2018-10-16 PPS School Board Regular Meeting, Work Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2018-10-16
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular, work
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education, October 16, 2018

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okay we're ready this regular meeting of the Board of Education for October 16 2018 is called to order welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PBS TV Services website as a reminder we now have our PPS ombudsman Judy Martin attending all regular board meetings 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 503 906 three zero four five or Ombudsman at PPS yet dotnet and can you just she's over here we also have interpreters here this evening and I'd like to ask them to come forward at this time introduce themselves in the language they will be interpreting into and inform the audience where they'll be located in the auditorium should someone need their assistance please use the standing microphone Ola Ola I'm Ivana Starbase yell vivo esta fazendo servicios de interpretación and espanol por el público que precisa ayuda muchas gracias I don't know why I do it in California my name is dong I'm Spadina me sent out or not eBay no conceived diabetic big simple on paper quickie come on thank you I'd like to provide a quick overview of the business the board will be conducting tonight we'll begin with student and public comment followed by the superintendent's reports and then receive a quarterly report on the implementation of the recommendations from the investigation of the Mitch Whitehurst incidents immediately following this meeting we'll have a work session on the visioning process in the Mazama conference room board members are there any items in the business agenda that you have questions on not asking for a separate vote ok anything else okay so let's move right into student in public comments miss Houston do we have anyone signed up for student oh sorry Miss Powell do we have anyone signed up we have Gabby cozy and fuzzy yet and as folks make their way to the table I'd like to review the guidelines for public comment the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide your comments to the board we value public input as it informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen with electronic devices turned off and without distractions from paper when board members will not and the superintendent will not respond to comments or questions during public comment but the board office will follow up on board related issues raised during public testimony if you would like us to respond please contact Miss Powell guidelines for public input emphasize respecting consideration of others complaints about individual employees should be directed to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter if you have any additional materials please give them to mr. Powell and she'll distribute them to us so you have 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 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 we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments at that time hi thank you all for having us here tonight my name is Gabrielle cozy last name spelled cos you I I I'm here on the behalf of the third annual what now planning committee and also as a Lincoln High School student hi my name is I BR aah I am I'm a senior at Madison high school so this year the third annual whatnow event will be held on November 17th this year's theme is focusing around how youth are leading and innovating our democracy
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challenging and expanding the traditional norms of American democracy the event will be featuring youth led workshops and youth keynote speakers we're here today to extend an invitation to all members of the PBS board and all members of the PBS staff to come and join us for the event the all the workshops at the event will be equity centric in nature meaning that underrepresented voices will be heard and highlighted throughout the day topics will range from racial justice to gun violence prevention to indigenous rights to climate change to sexual assault to LGBTQ rights to students rights and more I would encourage you to bring your family and friends to the event to witness the incredible youth social justice activists in our community that I am utterly humbled to be able to work with to plan this event it is an invent it is an event that is incredibly important because we're going to have the opportunity to listen to the emerging voices of our community and gain a unique perspective on social issue topics of this time we will also have specific pathways to get involved and to make a tangible difference I think this combination of things is a rarity and so I believe every single person should jump at the chance to partake in this event again the event will be held on November 17th doors will open at 10:00 a.m. and the event officially commences at 11:00 a.m. we're looking to have the event at one of the local high schools and we'll be have the location on lockdown very soon if you're interested please go to what now Oregon don't work for any more updates and I hope to see you all there the event is free next we have Allison groom and David Morrison hi my name is Alice Ingram gr om I am a third grader from access Academy and I need your help getting more pearls into third grade there are only eight girls in total four in each class there are two third grade classes there are a few of reasons I think access would be a great program for girls who need it the way the tiers that access teach really gets her brains working it challenges us to work hard and learn more the program helps individual kids there are new things at just the right level for them not only does XS provide special academics but it is also a very good program to make friends in there are a bunch of social activities that we do throughout the year the teachers help us learn life skills that help us make strong friendships I've done a bit of math and I figured out that there are about 2,000 third grade girls and all the schools in the district it's the assuming that there would be a lot more than eight to a grade girls that need a program program like access I'm here tonight to ask for your help to make access available to more girls who need a program like access will you help I'd like to have more girls in access I'd like to have more girls have this opportunity and I'd like to have more girls in my class to make friends with nothing against the boys but you get that I'd like more girls in third grade if I need third grade girls are listening I'd love to have you here and access there great thank you for listening and thank you for your help thank you next we have Taji Chesham 8 and Deb mayor Garrett Ingram and Beth blood clots go ahead hi I'm Beth bloom class good evening good to see you and I am a Portland public school special education school bus driver and we came here tonight because we wanted to thank you for riding along and we really appreciate you showing up and I'm doing
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what you said you would do Thank You Julia also for coming we do appreciate the time that you guys both took we have come here so many times with concerns complaints and criticisms and so this is our only Avenue to have one-on-one with you guys as a group and so we feel like this is only right to come back and publicly also say thank you and I just really appreciate that you came in at the check-in time I wanted to say hello and introduce you to everybody but I actually was homesick that day so I apologize for missing it I heard wonderful things about you that you interacted with the students well so you get a good grade for that and they you participated with the pre-trip which is basically making sure the bus operates correctly you're having to walk around inside and out and make sure all the equipment is there and everything is functioning and so you participated and I'm sorry superintendent get a tow so everybody knows who I'm talking about specifically picked up students for both schools with the driver and his first name is Jeff and he's a wonderful wonderful driver and took him to the school and there's one particular school that I also go to and there are two students who thump on the wall or the windows the entire ride and so superintendent I know you got to you know witness that and be a part of that and anyone who is a parent can get you know a little bit impatient after a while when the kids are not following directions and making a lot of noise well these two students they make those noises non-stop and so but Jeff is wonderful as a driver he understands that that's part of their IEP that's why they're on the bus they don't have any self-control that they can do to keep still the entire time and they're literally the whole time and so when I arrived to that same school in the morning I can hear that with my windows up and I'm sitting there waiting to drop off my students at that school so Jeff is amazing and he sits there the whole time so you got to witness that that is what we would maybe describe as an easy route but the more difficult of the easy so you can just imagine if you were on a more active route it would take more physical time and so forth so this is the good news we're very very excited and I promise you I had no intention of any down news but Jeff actually today was his last day he actually just a few sentences I promise he today was his last day and he had he's just it was just too much after a while but you had personal conversation with him and he is an excellent driver so we have last year we have 19 drivers who did not return this school year and a few are because of retirement so I will say that and then so far this year we have six who have left for other opportunities so we just continue we'd like to continue to work with you to keep the drivers and have really excellent drivers here who who love doing what we do thank you so much for your time thank you lastly we have mark from us good evening my name is Mark from uh the last name is spelled FS and Frank R om u th I'm the parent of Charles froma the senior at Alliance high school at meek and I'm here tonight to state my wholehearted endorsement of Meeks academic and life skills teaching before coming to meet my son Charles was a Grant High School a good school but not the right fit for him he became lost in the vastness of the school and was on a path to drop him out academically he was suffering and this in combination with his choice of extracurricular activities did not create much upward pressure on his GPA through the intervention intervention of my wonderful sister-in-law Laura Ross a Spanish teacher at meek my wife and I came to know the school and we decided along with Charles to have him enroll from the time he walked into the school he was embraced for who he was and was given positive enabling direction excuse me positive enabling direction there are a number of excellent programs that meet that provides students with the opportunity to succeed my son was one of those students act academically his GPA
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has ridden risen from below 2.0 to 4.0 and the technical skills provided by meek in classes like automotive and manufacturing enabled him to obtain a paid internship this last summer at dawn were trucks here in Portland finally a few weeks ago when school board members came to meet Charles participated in a student panel and told the board member that going to meek was the best decision of his life his mother and I believe that I applaud the school teachers the leadership and the board for supporting Meeks ongoing success with physical space and capital this school makes a difference thank you thank you chair more I have forgotten the one speaker grace groom hello my name is grace groom gr oom and I'm here tonight to again ask for your support for the students served at dr. Martin Luther King jr. k5 school PPS board made a resolution on November 14th of last year resolution 5 534 to set the feeder patterns and attendance areas for Harriet Tubman and rosary Heights Middle School's included in this resolution is the commitment from this board that was is as follows prior to December 31st 2018 PPS will develop options for increasing enrollment at King k5 in order to create two robust neighborhood non-emergent strands and it continues the board directs the superintendent to take all necessary steps to implement this resolution including developing options for boosting King's k5 enrollment at the November 14th meeting director Bailey stressed his belief that the original resolution which included a slight boundary shift from Sabin to Martin Luther King jr. that would have resulted in increasing one strand per grade per year starting with kindergarten was in his words too slow by the way this slight boundary change may have avoided the overcrowding at kindergarteners in Sabin this year that we experienced director Bailey further explained that the single strands in the neighborhood program at MLK needed to be addressed sooner than later so it's a year later now Martin Luther King still has the smallest k5 boundary in the district and even if the school captured all of the students living in its catchment area it would still be under enrolled I'm very thankful for the attention the board members have given this issue in the past but the problem persists and continues to hurt children for example we have a second grade one neighborhood strand second grade with 28 second graders 7 of them have IEP s nine of them are English language and 3/4 3/4 of that class is performing below grade level on the map test recently taken all of this with just one teacher to serve all those needs so I don't have all the answers but I do have three important questions for you to consider number one will you follow through on the commitment to directing staff to present options for limiting single strands at dr. Martin Luther King by this December number two who will be in charge of developing the plan and number three what's your plan for engaging the school community as the plan is developed to ensure that there's nothing created about them without them thank you thank you okay thank you all again for your comments and we appreciate hearing from all of you so we'll move on to the superintendent's reports superintendent greenroom good evening directors I'm gonna be brief tonight but I do want to speak two to one really critical critically important topic because I know it's on all of our minds and we've had a number of recent incidents here in PPS but I know they're happening around the state and around the country and that's around the issue of student safety so while our core mission is teaching and learning the safety of our students and staff is has to be our primary and highest responsibility and priority and this is everybody's job we have to be vigilant in our schools and our classrooms on the playground before school after school but the recent incidents are really underlining the importance of making sure that that stays at the top of the list and it really goes beyond sort of the everyday work that our classroom teachers do to create that positive climate and atmosphere and their rooms the work that our schools do to make
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sure they're welcoming in safe environments but it extends to the work that our counselors do for instance or our bus drivers thank you I loved my bus trip and spending spending the day with with Jeff it's making sure your vehicle is safe and the students are transported to their schools and I just wanted to share out you know things that I know we're all aware were we're in the middle of towards this and last week in work session we talked about an important and critical MOU a Memorandum of Understanding with the Portland Police Bureau to to work on enhancing our school resource officers presence full-time in all of our high school clusters available to all of our schools for instance look forward to wrapping that up we our voters set aside five million dollars in the 2017 bond to make sure the intrigues the entries to our buildings were equipped with cameras and intercoms and signage that's ongoing work that's happening right now we know that our board is considering a new policy that clearly outlines professional conduct and boundaries between adults and students for instance related to that staff have already begun training our school leaders and others around a correct and proper sexual incident response for instance later today you're going to hear presented by our chief of staff more details around the work that has been occurring in regards to the implementation of recommendations from the Whitehurst investigation so we're going to hear about that topic tonight for instance so on I just want to highlight that that we don't go through our school day in a system this large when we hear reports small and large to make sure we're addressing those in a thoughtful way it's something that's that's very important to us so in the interest of being prepared for for emergencies and making sure we're doing and conducting safety drills this Thursday is the great Oregon shakeout it's a big tradition most of our schools are going to be participating in this earthquake drill at exactly 1018 a.m. this Thursday morning so while we're drilling for safety we're also going to continue retrofitting our buildings to make them safer seismically prepared and using our funds and that's going to be ongoing work so just wanted to do a little commercial there on school safety and and the shakeout and the last time we had our regular meeting it was sort of an unaware sory occasion and I didn't know we're gonna have some some folks following me out and about and they've put together a little compilation which if you'll indulge me or watch a little two-minute video here can't think of higher praise and I'm thrilled that Guadalupe Guerrero will be our next leader in Portland schools and with that I'd like to introduce our next leader Waddell looping a year ago today when we had that press conference in the garden at Sabin do that this was this would be a challenge and I think everybody recognized that with a newly elected board and a reaffirmation around beginning to set the stage for the work ahead but included a few elements which I think we've been successful in accomplishing one of those is is the recruitment and hire of a new leadership team an entirely new leadership team bring it in bring it in if the board wanted to execute on a commitment to the community around the opening of two new comprehensive middle schools Tubman school we're sitting in now at Rose Way Heights given a goal to make sure that more of our middle grade students had a comprehensive experience there was an existing inequity around what students had access to it was a having left and from board vote to opening the doors you know that was a matter of eight or nine months to go about wrapping up the construction the programmatic development deal with hiccups along the way like environmental concerns at Tubman which we were able to mediate for we nonetheless open the door on the first day of school they have brilliant students and our adults are committed to to serving them I would say what keeps me motivated is seeing our teachers energized to receive our students in the mornings it's seeing our principals when they're gathered optimistic about our agenda it seemed families dropping off their young students with smiles on their face with the sense that my kid's gonna have a good day it's seen all elements of the school system kind of working and choreography around our core mission whether it's a bus drivers or its nutrition everybody
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kind of working in sync it's a good thing that I enjoy a challenge because as I reflect on this past year I think there's been a lot of growth and I think we've learned a lot as a school system it's definitely been a lot of hard work and and that's okay when I first came aboard I talked about the need for all of us to remain optimistic about the possibilities and I remain feeling optimistic about where PBS is headed you know what's it's here that's the best Job Description anybody's given me well there you go we can make this a great school system you know our youth say it all so thank you everybody so [Applause] before we move on to the next item I was just informed that we're having issues with the YouTube live feed so it will be they're continuing to record it will be posted on YouTube as soon as as as soon as we finish I guess so okay sorry about that okay so next we're going to move on to the quarterly reports on the implementation of recommendations from the Whitehurst reports good evening board members I'm Stefanie Soudan chief of staff and superintendent Guerrero charged me with leading an implementation team this is in response to the Whitehurst recommendations and report I in no way do this work on my own there's a large team of us two of which are next to me that I have asked to sort of expand on some of the items I'm going to report on but just as an introduction this is the second quarterly update to the board on the implementation report so last May the board accepted a report and recommendations resulting from an investigation into sexual misconduct by a former employee and the follow up or lack thereof by district staff so these recommendations include a variety of action steps to prevent incidences like those in the report from occurring in the future and are and include but are not limited to enhanced an ongoing training for staff contractors and volunteers clear incidents tracking reporting and response protocols consistent investigatory practices and outcomes and strengthen laws and policies so this team reported to you in July is the first quarterly update today's the second update so I thought you have in front of you a staff report that includes the 17 recommendations and some deadlines we had assigned back in the summer and status reports on each of those recommendations I'm not going to walk through them today but I did want to point out some highlights in particularly what we've been working on in the short term has been training number one priority is to have every building have a trained staff person and also identified a school compliance officer and trainings around that have occurred in August October we're asking all other PPS staffed actually were requiring all other PPS staff to go through online training by the end of this month and any staff that are in contact with students such as counselors nutrition services transportation they are all going through the sexual incident response coordination or circ training that the superintendent mentioned we are developing with a serious sense of urgency training content for our contractors and volunteers as well we expect that to be fully in place by the end of the calendar year so another key area we've been working on is legislation and I'm gonna ask Courtney to walk through that in a in a moment but just to highlight other areas before we get back to Courtney there are also policies that were recommended we update and the Professional Conduct policy one that you're all aware of you first read it on October 2nd it was discussed in the policy and Governance Committee today
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and we expect it to come back to that committee at its next meeting in November we're also embarking on the revision of the field treat filled trip policy and that will be that will come back before the committee in November as well we have selected a vendor to track and help us report instances in a consistent manner where that vendor is undergoing testing protocols and we expect that to be completed next month so that will help us have one one-stop reporting and accessibility and then finally education and outreach is a big focus of the recommendations and we do have some website content that needs to be updated it's I need to be posted it's updated based on best practices other school district websites that do a really good job communicating reporting and and what happens in these incidences so those will be up by the end of the month we have really at least assures our interim title nine coordinator an important person on our team she just in the supporting what the superintendent said we have had a lot of safety issues arise just in the school year alone and ELISA finds herself working with building administrators teachers staff counselors in all of our high schools so I think we have a pretty good presence and identification stickers posters in schools but we're continuing to monitor that I guess that's what all I would say in those areas I'm happy to answer any questions before we turn to legislation I also have Mary Cain with me who's been really integral in developing the training and there's rest of the team who can answer other questions it's happened so to date so just a couple questions on the report under the very first the training which it's really important on the second page it says training for nutrition services facilities and maintenance and perhaps transportation staff I'm wondering what the perhaps is about or well related to the date it's related to the date and not to the expectation one of the things I'm looking at is for those union employees we have to be very careful of providing time within the within the CBA and so we're looking to do that so that's make it sound like it was perhaps we're gonna do no no okay so they're gonna get it it just may not be just over 29th and with some groups and I think that with we've we've changed things around a bit the facilities and maintenance given their schedules because they work very early in the morning and late at night we're gonna individualize the training for them so that we can best meet their needs as well so added another question that the second recommendation was you use a specialized trained investigator who has expertise and employees student sexual conduct and can investigate each complaint thoroughly and fairly and I know we're not the recommendations were sort of guidelines not like you have to do X but it looks like that we're building internal expertise versus having a specific trained investigator is that well how was our model our model is so the with the circ model there is a facilitator who is the kind of the primary the expert in that and go and we'll be conducting investigations assisting schools as they roll out their cert protocols and providing them the support they need and there's also the title 9 coordinator director who will do the same so we'll have internal experts who are doing that but part of also part of what this training is in part of what the sir can ASMR training we're trying to do is make bring that expertise to the building when we when we did the training at the beginning of October for the each building as we know it's identified a school compliance officer but will have multiple trainings for
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them and they will be sort of the subject matter experts in their buildings so that anybody from the building can turn to them and say so this has happened what's my next step or what should I be looking for what so we want to build internal expertise as well as have than the to identify leaders of that of those programs okay so that builds capacity does that mean that so I had thought for example so there's an incident and the school compliance officer it's like yes this should be investigated or makes a recommendation be sure to investigator are you saying then the schools based personnel are going to do the investigation or there's somebody here centrally that will be sort of a designated well for the adult sexual misconduct that that's it that the title 9 coordinator works in conjunction with HR we already have an expert group in labor and employment who conduct investigations they are enhancing their skills at this point they're recognizing the things that the particular needs that they need to have when investigating these kinds of incidents so they take the lead in adult matters and they work but we've also developed a protocol for for incidents like this where it's a it's a team effort so it's general counsel's office HR the building person to do the to do the investigation following up on that cuz I had kind of the same question will there be outside investigators hired in any case there may be instances where we'll need to hire outside investigators but I think the the the idea is to build the capacity to build it internally training was to be completed the modules I guess the training itself by December but has it been completed now is that when will it be ready to go this is a large district with a lot of employees the modules themselves oh well so so we have I think I think by December we should be able to have the building level people trained that's that's my hope we have at least in looking at the circle oh the content we have the content is done I'm sorry yeah that was sorry I and it will be available to not only district staff but we're gonna be looking at also our contractors that volunteers so it's kind of broad-based yes great so the training is required mm-hmm how are we tracking compliance it's easier to track compliance with PPS staff because we're putting it on the training sessions on pepper and so when you sign in it tracks we are working with IT to try to develop a tracking system or some way to track volunteers and contractors it's a that's gonna be a little more difficult but we've already met but with some looking at the volunteer piece and how we can put that into play just to clarify pepper is our online professional development training somewhere so attracts everybody for completing the exercises I want to thank the team for helping me online training so one of the recommendation talked about just how compelling or compelling it was before and I'm wondering if you did it after staff has taken it have you done anything to assess whether users engage more with the content or retained more I think it was like you know it's 80 slides into a so what we did this year in response to that was we changed the online training program we we are using safe Safe Schools program because we wanted to have something that recognizing that the other one wasn't providing with as robust a training we exchanged it for that one the idea it what we are thinking of doing is developing our own for next school year
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but to use the safe school one this year because we we just didn't have the time to put it together so you've got a package one that replaced the yes the PowerPoint slides that were adn or whatever I just it's very comprehensive it's a good training so is that like on the district website or it's only professional development pepper our employees have an internal ability to log on to our professional development site and that's where the the module appears it is true we have a more engaging set of slides it reminds me of I was boarding my plane last night every airline has to share safety rules some have a more interesting way of doing that we've attempted to do that here as well so is it available for non employees at this point no I don't know that they can access it that it's it's embedded into the pepper platform which is why we have we actually have a number of we're developing powerpoints for again for the volunteer site and we have so we haven't modified we can post that the one thought was posting it on the the volunteer web page and then also I remember where else we were going to post it because people come in through different avenues yeah I guess that had been my question I'm thinking now beyond just employees because I scope up the policy like you know it's more inclusive so how in what vehicle then will they be able to access it through we have a standalone ASM of the adult sexual misconduct PowerPoint that we that's been part of the in-person training and that's the one that we have modified to to provide to other volunteers and others so you're I think your question is can we make this new enhanced online training that's about 30 minutes long available to the public and I don't see why we wouldn't let's definitely explore that so we could definitely look into that we already have plans underway to get training easily accessible and required by contractors and volunteers that's not the content is getting developed but it's not rolled out completely yet so I just want to reassure you that is our very next step nuanced our complex recommendations is exercise transparency and do not enter into resignation agreements that restrict disclosure of possible sexual conduct so the notation is completed and ongoing so part of this involves some of our contractual agreements but can you just explain what's completed or what's ongoing or so we are not engaging in any so we will still have discussions about resignation agreements but they will not and we are forthcoming and the Union notes that we will not admit write that information it's our duty yeah and so we we are letting the employees know that as well yeah just one question so like looking forward is the online trainings is that something that staff are gonna be like recommended to do every year okay required to me okay so this is sort of just a further question and you can tell me that you already answered it but I'm not sure I heard it my number eight on this list requires sexual conduct prevention and vacation training for PBS volunteers and contractors it says it's training and content requirements are being added to volunteer registration in schools so you're a parent at Glencoe and you sign up to be a volunteer are you saying that that's when you get a notice like you've got to get a background check done and take this training is that one of the things we're thinking of doing is adding it because you get that letter from those thing you have to do you know it's a checkoff and one of them is and and do the training so that's that was one of the things we're contemplating and then having on that volunteer web page that so you've done two things if you're gonna have contact with students as a parent or volunteer you're gonna have a background check background check and you're gonna have completed the training yes that's our expectation we don't have it yet that and but the target date is December 31st is that still a realistic that's doable okay great I would say that's do great
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kortnee do you wanna go for legislation that's a lot of progress a lot of progress and a lot of work to do so we're committed to getting it all done okay um Courtney Westland government relations director so quick update on what where we are with prep for 2019 on this matter so I think you all know that we handed out a letter back in May to all legislators giving them a kind of a brief breakdown of what was in the white Hurst report and what recommendations were included and why we needed them among the recommendations as you well know by now there were a couple of legislative suggestions so one was to adjust the definition align the definition in statute for sexual conduct with with TSP C regulation regulatory definition right now the bar is very high to substantiate a claim of sexual conduct very high it's a four-part test it's tough so the so that's been part of the conversation that I'm having in Salem there's a lot of interest in that Senate you can see from the piece of paper that's in front of you that I hand it out there's sort of I'm sorry I'm jumping around a bit I'll start by saying we're pursuing to two tracks legislatively the first is our own bill I am working on a concept language with Senator Wagner it's not a draft yet it's just language just a concept that's how things start at the same time Senator Roblin who's the Senate Education Committee Chair and also the co-chair of the Student Success committee he is a retired high school principal from Coos Bay and he after the Whitehurst report memo was distributed he asked Legislative Council for an opinion on how those recommendations would interface with the with essa the every student succeeds Act or the the federal law so he asked for an opinion you have that in front of you as well it's pretty long and pretty dense but essentially what he wanted was to know that these recommendations were not going to fly in the face of what we were required to do by federal law so he has a real interest in these issues probably because of his background but also because he finds that it's important as we do so he's pursuing his I've outlined that fixes or the tweaks that he's trying to make to state law to a aligned with federal and to be make adjustments in close loopholes and improve how we do business on this matter a lot of his interest is around TSP C and getting them more robust investigation capabilities right now they have very few people invested these issues are not unique to PBS we know that and so there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that they have the capacity to capacity to look into this stuff so that's a big piece of it he's also completely on board with adjusting the definition I've run into a lot of people who are shocked actually that it is so hard to substantiate a claim there are some out there that are concerned about changing the definition that would be our teachers union has concerns but I don't have a lot of specifics yet about why the the other piece around that was recommended in the Whitehurst report that we address or that we go Lobby to address is the TSP C investigation timeline on average right now the investigations at the TSP sea level take eight months it's a really long time and it's way too long so again it goes back to staffing so you know the blame is not on all on them and their process it's it's a matter of people doing the work and that's a challenge for them so there's a lot that goes into that and it's political because everything is but there's there's a lot of good conversation happening around all of this we were dual tracking this because that's how you do it you kind of throw the kitchen sink out and you figure out what is gonna gonna pass muster and who's going to support what and I think that what I'm learning in this process is that people are really motivated on us to make some changes and what that eventually looks like is still you know to be determined but but it's very promising that Senator Roblin is very interested in this that there are a lot of conversations happening among stakeholders our partners OSB a cosa others to improve and tighten this this legislation the top piece of the handout is those are the details that are going into the concept we're currently working on that's being drafted I haven't seen language yet but it's a couple of things
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that are pretty low-hanging fruit quite frankly we right now in statute sexual conduct does not go beyond k12 and we obviously have students that are less than that and older than that so making sure that the the student population that we serve is contained in a definition and then also as we were talking about volunteers and contractors the a school employee does not currently include those two so making sure that they're included as well so that's kind of the big picture happy to take questions there will be more as things kind of settle out but this is the latest viewing audience ts piece sorry teacher standards and Practices Commission they're the teacher licensing agency and they are a fee-based only agency which makes that's what makes it tough for them to have enough investigators is there they don't have additional general fund or anything like that that I know of I better say that I know of because I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that's right anybody willing to throw any money at this I'm hopeful I know that one of the things I'm hearing from roblins office is that he would like to see this go through Ways and Means which means it would have to have a fiscal and I don't know what that fiscal is but going through ways and means is you know that's a good goal and I think I think there is interest it's a you know this is it's a resource issue just like everything else that we talked about and I know that you're particularly frustrated by that Rita we talked about it a lot which is why we need more revenue same totally it is profoundly irritating to me that on page nine this is about the in the in the report from the Legislative Council committee this is on the second legislative recommendation second paragraph says talking about why it takes so long for investigations to happen our understanding is that lack of funding for investigations has been the primary obstacle in past years forty SPC and conducting investigations in a timely manner therefore mandating an investigatory timeline may not be productive yeah I think so I think therefore should be we should have more investigators so that they can actually conform to some reasonable timeline okay so I think we would some of us would be very happy to do what we can to support any requests for additional funding okay my rant is over go ahead so the one pager we have here that has the PPS concept and then the Senate roblins concept so these are all actually in to the ledge council as yes one big omnibus bill or two separate bills with the hope that we would come up with one in the end but leaving an option open to have make tweaks to our own if we need it so the hope is that we would have one bill that addresses all these issues that everyone can get behind and a relating clause that covers them exactly so there'd be one Senate bill potentially in one House bill and then potentially okay and when do we expect when did it go you don't have to get it that we don't have to see anything until December see you sooner than that I don't I don't have a date for you but I know that the ledge council that's assigned to these I just saw her yesterday at another meeting and I know that she's knee-deep in this issue you know I just really appreciate the thoroughness of the potential legislative concept and so hopefully it come it comes out the Legislative Council as we wanted it and we'll make sure that it gets in order if it's not in roblins concept that adds seven additional investigators to the SBC staff and mandated 90-day time line that's a start yeah and I think the seven I was also there were some notes that seven is not may not be the last number they land on right it was a starting point that's what I think a lot of this can be looked at as a starting point there's gonna be conversations in the interim leading up until January by the way do you all remember that session
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does not start in February this year it starts January 22nd just to remind her two weeks early it's always good to remember okay one last question I think how are students hearing about these new processes and particularly also for student student issues as pertains to our new policy around dating and that's something that we have to develop we haven't yet I think some of what they're getting they'll be getting the new educational curriculum that's being rolled out as well so some of that will come there but we're realizing that we need to do that's an Avenue I haven't we have looked at a health and wellness this yes the health and wealth wellness curriculum so I better you on that you on that doubt very recently to all high school students alerting them to resources to report concerns about sexual assault encouraging them to consult with resources inside their building at the district and outside the district so there are a number of actions happening I think there's a lot of work yet to go but that's a recent direct communication to all students from the district or all high school students I should say from the district and this is eventually gonna be rolled down to younger grades as well right so I'm wondering what are general practices and I don't know if this is a question for Sharon Reese or not or a general counsel but when we put somebody on administrative leave and end up referring somebody 2tsp see are they generally on paid leave through the time period by which the end of the TSP sea investigation occurs so we may have done an investigation made a determination so we don't we we generally don't have staff who are on paid leave who get referred and then are in the sort of year-long queue or however long it takes to investigate that we're paying so maybe some overlap but so I've so you're saying then that the likelihood that we would continue to pay somebody who haven't mine paid leave that they would still be on paid leave while there's this long T SPC investigation but that's unlikely helpful if it works the other way around if they were ever able to conclude an investigation before we were that could be helpful and it could reduce our time on paid leave but that doesn't look I mean likely in the near future but it would be helpful it would be it could happen in the near future yes they are but they could come up with information that proves relevant for our process
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today wait for us to be completed just sometimes they start just oh no so wouldn't be what may be a resource issue or it may be we're just gonna wait and see how this turns out so wouldn't exactly us so in those cases where there have been some recently where a PBS staff person resigned and like a year later TSP see came out with a finding they recommend the revoking of the license in our new regime where we don't but there was with the resignation we say what happened but if whatever our finding was you wouldn't have it wouldn't be surprises like that in the future theoretically if we referred somebody they resigned and then comes out later that they revoke the TSP C revoked license we're not gonna have instances where we somebody will have had if it's a favorable resignation or whatever that looks like I mean their resignation would note that it's still being they would still I mean the resignation would still be up would be in play are you looking before well if the resignation was still if they'd resigned now it would say something like we've referred this issue to TSP sea I don't think the resignation would say the resignation agreements tend not to say that they were they we say that we've we follow we follow applicable law so that if that is if that entails a report 2tsp see that it could entail that it could entail a report under hb20 62 for substantiated findings so we keep that language in there saying we will we will we will uphold the law and do those things even if you resign today so one of the things we're asking for in the legislation is requiring Disick's to complete investigations even if the employee has resigned that's something we can just do on our own is that you need legislation to do that that's it so it's that our current practice now so I think I don't know if that addresses what truly what's your question fully answered I think you were wondering if there would be a situation where it could come as a surprise to a subsequent employer that that when they finally get a finding from TSP C which the answer should be no because when they left our employ they had a notation that this had been referred to TSP see and there wasn't a you know sterling recommendation well and we will have completed our own investigation regardless of whether they resigned and the results of that become part had how would those get communicated to another district substantiated conduct findings are sent to other districts other educational agencies so that continues to be a gap and that's and that's one of the things we're asking to address yeah one of the things that we have been talking Courtney we've been meeting in groups looking at ways that we can change as
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well that the at least the reporting mechanism for HB 2062 which now only is a box that says either there's a substantiative finding or not and we're looking at changing that to add have you been in are you currently under investigation have you been under negation so that it provides more information to another agency rather than the did you just have a substantiative finding which was a really high standard right so is that a change that PPS can make independently or is that gonna require state action that's Morse well state action yeah so it will require state action it's a statewide form okay okay right Washington yeah Pennsylvania both have allow more information of investigations that may not have resulted in substantiative findings but still give some some additional anything useful information so we're pursuing that as well right yes okay any other questions thank you for this this is a lot of work and it's I mean these things never happen as quickly as everyone wants but there's a lot of work involved so thank you and I think we've made great progress in a relatively short time okay so now moving on to the business agenda the board will now consider the remainder of its business agenda yeah are there any changes to the business agenda okay so there were some changes to the one that was originally posted but those have now been available since Friday okay so I have a motion from director brunette words do I have a second - it's not okay seconded by Tori to cause damn is there any public comment okay is there any board discussion from the business agenda a question I think staff Soudan is gonna answer it regarding the David Roy consulting contract it's a significant contract for the remainder of the year and it's built on a previous contract and then a another amendment and given just the size of it for services can you explain the percentage of his time that we will be that we anticipate we'll be getting of him and sort of what the sort of back fell purpose of because ordinarily this would be staff work so answering some questions about this contract so part of the justification is to backfill for two positions that are currently open so can you clarify if this is a not-to-exceed contract with an expectation that it might not be used in full if those other positions are filled permanently I don't know exactly the answer to this because it now resides with Stephanie Cameron who is unable to be here tonight but let me give you some background so just as many areas of the agency where we still have open positions that we are trying to fill for example you have contractors that are working in there in your budget office in HR in other areas across the agency while we look forward to bringing full-time benefited people on our staff and we're recruiting actively for all of those positions we still have some open and so what David Roy is doing for us is he's been serving in a backfill capacity while we've had positions open we have a public information officer position that's been posted and recruited once and we are now reopening it again and we have a community engaged Director of
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Community Engagement position open and so that said David doesn't he's not serving as our Pio that's being managed by hairiest Evans you know but he is filling in in a number of capacities one and since he started it's been on sort of the culture change in internal communication employee communication he's been working both for communications and HR he is on the communications team for the visioning process which as you know now includes a greater community engagement component crisis communications as you know we have those often and just communication strategy helping filling out the tea and so the original contract started in February of 2018 and this and then there's been you're looking at a the third amendment to it which takes us through June of 2019 and director Broome Edwards David for the most part just works for us he when we first started he had other clients but he is very interested in working just for PBS and so I think I believe he's our soul we're his soul client so follow up on director Khan's dams question so even if we fail both positions we anticipate with the Asian work and some other things that the likelihood is that he will he could he could stay if we get those positions filled we would definitely assess because those open vacancies are helping to pay for this contract so we don't have resources to have it fully staffed in a contractor so that's a that's a call we would make at that point we are actively recruiting and want those positions filled but at the same time we're very thankful that we have a really talented consultant helping us great and then I guess my last thing is I'm just going to thank Roseanne and other staff we're putting together the contract renewal report for them just as a way for us to be able to clearly look at some of the details of the contract so when we vote on them that we're not going to happy necessarily having to go through and a 20-page contract that was our inaugural launch so if you have feedback you would be happy to tweak it too okay the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed say no any abstentions the business agenda is approved by a vote of 6 to 0 with student representative payslip voting yes okay thank you are there any committee or conference reports I just want to point out something on the business agenda that's kind of a big deal which is the award of the construction project for the Ford Lincoln High School to Hoffman construction so it's a big contract and it's was a good competitive process in terms of really being bringing out some good capable bitter so that's very exciting I have a conference report last week okay last week I attended a conference with the superintendent and some of our senior administrators the association of Latino administrators in superintendent it was their annual education summit and the event is designed for educators across the country to work together that to look at the current educational challenges and to you know come together to discuss strategies particularly those that impact la fenix students in our own superintendent Guerrero's featured as part of Alaska Heartland which was a leadership program there and this was the same cohort that included Reynolds new superintendent and ideas and the new Chancellor of New York City Schools Richard Todd Anza so he's in excellent with an excellent cohort there it was really a great conference pulling together people kind of specifically with lenses that latina students but education in general a lot of great presentations really a broad range of topics so it was and there were some board members there
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but it was a really interesting conference that I came away learning a lot from report on our equity and contracting committee for the district which meets on a quarterly basis so it's a really good opportunity for our internal staff to meet with contractors and prospective contractors about how are our systems working how are we doing relative to our goals and the news is all very good we have policies and aspirational goals regarding contracting with minority women-owned emerging small businesses service disabled veteran businesses and we have increasingly been doing considerably better we've we've met our aspirational goal four of eighteen percent for the last couple of years and it's not just about hitting the target it's about really developing the capacity within the contractor and subcontractor community and it just seems to be a very open process where our our staff seems to be really tweaking our own systems and solicitations based on feedback from the community so all all very positive and also I guess danyoung left but we continue internally to work with our prime contractors about how to enhance their relationships with minority emerging small business subcontractors to really broaden that part of the industry so to me this is really important as we are such a huge economic driver with you know over a billion dollars worth of capital investment in this community right now and we want to be we want to be a good owner and we want to make a lasting contribution to what the workforce is in our community so that's all very good news have a committee report from the board policy and governance committee that met this afternoon we reviewed options for policy development process really appreciate the General Counsel's office putting that together looks like it will allow us to create a sustainable policy development process that's current and functional for our staff we also had a discussion on five policies that we've had a first reading for recisions the five policies are real estate transaction process the public information program teacher transfers non contractual grievance procedures administrative recommendations unemployment of relatives and those are all being recommended for rescission and the committee today we haven't received any public comment on on the committee today is going to be recommending that at the next board meeting on in November after our 21 day comment period that we have a second reading on those we also had a discussion about two other policies that are currently in the public comment period the first being the preservation maintenance and disposition of district real property and we discussed whether there was any public there wasn't any public comment on this but there were there were there was one change added to the draft which is on in this policy under sale of real property 1b and the revised version we're going to add the word district in front of the words needs so the summary sentence will say a summary of factors considered in the development of the recommendation including a market and district needs analysis so we'll add that to the document that is currently under consideration there was committee agreement to add that and then secondly we had a discussion about an amendment that was first read at the last board meeting and it's an it's language actually in one of the policies is being rescinded that now will would be incorporated into the preservation maintenance and disposition of just property and we had a discussion about the amendment last last time we hadn't didn't have a full discussion of the committee and a recommendation of whether we should incorporate it and we had a fuller discussion and we'll be recommending that the board incorporate this amendment into the policy when we have our second reading on it which
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would be also the November 13th meeting the one addition we made we had fair amount of discussion about the amendment and are just given the lack of space and how precious it is that the board having an interest in just knowing if there are leases that are entered into that are below the delegation I'm at threshold that we would get a quarterly report so a sentence we're adding to that amendment that we can add into the posted amendment reads the superintendent will provide a quarterly report to the board regarding leases signed below the delegation threshold and that has been reviewed by the superintendent the general counsel and the deputy superintendent for business and operations so that's an one of the change and then the other policy that's out for public comment that we discussed today is the profession the policy Professional Conduct between staff and students and this is another this is a policy that was recommended that we create it coming out of the white Hurst report we hadn't received we'd received one public comment and then we also had public comment today at the meeting where there was a lengthy or somebody who's had a long career in volunteerism talked about sort of their perspective of the policies and some recommendations on how we might implement it and so and asking some good questions so we likely will have another another committee meeting where this is a central topic we're expecting the public comment period again is till October 23rd we expect additional comments the superintendent has some questions also that he's going to pose so that will be I think that the topic of our meeting in November 3rd November 1st that we have in addition there were three other new policies that we briefly discussed one related to the district performance auditor and some modifications we may make so that'll be the future future committee meetings same thing with the student assignment to neighborhood schools and looking at the policy by which people have a right to our students have a right to continue to attend that school and also the last piece was the field trip policy which was this was another recommendation that came out of the white Hurst report and we had a discussion about it and there was some information that we're looking for as a committee just to get a better sense of what sorts what sorts of trips currently are occurring that our school that our school district sanctions and those that aren't being clear when they're not that the district that they're not district sponsored and then the discussion will be when their school district sponsors what's the district standards and expectations and again this comes out of the white house report and will be linked also to this to the other policy we were discussion the professional conduct between staff and students so that has more that's going to be probably another committee meeting where we have a significant discussion on it so we'll have some I think five or six coming at the next to the next board meeting or the meeting on the 13th and then some other trailing and I want to thank all the staff in particular the staff who put together the real estate property draft policy this is going on been going on for six months so hopefully we're gonna give it up with finish line soon and then also Mary Kane and Liz large for the work around the professional conduct between staff and students so a big lift that's the report so I've been regularly attending the Madison work group for the update of Madison High School so a couple of things there they continue to do community outreach in communications so there was a much bigger turnout at the first PTSA meeting at Madison because they are making a presentation there and they're going to be doing outreach to the feeder school PTAs over the next coming months value engineering continues a pace and with that's one of the main adjustments that they made was
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they were originally going to keep the Jim structure which had issues and found that replacing the gym would deal with those issues and lead to some cost savings it's also led to some engineering challenges because it's on the side of a hill so there's the whole similar to Lincoln where they ran into issues around seismic and soils it's the same kind of challenge of well how do we actually build this and have a stable structure on the side of the hill but they're working working on that and I think it was mentioned that I think at OHSU there's they had similar issues and some of the building that they've had up on the hill there that they're trying to learn from sometime in November we should get some updated cost estimates as they're becoming much more refined so we should be hearing more on that and then just the sort of future planning going on so they're already meeting around you know the transition to Marshall for the two years period there are a planning and that they've already brought on a number of subcontractors to engage them very much earlier than has been the case in the so that should help with the making sure the the subs are online in terms of meeting the deadlines going forward deadlines going forward oh and also working with facilities in terms of maintenance and making sure our maintenance staff are up to speed on the HVAC system all those kind of issues going forward so that there there's a cohesive whole going forward so good stuff great work by staff I just want to give an update on the trip that I am taking next week taking part in the Council of great city schools student Town Hall in Baltimore we had a conference call with all the other students about a week ago just going over the details of the event and I actually learned that I'm gonna be able to meet with some students oh man it's a lot be able to meet with them students that survived the Stoneman Douglas shooting in parkland Florida so they're gonna be taking part in the discussion as long as long are along with me and some of the topics are gonna be covering you know anywhere from climate change to student activism student voice school climates and equity and school districts so I have to say I'm the only student that's representing the West Coast so I'd like I'm really excited about that yeah so I'm really excited to meet these other students especially the students who had to that had to live through this tragedy in Florida but I think we're gonna I'm gonna get a lot of good information from this meeting and bring a lot to it too so really exciting great okay any other reports comments okay the only other committee we were director Moore and I and on the court core team for the vision and we're going into our work session on that so right stay tuned okay the next regular meeting of the board will be held on November 13th and immediately following this meeting we are having a work session on the visioning process so our meeting is

Event 2: PPS Board of Education Work Session, Oct 16,2018

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great well thanks for reserving an additional session firstly Jonathan is gonna continue along with Sonja and Fiona guide the way the evenings yeah events yeah so thank everyone for for entertaining this visioning process on stakeholder engagement so just wanted to recap provide some context and then turn it over to Fiona and Sonya to lead the entire process but I just wanted to recap where we are with this whole visioning process so we have confirmed the dates for gotten the guiding coalitions the three sets of guiding coalition's they should be on your calendars I sent a calendar invite so those are their the only thing that's missing is the time is my shift by an hour too so I just wanted to put kind of a general time frame in there but maybe those are on your calendar as well as the time frame for when we expect to do community engagement so those should be on your calendar as well we are actively working on the guiding coalition narrowing down the list that you all have seen and so obviously that's going through a couple versions of iteration before I get to presented to the board for final approval and and then we're able to send out those invitations so again well you'll hear more from from us in a few days on where we are with that narrowing down the list so so there's so that those are the two main areas and the third thing which is the the thing that we're talking about today is stakeholder engagement particularly you know the the broader community outside of the the guiding coalition and so we're going to go through a series of conversations and activities to get your best thinking about how we best do stakeholder engagement we've had the opportunity to meet with many in the community around what they they have thought you know works as an this after this moment this this afternoon we had a chance to meet with folks over at the Portland Bureau of Transportation who done really incredible work around community engagement and ensuring that all voices are really at the table both from you know kids to - to senior citizens and everything in between different languages and so it was really interesting to learn a lot about what their they've done are especially around safe routes to school and so again we're getting a sense of some of the things that have worked and some of the things that we need to watch out for especially as we engage our most underserved communities and ensure that our students are front and center in many of the conversations so again we've been doing some homework but really want to hear from you all as board members and as senior leaders as well since this is probably one of the few opportunities we get to be with all of you in the same room around you know stakeholder engagement so with that I'll turn it over to Fiona and Sonya to lead us through some of the process all right so what we're gonna start with tonight is actually we're gonna start with a question for each of you table we'd love to just hear from you what is your best experience of a community engagement process and that could be one that you've taken part in or one that you'd witnessed in some other way and it may be something that was completely successful and you can tell us about that or it may be something that wasn't ultimately successful but had a piece in it that was really really good so I want you to think about that just for a moment and tell us what the process was who was involved and what was it that you had identified as being something that work particularly well about that process and why okay so what it was about who was involved what worked particularly well and why while you're
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thinking about that I'm just going to do it so I actually posted something like a baby picture so now all right so now you all on this side of the table that you will have to turn around every time you hear that okay so so just sort of briefly I'd like to hear from from you about this these best experiences you've had of community engagement and I think I think we'll just we'll just go around the table and maybe somebody would like to volunteer to start thank mrs. that typically have been disenfranchised I think it's a good process when they're heard as well and somehow there's a way to capture their thoughts and feelings versus as usual suspects is there a particular example that you sort of been through or heard about a witness that makes you think that they do I'm thinking of a community process where I merged schools and I heard from family members that typically wouldn't show up but at the same time wanted to voice their support for improving outcomes for their kids yeah yeah thank you all right yeah I'd have to say I think when the community is leading it I think when the community has more power to leave the discussion or the event that's going on I think that gives them more of an opportunity to speak to really on what they really care about in the matters that their bidders that they're being discussed so okay so sound a little bit more about that leading process so what do you what are you thinking about well I think that it's like the space is like open to community members to talk about what they want to talk about you know there can be some like guiding questions or maybe the event has a specific specific scene but I think when there's less pressure and like for the people who are like a moderating it or the entity that's like you know and get in control of it I think when they when they take a step back and let the community take have more time to give them information I think that's really important thank you so I'm gonna kind of add on to what our superintendent shared when you have families who you haven't typically heard four from and you create a process where they get to come again and again we when I have that opportunity to be in that space they become more comfortable participating but also those who are facilitating in holding a space learn more about how what makes it work for them and I would add that one of the things that makes that work that I've seen as a consistent theme is personally calling people like getting an invitation for someone who knows them like the principal of the school or a teacher and maybe even coming with them the first time was particularly successful Morrigan and instead of having the consult it was an information session and to get feedback on the bond and instead of having the consultants run the meeting they turned it over to a Pato and they got a really big turnout and I mean they just did little things like they had food that the community would want to eat and I was surprised at how interact if they weren't it just worked really well people really hope we just let them let apana do it the way they knew similarly so in other states had a lot of success
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with second language parents when we would do things like I mean particularly with the political climate now make sure that the activities was not on school property it was actually some community with space where they don't say there was also access to call the transportation child care needed to be provided food was always an issue so just making it really inclusive and comfortable for the family there's a lot of our you know child care certainly issues and people being authentically kind of co-leaders from the community obviously language is an issue but I mean I think the space just the fact that even though it may be school related was in a safe place to the community we also had notices in the community stores you know the businesses that the community frequents yeah um I think probably the process that came up with the 2012 bond package was it perfect way better than anything else and I think what made it work was that it was reminding mm-hmm it was to the extent that PBS backed off and let it actually I mean I think it actually produced the conventional wisdom for the district was that you can't possibly go out one year after the voters just rejected it and in the community we said yes you can if you have a better package yeah yeah one thing I was thinking about is how important it is not to have preconceived ideas and I was thinking about a process I was a part of with my former employer where they had gone through a community needs assessment about developing a new program that was gonna focus on services for people coming out of incarceration so all that kind of programmatic work had been done but then when we got the community together so people who had just been released or even people who were about to be released there was no preconceived ideas about okay we're gonna have this reentry transition Center what services are we going to provide and a lot of the a lot of what came out of that were you know so much more elemental than people had thought of like you can't do anything until some I can't do anything until somebody helps me get a driver's license and that's not easy if you don't have any identification that you know so things like that so just you know opening up a process with no preconceived ideas is what I really came away from that with we're saying is that sort of keeping a very open frame even if we have some specific things that are questions or in mind or I'm I just want to loop in laser crank at the back here so you thought you were gonna get a pass probably given the nature efficient in a crisis situation being agile process of sticks out to me last year at Baltimore we were revising our discipline policy it was very very contentious because we dealing with spikes and suspensions expulsions and community was demanding that something needed to be done so the process was actually very very very smooth what we did was we would concentrate these town hall meetings and each of the respective regions in Baltimore and we would have a town hall meeting of the morning to allow parents to have that flexibility in the mornings and really to give the evening and so we are having multiple time slots for folks to come and be able to be a part of that process but then we just didn't stop there we had it again in another area within the same region to allow another opportunity to post ahead of that that weren't able to participate something to also work really well was that we had we tried to to overpopulate with central office staff and every meeting was only wanted to do was be very intimate with all the folks that were in attendance we went to
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small groups they drove that they drove the discussions they were driving the policy but we were there to help answer questions and it was like 1:00 to 5:00 to 1:00 to 4:00 when we would break up and it worked really well he's it wasn't just from one person in the whole forum we had a lot of central office and school-based support that was in attendance to be able to reduce you know the to reduce the number of personnel different appearance makes any sense which they felt that was really neat that they have their own concentrated space while working on their plans and we were there to help answer any questions that they had without driving the conversation so that was a real City process they appreciated that so a lot of things have already been said I've engaged a lot of community organizing and community engagement like just things I would say I would add is I've seen it be successful when people have an opportunity to get to know each other so it's not just an anonymous exercise that you just happened to be at the same table it's not to somebody but really you're understanding what's motivating for them to be engaged and what's driving them so the more personal understanding right before they're personally another thing is you know skilled facilitation versus speaking at people when the first part of the exercise is agreeing on what you have in common so then you're not arguing I mean so that's settled like while you're there what are you trying to accomplish and something that I've seen is when you figure out what people's unique talents are that you don't know like whether they can sing or you know like they're free you know whatever people's skills are that they bring to the table have how they can like come and show up in their best self or the thing that they can contribute to most to the group and just that what power that brings to the larger actions all right so kind of balance there between what are the things that people share and getting that way and then what are the things that make people uniquely yeah so if you have a whole group of people like you're bound to have all sets of skills and talents and expertise and so figuring out like having a skilled facilitator or engagement will bring that out on the group versus you just have like the five people who are good at that actually do the whole exercise and plan because they have people who do that any other you know twenty five people just sort of sitting back and observing well there's been a couple of community engagement processes that I have thought have been that have gone really well one of them was where we were looking at building a new elementary school and so what we did is we actually had the architects go in and present to the students and then we had different types of equipment and furniture and and different designs that the students could look at and the students actually provided us feedback on different types of learning environments that were best suited for them and things that they would recommend and then another process where then we brought a group of students with us in one of our strategic planning processes is we allowed people to provide input in the bad ways that they knew how so there were different beautiful pictures on the wall for students or different adults especially like adults with disabilities they were able to draw some pictures of things that would be more meaning for them or something that would draw them to the school and then we also had parents participate in that and it was really nice because it wasn't as much a list of things as it was visual and it really we really connected more of their senses to it you know like what would it smell like what would it feel like what we do here and so I thought that that was a really great strategy to include and the kids were amazing because I mean with the exception of them wanting a slide from the second floor to the first floor we all that was the risk manager was not too strong with
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it but but other than that they were right on it was a couple of things in my experience at PBS we used to do a parent Leadership Conference every year and the first year we did it it was all white and middle and upper-class and the second year wasn't much different but by the third year we had figured out our contacts and it became the most diverse parent gathering easily I think the last one we did forty five percent of the parents in attendance were not native English speakers so it was incredibly diverse and had great workshops and secondly we did a parent involvement assessment so we had parents creating a survey tool that was probably too long but we still got 1,200 online responses and some in-person written responses as well and we also did at least 20 focus groups and all the major languages and the speak and the tag ACK and our different advisory groups engaged in that and we were at 12 different schools mostly title one but we had a little bit of a mix of non-tidal in schools as well so we we got a really good diverse mix and again more commonalities than not across the board in terms of how parents felt about how welcome develop their schools what kind of interaction they had with teachers around what can I do to help my my students succeed how was communication those kids Thanks was there a particular you mentioned the leadership group by the third year you were getting a much more diverse vision parents was there a particular strategy that you developed to make sure that it was just doing more contact ahead of time in the communities and finding people who could really do turnout so we found it PBS used to have family outreach coordinators so you know one of them could would would go around with with a van and make sure we had three van loads of Somali parents there so we we found who would bring migrant parents so it was it was finding those contacts building those relationships son schools were often a better way to connect with parents then the principal or the PTA so yeah it was just kind of learning what what worked and keeping on building those relationships and when we did focus groups it was food child care gift certificates to admire something like yeah those kind of things and then and then they County prompts but stand back yeah I think similar things that have been said I think back to when the dual language immersion department when I worked in that two department we were changing our opening a new magnet immersion program and the idea was to reach out to our native families to give their students access to that program we knew they were in the system but we knew they weren't accessing them so we did the usual outreach and did not hear from those families and so instead we just contacted the people who work for the families and asked them what do we do instead of just trying to prescribe our usual we just asked and we and we're led to reach out there was a church in the area that does a lot of work along that area of the town and they told us where to have the meetings you know which is off-site and the usual childcare and food and but our reach was through postcards along 82nd Avenue the Jade corridor just you know stocking stores things like that I mean it was a completely different experience at that point we just our next meeting was almost all native Chinese speakers that they would not have shut up a lot of the people have said already about providing childcare and I've seen it work where for example metro and they actually a community-based organization contract engaged and it's going to bring two other people and they also gonna stipend
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that's similar to what people have said so I was thinking of it trying to engage was immunity but it was employees that were pretty low morale and this were child care decades ago and I remember to talk to them and they didn't want to be there and just being able to acknowledge their what their life was like with their troubles were and I just went in and said you know thank you so much and I just thank you and you could tell they all just they were so appreciative to be in college their what they've been through so if that could be translated to really here and acknowledge what we go going I've been through many community processes and going into the neighborhoods were the people that you want to speak to are instead of having them come to you but really going out the neighborhood and then presence we did some budget meetings that we ran them in Spanish and we worked with a bilingual liaison and in the school to tell the parents to come because if we told them it was they wouldn't come but if they're persons they're used to working with on a regular basis would tell them that we wanted to hear from them and hear their voices then they would come and again we didn't job care sure also with just watching the reaction of the board and budget committee members that didn't speak Spanish and we ran the meeting and they had a little ear from ear ear but then to listen to the translation and they realized how hard it is to participate in another language so it was also a learning experience for them about the delay factor and so when you expect people to participate if they have the delay factor they can't really participate so I was a youth organizer for a few years and so we did a lot of work obviously organizing young people but it was around changing policies and whatnot at the city level so this intergenerational partnership between young people and and I guess adults and we're really creating an equal partnership was was really important you know I think what one of the biggest lessons learned in that process was you know young people are not dependent on the past right because they're always kind of thinking about the future and and what's next and what's bigger and and and it's really hard for for adults to convince them of one thing right like you know we've always done it this way and they're like and what you know and so I can't write exactly and so so you know so having young people at the table you know really as equal partners and and leading the conversation was really important to you know to shape to shape the city's strategic plan and a lot of policies and I think it was the conversation would have been different if it just been adults the you know one are always in the meetings and two are always kind of involved in the process anyways yeah so the students were the young people were the ones actually doing invitations leading the efforts first to speak you know facilitating conversations I think what was interesting for all of us was for as adults right was like how do you you know release some of that power that you have whether it's perceived power because you're older means you're wiser and so I think it was a challenge for a lot of people and and there were contentious company moments but I think overall it was you know young people really owning though their own story and their own there and in owning that they're the future is their present right and and what does that look like and so especially when you were convincing elected officials about that right because they were the elected officials frankly were concerned about two years from now and what gets them elected and you young people didn't care about that they cared about how do they make how do they make sure that their community is thriving how do their parents and family members get out of intergenerational poverty and so I think a lot of it you know it was really fascinating because a lot of times the young people were really passionate to the point where you know the shut down meetings and they did a lot of those things but it came from a
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point where it was a lot of frustration and the adults in the room right wanting to keep status quo and and whatnot so I think young people really be playing a very pivotal you know forward-thinking role and and prominent role is what's gonna make I think the difference between you know in any you know engagement any community engagement but obviously for a school system you know even more important I guess when I echo a lot of the comments that were already um I guess what I think about engagement I think not only about sort of getting people to the table but what the entire experience while they're at the table and so two things come to mind I think that where I've seen a lot of success is when processes are really mindful of the different learning and communication sort of like how people take in information how they process information and provides a lot of opportunities for movement for change just sort of just thinking about like how adults and other and young people learn and taken information and time of day and sort of thinking about that experience I think the other thing is you know I'm pretty cognizant that sort of like in-group out-group and sort of how it's really important to have facilitation that helps people not only sort of tolerate different sort of identify difference but really can help groups of people move through difference in sort of really respect and understand the different perspectives and to give time and space front towards those conversations to happen but also to really think thoughtfully about the experience about how do you how do you sort of incorporate the different perspectives and really help sort of the group come to really respect those differences and they may not be able to come to agreement or build absolute consensus but that there's that there's like average respect and really robust discussion in a way that makes people feel really really good about their contribution to the process well I would say that I've seen I mean so most recently I would say that my experience with the coalitions of communities of color I think that they work really well there's like a there's a annual convenien of their leadership programs it has seven cultural communities and sort of varying levels of leadership very young people folks are more seasoned and sort of like a lot of times they'll have sessions where they're coming to agreement about like a legislative agenda or sort of an advocacy priorities and that's where I think that because and Julia mentioned this earlier about how important it is to have that sort of time to like build respect and relationship I've seen that work really well so that that sort of pre work that you do with groups does where you say like hi my name is Danny and like you know what's your favorite whatever and you know that's really interesting like that sort of relationship time I've seen pay really big dividends when it's like no that's the worst restaurant to go to like this is the best restaurant you know and to be able to kind of have that conversation and disagree but with a lot of respect well a lot of my experience has resided inside of the instructional core for many years now and so it's about teaching and learning developing adult capacity-building agency etc and so the most powerful and most valid experiences for me have been where the discourse is not defined by or dead by the hierarchy but by the expertise in the space and so it's about facilitating it so that it allows for that expertise to rise and it not become dependent on those with positional authority to define what that should look like but those who have the knowledge and experience to actually articulate what that
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my best honestly I'm not sure a lot of people working to it well I've been a few different processes and I'll make this short but some of the things that have stuck out to me is most valuable is when you set the standard for the space so for example in one of the sessions that I've been in the facilitators made sure that when anyone got a chance to speak they used I statements instead of over generalizing or speaking for other groups of people because frankly no one perspective represents the whole and the other thing is creating spaces for people to process because there's going to be a lot of information that's that we're absorbing and so being able to unpack that great thank you so thank you all for sharing those experiences of the things that have worked really well I know it's often tempting to go to the places where it hasn't worked really well but we wanted to keep you at this point into the things that worked well and there's some really obviously some clear themes across the things that everybody has shared as well as some really great suggestions Sonya is there anything that you wanted to I just waited drinking is there anything that you wanted that reflect on or after we want to now start thinking about just mapping some stakeholder groups so sort of getting everything out on a piece of paper who is in when we say community is that it's where that we use a lot that we want to get into well who are we talking about a water or they're sort of the different flavors of different colors that we are talking about in under this word community so we have started a very very brief list over here and it's kind of coded so in the green and sort of teal color scheme with students so we've broken out a couple of we have a couple of events here so we know that Nick has a Student Leadership Conference coming up so we just would do the flag that so this is going to be a combination of groups that we know we want to reach out to using some of the strategies that were shared here we're groups want to make sure we reach out to so that we don't miss people but also maybe events that are coming up that we might want to tap into as well so we've got a couple of leadership events up here as well and then we have community groups so this is probably going to be one of our biggest areas in the orange over here some of them up here by name for the CBO's internal if you guess in the yellow so people who are doing the work but not in the schools and then educators and school staff so that's everybody on the school sites doing the work to support students every day and then parents and Families down here in the pink and other learning organizations who just have the placeholder there but that would be people like the formal ones like museums zoos science museums whatever but there might be other kinds of learning organizations that you know of in the community that you would think we should reach out to these people we should make sure that they know there's a meeting coming up cause we really want them to sort of either to come along themselves or to make sure that their network of people's know about this and they can come so what I'm going to suggest you to you can you should read some of those smaller ones that love just physicals examples yes so other parents and families so we have some of the language related families you've got the Panthers Somali speaking family or the Russian speaking families but we've also got some of those parent advisory groups like decoding dyslexia the Head Start advisory committees we've put them with the parents and Families groups you may feel they should do somewhere else so that's where they'll right now and then we've got my a play works urban league groups like that so what I'd like you to do is just come up and have a look at these and then add so we're just going to take a little bit of time just to add things so you Pacific groups that are up there get on here that's the key otherwise we'll get very confused so there's everybody should have a sharpie
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look at your calendar Oh mine's worse mission over a man the one who looked like election sometimes I know it's something that's like that this is your opportunity [Music]
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we started 45 or 745 we need to be done at 9:25 [Music] all right two more experiments on this area this might get rid of confusing and messy but what we'd like you to do you look at this names of potential community stakeholders radhaji to identify some that seem like really natural partners or particular kinds of allies to one another and take a shot to draw y-tan together it was sticking them together why are we doing this so we did a partly because we want to see our groups that we might want to bring together to do a new thing that we bring them together more in certain theories but mine is almost like a gateway to another [Music] [Music] [Music] one last instruction for the posted area using any kind of dot on the table
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recently got any of the post-its that represent your group that we have traditionally it has traditionally kind of uncertainty is there any method to the dots today tell me [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do more than yeah Oh board members
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I don't wish to go there's a photographer [Music] to make about either names or groups that were added or the distribution of the does take us six years other groups that either engage us actually I think there's a number of other dots that could go up there if we're like men groups that we haven't engaged in some kind of input process there's I think there's I think there's there's a number of other groups out there that deserve a doc but we've never really engaged in whatever process okay so it's interesting yeah to that point about why they're dots kind of in the middle or it feels like there's dots with the individuals versus the institutions right and so so as I think a lot of us are thinking a lot about that person that needs to be in the room versus that organization that needs to be because that's the that's the common ingredient typically for inauthentic or unsuccessful community engagement which is just like boom boom boom here's five stakeholder groups and you're done I'm
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thinking when you asked your question earlier and now this of a certain experience we had gathered we had just been awarded a federal Promise Neighborhood grant thirty five million two hundred people showed up to the first meeting like it's convenient for me and a lot of the conversation started to focus on sort of what the objective and the guiding principles were like well and being very student focused like what were the what were these what were the efforts of the strategies evidence space that we're gonna promote improved outcomes for kids health education housing whatever it was and so and then the conversations would lead over a series of meetings over and who could provide that right so the meetings quickly went from 200 100 250 220 I got implemented really successfully right but because people realize that they weren't really gonna be able to have that kind of an impact they just were in it for the initially but so who gets sort of a voice and an input and stating sort of what the game plan is going to be I think so because it made them accountable to really saying what it is that they could contribute to the effort versus just having it be a given yeah so yeah probably I mean I can come to speak to it John Jonathan was saying like in the middle I think especially when I was putting some of the post-it notes up and the stickers I think we all especially with students and parents and families I think we all when we're putting the specific ones up we have like for lack of a better term the raw image of someone we know or someone we've heard of it as part of those groups or as dealt with something should I say so I think those are I mean the groups are really important to all of us and kind of putting that corporations and large organizations aside I mean we all have those individuals that we know are part of those no I guess I did it's just thinking about that I didn't necessarily think of individuals but for communities and those language communities but it's interesting that there's the most dots around well what's back fact is a parent Coalition for so it's interesting that a lot of the groups and organizations up there tend to be sort of advocacy oriented community organizing and we're talking about a visioning process and preparing students for something we're not quite here what that's going to look like I don't know if we've captured well who are those industry leaders you know who are those folks in this region that we would be preparing kids for is it important as those people well we should be preparing students for I'm just wondering yeah well higher ed we have higher ed but not like employers because they're visioning across the head lot further along than ours or the Oregon Software Association yeah biotech Association future right who are those who are those industry leaders to say here's where we see our industry going the kind of skills and dispositions we're gonna need from your graduates especially all the ones that are going outside or into higher we don't have a specific area that's like businesses we do generally in our stakeholder lists in the community section there's a number of references the distance burglars there's always call it out because rank it out yeah I do like that and what industries I was just reflecting on because I've been a part of planning so many of these both around visioning and for other purposes and it just just making me think about the different times we might do outreach
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because my experience in Oregon especially when we've lost so much in our public schools is over and over again people just restate what we've lost versus inventing it new so it seems like there might be part times in this process when we really want to hear even outside of education because sometimes I mean frankly higher ed and the way teachers are getting prepared in some places is not super visionary right we're always having to now educate that once we hire them and so like how do we get out there far enough are not going to be the same people that we have all the red dots on tonight they're gonna tell us what they need right now because they don't have it for the most part that's been my experience so it seems like there has to be like different parts to this process because we want to hear those voices do but when you're developing a vision that's for many years into the future you have to have those people that are everyday looking out there which aren't even us right because it's possibly true that the people with results on right now might have a lot of lead around what is needed right now to share about that and there might be another group of people who are thinking about the future every day at the beginning there might be something of a delta between those two groups but ideally as time goes on actually interesting connection okay there they go so one thing I just wanted to notice as well is that obviously this is the perceptions of the spirit tonight the bracelet for the curl this step up step up and sometimes it's really helpful just to make a visual of what we're thinking and then to look at it and there's somebody said earlier it's kind of interesting to stand back then and see the old look students and parents and families these are the people that we feel we're not we're not connecting with enough so that's you know that's something we can sort of plan for right we can sort of taking some of the wisdom from earlier we can start thinking about how do we remedy that but I think this is also going to be you know we want to do some several rounds of community meetings starting in there in the new year so this is not the only time for us to have this conversation so I think will be good too so like this to mom this over a little bit and then just keep sort of thinking about this group and how what are the different ways we want to reach out to different groups of people some will be in the guiding coalition these different kinds of community meetings we want to talk a little bit later about what those might look like just a very high level in the stage but I was wanting to sort of flag that let's keep thinking about this piece now I'm just gonna say did we fail and the exercise about deriving the connecting line there are some I think was more likely that people just a big exercise we want to talk about now is start to think about the meetings themselves again at the very high level so if one of these community meetings are if they have been really successful what have they achieved and what differences that made for PPS so if we are sort of having this conversation in April or May we've done several rounds of community meetings they've gone very very well what have they achieved and what
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differences that made for PBS so that's kind of a question tomorrow Julie was saying that what we've been able to focus on yeah an understanding I know this industry human nature yeah great yeah been a really diverse yep I've been a really diverse group of individuals are connected in a longer-term way around our common like where we going right okay so the sense that diverse groups have come together and they're really still engaged and involved right it wasn't just process and I like the people I worked with and I want and along those same lines I would say that people leave feeling like their contribution will make a difference yeah yeah so it's not an event it's an experience I gotta say new building which I know may be a little too much but it's an experience moving the building and people feel yeah there was worthwhile by the time they put into it the conversations they had they can see something come out of it record correctly remember weeks I mean I think if at the end of this process diverse stakeholders feel ownership on the end in the end product that is successful I think if the community at large whether its elected civic community parents students etc etc if they feel like we are responsible for the direction of the district or we are for the successes of the district or for the realization of this vision I think that success right where we all see each other as owners of the our own of our collective destiny I think is really important yeah so thinking about the idea of visionary ideas it would be wonderful if the ideas were really thinking about how learning could be different so it's not just the outcomes but how that learning all along the way could look really different to serve kids better more personalized I don't know what it is and and I think that part of that is also in healthy living social-emotional citizenship contribution and that that also could come from a diverse group so I know even I tend to kind of stereotype ok the ones with dots are the ones who are struggling maybe that doesn't mean there are people who have vision right so I don't know if there's a way to get such a diverse group that the things that both of you just described would happen and that it's a bigger group so that when we say the collective we own that vision that it really is rooted in this whole community so that it's not dependent on the individuals for example that they're here or on the board or whatever right now I think what's interesting one interesting about what you're saying is that it's not about the institution it's about the ongoing activities within it's not about okay here's your just a document that's a strategic plan that is going to set a course but really how is the experience going to be different for kids every day and for teachers and for families I think it's important to have a process where T's will acknowledge differences of opinion so like the last step might be okay what are the areas of agreement you heard what are the areas of differences I think you know one of the definitely one of the design principles we'll be working with with you is to sort of toggle between the big picture pieces and the specifics so and when we think about the stakeholder groups a couple of you mentioned this earlier is like some ways we think a lot
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about the group's the advocacy groups but we also start thinking and somebody referenced this earlier you start thinking now about the specifics of the people so what will it mean for a nun house students to graduate from PPS in ten years time and to have had a fantastic experience and to feel set up for life sort of then take that back to the big picture and say well what does that mean for a whole range of young people and the adults who support any other comments about this piece or any other reflections so I think what we want to do now is just think one last little thing about thinking about how the meetings you know at a high-level sense might look and feel so if we want to think about sort of attributes or qualities that those meetings might have some of them may think came out earlier what we wanted to make sure they feel very welcoming to people and there's different strategies to make sure that that is true but what other kinds of attributes and qualities do you think the community meetings already need to have and we can just kind of throw out but speak loudly and not over each other so that's when you can hear what you think well I think we talked about like so I've heard a lot about childcare in an evening childcare and yeah and we've talked about and we've heard a lot from folks about instead of having childcare what would it look like to engage those students right if they're there whether they're 5 years old or 15 years old or 8 to whatever whatever the age that they're actively participating and not just sitting there and doing anything there's that's one I think - the other thing that I've heard around that idea is this this you know whoever the the childcare provider is has to be conscious about the diversity of our students whether it's you know special needs or etc really being thoughtful about who's in that room so it's not just you know a teenager an intern or someone who hasn't that who doesn't have that experience to to be with the student for X number of student of ours right so we have to be really thoughtful as a system about who we contract for for that service again and engage them engage the students in an authentic process I've been wondering like we talked about industry leaders how do we engage them when they might not be motivated to come to something here so we talked about four families going to churches or the neighborhood but where is that for industry leaders I don't know the answer to that but I was thinking today I was just different I know I mean we're meeting with submit their places of work yes that's where they're at right which is probably not a meeting that looks like a community engagement meaning yeah it might be almost how we lobby legislators went right when there's something really important like we'll make a point to be in places where we know they're gonna be or make those one-on-one appointments right and take somebody who really knows how to speak to them just like our families who we might not be able to speak to or people who speak a different language right Thank You Bailey so I just found the perspective of someone who's been working around economic development workforce development for 25 years now this sort of the industry leader thing let me tell you the system is built to bend over backwards to try to do things for them and it'd be nice to have it more of a two-way street so as opposed to what do we do to cater to your needs it's how do we engage you as quickly citizens so I think I think the best way to engage them is like frankly we have a lot of industry leaders who are parents PBS and I think they have something vested in TPS being successful and it's your point they're kind of part of them engaging is they want a federal system their lungs they have some connection other than just yeah we're talking about that today but the list of individuals and you know a
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lot of people check three or four boxes which is helpful I think the other thing if these meanings is really skilled facilitation because we want that balance between structure and kind of letting go and seeing what this goes to get those something we might not have thought it thought of as as a prompter as an issue and maybe we have student co-facilitators so we have students engagement in that part of the process as well something to do some I think there should be a lot of training facilitation alright there are any other attributes or qualities of those things that you filmed but we haven't mentioned already that would be MP wanna sorta make sure it gets thrown into there I mean I think one thing that was set up a last supporting work session what folks appreciated about the guiding coalition was a hands on communicate like very active participation so as we translate the code cutting coalition into the community sessions to think about how we do series of of engaging processes so it doesn't become everybody gets three minutes to speak and that's it you know like what's this iterative process there is loudly like two or three hours that were there right so again and that's why talk to the pbot folks they talked a lot about right so they did session you know like sessions within within our nation stations think you can stations within the the room and every station had a different activity and so whether folks took five minutes to do it or 20 minutes to do it they were very much a part of that process and then again thinking about how you process how you engage I mean it really helped differentiate a lot of the kind of how folks were engaging yeah and they had something interesting so that gamification I hear they also do the communication right so thinking about how do we came a fire maybe some of this is at like retail the round tables in the cafeteria you know the big cavernous cafeteria it's just so like just overwhelming and I think really exclusionary cuz like some people totally get into that and they're over again the rest of people are like oh my god this is like not what I signed up for and they're looking like to get the chair next to the exit so somehow like how the room is set up and I think stations is one piece but it's not all sitting I think like getting people standing up and it also gives people an opportunity to stand and talk to the person next to him there was one of our fall exercises around I forget it was at Madison where we but there's an opportunity for people to stand and talk to people that they wouldn't normally do and it just led to different conversations that you're at a table stuck there yeah yeah so it seems like it was like connects to what Brenda was saying earlier but using all those multiple sensory you know sort of thinking about that the design of the session and giving people time to get to know one another as people and some space for serendipity for the things that we can't anticipate I think I think if I'm brought it up earlier is that balance between the airing of the grievances which many and are valid can you just teach my kids to read and how to honor that and sick you guys talked about creating exercises that pop you out of current reality to think about the future without denying yeah yeah we won't be able to feel that connection right but they don't have to make a trade-off between a blue sky future and a present that doesn't really go to fix or put both into the same conversation somehow I get the beginning of them incorporates student voice on the first day of school was amazing the governor went to Madison and she had all the new partners talking to her and then there was these two co-presidents Madison the student body and the
01h 25m 00s
reporter started talking to them and oh my god it was so inspiring and just it's like yeah this is I mean it wasn't they weren't working out any talking points so somehow bringing student voice into it so people are they're like realizing like this is what we're here for yeah person is you know starting with a the rules the facilitation and you know Google bathrooms are and stuff I mean we're getting people like oh yeah this is excited about yeah and a lot of times especially if we're running around portrait of a graduate I mean maybe it's a graduate or someone who didn't graduate or someone who got what he or she needed or someone who didn't get what he or she needed yeah yeah that was pretty inspiring for tonight experience so if we want whole student participation some students aren't going to be able to come and participate in the ways that we think are conventional and so if we can give some of our teachers a prompt then the teachers could help the student create something or they could record it on their dinah boxes or they could do it Peck's communication system work something like that but they're gonna need more time even to be able to plan that out and to really have some thoughts around that and to be able to get it out into a way that we would be able to understand it and hear it you know so so that would be a nice way to have additional participation or the can we can we set up some time separately to kind of unpack that a little bit more I think really fascinating for us to all [Music] [Music] the longer it takes yes yeah a really good point when we talked a little bit today about and I guess it's not up there as a should be up there probably on its own sticky of people who have opted out of Isis yeah so those kids who never come to our and why so the kids whose families made different choices yeah yeah people to run 504 plans due to anxiety and other issues that are preventing them so I think I want to just come back and reiterate the importance the point you made about making sure that we connect that sense of I think one of the quotes that maybe we shed in the new session a couple members yes it was one of the inventors of the three horizons exercise that we did and he sort of talked about how we're all living somebody's plan future like what we're living right now is a future that somebody's sort of thought through so let's be very intentional about that somebody messed up the planning process yes okay so we have and I think one of the last things we want to sort of totally be about tonight is just to think about how we can we engage lose multiple different kinds of stakeholders some of whom maybe have been historically underserved in a variety of ways some who typically played with pts regularly and what's the kind of balance of we figure there's probably some balance of some big meetings that we can maybe get lots of different people to come to and then some sort of targeted meetings that might be because communities won't come to a big meeting or because they're you know but work all day and we have to figure out how to get
01h 30m 00s
into them so when you think about that so I think this with thinking probably a combination of thing meetings and targeted meetings it seems like the right thing to do because the advantage of the big meetings I think which is always fun is to sort of put diverse groups of people together and see what yeah there's always some kind of interesting magic that happens and you get different people working together and give them space to do that so I don't think we want to sort of do specific meetings with every possible group you can think of we want to have some mixing but we know we need to do some targeted groups so if you think about that what feels like the right balance for you in terms of some some big meetings around the city and who you might think might come along to those and who are the groups that you think that will do more than this but if we could only do three targeted meetings who would they be with that's the ones with the most dogs would be the targeted definitely what happened do you think that the ones with the most dogs definitely wouldn't come and that's why they've been or is it because the invitation hasn't been the right invitation but that might be good sort of first step to think about the targeted meetings [Music] yeah while being sensitive right yeah so finding those trusted partners that different groups of parents might come to organization well yeah okay so like we didn't call out african-american famous and I would put it big [Music] so african-american families get a you're putting that up now sexy example kind of different than Somali you know [Music] there's a lot onion if we're gonna get that granular we can expand which other so are you asking us for we've been successful in convening some of these more underserved communities how would you broker that like what without setting look like that I guess well I'm sort of trying to get a sense of is what do you feel is the right balance between having some big like is it for big meetings and was like all it targeted pointing sir do we do we do some big meetings and see who shows up and who's missing what do we know already then there's some groups who are not going to come there so we make sure that we have a plan to reach out to those groups [Music] [Music] so there's a specific russian-speaking the families meeting and a specific the advantage of that is then that the meeting can actually be run in the language rather than people having to do like the delay piece that was mentioned earlier 40mm yeah so earlier today there was some discussion of that so there was some discussion about organizing big tent meetings in different ways because I frankly think that the way we've done things as it really doesn't work for anybody okay it's you know its usual suspects up there doing it three minutes we all know what - we all know what everybody's going to say because we've all been there before so I think it would be if we can have some imagination around how to organize the big meetings in a way that's gonna leverage the
01h 35m 00s
diversity in the except there is diversity and maybe even encourage more mm-hmm I think it would be yeah we've also had a big tent meetings that were more small group oriented with reasonably well facilitated with good props and then act ethically to report out that were free inclusive the 2012 on that in talk to him that's the way the average was structured the diversity of turnout isn't there yep but it was people weren't Gators yeah those who were there were more engaged but people but any of you guys yeah was talking about things the could station yeah so so I know someone brought up stations we were thinking more these sort of stations to Madison so if we had six different experiences and let's say it's a half dozen different experiences in ways and manners in fire that's for community members to give feedback based on activities prompts however the liver cell from the university standpoint this parts preferences or how people like to feedback giving that feedback they could choose Facebook and then we've spilled out translation services if someone is more than side of the scale where they can't talk about they can go to all six but if they are really on talked about groups are talking whatever and we will have something set up so it's it's a it's a big numbers game with these big tendons we know we're gonna work really hard on the flocking in the mainly and bite in the way we try to engage communities we try to work with a lot of the community-based organizations and communities of faith and others not just to chase these groups to finish gaps if they don't show up but to try to appeal to them and if we can just give some sort of iterative but look you know we do forward to - to Jonathan and Sonya and Fiona or you know what that design exactly that looks like but Reid aesthetic on them in a big picture we're definitely talking about and I would say just given our conversation again with some of the folks like PIPA you know they were very intentional about how they out did outreach to a variety a diverse group of parent groups and parents and students etc they did everything from individual news like in newsletters that went into each of the kids backpacks to you know invitations from the teachers for the trip I mean there was an array of things that they did they use social media they went door knocking I mean there's a number of things that I think as we think about this process again how do we do the big tent kind of events and get folks who are historically don't commit those those type of meetings and then after we've exhausted all of opportunities to engage folks at those meetings what would it look like to do these smaller group sessions you know because of that is the only way that we might engage a family or a community group so just like kind of interjecting to like the council just met saying their time talking about like at our summit for instance we might want to get you know have students give feedback on PBS and what they think and etc but we also talked about how some students might not feel comfortable I mean all the situation's we're talking about here are great but it's all conversational and some students and parents and families might not feel comfortable having a personal conversation with someone about it so I think having an opportunity to write down what they might want to say and stuff like that so I think we well this is great we also might need another media should I say you know what I yeah yeah long weather as they get something to fill out right yeah I work we have a handful of those walking around the tablets yeah and their stations so that's another that's a great point at something else we're talking about for some people may know yes right yeah I think that's super working so I'm just thinking of a few things so one is I want to make sure that when we want to get diversity that we're not just reaching out to community based organizations that oftentimes
01h 40m 00s
they're people who don't anymore have children in schools sometimes we like they have more time so one of the things that we've tried different ways to do it in different districts that I've been in but the ones I've seen have been most successful have been around really focusing on principals and teachers and schools to participate in something with parents so like bring a parent or two with you and so it's diverse because you've got staff members you've got principals teachers and then in one district principals started a competition right so we had some of them in schools where if we had given the information the facilitation work to the principal which which was the person or parents felt more comfortable with cuz they near the principal so as principal and staff facilitating the conversation so we were able to get a lot of feedback from schools that included parents who wouldn't typically have been there because teachers called them personally so it was like competitions to say you know can every school get ten staff members who will bring two parents each I mean getting that specific but I kind of think that's true I think we talked about this before a little bit about most of the invitees for this larger guiding coalition like it comes from someone in particular that's we're more likely to get people to participate yeah rather than just PPS right invite invites you to give three full days of your time so that sounds like it's a design principle across all the different groups to have that personal connection and I think and then we can we can definitely design sort of multiple kinds of experiences for people to go through to make sure there's you know it suits different ways of engagement that people like and I think we'll definitely want to be really careful about that we also want to make sure that the community meetings are about input as well they're not just about feedback so it's about people doing some you know some creative thinking so we're also thinking about how do we how do we help people sort of how do we prompt that as well so how do we help people think about the day to day concerns and have a space for that but how do we also help them do the dreaming and the imagining piece that we want to have happen as well but I think that one of the key things is going to be how do we how do we really make this so inviting that a lot of people want to come in because it's going to be better we can get two to come to those meetings I think there's been lots of really interesting and useful comments about how that invitation process might work with the different ways in which it will happen and making sure that we've signal to people that their their input is valued and valuable and that they get they realize that something is going to come out of that afterwards it's not just a show of your waste of time and nothing happens so I know we're pretty much at time do I see your hands go up at the back there if you board the invitation okay or even come get these feedback rightly so you're saying you want you to that then you got Rick input that feedback could be worded as like opening out I don't know I'm coming I'm not prepared so making sure that invitation wording tells people what direction they should be so yeah great thank you yeah Chuck tell us where to go
01h 45m 00s
okay we have David my comment is there are really that's an important point we want to manage expectations [Music]

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2018-2019, https://www.pps.net/Page/14001 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:50.174924Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2018-10-16 PPS School Board Regular Meeting, Work Session

Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education, October 16, 2018

Event 2: PPS Board of Education Work Session, Oct 16,2018

Sources