strategic discussion I mean those people were doing valuable work before so it takes some work process management some changes we have important work to do but that's one in terms of least painful ways to do it that's much easier than pink slips obviously if I'm reading this right you're you're looking at a fifty roughly a 50 FT e decrease in the non representative and leadership employee group yeah that's this correct and if those numbers are content around for a reason and and that's just simple math average salary yes but that give you about 50 reduction yes correct and we have you keep in mind we have you know last count a hundred and some vacancies across across the district and when you boil it down to like you know finance HR accounting it's a smaller number but we still have a sizable number of vacancies but things aren't happening to by the way not exactly I'm like you know it definitely slows the staff down we don't have enough fully staffed and
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unfortunately I do need to point out that over the last couple of years the departments have used those vacant positions to fund other critical staff additions fill in gaps that's correct hatch emergencies what on baling wire it has been really a patchwork and if we're taking taking those little bits of personal reserve away we better make sure that our departments are actually adequately funded or having willingness to go to the piggy bank yes during the course of the year so one of the things that you said at the FAO meeting that I think is important to note here is we're not talking about an across-the-board cut we're talking about evaluating what positions what work needs to be done how many people we need to do the work and and then allocating FTE appropriately that's correct and superintendent Guerrero has been very clear from the very beginning and I think this is this is a healthy way to do it to ask to challenge all the all of his leadership team to evaluate everything they're doing their organization and build up and prioritize the things you really need to get done okay and it's really it's it's it's more time consuming and we started late so it's it's hard but it's it's the right way to do it approach because what you're talking about is in past years we may have said okay we're gonna do a eight percent reduction across the board everybody show me what that looks like in your department and what we're talking about now is what do you need to do in your department to deliver the services that our students need and was it gonna take for you to do that and make your case that's correct yes and it is a different it's a different approach and you can see it's um and this is good I mean it challenges our systems and our data and all were people to think about it in that way I'm a finance team included but it's the right it's definitely the right way to do it you stimulates so much better conversations about if you think the contracts valuable particularly why it's valuable from the point of view of the students and really be clear about that and quantify it okay any knows a lot of numbers on this page and he's any other questions okay so because I don't want to leave the contingency for the end talk about the trend for the for this district you can see historically and I think the problem was worse than it has been was worse in more distant past and has been recently but we would budget you can see the bottom line the red line of what we budget for a contingency and this is as a this is a percentage of the total expenditures in the general fund and so for for us just keep in mind four percent is about twenty four million dollars so it's about six million dollars per percentage point and just that's a it's a tremendously large number but when you put in the context of district spending so a payroll cycle for us is thirty million dollars and we spend around the district we spend about fifty million dollars a month so it's it's it's hard to think about what the cat is what the catastrophe would be but it's it's wouldn't covers for a full month the contingency and so as I mentioned before the board took a goal at the CBR C's urging to get to continuously up to 5% by 2021 and with this you know four percent is in is what we have as a place on the budget it's a nice you know the red line is a nice trend up towards that net healthier number so Beaverton Salem Kaiser not sure about tire Tualatin but most of them budget five percent and it's I haven't involved in budget processes but it get the I get the impression it's a it's a it's a matter of it's just a matter of process they start there and they work their way up so just just some context Jim Scherzer and I were reminiscing earlier tonight that if you took that chart back to 2001 the reserves were $200,000 which is what the the previous board had left the 2001 board and your reference to I don't know what could happen if you lose a month payroll but in 2002 during the recession the state unilaterally mid-year just announced they were going to be sending a lot less money and because of the heavy heavy dependence of Oregon on the income tax obviously when you have a recession income tax reduce and then there was a pretty dramatic drop and so this is really a tribute to wise management and stewardship of the district resources to get the number to
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this level because while it seems like a big number it would allow you to effectively manage through a pretty difficult financial situation that's right that's exactly right yeah and it is you know it's the unfortunate reality in any organization like ours and the knowledge based organization is our the vast majority of our spending is on people so if we end up in a situation like that the first move would have to be laying people off so it's you then it's an uncertain world out there so we will make sure we're prepared what is the G FAO recommendation it's ten percent yeah so much higher okay so another piece and that top line is a little little faded so I apologize but one of the things we wanted to wanted to understand cuz we were pulling the data together for for a presentation last week was understand how you know our general fund is increased over time an organist spent more and more dollars on education in the more recent past so from PBS's point of view you know how if we have we prioritized those revenue increases over time and in this chart I think tells a pretty interesting story that over the past five years while our revenue has grown by about 32 percent and that's over that entire period of time are spending on instructional an instructional includes all of our teachers and all of our assistants it's a pretty it's a broad OD II definition of instructional has grown by 46 percent so it's grown quite a bit faster than what our revenue so we've taken all of our revenue growth and then some and put it into classrooms and this this budget you can see the last point is what we're assuming now for the budget this budget really continues on a same trend it's a little bit flatter but for the most part it's the same trend okay this is where I feel compelled to mention that even though the state school fund amount has increased an increase you know not in significantly in the last couple of years we remain two billion dollars short of the quality education model was funding level two billion so just to put things in context we are still chronically underfunded okay yes it's it's excellent point so we wanted to go a little bit on the school site budget allocation so and as director more mentioned we'll have detailed school-by-school information that you obviously make people very interested in in the next week or so principals are obviously very good at maximizing the use of their resources they're doing everything they can to optimize and and put FTE in the right places so once that's done we'll be able to share school-by-school analysis but probably where I draw your eye is probably to the to the variance column just you can get a picture of where we are year-over-year and this is high-level district-wide across the entire system so fifty-one additional headcount the average salary across the district up about sixteen hundred dollars total base salaries up six point four million are our fringe or healthcare benefits etc are both up pretty substantially here's our overage wages we have in the budget right now here's the the consolidated which is the amount that the schools have to spend on other kind of cash needs and that type of thing it's largely flat so overall about ten million dollars increased across the total school site budget okay so it's kind of the big the big picture the other piece we shared this before this has changed just a little bit we wanted to and knowing and I said I want to reinforce the caveat that we're not done but we didn't understand so Howard Howard at the individual school level how are they faring the changes in staffing model and that type of thing we have enrollment changes across the district every year as well and so just to put them into kind of broad buckets 57% have consistent or increased staffing so nearly 60% have more resources than they did last year 30% have a decrease in FTE but that decrease in FTE is equal to or less than the enrollment decrease so even in our in our in our lower grades with a staffing change that aligns resources to programs is still there's still a student based formula behind that as well and what this tells us is it's not we haven't taken as many resources out as the enrollment may have declined in some of these schools just a question about that
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the decrease so with some schools are you counting some schools twice 30 and the 13% so is that 43% of the so it's having a decrease or is that a simplistic no it should I haven't checked the math there should be a hundred percent of the 57 plus 30 plus 13 should be hundred percent no but if you if you take the two counts the the FTE decreased due to enrollment ft decrease due to model change and 30 and 13 does that mean there's a total of 43 43 percent or are some of those some schools double counted oh I see the gum I would have to check I'll have to check it's a good question I'll check yeah yeah right 43 is different than 30 yes yes it's a good biscuit question good good context last time we showed this we had one school in the analysis required square since then we added resources at school so that school is now you know it's more stable before it was down from resource point of view as part of what we did with our set-aside yeah so this central administered resources so just to get our hands around you know how big these first of all what what kind of functions we talked about when we talk about centrally administered resources and then from a budget point of view or how large are they because that most people probably spend in all these different groups and in order of size the biggest one is special education vast majority are teachers and people in the school's facilities and asset management clearly the vast majority those dollars are spent on school buildings not in this building so we would define that as something that's a school facing transportation same way and then BSL and then I bucketed Athletic security a bunch of other pieces where we have central office administers but all the work happens in the classrooms my bucket all's together for an additional 22 million so when we we start to put together the full budget and you know I think about the reviews with with the public will be able to split that up into the you know it's truly central office and what's the central administered piece which is vast majority schools and then what you know we've traditionally called instructors in schools pockets like for special ed in ESL so is this our cost so there it's a dish it's a bigger total bucket yes it's been there that's a good question so every everything in this presentation is a general fund only so this would not include any other federal funds not typically so these when you add those these never to be larger okay and then just from a trend point of view how this is trended over the past five years and it's definitely up I think it's up I say it's up to thirty fifteen percent or so but it you know it's like increase over time and then you can see also I think it's always good to know you know how efficiently we're using our resources and I always think that something less than two percent of actual the budget is it's pretty good so yeah they're not not leaving a lot of resources on the table but they're not overspending and then central office as well so central office if you pull this data back there was I think it was probably 2008 the central office it was reduced by a close to 40 percent maybe 40 some percent since then it's been then you can see this lines a little bit steeper some inner lines but has been you know marching back up and this is where we expect central office to look just don't expect central office to land for this budget year okay and then the last piece on the in the first page we've mentioned some additional needs so these are pieces we need two things we know about then we need to fit into the budget so all these are blue impact the general fund and these are things that were not in last year's budget so all incremental campus I couldn't like them you can obviously all read the list probably the pieces I'd call out Outdoor School funding because now that's the source of revenue for us that's actually good news and then the grant shortfalls were working through those right now any grants that we don't move forward with or where the funding is reduced it puts us in a situation we have to make a decision on continuing forward with the resources and services or and and paying for it as a general fund or no longer providing those resources burns what about the ballot measure 98 funds I'm assuming that's a plus yes as well yes that is I haven't looked that number in a while
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but yes that is possible for me okay I was gonna say 628 good for me arch tax is I want to say it's 5 right around 5 million potential grant shortfalls what those mostly be federal yes there yes they would be federal do we do we have clarity yet and what the federal funding levels are gonna be so we really if you're talking title 2 and 4 I believe I don't have a lot of clarity at this point I mean I think there's a feminine nervousness I've reached out to our our contacts at Council great city schools haven't heard from them so I need to keep pestering them but we not a lot of clarity on which way that's lack of clarity particularly with title for funds and whether there's gonna be different areas of eligibility and you know everybody was sitting around saying we don't quite know yet yeah so you know that this you know once again I mean this is what contingency would help us if some if we learned something unfortunate in July or August we can make the decision we did this last year with cap for in Europe right we move money the board made decision to move money into the general fund to keep moving those programs ahead okay and then just really quickly for next steps and I'll share the the more elaborate calendar but just things to keep in mind the week of March 26 in April second and yes that Spring Break but we have to keep working on it we're working on the central office budget pieces on March 29th these groups I have a little yeah CBR see the the CBR C meets on March 29th April 3rd we have a board work session April 10th we'll have another update just like this it'll be regular board meeting welcome in and give you an update on where we are at that point we should have good information on central office and then on April 17th F a know we've we've been doing deep dives and director more and I will talk about what she areas we wanted to dig deeply into and really understand a certain certain topic providing Commission whether the sort of later vote can happen yes yes oh he's um he really wants help us out and so he's been very cooperative and said he'd be willing to do it he has some very specific requirements on us based on the data we give him but he definitely definitely helped it he's been pretty explicit that it's a it's a one-time he doesn't want it to creep in the next time we build our scheduling over over again with that assumption but but he will work with us okay so I had a question about the another question about the calendar so we're still waiting on final final staffing numbers for schools so what's your best guess on when we'll have some you know good level of confidence in those numbers so I believe so this I probably want some of my Pearson instructional side to help on this but I would think within a week we'd have better I don't know exactly where all the different pieces are within a week we'd have better insight into those okay that's the twenty you know we could the 26th okay will you be sharing that with the board like school-by-school allocations so that would be that that would be the goal is to share that that level of detail but I think everybody really wants to see it and and and should see it so that that be the goal to share with yeah I take a lot of people want to see her and then ultimately the plan is to share it with everybody out there correct yeah okay yeah definitely yeah so is it reasonable we've got don't we have a board meeting in the second we have a something on the second dome April other I think we did an FAO meeting in the second am i making that up I have one of the seven to you you know we may have one but we may not have an item on the agenda so we may have one in the second it is spring break ramp no okay April's April second is in Monday April third we have an FAO meeting so guess what um if that's doable I think that would be great if we could talk about it then okay let me um let me check with it with team and I should know by the end of day tomorrow okay thank you
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notice thank you I found that really helpful it's my angle each this is so much more streamline and clearer okay thank you can I just add a couple things so the fao I have to say the FAO meetings the last few meetings around the budget have been very very illuminating and really needy so anybody who wants to get deepen into some budgetary weeds you know do I have a committee for you the other thing is that we have been talking about coming up with a way to do the budget hearings in a more kind of meaningful way for public participation and we I don't think we've quite hit on a format yet but it's one of the things we've been talking about and one thing that we did change at the last FAO meeting was that we had a joint session with FAO and the CBR sea community budget review committee and I thought that was a really great use of everybody's time because we got an awful lot of really good questions that so I I think that's a kind of a good model going forward and and and then we'll eventually have budget public budget hearings and and where we're trying to rethink how to do that so that it's more it's more useful for us and more meaningful for parents and community to provide implement more one thing given the substance in in the finance not an Operations Committee I'm wondering if we could ask to have all the materials just posted you know either before the meeting so that individuals who want to come to the meeting or those who aren't able to make it have the opportunity to review all the materials so I have to admit I haven't looked in for the last couple of meetings but they were being hobbled they were being posted certainly after the meeting I think I think it might be unrealistic to think that all of the budget materials would be able to be posted before you know they would a couple of days notice like we have the board materials ready because I think staff are working on these things like right up to the minute but yeah we can certainly make sure that all the materials are posted after the meetings great also I'd like to request just the presentation from Mike differently make sure that's posted somewhere that think it was a great educational document anything else okay thank you next I we have a charters charter schools for consideration and I am going to ask chair Anthony who is the chair of the charter schools committee to introduce the topic and before we go to the motion on the resolution thank you Lamont French Immersion public charter school is in the third and final year of operation in its second charter contract with Portland Public Schools Lomond has requested renewal of its charter staff has reviewed LeMans academic financial and operational performance and finds that Lomond has substantial substantive ly met all renewal criteria and staff recommends renewing the Charter with Lomond for a five-year period staff recommendation is based on information gathered from the official site visit the renewal hearing LeMans annual performance framework and report and other information obtained during the renewal period I would like
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to note that Lomond is in compliance with their Charter and all other state and federal laws it is in compliance with the charter of the public charter school it is meeting the student performance goals and agreement specified in the Charter it is fiscally stable and has used the sound financial management system described in the proposal submitted it and it is in compliance with any renewal criteria specific to the charter of the public charter school finally lamang is in alignment with our equity policy implementation plan and with this resolution the board is asking Lamont to demonstrate that its sources of donations and grants are reasonably assured and that it has plan in place for supplementing funds if the funds received from the state school fund are make that necessary that Lamont has a contingency plan in place if revenues are significantly less than or expenses are significantly more than projected that each school year's budget will be amended and resubmitted to the district when there are any significant changes in the state school fund we also ask that lamang provide a plan to attract a diverse population of students and get back to us on an annual basis the board would like the opportunity to review this plan and would like to hear at least annually how it has worked we expect that it will involve outreach to specific underserved communities and that Lamont will look internally at their culture and programming for elements that might cause them to be less than welcoming such as looking at who is marketing to specific communities what transportation barriers there if may be and what after-school care is available other than that I would just say the committee unanimously recommended approval of the Charter I like the fact I mean given that the guidelines for the Charter review and approval process are so clearly laid out for us I like the fact that you are that the committee is recommending some additional review that exceeds the requirements that we are beholding to and and gives us a chance to exercise our values so before we have further board discussion I want to make sure we get the resolution on the table do I have a motion have a second director Anthony moves and director Rosen's seconds the motion to adopt resolution five six one eight Miss Houston is there any public comment so now a board discussion so I just want to continue on the theme that director Anthony raised about the diversity of the student body both in terms of race and ethnicity but also economically disadvantaged students which are very few in this school and this wasn't there was a committee discussion not just on this charter but really all the charter renewals that were up the other charter renewals which we voted on in block last meeting were one-year renewals so I think we raised the issue about the diversity and the outreach and the effectiveness of the outreach it was happening with all the schools it was just the the ones that last week were for one year and this was for five years so I'm glad to see that we have something in the resolution about a plan I think we also talked about discussed in committee the possibility of what can PPS do to sort of set some benchmarks about how you might how the district might provide some guidance on outreach to more diverse communities we had a discussion about whether materials applications and materials were translated and other languages and just the effectiveness of the outreach and whether there's some things that PBS can share that would be what would help these schools reach a more diverse potential population and ultimately have a more diverse student bodies so I'm
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glad to see that in the committee and think that chair for long discussions about it any other this board discussion about the resolution or the now I just think that in the discussion of how we support them in recruiting a diverse student population that working with our community liaisons here would certainly a you know that have the pipelines to the communities would be really helpful to the charters so get them connected we have okay and as chair Anthony noted it was a unanimous recommendation out of the committee so the board will now vote on resolution five six one eight all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions resolution five six one eight is approved by a sixty or zero vote and soon represent of Tran is absent this evening so I'm now gonna go back to an agenda item that was at the very start of the board meeting which was the board work plan on the and the road map miss Houston I don't know if there's a this would be a slide presentation Gordon board members have it in front of them as well and this has been posted on our website so when the board was installed in July we set a pretty ambitious agenda hiring a new superintendent gradient evaluation plan working with staff we have launched the health and safety improvements in our schools authorized the opening of two new middle schools commissioned an independent review of the White House misconduct case requested recommendations and policy changes negotiated radically and ratified a contract with teachers and launched revisions in several district policies several of those that were considered tonight so there is a lot of work underway and as we discussed about two months ago sort of moving out of sort of the sprint to end more into sort of a middle distance run sort of changing the pace a little bit where we still have a fair amount of work from the board to be accomplished before the end of the year so we have put together a worker project plan that provides a road map for the board for the community for visibility to the community and also to the that's the staff that we're working with in a daily basis because you know none of this work happens just in a vacuum with the board by itself it's much of it's a partnership with the staff and sometimes we're in the lead sometimes staff is in the lead but it's a very close partnership so this should be a template for the work for the last four months so generally the context of the work plan is it's a four month work plan that runs from now through the end of the school year and it's also going to be a framework for the long term sustainable it would be a long-term sustainable template for the board's work we photo catalogued work that is annual work that needs to basically appear on every annual work plan and the purpose of putting this together it's a way to organize their work collectively understand our priorities so I think we all have many passions and interests and things that we would like to work on but the salon allows us to have a collective discussion about the work and our priorities it allows us to clearly define what is the board's role in the district's work and what actions we take so that the board is playing its appropriate role and staff in in their role as well but this allows us to be really clear is this board work or staff work and then also provides us the ability to track our progress so the work plan structure is our work revolves around eight strategic imperatives there's work items there's again as I mentioned there's so a definition of what the board's role is on each work
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plan item and we've prioritized the work and into legal requirements tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3 and obviously legal requirements there's some things that the board is required to do that like pass a budget adopt particular policies that were in compliance with law there's other things that are priorities for example their opening of the middle schools and those things would fall into tier one we tier twos are some things that are issues that have been identified by the board as priorities but that we may not have the bandwidth or we may not yet have the capabilities or be ready to have the discussion and then lastly we have for each of our work plan items sort of a status of where they are and it falls into a you know completed work or on track off track or not yet started so this is the structure of the work plan generally whoops we have came up with sort of eight strategic imperatives for the work that we have underway there's district staff leadership which is hiring managing evaluating the superintendent there's school board leadership to take action to make sure that we're student focused accountable transparent effective we also have a strategic plan development and preparation for that supporting student success healthy safe modern and accessible schools aligning our resources to support PBF schools and students supporting PBS workforce talent planning compensation supports and accountability and operational excellence and then we have some foundational items so we have these strategic imperatives underneath each of the strategic imperatives there are different buckets of work that we've identified that we want to get done before the end of this school year or plot out in a eight school year 1819 workplan and then the next like 12 slides I'm not going to go through them individually but because they're all posted and this is sort of a working document for the board and for the community to understand our work but this is an example of the first strategic imperative around district leadership so we had you know five things related to this particular strategic imperative you know we've hired a superintendent we have an evaluation instrument created quarterly check-ins planned and then we course have not yet started the 1819 evaluation instrument development or goal-setting and so we're able to easily look at this and see sort of where we are the status of our work and if you go through the this template also shows whether there's a vote required by the board and so the timeline of when the activity is going to happen if we go to you know some of the other strategic imperatives you can see some places were on track others we are maybe slightly off track and we need to look at you know what do we need to do to get these initiatives back on track because these are all in this template these are all tier one or legally required things that the board has to do so just to give an example more districts staff leadership let's see that's another good example let's go to this is a good one this is supporting PBS workforce to out planning compensation supports and accountability so we've identified all of our employee groups that were either have been in negotiation with or will or are in negotiations with and where we are in track it's very important to the board that we take seriously how we support and support our our staff and there's different employee groups this gives us an easy benchmark to look at of how we're doing related to that again just variety of different issues we can see where we how we're doing on these issues and then so these are all the strategic imperatives here you have the bond work some of its on track others needs to be accelerated if we're going to get back on track or it's not yet started and then in the appendix we have this was part of the priority the prioritization process that the board worked on at our last work session and also then a work session with staff leadership but looking at the sort of a hundred and fifty different items that we wanted to
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get done before the end of the school year you know realistically it wasn't all going to happen and if we wanted to live to see the end of the school year so we have designated some things as tier tier two or things that we're going to be putting on the 2018-19 school year roadmap or work plan for the board so as you can see it whoops the wrong way there's a whole host of of items that are still outstanding so this work we'll use this as for our agenda planning for board meetings and for sort of the cadence of our committee meetings and making sure that we meet our legally required deadlines for example all the budget deadlines that are required by law and then also ones that we have built in that are more informal milestones like our community meetings those are all built into the roadmap so that we can easily see each month between now and into the school year what we have done it's a sort of organic document will be continued to be changed I think we'll assess whether we continue to be on track with our work or whether things have moved off track and whether we need to make adjustments or in some cases whether we need to move things to the 1819 school year because the circumstances or just internal capacity and I want to thank all the committee chairs who their work plans really informed this document and hopefully there'll be a useful tool for the board and community members to see what what are what work that we have prioritized and we have underway and that we'll be working on over the next four months and then also just as a planning guide for for staff that's that item we've already done the budget the last formal item we have I'm sorry plan I think I think it's a good representation of the items that were brought forward from the committee process about the issues that we want to address and I think that you know we had a pretty good conversation around how we want to characterize our strategic imperatives the difficulty being that we don't have adopted strategic priorities in concert with the superintendent and we know that building a strategic plan is you know a really important process and once we have that and that is a mutual process then we can have really clear accountability metrics because right now we don't have accountability metrics we have a laundry list of activities that we want and/or need to do but really I mean what makes school board's effective is that monitoring and having really clear metrics of success first describing the goals but having really clear metrics of success and monitor and toward it and sometimes those are metrics of success around our own operations but sometimes they're really clear metrics of student success and having the conversations around let's look at the data where are we on a quarterly basis how how is our GAAP here what are the initiatives and the interventions that we're using to address this particular issue staff what can you bring forward to tell us how we're how we're making progress toward where we need to be and we don't have anything like that in here around student achievement so I mean it's an iterative process and I know there's no one more anxious to begin the strategic planning process then then superintendent Guerrero but even in the interim I hope we can start to pivot a little bit more toward a deeper focus on student achievement and some more concrete metrics as part of our work because I think it's our responsibility well certainly I'll invite you to that teaching and learning company cuz certainly in that committee we are looking you know and the agendas are posted so we're looking at various topics and groups and programs and we're looking at student level achievement data particularly by subgroups so you're welcome to join us for any of those discussions I would also point out the middle school work that the board did and that is now being done with the staff is you know goes right to the heart of student success and equity so we we do have items built in here and I
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would point out that the one of the strategic imperatives is a strategic plan development we had an early board leadership and an early conversation with a superintendent about whether it was feasible to actually do it engage in the super in a strategic planning process this year and the the sense was yes that this was a 18 19 so we're going to get through the year we had some pretty clearly identified and some pretty ambitious goals to get done through the year but that this would be an 18 and night process and hopefully then we have the sort of Co defined goals that rent that our student focused I will say that there's there's two things that need to happen in the one primary thing needs to happen this school year related to the street plan development and that is if we need resources for it we need to identify it as part of the budget process so that we don't start next year with we're ready to start our planning process but we don't have the capabilities to support a really rigorous community driven process board members just one I think we all need to be we all need to acknowledge out loud that this is very much a rebuilding year or a building year and this is a district that has been adrift for a long time a very long time and and the first order of business is to to try to that build some infrastructure and build some systems that will allow educators and staff to to actually serve students in the most productive way so that's going to be I think next year I hope is going to look very different and we're gonna be able to to start a strategic planning process where we can really start thinking about not just next week but you know five years from now and what do we what do we want this district to be doing for kids so great points so our last item is the board received a packet of information on each of the four step 3 complaint considerations all four appeals are related to the Pioneer program move we're gonna vote on each individual appeal so in this process for the vote on the appeal there's no public comment allowed and so individually I'm going to walk through each of the we're gonna vote on each one of them individually so I'm just since there's no also no board discussion we're just gonna vote through them board members all in favor of hearing appeal number one please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the motion passes on a six to zero vote board members all in favor of hearing appeal number two please indicate by saying yes yes yes I'll opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the motion passes six to zero board members all in favor of hearing appeal number three please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions motion passes board members all in favor of hearing appeal number four please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the motion passes on a 6-0 vote thank you board members that we're now into board committee and conference reports dark Turkish constan of sparse Brown Rosa no more I'll attend at the Council of great city schools legislative policy conference and I'd like to ask director as far as a brown as the board's designate lead to the Council of great city schools to present on the consolidated report on the conference great thank you as chair rim Edwards indicated for board members and superintendent Guerrero Jonathan SIA Courtney Wylie all attended the Council of the great city schools legislative conference in Washington DC this weekend so this is a great conference that offers an opportunity to network with other board members
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superintendents and late legislative staff from all of the urban school districts around the country as well as allowing us to continue to build our relationships with the council staff and partners till we receive policy briefings from congressional staff on key legislative topics that included essa implementation school safety title funding perkins reauthorization infrastructure and school facilities some members of the team also visited with congressional delegation staff and members to discuss district and the council priorities so one of the highlights included our own congressman bloom lumen hours address at the invitation of director constant to the group yesterday morning and he was showing his support for districts and all the issues that we face every day and in particular he he had a big focus on school safety in the wake of the parkland shooting he was impressed with the council's resolutions sorry which we adopted as a board in our last meeting and congresswoman our excuse me it's going to enter the resolution into the Congressional Record I'm sadly this resolution takes on even more importance today since our country experienced another tragic school shooting this morning in Maryland I just have a quick update congressman actually did take it to the floor of Congress yesterday afternoon so yes exactly I have three and one is a little long but I think it's fairly important the other two are very very short last week I attended the monthly meeting of lipstick the local Public Safety Coordinating Council which of course has our region's best acronym the council heard a report of the results of a two-year pilot of the Multnomah County community healing initiative early intervention and diversion program which goes by the acronym acronym try I try is a voluntary program to direct first-time offenders out of the juvenile justice system over an 18-month period between 2015-2016 385 children were referred to the chai I program participating youth were about eighty five percent less likely to recidivate compared to a matched sample director more had been at a session with our region's judges and that question had come up this is an remarkably effective program and for some reasons that we should be paying attention to the overall findings indicate the program is a promising approach for lowering juvenile recidivism I have the statistical analysis if anyone is interested in seeing the actual report email me at p anthony at PB s net the program's eight item risk assessment of participants includes chronic truancy and suspension and expulsion during the prior six months that is of course pointed directly at Portland Public Schools african-american children were significantly more likely than all other youth to have a suspension or expulsion in the prior six months and to have chronic truancy as a comparison 43% compared to all other youth at 21 percent overall african-american children were represented in the juvenile justice system at rates far exceeding their presence in the overall population again as a school system and as a society we are not well serving our african-american children the program also include an examination of 19 family risk factors education was number one that are very familiar to us in the district as we do more work with adverse childhood experiences and with trauma-informed care all 19 are articles and issues were pointed directly concerns the county's report emphasizes the need for stronger school connections many of the children in the program were
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facing school issues coordinators spent significant portions of their time helping you three enroll in school and developing connections with school administrators counselors and teachers while on the one hand this was difficult because coordinators had to navigate different building administration and staff to open access and develop successful plans for youth on the other hand the county was remarkably successful at repairing those relationships and successfully maintaining students in school this is an issue of previously spoken with the superintendent about we as director more likes to say we're a system without systems well every single one of our schools seems to have a different entry point different people to speak with a different way to set up a relationship and everything has to be made to measure anecdotally though not in the report the County social workers were both remarkably adept and effective working in our schools and improving student performance and achievement County feels there is need for a more institutionalized relationship between the Tri program and local school districts and administrators and I am happy to say that right now important public is making for the first time in four years real progress on actually getting a Memorandum of Understanding together with the county on this two things very quickly last Friday I went to a Deborah Kerr for a state of the county address which was very nice but most importantly for Portland Public Schools it was moderated by Kevin medica and it was publicly announced that mr. medica has gone to work as Senator Liu Frederick's legislative aide mister medica was the highest-ranking african-american in the Portland Police Bureau he was assistant chief and most importantly for us he has about 30 years experience working directly with children's issues and as far as I'm concerned christmas has come early for us and for the children in Multnomah County he brings an extraordinary degree of gravitas to children's issues and I think we're going to see that starting to be reflected in the legislature and then finally of this last weekend I was in Salem the Oregon School Boards Association board was meeting we were doing our preliminary budget work for 2019 supporting the goals we passed last month and we are concentrating of course primarily on statewide revenue reform thank you Thank You director Anthony have a committee meeting that needs to be reported on director we legislative and government affairs committee and inter-government Intergovernmental Committee and really was just a wrap-up of the special session and talked a little bit about how we want to go about starting to talk about our priorities for a 20-19 lobbying agenda at the fao meeting in addition to getting the budget status report we also got a reports a very preliminary report on the efforts that are underway now to review our contracting processes and this will this will cover contracts of all kinds from across the district every you know ranging from very small to very large and the contracting procedures or or absence thereof was identified very early on by superintendent Guerrero as an area where we needed to to do some serious evaluation and improvement so this has been this has been happening over a number of months already and now is being looped into the budget process so this is going to be an ongoing effort and for in the short term we're going to have some some decisions made about the
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value value added from various contracts and going forward we're going to be the the staff we're going to be working on helping a process to to look at the internal processes and procedures that are in place around contracting whose good contract authority you know what kind of accountability do we have for contracts how are we monitoring are we are we embedding an evaluation function in the contracts all of that kind of stuff and the the staff will be coming forward with regular updates to FAO over the next few months and and with an eye toward having a recommendation staff recommendation for reforming the contracting processes probably sometime in the fall based on the evaluation of what's been happening and looking at best practices from other districts superintendent grew well as you saw from this evenings budget directors already you can see the only way we're gonna reconcile our revenues and our expenses is as you saw noted almost six million in non personnel contracted services that we'll have to find in efficiencies so we've already prioritized level or better funding and staffing in addition to the wage increases that's fourteen million but we're gonna have to find six and contracted services and you're already seeing how deep you know the central office give to the cutting your contribution is going to be that's that's about four dozen positions so it is becoming a trade-off and prioritization exercise here so a good number of some of those contracts will kind of fall off in this budget development cycle and as we move forward with those that you know we believe we want to take a deeper look and analysis at and get into a rhythm some quarterly reviews will do in the fall and just to clarify which district staff person is on point that stops with super dinner well you've met our interim CFO and interim budget director and of course we need to identify a permanent team for the fall but in regards who's going to be point on the contracted services well well we'll say our budget director for for today but I think what I would truly like to see is a multi department team that does a quality review or has a panel process there's just so many places you know and I don't want to start to list out here but we have contracted services originating from any and every department in the school district and so I think we need to have a tighter process there thank you any other reports all right let's see we have our business agenda the board will now consider the remainder of the business agenda having already voted on our resolutions five six one five through five six one eight board members are there any items that you'd like to pull for a separate discussion and vote on no changes okay you see miss yu-san are there any changes to the business agenda you know to have a motion to in a second to adopt a business agenda it's been moved by director sprays of brown and seconded by director Rosen is there any public comment on the business agenda is there any board discussion on the business agenda well now vote on the business agenda all a favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes I'll pose please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions the business agenda is approved by six zero vote with student representative Tran absent this evening all right so just a reminder to board members that immediately following tonight's board meeting we have two executive sessions that are scheduled they are in the limit room is that correct are they energy firms in a moderate room so with that the meeting is adjourned and our mixed public meeting is on March 20th you
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okay

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)

2018-03-20 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: PPS Board of Education Regular Meeting - March 20, 2018

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