2018-05-01 PPS School Board Public Hearing

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2018-05-01
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Meeting Type town-hall
Directors Present missing


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Event 1: 2017-2018 Budget Public Hearing - May 1, 2018

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we're gonna go ahead and get started I know director Bailey's in the building and they'll be here shortly I'd like to call the public hearing for May 1st 2018 to order and convene the board as the budget committee thank you all for being here the board is set aside this evening to hear comments on the superintendent's proposed 2018-2019 budget we currently have I think 10 people signed up to testify and I think we had originally said two minutes for testimony if we stay at ten or even go a little bit above that we'll go ahead and go to if you want to go to three that's fine we were just anticipating a longer list so we can provide some flexibility the board acting is about it Budget Committee will take everything into consideration before approving the budget which our vote on to approve the budget is scheduled for June 12th we'll also have a budget listening session on May 15th I am the time and location will be determined it'll be posted on the PBS website childcare is available this evening and we also have interpreters with us tonight I'd like to ask them to come forward introduce themselves and indicate where they'll be located in the room Tim knows about that Jana is solution ruski pyramid puzzles the father ditches Provost irani Boompa market the proposal it spasiba minimus olimpiadas you soy de interpretación oil simi necesito por favor levanta la mano y mo percent our circle of days gracias watching mom was it so soon when finally Johnny upon me watching man was over two men Tanika you wanna see you learn how upon me like a puppet good evening my name is da da am badami translator for tonight Tsingtao no kuvakin Gupta of a normal teen vegetable I'm captain al quie of home come on thank you and have public comment tonight and have our public hearing I'm going to ask Ryan Dutch you're the interim budget manager to provide some background on the proposed twenty eighteen and nineteen budget and I'll note that the finance odd audit an operation committee has had discussions about this year's budget we've also had extensive discussions in the last couple months about staffing that's included in the budget and we just came out of a to our work session on the budget and we'll have this as an agenda item for the next several meetings so with that mr. doctor if you want to provide an overview my name is Ryan d'etre with me tonight I have Molly Bradley who's been helping out with the budget process as well so really what we had plans will go through the same message it was delivered to the board just to give people people that are interested to give them some context and however think about the budget this year okay so the most of this focus is on our
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general fund our general fund is our largest fund by far and the fund that funds most of our teachers most of our personnel and operating expenses so most of the discussion tonight is on the general fund it's a little bit less than half of our total spending at PBS though generally speaking what you're gonna see tonight is how we balanced the budget so just for context were the second year the biennium for next year the organ department of education appropriated 8.2 billion for the biennium and that was split about 50/50 to 20 years that there was a quality education model that was developed a few years ago and the estimate was that that's about two billion dollars short relative to what the state needs for k-12 education and if we were to convert that into what that would mean for PBS that's about 180 million dollars over two years so about ninety million dollars a year is what would be short from delivering that full education model that would go to give us a full level of services for our students in that context we've worked hard to prioritize staffing and services that we believe will have the most impact on our students and you should see that reflected in the presentation tonight and largely to balance the budget really what we've done is we've had increases not surprisingly for our personnel expenses and our health care expenses and we've made those made that balance through largely reducing our central office and then also squeezing our budget reserve to a lower to a level that's lower than what would be optimally ideal for a district of this size so just really quickly to give you some context our general fund overview you can see what our budget was last year and I'll talk about the total resources here it's gonna go from six hundred seventeen million to we're estimating about six hundred fifty million because we have a balanced budget you can see the requirements will increase by that same amount and our expenses then will increase serving about five ninety seven and last year's budget to about six hundred twenty seven in this year's budget okay largely what's driving the resource increases you can see here our state school fund is expect to increase a little bit this is largely based on a little bit of an enrollment increase over last year our gap tax our local option tax these are all tax revenues that are relative to our local tax base and not surprisingly that is appreciating so we expect some increases there also call out our high cost disability is also increasing we had been under estimating that in previous years so that's a more accurate reflection of what it should be other one is our investment earnings we with a recent addition of a treasury manager we put those dollars to work we're seeing returns better than what the district had seen in the past so this district or this budget reflects those investment earnings increases you'll also see our ending fund balance which is reflection of our spending this current year we expect that our ending fund balance will also deliver an increase as well so the upshot of this of this page is that we expect resources will be about 33 million dollars higher over last year's budget in the interest of time I won't go through this in a lot of detail this is an estimate of how we expect to end the current year so 2017 18 and what we had budgeted for an ending fund balance about 20 million and then some ins and outs and how we expect that amount to increase as we look forward to the end of this year so this is the end of June of 2018 and then our expenditures are following that same trajectory so you can see our school site budget increasing pretty substantially here over the last three years our central office our central office includes what we're calling the centrally administered school resources so these are resources are allocated directly to schools special education ESL transportation but are actually budget in our central office makes that number look quite large and then you can see our budget reserve increasing by about about five million dollars there so before we go into spending in more more detail and we are moving pretty quickly here because I want to make sure we can get to the to the public's comments I'm gonna turn over to Molly and she can talk about the about the spending so when we did the budget this year we had a set of investment priorities number one was in the schools we want to make sure the schools were staffed appropriately and that we had the professional development for those teachers we also are rolling out what we call the equity to dotto which is really about creating a community a culturally responsive community partnerships so I'm going out in the community and ensuring that we are doing our doing our part
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bringing those those underserved or other people into the fold of the education system and of course planning for the future because we all have to look beyond just today we have to see what's going on next year and the following year so the school site budgets this is just a quick graph to show that over time we've have invested more and more into school sites and these dollars represent the faculty that is in this actual schools not what we carry in the central office as you can see that the wage costs have gone up along with the French Health and Welfare etc feel free to ask any questions I know I'm going kind of quickly I'm gonna skip over this chart this is the leadership organization chart that was proposed at 4:23 the last week's meeting I just shows how this all right so one thing I really want to focus on and I think it's great to bring to people highlighting is the central office is how the spend is kind of bifurcated between what we call the central of administered school resources and what's the central office portion so when you look at that huge number we just want to bring to light that in that is the cost is bused children to school back and for the special education needs substitutes there's a lot of different costs from there this is not a holistic list and we didn't we just pulled out the big buckets so even though what we still say it is still central office can be parsed even further to say it's cost to support the school that children in the schools and then this is a breakdown by the different teams and so again you can see of the different teams who is considered central middle administered school resources how much is central and some of it may be look a little bit this evening but Human Resources has a huge piece that's considered central administered school resources this causers the substitute spend we put it under the HR umbrella so that they could sort of spend can be understood and we're making sure we're leveraging that substitute spend as as well as possible one of the pieces also that we have from your two years are pers rate we just wanted to call this out that it's flat for last year and this year and then with the changes in in the future years we're gonna see about a triple of cost increase which is something that we have to look forward to in the future we are planning to offset part of that by a credit that we have sitting in another fund to help reduce the impact in the bank twenty nineteen twenty twenty twenty year however it is still ahead win that we're gonna have to face looking forward so where as a team we're very aware of we're not only looking at this year but we're trying to look forward also to understand what the implications are following this is our top 10 contracts vendors again this just to speak out this is money that we have currently in the budget it does not commit us to anything we're still evaluating these vendors to ensure that the spend is what we it's the amount of spend we're spending the dollars right and getting the right benefits from them but we just wanted to give everyone an idea of when you look at the dollars where some of these dollars are going and Ryan touched about the budgeted reserve which is are the dollars that you know we have we set aside the pool of money one portion for school sites when portion for central office and went portion for the budgeted reserve and this dollars over time needs to climb to equal five percent of our overall general fund and so this year we're making some strides to get closer to that but in the out years again this is going to be a piece of spend that is gonna take a piece of that pie so just again want to be aware of that so as we put the budget together there were some investments that came through that we just want to be clear and transparent that are included in the numbers that we have proposed and there's quite a few items here we have high level estimates we would need to do more due diligence to understand the expects spend around them but it's again a spirit of transparency to let people know that these costs are still these are still outstanding items when we talk about the next year's project and like any other thing a budget is not a perfect item there are some risks to the budget that we know of and we want to call out we're still building out the middle school with those transition costs are going to be actual salaries for hire for new teachers we do an average when we look at the vacancies so if the actuals come in higher that could be a risk the Health and Welfare Trust Board concerning the actual health and welfare costs that will set for 2017 2018 2019 could impact our budget also and of course with with the risks comes we have to look for opportunities and
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what we can do so some of the pieces that we know that we can look at and possibly leverage is how do we reduce reliance reliance on substitutes evaluate a comprehensive transportation plan what does that mean are we getting the best bang for a buck reduce our workers comp rate currently we have a small surplus and that is to ensure that we're aligned so we're not charging ourselves too much we need to analyze the likely pressure or changes from federal grants so that we don't get caught flat-footed in the future about any changes coming down the pike for that and then of course there's always various processes data it's just improvements that we can leverage that will help again free up funds in the future to support education ok so as we think forward obviously this is for the 2018-19 budget we did want to look at some of the pieces are coming down to coming down the wire that we need to be prepared for and as we look to the future we've a couple things that we think are gonna provide some financial relief new biennium and the expectation of funding levels will be higher at this point it's really early so really hard to tell exactly how the state's gonna appropriate k-12 education funding 9 billion would represent about a 10 percent increase and then from enrollment point of view we're expecting just about flat as it has been for for this current year was pretty close to flat so we expect the same thing on the pressure side there are a few pieces that we that we know of today and if we could make this list quite a bit longer if we wanted to be more speculative but we are pretty certain we'll have a purse cost increase that could be about three times and this will be experienced across the state PPS is in far better shape than most agencies of the same size because of our other investments but we will see an increase our Health and Welfare cost will increase as well and then the board has a goal of increasing the budget reserves and I was the chart that Molly referenced by 2021 and putting us on that track will obviously take take cash out of the budget it's the right thing to do from a financial planning point of view but it it were just expending in the short-term so we did a quick revenue outlook rolled this roll our revenue out over the next couple of years 19 20 and 2021 under a couple different scenarios one with a baseline I'll kind of I'll focus on the 2021 number here at 681 million and then if we have a moderate recession at 659 and then a more severe recession that gets us down to 633 and we have a list of assumptions behind that to understand what might drive those and the large kind of not surprising pieces or how the state appropriates dollars to k12 our property tax growth within the district and then the assessed value growth as well so the main there are other pieces in here but those are the main drivers and then if we were just to compare the different revenue forecasts from what we've identified as spending pressures just gives us an idea of you know some I won't go into a lot of details here but just some some red numbers if if you just take those scenarios today and and we weren't to manage them actively give you some red numbers we need to be need to be aware of so I think it just it's uh I think it just a message for us to make sure that we're really planning not just for the next sixteen months but we're planning for the next two or three years in advance as well because if we not just for PBS but it'll be difficult really across the state okay and then just really quickly just to give people an idea on expectations for the future just some key dates here for the budget process the board will schedule to approve the budget on June 12th and then to adopt the budget on June 26th this amount of time here between the proposed budget and approve is largely to gather input from numerous stakeholders okay all right thanks very much one quick question yeah so how severe is a severe risk River recession like a 2008 or sort was sort of close to that bad but not really that bad actually yeah it'd be close to that bad I'm doing sums from memory close to that bad but not that bad actually okay yeah so this is the of our budget hearing which will hear public comment we won't be making any decisions tonight but the public comment we hear this evening should inform the board's thinking about the budget and as I said we have some follow-up meetings where
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there'll be additional opportunities for comment also at our when we approve the budget there'll be an opportunity there as well so mrs. Hewson but let's say before we start public comment I'm just gonna provide an overview of our guidelines we appreciate the public engaging in our hearing tonight and we value a public input as it informs our work the board's job is to actively listen board members and the superintendent will not respond to comments or questions during the public comment guidelines for public comments or public input emphasize respect and consideration for others presenters will have a total as I said earlier tonight I think given how many people we've have signed up you can have three minutes please start by stating your name spelling your last name for the record during the first two minutes the testimony a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining I'll you get yellow light will go on and when the red light goes on we'd ask you to wrap up and since it's a little bit different than a regular board meeting and we don't have a limit on the slots please please please feel free to sign up with Miss Hewson during - during the board meeting if you want to speak so with that Miss Hewson do you want to call the first two individuals signed up for Samuels and Christy scatter Ella tonight I'm Jennifer Samuels s am you Els and I'm here to speak tonight on behalf of the Portland Public Schools k3 read together initiative since the fall of 2014 the PBS k3 read together initiative has brought together the district six nonprofit and community partners including children's book Bank Multnomah County library reading results BPI the shadow project and smart and five priority and focus schools to work together to make improvements toward third-grade reading outcomes for a PPS K through third graders ultimately making improvements toward high school graduation rate the group of partners provide a coordinated suite of cost-effective wraparound services designed to support each school in building a culture of literacy the services we provide are aligned with PBS's equity based balanced literacy initiative they support PBS's literacy goals and racial equity goals and aim to empower students to read in school after school and at home we also aligned with the equity 2.0 initiative bringing cultural responsive services and student specific services to historically underserved students at the school's we serve in 2016 PPS is data and evaluation team concluded that the students served at the read together schools made gains in reading at statistically significant higher rates as compared to students at similar schools the read together initiative is among the painful cuts slated for next year annually the read together initiative costs PPS a little less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the partners use that to leverage another three hundred and thirty thousand dollars back into the schools and outside of the project the group of partners bring nearly another million dollars in services direct services volunteerism and learning materials directly into the school's we serve our principal newsom at our partner school Rosa Parks shared that losing the read together initiative will be devastating to her students and her school community so a few words about who benefits from maintaining the read together initiative a hundred and thirty three first second and third graders participate in more than 6,000 30 minute reading intervention sessions 164 early grade students participate in 3,500 30-minute sessions reading with adults 85 special ed identified students have hours of one-on-one and small group support and goal-setting over 2,000 students get to keep and bring home over 21,000 books including over 400 culturally specific titles and 500 parents have eleven black biracial cultural literacy nights workshops and fairs thank you for your time and I request you consider reinstating their read together initiative thank you for your comments I'm Kristy scatter Ella and that's SCA TTA ar e ll a long butt phonetic first I want to thank you for championing the read together initiative last year and for your commitment to the idea that when schools and families and culturally responsive community-based organizations come together we can accomplish great things for our kids because as we all know these kids are not just the school's responsibility these children are the communities
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they're everybody's responsibility and that's why Portland Public Schools came to us some years ago as part of a long-range plan with the idea of supporting schools in building and strengthening a culture of literacy at five Heinie's schools the partners jumped in and we spent over a year volunteering our time to create a very specific and detailed action plan and a strong coalition well thanks to you we've had a fourth year and we and the schools I know are very grateful for that as well we appreciate how you put our trust in our ability to follow through and to really help move the dial for our underserved populations I want you to know that we take that commitment very seriously so independently we produced I know it's kind of long but we produced a report that details the activities the outputs and the outcomes that have resulted from this project in the last year the red together partners are also members of their founding members of a coalition that has been advocating with state leaders to really advocate for our children and for the community-based organizations that can really support schools and we've had a lot of meetings where we're hearing a lot of interest actually just and read together as a demonstration project the state has expressed some interest in how we can take we can continue to fund programs like this how we concede future partnerships and how we can have partnerships like this work throughout the state of Oregon and finally I just would like to share with you a couple of things that you made happen this past year but you're not going to find in the report one of them is the look of pride on a child's face and I should say child after child after child when he reads his he's been struggling with a reading and all of a sudden he's not just reading a whole grade level but he has increased an entire intervention level in less than a year and the way a little girl is finally for the first time being transported into a culture of literacy and literature because when she's opening books now more and more she's seen characters who look just like her and for our special education students who I have to tell you a lot of them don't really see you so it's just like one last thought and wrap up okay thank you and I just want you to know that these kids have now three of the five schools these children participated in a national reading contest using assistive technology and they placed as high in the top seven percentile in the country so thank you let's do it together let's keep read together going Thanks next we have Sarah Van Buskirk and Brian Conley hi I'm Sarah Van Buskirk it's VA n bu s ki RK I'm a mother of five PBS students including a current 7th grader and an incoming sixth grader at da Vinci arts middle school I'm also Co PTSA president of da Vinci I'm here today to advocate for PBS to utilize decision making and communication protocols with greater transparency equity efficiency and the inclusion of feedback from all stakeholders this is particularly relevant in light of the revelation of this significant under budgeting of the recent bond measure by 89 million so far it seems clear that taxpayers are funding this measure based on faulty information another pertinent example of the damage done by insufficient public communication is the important effort to find a new home for access which continues to be in limbo which is caused significant undue negative impact to all involved the da vinci community fully aligns itself with accesses demand for an appropriate home for their students not just at the expense just not at the expense of da vinci which already runs at capacity and does not have adequate
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available space to make this a feasible reality we cannot understand why the feedback of impacted school communities is not solicited during this decision-making process and instead communities continue to be blindsided with final plans for changes they have no voice in shaping this lack of communication or and respectful inclusion breeds mistrust confusion and as the press has documented a series of rightfully panicked and enraged school communities which all deserve a safe suitable facility in which to thrive just as access also deserves here's a specific example of the lack of positive consensus building communication last Friday da Vinci families received an email from Deputy Superintendent Curtis on the possibility of Co housing access at da Vinci the letter stated we ask that everyone keep an open mind as we explore a variety of possibilities followed by once a decision is final we will work with principals to schedule meetings for newly co-located school to meet each other and ask questions of district officials how can a school community be told to have an open mind about their program being altered without inviting welcoming and listening to the feedback of those communities the suggestion is that we sit tight and keep quiet while the final decision is bestowed on us and that only at that point should our questions and concerns be answered after a few days of advocacy by many davinci families it is clear that our program won't be as significantly altered as many feared however we're still awaiting any more information about how co-locating with access might even work or even if that is a possibility if that possibility is still on the table it's discouraging a deeply upsetting that we were all kept in the dark as the process was unfolding and that we continue to be excluded from the process thank you thank you hi my name is Brian Conley that's Bri aan Co n lui I told Karen that I wanted to I had a question to clarify about busing costs because at the time I had been told that the board did not want to hear from access parents because the access is not included anywhere in the superintendent's budget that's disturbing because that's exactly why all of these people are here the budgets not itemized we haven't seen an itemized budget despite the same presentation being given a week ago so we don't know currently access students we have a hundred between 161 and 215 students using buses we have eight buses the bus need is likely to double when you put us at two sites mr. Vincent said that you would need to double the transportation cost at 1.4 million I'm not sure where that's in the budget you might be inclined to tell me that 70% of transportation cost comes from the state that's great but back in February mr. Mundson told you the total cost for facilities construction was at 35 million dollars yet PPS only budgeted 16.8 not upgrading sites for pioneer students keeping them where they are and cutting the $3,000,000 others only save seven million dollars you're still quite over dr. curtis has told axis families in writing that our current level of service will remain and I want to believe her but I don't know how without evidence I hear great things from the district new district staff you know to be frank like superintendent the communication staff the new deputy superintendent we we like what we hear but what we see is the district moves forward with plans that reduces options for our children every student at access all 326 have been told by PBS that their needs can't be met anywhere else these same students have heard our superintendent say he believes in equity and is the chief equity officer yet our students continue to be picked last our students were you know continue to be told we have to wait space is tight we know space is tight our you know it's it's our children are picked last many of them were picked last before they came to access their nerds their smart kids a lot of them we know what that's like we deserve a spot on the PBS team if you if you truly value our kids if you believe in equity it's time to show some courage and make some enemies in the name of educational justice history's not going to remember you because you balance the budget they're gonna remember you because you showed leadership and explains the rest of the district that our our chil name needs and meeting their needs is the right thing to do
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please don't pounce your budget at the expense of our children and let us know how you're gonna make up the difference because you've already said that that money is it's more than what was budgeted and you've already promised to keep our services that they are thank you [Applause] so I just want to briefly address a comment you raised there was a miscommunication between myself and miss Houston about the hearing tonight and the public comment and the question was was the hearing about da Vinci or about access I said the hearing was about the budget and that got translated into people couldn't testify and that was a miscommunication so I apologized that was what was communicated to certainly access da Vinci all our other schools are in the budget it's so it was a miscommunication so I apologize that it got then translated into something else sorry [Applause] I'm Judy Burke but I'm not feeling great and so I've asked Cody to pinch-hit for me I'm Cody weathers see ody WEA th er s echoing much of what Brian said with a split a likely possibility the students have access to serve a commitment in this budget to preserve certain services at both sites above and beyond what may have been anticipated in the current fiscal year these include but are not limited to FTE and supportive walk to math for elementary school students requiring middle school math and also middle school requiring high school math transportation from all corners of pdx special ed technology and language you've asked for our patients and you've asked for our faith and trust and we in return ask that you champion this program and commit to making it stronger even as it wanders thank you thank you I'm grace crumb gr oom since it's a budget hearing I brought some numbers sixty-one percent at beach 67% at bridger 72% at James John 75% at Scott 81 percent at Martin Luther King jr. 84 percent at Lent 85 percent at Sitton 87 percent at Cesar Chavez those are their percentages of the historically underserved students and I would are you currently underserved students at those school buildings that are isolated in single strand programs without a focus option review or a district-wide boundary of you budgeted in the next budget those numbers those students behind the numbers will continue to be isolated and separated and not allowed educational justice access also needs a home it needs a home in a climate in a budget time where we don't have a lot of money to spare it needs if it's gonna be split it's gonna be more costly it needs a home in locations that are close together we don't have extra money to spend on extra staffing when these students don't have their core requirements met at those schools it's irresponsible to put off focus option review any longer it's irresponsible to put off district-wide with boundary of you any longer we saw that pers cost is going up quite a bit if we put it off it's not going to happen again for another five ten however many years I know you guys care about our kids and I know that our superintendent cares about the education of our kids and we won't be able to provide what all these students deserve and need which is educational justice without those two pieces added into the budget focus option review and boundary of you we don't have to start from scratch we all know we've got a lot of data already collected we have a lot of people willing to do the work we just got to put it in the budget thank you thank you [Applause]
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my name's Jian Peterson pers Oh n I'm in my 12th year as an access parent I have three more to go we're now in May and our 338 I think that's the right number children still have no home for next year it seems clear that it is the plan to divide access between two sites we've been assured by deputies Deputy Superintendent Curtis that any split for access will maintain the same level of services and it will be temporary how are we to believe those assurances aren't merely empty promises where is the evidence that PPS has done the work to ensure that those promises become reality we're in the budget are the costs for moving access to two sites two sites would mean not only additional costs in the actual move but additional and ongoing costs to duplicate the services that are received by access students now sped and 504 Services counseling professional development for the new staff and how to work with our population those are all additional costs our students need real electives they need programmatic integrity in maintaining our current walk to math program where are these costs in the budget additionally maintaining the same level of services also means supporting accesses cohort community of learners where is the budget for preserving our else all school activities like spelling bee and talent show and after-school game Club in which students mix across grades all these costs are not one-time expenditures but continue for the duration of a split the farther apart any two sites are the greater the costs where is the budget for ending a split and reuniting the program where is the budget for planning for completing a real thorough dated driven focus option and boundary review without this the promise that any split will be temporary is also doomed to be an empty one why is this high-need population these 338 children with no home next year why are they taking the hit for PBS is lack of forethought and planning and its failure to live up to its own priorities why in this budget environment are you making the one program that works to serve highly capable students more expensive access needs a home don't split the atoms my name is Steve Buell be UEL be ism boy the in the last two years Portland Public Schools has moved to stabilize their libraries and when I look at the budget and when I call person after person nobody can tell me for any money as for the libraries for books and materials nobody they don't have any idea we're getting pretty late down in the budget session they've already begun to tack on libraries which starts sometimes with people on this school board but that attack on libraries to begin with we've supposedly as I understand it taking thirteen full-time librarians and cut them to half time but we're adding in the schools be interesting and know who's more critical out in our schools other than core teachers than librarians and libraries where is the money the last two years we've spent about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on library books and materials it's an incredible inequitable system for years and years and years ever since 1990 in credit you got library books if you were in a nice neighborhood with a lot of people who would go to your little fundraisers and they would then get library books in your school but if you were in a poorer neighborhood where people weren't going to your fundraisers and didn't have the money to contribute necessarily to the same degree then you had you didn't get as much as many library books and materials just that's the way it's worked for years so well two years ago we started to stabilize that so as the new superintendent now library the anti library person you know cut our librarians back and not have any school any books for the libraries is that where we're going is that the new direction that the school board is going doesn't make sense to me it's the exact opposite of where you go it's extremely critical in a school particularly an elementary school that you can get kids into good books and that the good books are there and for years and years they haven't been there and I don't know where they are be nice if somebody could tell me at least okay how much money do we have for library books and materials and where is that going to come from we figured it out two years ago where it came from but evidently we don't know now or no one is
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able the answer I mean I've talked to everybody I can possibly figure out so there you go so if this is a school board and I intellectualism and I library we don't care about libraries we don't care about the schools you guys are doing a good job but if that's not where you're going get your act together figure it out let's quit cutting librarians let's quit cutting library books and materials I mean you're gonna have to make up your mind I know you're not educators basically most of you so you don't understand the critical role the library plays in the school but there you go thank you mr. bule [Applause] yeah hello thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak on behalf of DaVinci arts middle school I'm going to read from a letter that I submitted to Yvonne Curtis this morning on behalf of many many many dozens of DaVinci parents and community members and students late last Friday afternoon as our school was preparing for the first of three spectacular dance performances we received a letter from Yvonne Curtis notifying that the DaVinci community was under consideration as a site for access Academy's new home it sent shockwaves through our schools world as this was the first that we had even heard of the possibility to our knowledge no one in the PPS administration has performed an impact study of how it this could affect DaVinci's programs the staff and the faculty the student body the school's academic needs and capacity or its mission to focus on the arts nor at that time had there been any dialogue with any members of The DaVinci community as a community we empathize with the situation that access Academy finds itself in and we truly hope that the board and the superintendent find the program a permanent home when it suits its mission and serves the needs of its students a few years ago in the name of equity PPS began the tough work of school boundary review identifying the schools that are overcrowded and the ones that are under enrolled the buildings that are working well over their capacity and the ones with space to spare with this well researched and current knowledge it would seem to make sense that PPS could find a home for access Academy that does not compete with or displace another program especially one that is as successful and as vibrant as da Vinci's program when the sir one that serves the needs of so many different students a few years ago again in the name of equity PPS studied the ways that lotteries have worked to staying focus option schools as enclaves of racial and socio-economic privilege second I think that there were some members here by rewetting the lottery and broadcasting focus option programs more widely more and more students of color have been enrolled at da Vinci along with more students who meet the criteria for free and reduced lunch this increasing cultural and economic diversity has strengthened the school in a great variety of ways especially in expanding our dance vernacular making cultural sensitivity more urgent and concrete giving us new ways of talking about immigration and the effects of our political climate on different populations all of this has naturally led the school staff to reevaluate their approaches to teaching can I have that extra minute go ahead thank you and so they too have become far more effective and reflective but cuts to our program will mean fewer students of color or the need are able to gain access to our program these students discouraged by poor chances of getting in may no longer even consider applying through the lottery and instead may choose other options for themselves and there will be fewer opportunities for all of us to learn from each other our community has always been highly welcoming to many other marginalized populations as well in particular da Vinci is warmly embracing of LGBTQ students who in these complex middle school years are just beginning to articulate their gender and sexual identities our sexually diverse and gender-fluid students are openly self-expressive fully accepted and
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participate in every artistic discipline and medium of the school likewise the arts focus of the school allows students with IEP s and a great range of learning styles to remain engaged in school for many students the arts are the reason they stay in school their tether to academic classes and their strongest motivation to succeed these do not have to ask you to I'm sorry I thought it was a short but oh you rap can you wrap up oh wait just a furnace everybody else sentence these students do not merely want the arts they need the arts thank you very much [Applause] evening Lord Pat Christensen chri sge NECN I'm the current president of the District Council of unions for those of you who haven't been up on the board very long I know some of you have been there while and some of you are returning and thank you for your service I appreciate that I also like to thank everybody who's given heartfelt testimony tonight about how the changes potentially can affect each and every one of the students and parents within the district and our goal of educating the students there's very important and I want to get out out there because I want you to all continue to use the process and I appreciate that you're here and I hope you'll continue to use the process but I'm going to switch the conversation from a moment for a moment from the students to the facilities I represent the unions and the workers who maintain your facilities those workers that have been underfunded for decades that allowed the facilities to become 2 billion dollars worth of deferred maintenance which required the eventual replacement so those of you that are new to the board and those of you that aren't I want to remind you of the commitments that were made when the bond was passed the Union supported the need the council supported the need and we supported it from the position that we had assurances from the school board at the time that if we started rebuilding these buildings because it was cost prohibitive to try and catch up on the deferred maintenance that had been happened through 20 years of not properly funding your maintenance department so you could actually do a preventative maintenance program and unfortunately we became emergency services Department and rather than a maintenance program we responded to every day emergencies and unfortunately today as we speak we're still doing the same function we had a commitment from the board that if we got some new buildings going forward that we would have additional staffing and actually implement preventative maintenance to take care of your taxpayers new buildings unfortunately looking at the proposal that's in front of us now that I know that it's a work in process and I'm hoping that you'll hear us and actually engage the council in future discussions because we do have opportunities in ways that you can perform your work and more efficient faction and what we currently see happening but I see that there's major cuts for the maintenance department this is a total reversal of your commitment to the people who supported your your bond to build buildings that you would take care of your new buildings and be responsible to the taxpayers that are supporting these new buildings to go forward and not repeat the cycle of building new letting it deteriorate so you can throw it away and ask for another 750 million Millett bond so please engage the council and the unions that supported you because we have ways to support the work we're not being engaged at this time and we're ready and available to do so so thank you so short brief and I'm saddened that we are in this budget situation and that you all have to deal with this I really want to encourage putting money towards data collection oh Jessica Colby sorry CEO lby and I really want to put encourage putting money towards focus operation option review and data collection we are not going to be able to help all our neighborhood schools and keep them healthy if we don't look at these things Vestal is losing kids access has no home we're not a focus option we are a school of need although as many focus options therapy kids there who do need them but sorry Wow I came up here a little so I would also like to ask that you put money towards data collection for the soft neighborhood model and reviewing it I really don't see how implementing the soft neighborhood model could put us in any worse position than we're in right now with the boundary review but I think we really need to take a look at it so
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please money towards data collection towards reviews towards the soft neighborhood model thank you thank you we have one more speaker Razi Basque around thank you for this opportunity I wasn't prepared to come up here but since I was here I thought I should at least hear like a few words I am Raji Baskaran for the record bas ka Rin I am a parent of two PPS kid including him this is Rahul since this is budget I will focus on budget related but just to give up idea of why focus option needs to be reviewed when we when we understood that my older kid was now in access was not fitting in in his local school mainly because he was really changing his character quite a bit to try to fit in and becoming doing one tenth of his interest things in order to be fitting into the clique crowd we started looking for focus option schools reviewed many of them toward we are react the kind of parents who really do our homework my husband toward the high school before we bought our home in Southeast neighborhood where then the first kid was two and a half so believe me we really think about this and do our numbers and when we did the thing the reason why we did not apply to many focus schools because number finally it comes to a lottery and it don't feel like the kids future the philosophy of how one needs to be educated is purely based on only a lottery at the end of the day so we did not choose to do any of the focus options and we still did not even know about the existence of access till about a year and a half later - well into second grade when the kid was and he's still not fitting in and that's when we actually did our own research and found out about access and after eight years wait he got tested in but just to let you know that you know I think that access at least in a personal story is a need not necessarily a luxury that's the only place he is thrived we were and just to tell your another story when this guy was tested and he qualified it's not the same as having a need his mouth it's not only about the mouth or one particular thing it's it's about fitting in he said his kindergarten review says he barely meets math that was he was just her 99.8% I'll that's 998 kids out of thousand he's better than them but in in the local public school he doesn't even meet the requirement according to the report so just to let you know if you had a kid who is 998 out of thousand in height will you find better chairs and tables that fit that kid's height it's very similar to that it's not necessarily an option it's not a luxury it's a need so please fund more data collection for reviewing all the options and finding a way to keep access together Thank You Percy marrow hello my name is Percy maro and they are our owm there's a lot of people looking at me okay so I'm a student at Madison High School I'm here with some people from my Boy Scout troop we're here to get a merit badge and I don't know I kind of Eagle Scout them I just wanted to talk about the way that the budget is split up based off of population and less on student needs specifically like an he's an example with my school Madison we got seven dollars in donations last year and I know there are some schools that gives like hundreds of thousands of dollars from their like parents because their families can afford it and like other examples are our school over 80% of the population requires free and reduced lunch and like you know there are other students at other schools who get so much money for simply in donations and it doesn't really seem equitable you know it's I don't know I don't really have much written down because this is very last-minute I'm sorry um I don't know I just kind of want to encourage as you look at the budget or decide where the money goes just keep in mind that there are students who don't
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have as much money as everybody else and kind of need that Thank You Susan is there anybody else feels they want to say something so the there's a budget hearing on May 15th May 15th there'll be a another budget hearing on May 8th we have our regulator school board meeting which is another opportunity for people to sign up for public comment will also have a discussion about the budget at that meeting then we have a meeting on may May 22nd which is another one of our regular board meetings that'll be another opportunity in addition on June 12th we'll have our final consideration discussion board discussion and approval of the document in addition I think I can speak for all of us that we get a lot of email we read it so we'll take the information that we've heard and as I said this has been a several month process that we've received information and and discussed with the superintendent staffing which is really the majority of the budget and certainly what some of the issues that were raised this evening our issues that individual board members have already raised as part of the process so we expect discussion potential amendments the sent the superintendent makeup may make adjustments to his budget as well so that's generally the process and then we vote have an approval on the 12th and then we have a where's Miss Powell I think we also have a tsp si te SCC which is at TAC supervising Commission meeting what's the date of that and and then to find the final vote the final adoption vote on June 26 so it it should have been noticed over a month ago well I guess what I would say is when people liked anybody's free to come speak to us if you like right right now that the floor is open well May 15th we'll have one and we'll make sure it's posted the location and the time so I just want to acknowledge I think we are having an issue getting things posted on to the district calendar and okay so we're going to fix it who hasn't had a chance to speak already tonight like to speak if you're shy I'm sure you can buttonhole one of us on the way yeah okay in addition you can send comments to visit school board at PBS net and that gets to all of us anything else from individual board members dr. Bailey just thanks to everybody for coming out tonight thanks everybody the meeting is


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