2019-01-22 PPS School Board Work Session

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2019-01-22
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	work
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Board of Education-Work Session January 22, 2019

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board members please come to the podium okay the board work session the board work session for January 22nd 2019 is called to order can we please have members of the audience take their seats not to mention board members not to mention board members okay tonight we'll be talking about the talented and gifted plan we'll get a middle-school update on aqua green Harriet Tubman rose way heights and Lent and then a business agenda we will be for the business agenda we will be convening as a regular meeting at the end of this work session okay so super Jenna Guerrero do you want to lead the discussion of the talented if gonna call up our deputy superintendent who I think is introducing staff who's speaking on the topic this evening we'll just have her or Terry come up hello board thank you for having me here this evening and Linda Smith our tag director is also here to answer questions and we also have our tag ptosis in the audience as well as our resident experts Linda is also new to the district she started in September and she comes also from Texas Linda was a principal of a tag magnet middle school and also attack magnet elementary school both Ivy schools and what she was the principal of for close to 15 years and her latest role was as a principal mentor she does a lot of work with the International Baccalaureate organization and we're here this evening to discuss the tag plain first we have some information about the division 22 compliance I know this came up last week in discussion and for 2018 we did a self report that we were out of compliance in the area of tag and the corrective action required of us was an initial professional development so the area that we are out of compliance was in the instruction provided to identified student shall be designed to accommodate their assessed levels of learning and accelerated rates of learning and so the first step we recognize that this is a process and it will take a while for this to have some accountability across all the schools but the first step was a training so we in November we trained all of the tag facilitator so every campus has a tag a designated tag facilitator and we have monthly meetings with the tag
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facilitators so we trained the tag facilitators in November and principals started training on one of their Tuesdays with professional development with their staff through December and January and so we are I would say probably at 80% we're waiting for a few more schools and actually today I know some schools completed the professional development today with their teachers and we have other schools scheduled for next Tuesday so by next week we should be complete with this training and so with the completion of that training we will be in compliance with the corrective action so because we did state that we were out of compliance we had to suggest a corrected action to OD e in that action was a professional development so we will complete that compliance piece once all of our schools finished the training for their teachers and I also want to state that that is the first of several we also recognize that we can't only have one training and then assume everybody is equipped with the knowledge and skills to meet the needs of all their students so we do have a plan to continue a professional development moving forward with both our tag facilitators our teachers as well as administrators moving forward and so that leads us into our tagged goals so as we and you should have the packets and so in your packet you're gonna power through questions oh sorry okay so let's let's try to get through the presentation and hold questions unless there is something burning okay so it is relatively short presentation as we focused on the goals that we have moving forward the full tag plan is in the packet its I don't think they're numbered but it's right after the attack annual review in your packet is the action plan so pulled from that are our goals so one of our goals is to improve the tag identification process so in looking at the demographics of our students and other historical data we recognize that we are not capturing our historically underserved students and one of the things that we'd like to look at is currently once students meet certain qualifying thresholds we then send home a notice to family stating you're qualified apply here and so we'd like to look at reversing that so you're qualified we'll start providing services unless you'd like to opt out of those services so that's something that we would like to look into is eliminating some of the barriers that come in place when through the mail through parents having to complete applications additional work sample collections from the teacher so looking at how we can ensure more students are identified and how we can automate services to those students so that's our first goal the next goal is around professional development so I did speak to that so I can answer questions if you have those at the end but really those are the big focus points would be the tag facilitators teachers and administrators as well as our ptosis who are fighting this supports and this also kind of bleeds into the curriculum development so as we're creating our core curriculum for the district and working hard to ensure that we have a guaranteed and viable curriculum across all of our campuses we would like to ensure that built into those unit planners and available for every teacher is opportunities for extension activities extension projects ideas of what to do when students need accelerated learning opportunities so building that into our core curriculum and so that will also require some professional development for the creators of our core curriculum so the people that are in those committees working with them to ensure that we have some great ideas built into our common core documents the next one is looking at formative and assessment to inform instruction so one of the opportunities
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that we have with the map assessment is that the map assessment allows for us to have data on how students are doing in the moment and there's some the data is aligned to common core standards it also gives us insight into skills that students are ready to develop so this could be powerful information for teachers for families and for meeting the needs of students in the moment so really looking at how we can use formative assessment to help inform our instruction and then our fifth goal is to work on individual instructional plans so I know last week at the board meeting I heard our superintendent discussing how important it was to create opportunities for personalized learning goals for students and so we'd really like to look at opportunities that we can ensure that our students have plans to meet their needs so those are five goals looking for it as the department and then and so that is the presentation essentially that we prepared because we did have the document with the the steps that we're planning to take to get there the in between from the where we are now to achieving our goals so we can be open for questions questions Thanks clear clear goals questions about a couple of them and this stems in part for me attending tag meetings in the past as they wrestled with some of these issues first of all the identification of historically underserved students do you feel like you have the tools to actually do that you talked about talked about the assessments for all second graders is that going to cut the mustard especially for say students who English is in their native language are these are these assessments unbiased enough because every assessment is biased to some sort are they unbiased enough to cross all cultures one of the things that we really feel strongly about is that there have been and as I heard through some of the visioning meeting today is that barriers are an issue and as we universally assess our second graders as it stands now a parent receives a card and then the parent has to fill out of form and they have to get it to the school and so we felt like schools or children who are historically underserved a lot of those families don't feel comfortable either filling out the form are not notified or they don't get that information and so we feel by actually having that opportunity where a parent has to say no I don't want tag services and to actually qualify these children through the nebula re3 which is also a total nonverbal test it doesn't have any analogies or anything as the cogut does as it goes higher in the grade level so we felt like this is a good opportunity to use that assessment as well as the map assessments that we already have on this in the district so it's not a cost factor for us to having to get another document to identify students so can I ask a question just I've got a set of questions okay but I do have followed her in this issue well following up on that we know from our past experience with universal second grade testing that it does not identify any more historically underserved students then the other methods we've been using in years past it doesn't move the percentages at all so having a parent component on it it is not going to change that we need better tests so I guess what portfolio so is it just one measure so we identify you know we always what are the multiple measures that we're using because we're not going to find a perfect test even a nonverbal
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test all that means is that students can answer in a non verbal manner and that there's less in terms of oral instructions but there's still communication that's involved and they also tend to be more culturally but there's cultural implications on them that we may not think about so obviously there's a lot of problems with no matter what test we use but what are the other multiple measures that can kind of level the playing field for other sources of data for our kids that don't speak English or have you know very little time and experience in the country on it right so one of the things that we also educate our professional development on at our TAC facilitator meetings is the use of the cled document which is the it is a document that is or a rating that a teacher or a building administrator can use or a classroom teacher use with the child that's not necessarily based on a test if they actually can see and provide work samples or a rating scale or parent gives input on that we can look at that as well to identify students and so that helps us and identifying some of the other students who might be historically underserved at all levels not just second-grade men at all what was the name of that glad CLE be culturally are there districts who have figured this out who you look at they're tagged ID'd kids and there they match that district demographics or a reasonably close to that far as it is ever is everybody struggling with this I'm seeing a parent sorry I've seen is going yeah everybody's struggling with it was mentioned parties the best choices every day and across the country so we aren't allowed to identify a one piece alone the test work for example as they were sitting and so assignments from the classroom with the other assessment pieces so it does become more of a portfolio type identification process and actually we are making it some progress in identifying more historically underserved students so we're getting there slowly but surely but we're stumped by the whole assessment piece just just to follow up on the clad or something like that means to when there's a radium scale where it's teachers that may not be very prepared it's working with diverse learners might miss many of the signs obviously so sure that's something that you know a good piece to follow-up is how we prepare teachers to look kind of outside the box of what exceptional learners bring and how they might demonstrate such as you know acceleration of learning English when they see quick language learning anyway it's just another source that obviously people I have to take a lot of care of because it's still a measure that they have some bias so I remember when I was an elementary school the tag program the kids would leave their regularly regularly scheduled class to go and to tag classroom is that still the case for most elementary schools or okay or like when do they do the tag kids get together at some point during the class day no so there are some there are some instances where there's like a walk to Mac program where they go to menudo walk to Mac so there are within the classroom there depending upon the schools a lot of our schools have a lot of tagged students in their classrooms have a lower population so it might be a little tougher for them to be with their peers but I know that and I can't speak specifically to which school directly at this point in my tenure in the district but I know that I've heard and I need to identify those places where if there's only a couple or
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a handful of those students how are they at the school level being with peers - okay so they're right okay so the like teachers and educators are catering to both tag students and non tech students in the club okay and so that includes like different curricula or like adjusted curriculum in advance okay also on identification do we have any evidence that a spec is a valid way to determine tag status I know that that is the measure that we used and that's where it is today so I've not researched any other tests at this point on this state level we give that test so that's a test that we give we're looking to use additional measures that we have at the district level instead of purchasing different assessments but again we also it's not just the s back it would be other identified identifiers it would be a second one it could be student work it could be grades it could be a map it's s-mint score lots of other areas not just one you had mentioned that before and I was also going to add that quite a few parents who are being told that no the a speck is the only thing that will be used for determining tag status after second grade and I think that if that is not true than doing some professional development around that would be a very good idea I'm kind of curious one I'm glad you're sending out a letters that's an opt-in rather than opt out but why even offer an opt-out if if my child was you know reasonably bright and got an extension for you know why why would you ask my permission to do that why wouldn't you just do it I would say on that same score you know how is talented and gifted any different from the differentiation that we expect for every single one of our students [Music] thanks why can parents opt out of having their students tested or why can the parents have their student to opt out of tag opt out of services so we I mean I'm not advocating for this but there's a whole host of things that people advocate that parents be allowed to opt out again I'm not necessarily in that group but there is we allow and I think board members have actively advocated people being allowed to opt out of different testings so it might fall in that same category I'm not saying I'm advocating for it but I'm just saying it probably fall in that category so if we're saying you don't have to take us back but you have to you have to do to have a tag test it's not entirely consistent yes I just don't know that we're asking permission around tag assessment either we're just doing it no we aren't a win about receiving the services tastes right and then based on that or based on that and other factors it goes to tag or not yeah and let's leave measles out of this go ahead I'm not for measles either so the five goals that sort of the beginning is is it the right process to think that you go then go to page ten where you have a list of bullet points with a series of activities are those the activities that marry to each of the goals so if you were gonna if you were gonna map here's the goal and then here's how we think we're gonna get there is the how we're gonna get there those all the bullet points and if you if we did all those bullet points each of those years we'd be meeting all five of these goals
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so that that's a lot it's a lot of you say activities but if you were to chunk them you would see that they do fit into those five goals and by successfully doing those things we feel like over a span of time that we would be able to accomplish or be very close to those if we're at a very granular level at this point and so we're building up and so I think with those activities and you know company combining them with the goals that are set here that we can get there and get very very close in the next three years so just thinking about that one thing might be to do so the community could actually see a progression as one of my frustrations is for example if we are out of compliance with division 22 which I don't think this is our standard it should be higher than that but if we said we're trying to deliver on goal number one to separate out the bullet points of these are the things that deliver on goal number one I'm goal number two but by year so that you can actually see the activities yeah and then by extension whether we actually create a scorecard so whether we actually did it because if these are the activities that get us to achieving the goals it seems a week we should sort of call out which how to match match them so it doesn't just seem like a random set of activities and so that if some of them have resource requests related to them or time or capacity or expertise that we identify that on the front end and the budget as part of the budget process or in our strategic planning process so that we know that we need to resource them in order to make it happen and then I guess the last thing would be like what is it you need from the board and from us versus the staff in order to accomplish this I just want to know that's a subset of a broader conversation that we had when deputy superintendent Curtis gave the report on division 22 or we asked for some connection in the budget process between those deficiencies and plans to address them and in the same breath what resources are needed so that we're not just just guessing in the budget process or just aggregating those needs with others so I think hopefully that was duly noted it'll come through for tag and other issues and to me it's a bigger conversation around our whole as we work towards a strategic plan is to have those goals clear and what are you know we could it's an easy thing to put on the web of where are we in terms of accomplishing each of our sub goals action steps kind of things and that brings me back in terms of an accountability piece both around quality control around the tag facilitators and you heard a little bit of that earlier tonight and around the individual plans as a parent how do I know and and one of the little blue stickies up there from the tag session was differentiation is more than a worksheet so around the whole curriculum what's what's the accountability piece how do we how do we know it's happening consistently across the district and that was another of the blue stickies of you know it sorta depends on your principal and your teacher and what year it is and if it's an even year or an odd year in terms of that quality of services you get so how's how's that work who's is the principal overseeing that facilitator at each school currently yes I think that that's definitely and that came up in this evenings conversation is that I think it would be important for us to look at the roles and the responsibilities of the tag facilitators and and how those are chosen by the school and making sure that it's an opt-in and someone who really is excited and wants that role on the campus and then our tag department working with those people for professional development and to give them the support they need on the campus but yes it is a campus person at this point in time who does report to the principal we're also having conversations around when the training of the tech facilitators and administrators moving forward what are
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some look for is that when principals are walking through the classrooms and coaching teachers and that they had to look fors to go ahead and say yes we see some of this things happen these things happening coaching up those teachers that may not be aware or need that extra support and then providing that support but really giving them a concrete list of the kinds of things that they could be looking for once they're in the classrooms [Music] many moons ago our superintendent talked about while there's lots of types of giftedness I know we're like in a lot of areas we're working on very foundational things here and really around some specific academics how do we build that out to other other kinds of I really get at limericks but I'm not suggesting that would be part of it but is that you know there there's guidance from the USDOE but every state plays tag services differently right in some states there's mandates for services and others there aren't in some states they're identifying across a range of areas in the way that do-e encourages you know school districts to think of I think what you're hearing here tonight or what we know has has been an important foundational step like these five goals is to you know build organizational understanding and capacity you know some some essential first steps around identification around professional development around facilitators around our school principals being on board making sure that we start to weave in and integrate these services and a delivery model in schools improvement plans or cap plans so these are first steps and by no means what would I appreciated about the comment earlier is that you want to see a roadmap over multiple years okay if we're gonna work on these five things now and we'll have to keep coming back to them what are the next five steps they're going to take right and you know we have our stakeholders our tag act others who have been very patient with us you know with we have some new leadership capacity here who can you know as you're starting to see a little bit of evidence here begin to think about all of these related issues a little bit more carefully I think when we we don't look across all the other categories of giftedness you might not get the kind of diversity that's represented a representative of the demographic in our district so so we want to be sensitive to that and you know you know what are the assessments for creativity right that's something that states and school districts kind of struggle with right is it a music audition is it a presentation is it as a dance performance there's categories for leadership and gifted and talented so how are we assessing student leadership and voice right so there's lots of exciting frontier areas where we really want to have multiple ways that we're assessing for cultivating those gifts I think just what you're seeing here is we're playing catch-up here so with our community but hopefully we'll continue to get stronger and get it some of these nuanced questions that directors are asking this evening can I follow up on that one so we're doing foundational work got a lot of lot of room to make up for so would it make sense I mean the the sequencing of how we're doing things I was never good at math I hated math but there were other things I was good at and no one cared so is now when do we start building the capacity around the the the not math language arts science you know the traditional tag focus areas when do we do that because if we're if we're creating a system isn't now the time to try to build that as part of our foundation so I don't remember what strategy it was but we talked about one of the one of the strategies that will be the strongest strategy is the one where we as we write the cv g'v C units is providing ways for people to not only meet rate and level but to accelerate students in terms of looking at the different ways they learn and so on when when you adopt a philosophy that all kids really can shine in different areas like you're talking about that's what we
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would want to do with the curriculum that is is deep enough for us to take kids deep when they need to go deep and again that starts with our GBC our core curriculum ensuring that when we identify materials that have activities and strategies that we are utilizing those that really enrich students as well as those that accelerate learners that are far behind so you saw in there Dok which you guys owe me a quarter we were they owe a quarter when they use an acronym that we haven't described so depth of knowledge is a way of identifying how do you look at different types different ways for students to demonstrate their knowledge and how do you understand the different ways that students are thinking oftentimes you have people talk about depth of knowledge strategies for talented and gifted students but it really works for all students right because even students who might have a disability or have other areas that they struggle with might be strong in others I wanted to add a little piece around the multi multiple ways of being talented and gifted and I know they they stated this but I just wanted to emphasize that in organ there are three ways you're identified and that is for academics and reading and math and then a potential to perform category as well as the int and and that is with the intellectually gifted right in math and then potential potential to performance in reading and math okay reading and/or math and in other districts I've been in there that is an area where we can talk about expanding what we mean by potential to perform that is where a district could make a choice to do that however where we are right now with GVC with new assessments with everything we need to do to build the foundation to ensure that we're at least giving every student an opportunity to be identified as a student at least in those areas where we already are required to that's why that's the first step because that there's a lot of work to do there especially if we want to make sure that we can we are holding ourselves accountable so we have to get into classrooms we have to get through the process of teachers writing or staff writing plans with the help of the toeses where we're identifying what are those strategies that address rate in level first and make sure that people have the supports they need given the level of staffing that we currently have and where we are with implementation of our curriculum GBC we have a lot of work to do in those two pieces before adding other things on does that make sense we don't want to go so broad that we're looking at so many different things that we don't we can't track not only our own progress but how effective were being in the way we support our classroom teachers and our administrators to really meet the needs of the students so I have a question about access so throughout the plan you talk about the universal testing but I don't see it referred to again specifically with access or any discussion of whether that will be the screener for access which would eliminate first and second grade or whether that's a recommendation or where we are with that because this is a discussion that we've had for several years regarding the equity of kids testing in prior to universal screening and then the ripple effect from siblings and such but I didn't see that specifically mentioned in here so we haven't made any decisions to change anything about that right now but that doesn't mean that working through the rest of the this year with the tag AK group that we might be able to identify that for the next round the next time around so we still use private screening results for kids prior to the universal screening it this is Kim Bertelsen she's a tag Tosa so the state of Oregon requires that
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children kindergarten through twelfth grade if there's a nomination that we test them all students that get into access have already been tested and scored in at least one area in the 99th percentile so it was redundant to T to do a Universal screening on those second graders because they're already identified okay and already in a program that that is targeted specifically to their rate and level of learning and their academic needs so testing occurs starting in kindergarten and that's me I'm dated by the state of Oregon first grade that's by nomination at second grade everybody gets corrected only in the area of intellectually gifted that's the we give it currently we use the cognitive abilities test for that we may switch to a different assessment in the future for various reasons that's another conversation but all second graders are given the opportunity in order to try to widen the net of who we catch on and on the earlier end and second grade was chosen eons ago as the year to do that I know some districts do it in third but we currently do the intellectual screener or assessment universal assessment at second grade but if they're nominated by the teacher or a parent or as a program as needed the student can nominate themselves that can happen starting in kindergarten but I mean I McClelland I know I'm also a tag Tosa I just wanted to add to that that a parent can nominate an intellectual reading and math in kindergarten so a kinder can actually take those three tests and we'll assess them so reading through the goals it looked like differentiation within a classroom in terms of at the elementary level was the main approach for meeting the needs of tagged students if my child were tagged was not in access and was doing math three grades ahead that really are they really are they was that second grade third grade teacher going to have the resources they need to keep my child challenged that's a really great opportunity then for us to work with other departments the math toeses could then assist either with us or with the teachers at that grade level which we already do now to have go and have that conversation on how we can meet the needs of that child there's also opportunities for students to do single subject acceleration in mathematics so that could also be an option for that student who's excelling at a much higher rate so are are we going to push for that walk to math model in more schools or walk to reading that is something that we have to have a discussion amount because I'm not exactly exactly sure again who's using that respond to that the use of that model anyway on it it works in schools where you have enough classrooms at grade levels to have them walking where we have how do I explain this where we have really small schools where we don't have as many grades like it works best in a whap to read model if you have four classrooms at every grade level because then you can have that spread of all the different levels that kids are are at the other thing is that some teachers don't prefer that model because there's pros and cons about every model and then walk to read students are moving a lot and that's not always great for every and in some school communities they decide that doesn't work as well for their community especially in communities where they're really working on creating community in the classroom and that school environment is one where the students want are better off staying with the classroom teacher in every district I've been in we've talked about what to read and there are times it works and there are times it doesn't what doesn't work is to mandate it and to require everybody to do it it's almost like mandating blended classrooms some people can teach them really well and actually do blend them and kids still get their instruction at their grade level or at their rate and level and other teachers it's more than they can handle and it's not the way they teach and so those are the decisions we
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usually use to the building leave to the building to decide working with the principals and the leadership team but one of the things I know we've talked a lot about is as they already refer to is how we use toeses which right now are being utilized mostly for assessment we think with the strategies we've suggested of moving to for identification that allows us to free up artosis for a lot more of the instructional coaching and working with teachers on plans and identifying what the resources are they need and because they're ptosis and that they're not in a classroom responsible for a group of kids they can move around they can check with each of the departments they can get the materials that people need so there there's a lot of shifts to do to move to a different model and I really do believe that the five we've listed that we've submitted to OTE as our tag plan are the right steps I've actually done this work in every single school district I've worked in in Oregon partly because there isn't hasn't been a lot of expertise in a lot of school districts and people don't understand how you put all these things together at at a district level so it hasn't been something that as a state we've had a real robust model for in the state or places to take a look at it take a look at for any of the strategies so we really are like starting from the ground up with the core and with changing our assessment model so we can free up people's time and have students not be over assessed taking assessments that might be more biased so we're trying to address all of those things in the suggestions we've made for this first the this plan is for three years and in the plan we've identified what we're doing in year one year two and year three you have asked questions about the accountability we we want to add an accountability step there and as our toeses and our experts administrators at the district level start working more closely with the principals where we see what is already happening and where what kind of supports do they need we'll help us build what makes sense for an accountability model because what you don't want is just sort of a checklist that doesn't work and that's what a lot of people do for accountability you know is there a plan have we identified in the plan what the kids are doing and is it happening in the classroom but there's so much more to know about how it's meeting the students needs and that takes more time with the classrooms with the teachers giving it once you share develop the teachers then helping them manage that it's hard to manage multiple levels in a classroom and then there are models that best practice has identified like clustering students that's a little bit maybe a little bit towards what you were talking about where maybe there's a portion of the day you have a group of math kids who are like you mentioned really high and there's a way to get them together for a percentage of their time so that they are interacting with peers who are thinking at that level in that area so there are different models we can use but our schools are so different in terms of size and what their implementing and because we haven't fully implemented the GBC there's a lot to learn about what's currently happening so that we could provide the right supports for each school included in the packet tonight was the 2018 tag a key year end report and I'm wondering if that informed your plan and whether there's any sort of outstanding issues from their year and reports that you feel like needs to be still need to be addressed I think absolutely in their plan they talked about the necessity of looking for identification and services for AOL students and so that is that is one of the things that spurred our conversation around assessing the assessments and looking for the best ways to find non bias although there isn't right but and then also the rate and level at the elementary schools and that's really brought us to that professional development goal as well as this curriculum goal and in hearing the variety of experiences across schools that have been represented in some of
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those meetings and through this document also so I think that a lot of their suggestions were taken into account and we are still working closely with that group okay I also had a question about on page 7 under this tag students instructional plans it says currently in PBS written tag instructional personal learning plans are not required for individual students unless requested by a parent I'm just curious because that relies on parents knowing about it having the ability to ask for it so I'm here so of the tag identified students how many of them have those plans and and then I haven't look I'll give you my other part of my question as well but then down below it it says PBS the goal is to create individual instruction plans which is different word is that something different or it's it's labeled something different the top one is instructional personal learning plans the others individual instructional plans that's the same thing yes okay so then Mike so the goal is is that everyone has one so I guess my question is what's the gap between like the percentage that currently have them of tagged students to our goal which is a hundred percent I we don't have the exact numbers it's large it's a large gap a larger gap okay we have actually facilitated at the school level we have had two and we've just recently had two more so that's four I'm sorry plans like written written individual plans we have four that's it this year yes okay mitosis might be able to give you a better lots opportunities for every school level they're done at the school level directorates they're dead at the school level so it could be that we don't have all of the numbers however the tag we do pay teachers to write those plans currently and so for one hour of time so that's how we're able to keep track how many have been done this year by what has been sent for us to pay for so are we shifting from how are we shifting from this culture of that parents need to know to ask for it to every student getting one are we already made that shift or you know have to ask for one anymore didn't we have not made that shift okay that's again we recognize that and coming in as a deficiency and something that's not good for our kids and so we won't we realize that this needs to occur and I think that there's some different stakeholders that we need to bring to the table to find out how can we achieve this for our kids and I really do want to highlight the tag act criticism that our science curriculum in high school is not aligned with tag students and their needs and their experiences and actually since you know freshman level physics doesn't it require algebra it isn't even really aligned with a very significant percentage of our middle school students who are getting first-year algebra in compacted math in seventh and eighth grades so I have adopted a science curriculum I just want to point out I don't think it's meeting the needs of the kids so as a professional expert and had a lie with statistics I looked at this chart which is male versus female and I went holy crud what a disparity and then I looked and saw that wasn't a zero down there and so the way overstates that so just data can tell us anything right just on the demographic stuff it would
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also be helpful when you're giving this kind of information to to clarify not only what the division I mean how the demographics break out among kids who are identified as tagged but how how each subgroup compares with the demographic breakdown across the district as a whole so like the relative rate absolutely we can get one of the things we talked about and putting it together is that we realized the data we're sharing with you is this this is what we have this is what we know and we have a lot of work to do to say where where are we gonna go and how should we represent that work and doing Davis will when we work on the data-driven piece that will be definitely and be included I wanted to mention just about the N net which is the assessment we're looking at doing using it is the one in let's see the last four districts I've been in we made the same shift from Co gap to n that because it was the least biased one we could find and part of it is because of the nonverbal part but I just wanted to reassure the board that we definitely would not just use one measure you're not allowed to I mean the state requires that you have multiple measures and none of us would ever recommend you would just use one measure however in the districts where we implemented the in that it was we did identify more historically underserved kids it it at least helped broaden people's perspective of kind of what the profile looks like of a kid who might be a tagged kid there were a lot more kids that teachers said hmm I wouldn't have thought about that and then when we asked them for those additional pieces of work samples how they're doing with different things in the class the kinds of conversations which there's questions that guide you through scheming teacher about that it helps us with that whole perception of having high expectations for for all kids even when they have struggled with language or whatever for reasons that have nothing to do with intelligence they have to do with their experience or background and so that is the other reason why I support supported them in that recommendation to change assessments I've seen it happen you know kind of district by district for that same reason and in every place I've been in we've been able to identify more students in all of those demographic groups with that assessment it's called it the NAG Lyari but it has a version is it five quarters will be four yes we'll just keep a little can I ask a question about twice exceptional kids so my first question is why are we not tracking kids with 504 plans what why why only IEP s so so there's a I under the tag umbrella so would if I understood please so we're we're tracking the numbers on twice exceptional kids based on IE peas and tank identification but we're not identifying kids with 504 and we do not have that information at this time that's a very good question so we'll get it we'll get that information I do know we have somebody who oversees 504 and typically you do not want to situated in special education because it's not part of special education it's outside so we do have a district person who does that so if you if you can share with me your questions around that it's the tag 504 intersection right yes okay I mean how many kids forunate active yeah I am aware that a lot of a lot of schools often suggest to parents that 504 is better than an IEP gives more flexibility it's this is what I'm told so if you hear that if you could refer that to us we can help okay but but even so I mean there there are a lot of kids who might qualify for a 504 and not for an IEP who nevertheless have pretty significant needs that are you
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know may not qualify for sped but but nevertheless you know have have some real issues that need to be addressed and that's the whole reason we want to move to multi-tiered systems of support because when you do put in a three-tiered model and you're looking at every single student one of the first steps you do towards the beginning of the year and in each semester is what we call hundred percent meetings where you're looking at a hundred percent of the kids and then you look at the twenty percent of the students that are whose need who are still kind of falling through the cracks sort of historically you've had special ad or you've had the general ed classroom and there was kind of nothing in between that won't be true once we've implemented EM TSS they'll be those layers levels of support inside the regular classroom and then in addition to the classroom whether that those supports need to be an acceleration or whether they need to be like I I mentioned an enrichment above and beyond I can even give you an example of how that works could work for example in an elementary school so one one's district I was in where we implemented a Tier two time in every elementary school and students who needed more prevention to catch up they got their skill groups and the students who needed to be accelerated were accelerated whether they were tagged identified or not it's my core belief is that all students should be challenged no matter where they are in every content areas that's how I taught that's how I let as an administrator we're not there yet but we will be marching in that direction because the multi-tiered system of support is a great model for containing all of that so that we're not just saying well do they have this identification and then do they have a plan there should be a plan for every student whether they need to be accelerated or they need to catch up and I think that's one of the points that was made in the tag discussion was well therapy social-emotional learning training for the tag coordinators as part of that to make sure that they're meeting that were meeting the social-emotional needs as well as the acceleration needs know real quick so the tag isn't just a one-year program right you can keep going so I'd be interested to see how many students are doing the full is it seven or eight like are continuing with it so so as a student you could be identified in kinder and go all the way through 12th grade through okay but we never pull you out once you're identified once you're identified as a student that has it so that's talented and gifted each year we should always be meeting the rate and level of what every content area you you are identified in okay okay again that the that happens better where you have an MTS s model in place because you're looking at all kids and as they get go from one grade level to the next and then as you handoff to the next grade level you've got those plans right now so I can talk forever tonight and I know that I'm not supposed to but we are also getting a data tracker that's what we call it shorthand I'm sure it has a better name but basically every student their data will be in there and then as we provide interventions or enrichments whatever that is will be in there for that students so each teacher as they move through the grade levels will be able to see across their experience what is their experience been so and and that is work that the MTS s team is doing out of student support services so you can see how closely we all have to work together in fact every time we meet I show them the Venn diagram of the four overlapping circles because the real work is right in the center where all of this crosses over that's how we ensure that no students fall through the cracks and every student is challenged we know where we want to go we have a long way to go it's going to be very important to look at building level day that's right to my certain knowledge going back to at least 2002 rates of tag identification going from nothing in our poorest schools and it's all socio-economic up
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to fifty five percent and if you know the tag number you know everything else about that school you know what the length of teacher tenure is you know whether or not enrollment is rising or declining you what the budget is you know of course offerings are you know what the racial demographics are you know what parental income is everything off of the tag number and we really need to do better for our kids plan but I'd like to request tonight we're gonna get a report on the progress of the middle school implementations and I would like at the end of this year to get a snapshot and our assessment of the access program and what challenges were present they just presented this year with the two sites and and colocation with at the schools and you know what worked what didn't and what we potentially need to do for next year to provide support for those students and school communities I'd also like an appropriate time to for us to invite tag act to tell us how the lottery for access went this year I'm just a dresser Bailey to that point I'm wondering it seems like that conversation is always trailing after after it happened there should be some things happening now I'd be interested to know that they're happy right so I just wonder if that was a good conversation to have an advance of a advance and then sort of a post-mortem versus the post post-mortem when often it's either too late or it's just more complicated or people have made other choices some sort of like I can't remember what the deadlines are for this I think they're the deadlines coming up right so the access applications open on February 8th and for excess schools it will close on April 25th that is the access application itself this the that is done at the school site level we're a team whether it's a teacher facilitator has to identify what the educational need is on top of the 99 percentile for that child to click up to fill out that application also can be a solo application where if a parent can't get to the school and has a documented need that the child needs extra educational support they fill out the access application we are not we are not evaluating we are not looking at other criteria to make a decision of whether or not that goes that child's application if they qualify for access with the 99 and an additional educational need that they would be in the lottery if they have also completed the school meant transfer application that's done through enrollment and transfer so they have two applications that they have to this has been this it will be exactly the same process as it was last year we have not made any changes to that application process we trained the facilitators last last facilitators meeting on the process to do that and they were very excited that we were not changing the process we are also any child that qualified for the last two years not 1819 but for the 16 17 17 18 year that qualified for the lottery that means that they had the educational need in the 99 and did the school meant and got into the lottery they will not have to do the access application at the school level they will just need to do the school mint transfer application because we have that documentation of their 99 so it actually is that we will be notifying those parents of that it'll also be on the front and center of our website along with the access application so that we are taking again the barriers away from some of the children who may wanted to go and apply
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and be in the act it being access that were not as many say drew the lucky number so we are not looking at those applications that are coming from the school site to determine whether or not the application you know evaluating the need we're not deciding yes that's an F or that's not you know not enough if it comes from the school level and it's signed off that that has been done and again a parent solo can do that it does not take a whole team then we will go ahead and process along that along with the school mint lottery application so they'll all go into the lottery but yeah this is a more foundational question so if access is a program and not a school and it's an alternative program wouldn't is why are why do we have the lottery because an alternative program this is just more of a foundational question that or this they can only go in during the normal lottery time if they're an alternative program and it's supposed to be for students who it's a specific fit not sort of random why do we have the sort of sort of strict lottery deadlines versus other schools that are not programs but other schools where it is supposed to be a random exercise so so we will have the lottery there will be a waitlist the waitlist generally is closed on October 20th that is not going to happen it'll be based on space so continuing throughout the year to bring in the children during that time if Chris did the principle of the principle thing the principle has space into that in that classroom then they will notify enrollment and transfer enrollment and transfer will then be able to and notify the parents that that space has opened up and if they want to do the joint I'm sorry but I swear I saw last year a whole bunch of back and forth that from the normal and transfer office or from the district somehow that the the time there was this distinct Pyne period like all the other lotteries and that because it was treated like a school that if you you know didn't go in as you or choose to opt in or what it wasn't the same time period as everybody else you wouldn't be able to get into the program but that's what the rules reminders anything for the schools but it sounded like last year the same rules that being applied to schools were being applied to the access program so if you didn't make it in or you weren't in during that transfer period you didn't get in so so Judi Brennan and Roman and transfer I can share a little bit around the technical part of the application cycle and I I think maybe you can clarify for me your you're talking about the process that we use for like focus options dual language and other which may be programs they made they aren't all schools but they're not alternatives so I think your fundamental question was if it's an alternative program should we have sort of a standard lottery mechanism and I think that part of that eligibility piece lives outside my world but certainly for for many of the grades at access we may have more interested students than we have space in those classrooms there may only be two spaces in the say two classrooms at seventh grade and we may have four or five students who are deemed eligible so they've gone through the eligibility process they're deemed eligible we just don't have enough space the way the program is configured right now and so it was just decided that the fairest way then to to meet those students applications is through a lottery where we're prioritizing students who qualify for free reduced meals and then any who are siblings of current students other than that it's a random number so the the random number lottery part only comes into place after students have been been made eligible there is a cycle there's a period of time in which you're supposed to apply and it's up to the Department of program to determine whether there's an opportunity to to add additional applicants over time if there's a lengthy waitlist already in place it may be a false promise to let additional application then I guess I'm looking at places where there
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the program isn't full mm-hmm that why would we have a like this this is this is the window and it's closed and if we have students who are interested and there's openings why wouldn't we why would we stick to the strict timeline that again this is an alternative program and so Smith for the student have a different purpose than a program you can probably you can probably ask the question particularly I'm gonna put it in the form of a question so if if you have a grade level at access that has space kids moved out whatever and you have a waitlist our kids on the waitlist allowed to join the access program mid-year yes well moving forward there they're allowed to but they weren't we didn't resort with yeah so looking for our understand our collective understanding I think is that there were empty spaces at grade levels in access even though there was a waitlist so we had a work group that has been meeting at a group of parents from access from not only from Tagget from from other groups at access who have been working on the application cycle and review and one of the things that came up is exactly that is you know if there is space and Christa or the principal at access would then no matter what the time of year is just like another place that a child could move into that space no matter at the time of the year if they admit that eligibility requirement and gone through that process through enrollment and transfer so so we are back there so we are removing that barrier we have another we're still our group is still meeting but that is something that's already been put into the process guide as we've worked forward and in producing that for for the 1920s great thank you sorry I didn't ask the question very it's gonna be fixed going forward I didn't hear gender balancing as part of the lottery there are separate buckets for each gender so that we can try and get as close as possible to district average for gender we run a separate lottery for boys versus girls if we don't fill all the slots we may take more of the other gender just so that we don't leave empty spaces we actually had to do that with last year's lottery we weren't able to achieve as high a gender balance but we were able to accept more students in the program to not so that we didn't have seats empty the numbers still look lower and we accepted all the applicants that we had available so can I go back to something you said earlier so correct me if I'm wrong what I think I heard was that you're now going to notify any kid who was qualified over the last two years yes for we have information from 1617 and the children who were in the lottery that's correct as far back as we have 16 17 17 18 because we have those so we have that information if they they met all the eligibility requirements and we're in the lottery and didn't get the lucky number then then and are not at access presently then they will just have to do the school mint application along with a letter that they have from as saying yes I'm getting participating in participating in the process okay I'm glad to hear that because I think the my understanding is at the waitlist partially because of the uncertainty live in the last couple of years the waitlist has decreased substantially so thank you for doing this any other questions so just in terms of checking that lottery process what would be the next checkpoint that we're on track so might you know I if it's not a post-mortem what how do we attract it we're doing what we need to do in terms of communicating with prospective
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applicants and so on guidelines for our families an updated FAQ about enrollment for access so that they're aware that this moving forward will be you know that'll be transparent that way yeah okay okay thank you and it occurred to me after we had started that I was supposed to start off the meeting asking if there were any students who wanted to make comments do we have any students signed up so hello yeah my name is Aaron quitte I'm currently a sophomore at Franklin High School I've been in the tag program since kindergarten or first grade sorry high school is an interesting experience and it's new for me but as many people have said being in the time program hasn't meant that much I'm lucky to go to Franklin High School because they have a lot of electives which are of high level but did class sizes are a problem for example I'm very interested in mathematics Calculus BC is technically available there are less than ten students who could take that class so the thing that I'm seeing is even in cases when classes are available and there are students who want to take them teachers resources time doesn't always exist to do that my understanding or my idea for the best way to solve that would be to I guess connect with outside resources like colleges and things like that from what I can see Reid is like the only school that is offering that and they're only offering it for seniors for one class and there's a slight monetary barrier and so that's that's one thing is it is just tag isn't just a program where you get people in and then it continues to exist but it's also something that exists for high schoolers Oh was that it cutting offer yeah okay okay cool and yeah I guess that's that's a big thing someone mentioned that the science curriculum isn't that great I have to stand by that it's it's not that interesting as the tax student and it's required I have to be there in class every day and in general for for kind of like the educational options as a tagged high schooler our AP classes and at least for my experience this is my first year of taking AP classes but I'm taking many of them they are the same type of environment where it's about education and learning AP classes because it's the way our school year scheduled I think one my teacher said we're too much Bob we're two months behind the APA like where the AP exam thinks the school year is going to start by the time the school year starts and so basically we have to cram an entire college course into six months and then prepare for testing and there's a lot of information there but it's it's not really an educational opportunity it's more like you did it you did the test got the rubber stamp you're probably going to forget it next year could you could you wrap it up yeah okay I think that's a besides that I don't think there's ever been in tag coordinated things ever at any of my schools I had the chance of good access it was it was good but I guess like a high school
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equivalent would be also nice okay okay thank you specifically tonight but the district is in the visioning process right now which hopefully you've had some opportunities I don't know if you did earlier tonight but two themes that have been coming up a lot in that visioning process have to do with dual credit opportunities in high school and how as a district do we improve those opportunities and the other is just blended learning online learning as as a tool that we can employ for every single individual kid who needs to access something that's not available in his or her school so those are things that are getting a fair amount of attention right now if I can quickly comment on online learning because I know this is still taking up time but online learning personally is not that enjoyable for me it's not that engaging you're not working with another person you can't really ask questions I I've for my work I go to a tutor outside who I'm lucky enough to not have to pay money for I meet with him for about an hour and just having a person you can talk to you can speak to you can ask questions to work through a textbook and to work through problems is so much better than working online and yeah okay thank you very much okay just remember in the good old days the Portland Public Schools did not offer calculus at any of the high schools there was a night class with a PCC instructor for 30 kids collected to play from that was just first-year calculus we've we've come things things are better now okay the next item is an update on middle schools and directors we're gonna invite up our chief of schools dr. Craig Cuellar to play leadoff batter here and provide us with some context and background of what we'll be sharing with you this evening and he's gonna have a whole cast of characters I think he's calling up today good evening board thank you for having us tonight one of the one of the new routines that we're going to try to do moving forward in board meetings as well as work sessions is to try to get our principals to the table to not only talk about the work that is happening within the walls of their building but to also be able to answer any burning questions that we may be also hearing from your constituents I'm out in the field in most cases we find out that as we're addressing some concerns are trying to ask questions or trying to inquire about something at the building level sometimes we circumvent the principle entirely in itself when in fact they are the ones that are on the ground leading the charge in the work every single day so one of the things that the board has had questions on is wanting an update on our middle schools as well as Lentz under the leadership of our new principal Richard Smith so we are very lucky to have four amazing principals here today to go through a presentation and to be able to talk about the great work that is happening at their buildings and also to be able to engage in a mild dialogue with the boy now I preface that mild dialogue because we do know that our students are back at school tomorrow and I don't I want to make sure that I protect the principles time because they are here with us with the duration of the night and they've been working very hard so I'm putting a 10:00 p.m. cap on that so I wanted to make sure I preface that upfront so we do what we do want to protect their time but we also want to make sure that we are engaging in a very robust dialogue as well about the work that's happening in our schools our principals here are accompanied by their wonderful teams we have Keely Simpson as well as Lisa McCall that are here that will be joining krysta from Oakley green as well as Kathleen Elwood from Rose way heights we also have Oscar Gilson and dr. Corey Seymour that is here from the OSP team that will be accompanied Richard Smith from lent as well as Natasha Butler from Tubman so without further ado if I can go ahead and call up the team so we can go ahead and start the presentations
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with principal Howard from aqua green middle school good evening it's nice to see you all again I remember our conversations the summer I feel like it was just yesterday so it's really nice to be up in front of you again and talk about the work that we've been doing so we're gonna start with our priorities when we met this summer I had just joined and I spent a lot of time conducting listening sessions with the community with families with students and with staff and I was collecting a lot of feedback and data and I wanted to use that to be able to draft our three priorities for this year and so we landed after looking all of that all that feedback as well as looking at all the data we landed at three priorities focusing on culture and climate so really creating a safe school environment where students and families and teachers feel safe and connected and cared for at the school that's our priority number one and we landed on some key metrics to be able to measure that as well priority two is around the instruction that happens at Oakley and that's again based on data and feedback that we received from several people and priority three was really about staff retention and really because Oakley has been kind of in a state of turnover after the last few years really focusing on retaining staff from year to year and so we were able to was synthesized all of the data that we received as an admin team and we went on a retreat this summer for a couple days we created these draft priorities and then they were approved by our community by our families through site Council and also through our staff and this is where we ended up so as we move through this we're kind of gonna dive deep into two of our priorities priority one in priority two and kind of talk about the successes that we've had and sort of the work streams that we've been doing and Oakley priority one is around school culture and climate and so we started by in our summer PD session with the two and a half days before the the student started with us as a staff we decided to come together and create our values and what we really want to value at Oakley and what we're going to create our entire PBIS system positive behavior intervention system for and also what we're going to teach students and so as a staff we were able to align on three core values of growth collaboration and caring and throughout that we then were able to define what that means when a student's displaying the value of caring or they're displaying the value of growth and we had some key indicators that then we trained on an align as a staff and so that was that was a big deal and that would launched into our PBIS system where we are awarding students for positive behaviors when they display core values of growth collaboration and caring on they earn on points and they're able to accumulate on points throughout the year and they're able to you know spend those on points through our we call it a dragon auction that happens once a quarter where students literally get to bid on different items that they have requested and we treat it just like an auction so they have like a paddle that has their point value and then they're able to bid on items such as like out of school trips or different reward system or rewards that we have based on their feedback we also were able to develop our restorative system on if students are not displaying values how are we going to address those and how are we going to align them back to our value system and so the values Oakley really guide what we're doing every day and then the other big work stream was our development of an M TSS system of just having you heard dr. Curtis earlier talk about the MT SS system and so Ackley we are able to we're doing different PD opportunities on Fridays where we're learning about Universal Design for Learning which is good for any learner you know special education students tag learners and just really any student at Ackley we spend Friday Huddle's a half an hour every Friday learning about that we also are have developed a robust sit process which is a student intervention team where every Wednesday we are coming
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together and we meet before school as grade level teams and then on Thursdays we meet as a sit team where we're talking through different interventions for different students that have been referred and we do sort of a problem a practice protocol where we determine next steps so the majority of the work that we've been doing so far has really been around priority one in creating a safe in school environment where every student feels cared for and starting around october/november we were able to start diving into priority two which is around instruction and so some of the work streams that we were able to start with in the instruction priority is really diving into training staff on the GVC training them on looking at their standards and understanding their standards at a deep level we really prioritize as an admin team that consists of assistant principals of myself we're really prioritizing going into classrooms and providing feedback to teachers we have a goal of being in classrooms at least seven times this year we're providing written feedback to teachers and then having face-to-face conversations and we're on track to meeting that goal so I'm really happy about that we've also been utilizing map data which allows us to identify students that are tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3 and then providing additional supports accordingly and so we've trained the staff on using that data I my previous school that I was that we used map pretty pretty robustly and so we've been able to do that this year and train the staff to identify the different goal reports and make sure that students are setting their own growth target goals we've done different advisory lessons based on this and we took our second round of map last week and it's showing very promising data we haven't disaggregated all of it but we're we're headed in the right direction and yes so so this whole second semester were really just switching over to diving into instruction now that the school has really stabilized around priority one one of the other things that we've been doing this year is really trying to streamline or different types of meetings and different types of community involvement prior to my arrival at Oakley there was site council and there was PTA and sometimes the rules weren't clearly defined so this year we're really trying to identify our different meeting types what the purpose is and then making sure that the community understands the meetings that exist and so if they have feedback in a certain area this is where they would attend we also started coffee with the principal this year where every month they're able to come and we switch it one month it's in the morning the other month it's in the afternoon and they're able to come and that's a more informal setting where we're just I give a short presentation and then there's a lot of questions and answers and a lot of just them giving feedback and then suggesting based on their feedback and then we've really tried to build our relationship with sei we have sei in our building and so we've been working on streamlining our practices between admin and sei and so we've developed weekly meetings with each other to try to ensure that we're all on the same page and then being able to discuss what happened at sit and then talk about how they can support us and how we can support them and that's been really positive and in terms of our next steps so I know I've spoken a lot about like what we've been doing but we have a lot of plans to finish out the Year Strong as I stated before we just took the second round of map and we're using that data to really determine which students need which level of support in identifying tier 2 and tier 3 students and being able to determine which supports they need in both reading and math and we've opened up more sections of support classes and things like that and we've also created different pullout models and push in models where some teachers and extra support staff can go in and support students that need additional support we've also continued with scheduling instructional planning days once a quarter so that core teachers are able to then come together and plan together through a PLC model or professional learning community model where they are able to talk through their upcoming curriculum with Atossa or myself or an assistant principal and we're committed to pulling them or having them participate in a planning day every quarter so that's continuing
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to happen and then we've also switched up our Tuesday professional development cycles so that it rotates through four topics at the beginning of the year we were really focused around our priority one which is the school culture and climate and now we're really focused around these four topics like restorative justice avid strategies instructional planning and using data to drive decision making and then as we're working on this year we're also working on plans for next year because coming in on July 1 this past year it was really challenging to try to do everything that we wanted to do so this this semester were really switching gears and while still maintaining our drive for this year we're really starting to plan for next year by creating a really robust master schedule process we I've sent the assistant principal counselors to Pearson training in December and they've learned a whole process that's data-driven and they're going to implement that this semester we are identifying staff recruitment and trying to have conversations with staff and getting our numbers and seeing where retention numbers are early on so that we can develop a really a really great hiring process and ensure that we're hiring early rather than the summer we were you know frantically trying to fill positions because we didn't know so we're trying to think really proactively about that and just using data to make decisions and determine priorities for next year so that's how we are closing out this year I knew it oh my god great oh my dad driven empty ss your focus so kudos I really am I really loved what I heard I'm a hater and I want to come visit thank you you're welcome anytime yeah I'm also really impressed with the seven observations that's a lot yeah it's amazing in your on track yeah we are on track it's a lot of hard work that's great I've been very happy not with just with what I've seen or what I've heard but with what I've seen the kids are not clear clearly doing much much better this year the community is doing much better I really appreciate all the work that you've done I do have some questions and Oh feel free to kick these four specifically math and reading interventions how are you getting resources for that are you getting enough resources for that more broadly from the district how are we allocating math and reading supports is it one or two per school or is it done on the basis of needs so please yeah that's a great question so we were we were allocated one reading intervention specialist for this year and then with some creative problem-solving I was able to free up a couple of sections and math to provide math support I've also you know every school is allocated grant funds in a certain way and so I've done some creative problem-solving with that too for a second semester based on our math numbers from math we have hired a person that is going to do a pushin model and so she's been pushing into some of our classes and doing small group and then she's been working with that teacher to pull out sets sets of students depending on the data and depending on the need because we weren't allocated an actual position but I've figured out some ways around it and how I'm using my funds because I based on our map data students are coming into AA CLE um you know one to two grade levels below and so math is a really big need and over the last couple of years there's been a lot of transition in the math department so that's also created some gaps I would say that you know next year looking at our staffing models and things like that trying to figure out how we can get a resource for math would be something that we're looking at or how I can move things around to prioritize math as well but we've been able to do some things creatively this year more broadly do we know how those
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resources are being assigned across the district honestly I have the same question for each of the other schools I have the same question about social and emotional supports PBIS what kinds of resources are you getting and how are those being assigned this is a fundamental culture shift for us as an organization in that how do we differentiate school supports and interventions across the school portfolio and I know our chief of schools and the team could could speak to that we know that there was a more equitable resourcing of our schools last spring with staffing with equity funds certainly our title schools we want to do more and this is this is a priority area that as a senior leadership team the board can expect that we're gonna be bringing forward we want our schools that are working really hard right now and taking the nickels they have to be able to take it to the next level so this is the sort of the conversation that we're having and we're obligated to sort of stipulate and articulate what that plan is under essa anyways so we're that this is very much sort of work in progress right now that that's being constructed I don't know if Keely wants to speak a little more our chief of schools on this just add to what superintendent Guerrero said and we realized we do need differentiated supports right now we do have you know fabulous leaders who are able to determine what their priorities or are and move their resources around effectively and so Christine is an example of that she realizes that she needed math and reading intervention and so she was able to move the resources around to make sure that she provided those supports and I know that when dr. Elwood comes up and speaks about Rose Way height she'll speak to the same thing and so they were able to use some of their equity funds to make sure that that happened and so that's something we'll continue to support them in I'm in terms of the PD and you know her doing some work within the staff within the day that's something we're also very supportive of and so we're gonna you know continue to move forward and help them develop a very campus specific plan to meet the needs of their kids and so that is something we will work with them on in the spring I have a quick question about especially your first goal around climate and culture but it pertains to the others as well can you just talk about how these school-wide initiatives that you've articulated so clearly fit within the broader district initiatives of the same in the same areas and so I think we still have a climate plan that's due for every school so is what you described your climate plan or is it something additional or different or how does that all fit together is our our climate plan in fact every school has to take a the they have to go through a TFI process twice a year and score on the different indicators and things like that and so we're on track we hit 80 percent at Oakley after the first couple of months and so yeah what I described is everything that's built into our climate plan and all of the supports that we have in place has like helped us create such a big gain at the beginning because it aligns perfectly with what the district is also saying as well and I guess I have a similar question around the MTS s work that you're describing how does that fit with what we're trying to build system-wide yet so we're taking we're taking an approach of really just supporting all learners and everything that we're doing is in the framework of like of UDL where you know it's Universal Design for Learning where students no matter what level are really getting an individualized component and its really differentiated by individual students and I would say that aligns also perfectly with what the district has been doing and really diving into teachers and their content and understanding their their content standards and then how to differentiate from there I think first where our first step is really understanding how to unpack what those standards are understanding the grade-level appropriate standard and then being able to differentiate based on that and so that's really the approach that we've been taking it Oakley and yeah I think it's been pretty positive TFI for the climate Christina and her team have done a really good job of is the Tier one interventions in terms of MTS s and they spent a lot of time at the beginning of
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the year making sure that there were highly effective Tier one interventions in the classroom and so I know some of you talked about coming to visit but you're gonna see kids in class and you're gonna see hallways clear when the tardy bell rings and kids engaged in learning and so that's where that Tier one comes in with the MTS s so the metric on climate is not it it's not it's pitch to the TF fine not to the survey that we're doing the metric that I chose for aa CLE this summer based on the information that I knew and what our team knew was really about a survey that we're giving to families and staff that's the metric that we chose the district doesn't metric to on the TSI so I mean all of that's kind of bundled together it can be an additional metric but that's the reported metric that we're also giving to the district so you did your own survey oh we created our own survey yeah that our site Council approved Oakley and okay that we're giving multiple times assure a concerted effort to integrate a lot of different input and feedback from school community student staff so so yes there's a tiered fidelity index it lays out what are the research space elements that need to be in place in a school especially at Tier one so that you can start to distinguish who needs those more intensive interventions and supports but if you combine that with some qualitative and antidotal data by hearing from the students themselves and from our families you you can also take that into account and so we want to be data informed we don't want to limit ourselves to one instrument the fact that the school community has elected to incorporate and wrap it I I'm just still amazed here because if I think back just six to ten months this is pretty amazing progress I have to say all the right acronyms all the right kind of work pretty ambitious agenda so I just I really commend you and your team so I just say what he said but I has a question just in the spirit of trying to get to ten o'clock just I'm just kidding so on some of the goals here you have you know seventy fifty percent eighty percent I'm wondering if you could share sort of what your baseline was on each of those and then sort of so what that growth looks like or the magnitude of the change that you're looking to achieve yeah that's a great question we so the baseline data for the first priority with the survey that was given we had the survey data from last year site counsel had given a survey to families and to students and so that's how we determined the seventy percent I think the survey was results last year were hovering around the 50 percent mark for the second priority the map measure that's something that nwea the the tests that are the people that give the map tests they recommend that schools should be at fifty percent or more of their students meeting their individual growth target and so what that means is a student will be given their individual score on how they scored in math and in reading and then nwea or map says that they should achieve this this growth by the end of the year and this is their growth goal so like a student coming in at two fourteen let's say they should end the year at to eighteen and so their growth goal would be that if they would grow four points and let's say reading I'm just making these numbers up but so that's what that's saying is that 50% of our more of our students will meet their individualized growth goal so it's not really about how where a student comes in it's more about where they should be by the end of the year according to the National enormous because it's normed against other students taking that same test it's like here's cry here's a standard yeah and it's saying all of the students that take this test if they score this range this is where they should be at by the end of the year if they're making adequate growth progress in a school that is you know able to show adequate growth and so the norm is that 50 percent or more in a school should be able to meet that of students and so that's why we chose
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that goal I have much higher ambitions and I'm after we disaggregate the second round I'm hoping that we can score a lot yeah average growth won't get them on track we need accelerated growth so right right and on track versus where the we're you know map says that they should be is really about the level that they're coming in at I agree with you like we want we want our students that are I mean if our data showing that students are coming in one to two grade levels below on average in math obviously we need to accelerate that process so we're looking at that I was just going with what they recommend for this year and then hoping that like our data will show a lot more progress and that in the future we can have a much more ambitious goal but we'll go with the recommended goal for this year and then our last priority around staff retention that's based on I think that's a 25 percent increase from last year to this year of so that's a pretty ambitious goal as well and that's something that you know very clearly I heard over and over from stakeholders is the need to retain staff and also the need to retain admin right over the last few years Oakley's administration has been changing quite a bit so really it's all staff it's not just teaching staff it's it's every staff member at our school behind you so I just had to follow up so that's sort of the based on your goals priority two and the aqua green will create a strong academic culture where classroom instruction is aligned to college and career-ready standards so if then you're going to compare that to whether students are actually meeting the grade-level standards so if you have these aligned college and career-ready standards do you have a metric also around whether students are actually I'm not seeing it here meeting those that would be meeting those standards yeah I mean it's really about us back because the college and career-ready standards are the common core standards that are at grade level and that are you know considered college ready standards and so it would just be our us back indicator we have some just informal metrics that we've said as a team but we you know I don't have that number exactly in front of me right now but we've really focused on map because of where kids are coming in and looking at our data and realizing that a lot of students are coming in significantly below and so that's not really you know using a grade level measure while we want to show growth there as well it's it's very difficult if our students are not coming in at grade level on average but we are also hoping that that grows as well so speaking of how where the students are coming in so great foundational work you've done this year is there an ongoing conversation with the Elementary's that are feeding into aqua green so that this is so that you're getting students who are in a different place and ready to really accelerate through middle school versus you're trying to catch them up so I'm just kind of had that alignment and I'll just piggyback on that for a second because that was exactly my same question so or even more granular than that the map data shows like that the specific areas within a subject where your kids are coming in deficient so sharing that information with your elementary schools we do meet as cohorts once a month and that's more for instructional professional development but as we move into the spring we will spend more time with feeders and looking at data and so that Christina and other middle schools can talk to the elementary school principals and look at data to really start developing some intervention plans and some instructional plans for kids based on the students that are coming in and where they are burning question I'm gonna call it I'm looking at the clock and we've got three more schools so if we want to hit the goal thank you three commitments and resets I assume that's fallen Angelz getting back on a path and it's some future point I'd love to see some specific examples from map that we learned this and so that led to that and also what map doesn't tell us so we strengths and weaknesses not not a bit not a big deal but just to give a little
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more hands-on because it sounds like it's really important to long want to hear more about that okay thank you very much just say thank you to your whole team you walked into a really hard job thank you thank you [Applause] who's next lint Oscar Moreno Gilson is the superintendent for Franklin and grant cohort and I'm really proud to be here today to introduce to you Richard Smith he was hired two weeks before the school year started I'm really excited that we have a full team in our cohort and so he'll take off with a presentation all right good evening board it's great to be here tonight with y'all talk about lent a little bit tonight and we're where we've been and where we're planning on going once again my name is Richard Smith and thank you for those who have come by and seen as this year so far so very similar to what Oakley green was presenting we kind of had three priorities we looked at the cap goal for many of these and also community input goal number one was students teachers and families feel safe and supported at lent it's been an ongoing issue for years at safety has been an issue at length discipline has kind of been an issue at lint and so by the end of the school year we will have reduced our suspension rate by 10% by having a clear system of positive behavior interventions and supports of PBIS and Tier one supports for all students Tier one supports our supports and systems that all students can experience so it's for 100% of our students the Tier one so right now we're on pace to meet this goal of reducing suspensions not just by 10% but we're looking more in the twenty twenty five percent range at this point of the year um last year we had about 110 suspensions we're sitting about 27 right now so we're definitely on pace we hope to continue to lower that number as a matter of fact most of our suspensions or referrals were in the months of September and October and since then things have calmed down quite a bit at Lynch students are in classrooms we've gotten them to where they need to be and so now we just have to continue to develop our teachers so that instruction is strong when those students are in class so that takes us to priority two that leg will create a strong academic culture where classroom instruction is aligned to common core standards to prepare students for high school college and beyond very similar to aqua green as well we actually collaborate and talk 50% or more of all length students will meet or exceed their individual growth goal on the measures of academic progress the map test for language arts by the end of the third testing in a and so we're also looking for our students to increase one level as measured on PPS rubric for writing as that's part of our cap goal as well so we're a cohort three school at lent which means our focus this year is on writing and K through five reading is not till next year really but we still want to push that and some of our teachers are piloting it this year in preparation for next year and so when we're looking at the second round of map about 40% of our students have tested our writing I've kind of started looking at that data so it's not super accurate yet because we only have 40% in about 40% of the students I've met their growth goals so we got a lot of work to do still to hit our metric for 50% by the end of the year and our priority 3 is the district will provide regular updates and will seek actively seek input from parents so we're in the process of finalizing the development of a site Council that will meet monthly to discuss problems and solve issues we haven't had a site counsel at lint for a while now for a couple years so we're in that process of getting that we have some bylaws established so in the next week or two there's gonna be communication going out to parents about how they can become part of that with what we do okay so to go into priority one we want people we want our students teachers and families to feel safe and supported so the first one is collaborative development of Lentz core values we we didn't decide to do this top-down we took this to the staff the students and the parents and we and we decided that be safe be responsible to be respectful and be kind would be our core values that lint we sent out a survey to parents they took at conferences we got feedback on the different areas of expectations for students and so the common expectation lessons were aligned to core values and students are taught explicitly explicitly what it means to display value safety responsibility respect and kindness we had these intro lessons when the students came back in January so a lot of the stuff that we've done at lent has been a roll out in January after we've gotten input the community really does want to be involved in the input that goes on at lint they don't want things that just come down just out of nowhere they want to have a voice in what said as well as the staff students do are in paw prints at little rewards for the for displaying those they can get stuff from the school store with that restorative conversations take place so when the students are pulled out we do kind of do a restorative model outside of the classroom we're gonna be working on doing training and PLC starting at March and what restorative circles and such look like in class so the teachers can begin to implement they're not just outside of the classroom and we're also implementing mind up in the classrooms for K through eight to increase mindfulness to assist our students and staying with the core values we see a lot of assumption about behavior in our building and the assumptions lead to the student being disciplined so we want students our staff all of us to have a more mindful
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approach to how we approach discipline how we approach to misbehavior so we can analyze what our students are doing and keep them in the classroom the multi-tiered systems of support and and then the PBIS are two big things we do receive quite a bit of support from the district on MTS s we have a toaster that comes in at least once a week she sits with our our sit team our student intervention team she comes to our PBIS meetings and she helps guide some of that work with us and so once again as we talked about the paw prints is one way we have a student management specialist who's been at the building for many years but it's new to the role this year who's doing a great job really working in some of those restorative conversations with the students and we help move from tier 1 to tier 2 3 with this with the counselors if they need more with the students see more help and so we have a lot of one-on-one conversation of the students a lot of check-ins checkouts groups outside resources we bring in to work with some of our populations that need additional help and we do have our team that meets weekly to discuss students on that that was quite interesting when we got there at the end of the year we had about 50 kids that had not been met on that were on the agenda to meet about sit and we've actually clear that up and we're actually completely caught up now where we need to be on that so it's been a lot of work from the teachers and other people on that so this is some examples of the pictures don't look great on there but just you know some of the hallway expectations it was a the the SMS and the teachers they were they were the ones that really owned it and they had small group conversations with students the students were really engaged in the process and you know they know you can ask them if they're not following with the expectations you say oh what are we not doing and they can actually point and tell you which is really powerful instead of just being like stop doing that so priority two is lint will create a strong academic culture where classroom instruction is aligned to common core standards to prepare students for high school college and beyond we have a lot of instructional professional development this year especially around writing being that we're a cohort three school writing is our focus Lucey Caulkins the writing Writers Workshop for k5 is really where we're trying to get down we're by the end of the year we want all of our teachers to be able to do a successful mini lesson which is about a ten minute lesson on a specific content and then to be able to do a lot of check-ins and small group instruction with the students as well as overall check-ins so our students should be writing in that time period aligned to the curriculum and what the GBC is as well we've been focusing on getting in classrooms and providing observations and support we have I believe around thirty probationary teachers on our campus which is quite extensive it may be 25 but it's it's right it's right it's it's high and and so we me and my assistant principal are in classrooms trying to get those observations and give quality feedback to our teachers as well we've enlisted the help of several toeses around the district to help with coaching as well we've identified teachers that can really use that support to develop and grow so we've we've started our coaching plan which we rolled out a couple weeks ago right when we came back and many of the teachers by the end this month will start getting weekly coaching supports from district ptosis to come in and help around reading and literacy and then a middle school around math lesson plans of course we have our weekly professional learning communities around one week is on dbl writing and the other week is supposed to be around culture and climate especially around mindfulness to help continue to drive that home and then our monthly staff meetings once a month we focus on equity based balanced literacy where the Tosa comes in and does that for our teachers in terms of intervention and supports for tier two and Tier three students we we've been looking at the map date data quite significantly we are in the process of we've as we've found of resources on campus to create some math intervention and more reading intervention by moving a few things and adjusting the schedule so not this week but next week we're gonna be rolling a few students into some of those classes to receive that extra support based off map based off how they've done in the past on a spec and also based on teacher recommendation so we're gonna triangulate three points to determine which students need that intervention the most for both math and reading for grades 6 through 8 specifically we have a K through 5 reading specialist that goes in and and usually does the pushin model with some educational assistance but occasionally some pull outs as well as need be and and then also our sit team as that as as figuring out who needs some of those supports as well okay so community engagement is a really critical thing at lent that we're continuing to develop and work on with the community input to see how we can best serve them as I mentioned before the site Council is rolling out we have the bylaws pretty much established now so that communication will be going out to parents we hope to have our elections early February and hope to have our first site council meeting by the end of February and then meet on a monthly basis to discuss the needs of the school and scheduling and all those things to help the school move forward we have our PTA they meet they meet every month we partner with them we're working to helping them grow that as well we don't just have the PTA but we also have our let United parent group so there's two to parent groups that meet and discuss
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needs of the schools and ways that we can assist them moving forward I have my monthly coffee with the principal where we meet and it's like it was mentioned before about aqua green it's a pretty informal I have a brief presentation about what's going on and then the other half about 30 minutes we take questions and we listen to what their parents have to say and take feedback from there and so our next steps second semester we're going to be adding additional math and reading intervention groups or tier 2 and tier 3 using the data ensuring core instruction is aligned to common core state standards that's one of our big focus is the shares that makes sure that we're lined to the GBC because the GBC is aligned to common core continue to pull the core teachers for instructional planning days we they do go to training professional development to get help with that GBC and to have our staff meetings and PLC time and in the PLC their continued focus on mind up begin restorative conversations and March what that's gonna look like instructional planning and working as a team that's something that we're really working on this shirt lent is as a as a school staff team how do we become a team how do we become one together and we're going to be working for next year a strong masters schedule planning the master schedule wasn't fully established until about a day or two before the school year started this year so we're gonna do a much better job next year of having a strong master schedule that's gonna be able to meet the needs of more of our students and not just figuring it out during the year and we're gonna have strong hiring we won't be hiring a week into the school year this next year we're gonna have ourselves fully staffed this time around and we'll have our PD calendar aligned and ready to go for to meet the needs of our students and I believe that is it for my presentation come to Oregon thank you the Portland and we all heard that y'all no apology is necessary I just want to say from all this work and considering the incredible turnover and turmoil that you stepped into this is a great framework that you've set up and a tremendous amount of work has been done and a tremendous amount of work needs to continue to happen and you know you touched on some of those things but really fundamental rock-bottom first steps that are being made and I was sorry you weren't there when I visited a couple of weeks ago meeting I wanted to be have you catch me the day I wasn't there yes I know if that's a challenging school and it sounds like things are going are going you know in a good direction now so you have a large al population there I don't see anything I guess called out here is there a particular I know you're gonna focus on all students but wondering to you know how you look at specific needs for disaggregated like disaggregate the data and look at the needs and right so so specifically around our ELLs we do have a high percentage of that we have three ESL teachers or yellow teachers on campus one that focuses on k2 one that's three five and one that's six eight and we've moved away from the pullout model we really don't feel that works and so those teachers actually push into those classrooms and give support to the whole class as a whole and then also individual support to those students on a need need-be basis in that class so are we as a system then helping el teachers but learn about the co teaching methods and practicing is that support that we give system way to your teachers so we're still working on on what that co-teaching looks like and that's something that I think is a struggle a nationwide is what that co-teaching looks like in a classroom so we could definitely use support with that thank you with the superintendent so the thirty probationary teachers so if you're an administrator in a school that has a disproportionate number of probationary teachers and just what's required to provide sort of the in-class observations and the coaching from a district standpoint what sort of additional supports do we give or provide for schools that have sort of this disproportionate I want to say burden because I think it's probably one of the most rewarding parts of the job to be sort of supporting probationary teachers as they start their careers but what sort of support do we give principals just knowing that that's a just like amount time in the capacity
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needed I don't think any of us want to see any school impacted with that level of you know teachers that are new to the profession we always want to see sort of a mix of folks on the career ladder in any given school supporting one another at at leant we in addition to principal Smith we do have an assistant principal there as well you heard about some of the central toeses that are coming by and working with teachers in a variety of different areas but it is a challenge I mean having been one of those principals who you know had a lot of newer teachers we need to free up our principals to be able to spend the quality time in classrooms these are some of the structures that everyone has to sort of share ownership for so that there's stability and ability to focus on instruction I'm impressed that you know you know we're already initiating a lot of those conversations but you know we've been having a lot of conversations around what level of administrative capacity is going to be required because we certainly want to see lent grow and we want to see retention and so you know it's an opportunity to help nurture folks that are new to the profession but this is why we have them working so closely with our principal supervisors so that they're coming back with a lot of this kind of information and if we're seeing a pattern of some schools you know having having that additional sort of responsibility what what are the additional supports that could be helpful is that a second aap is it our master teachers or mentor teachers we're providing a beginning teacher and induction support that we know is critical in the first couple of years so they stay beyond two or three those are some of the supports we we would want to see did you want to add to that Oscar it led specifically on addition to that we provide six days for the principal and vice-principal to take the time to write up their evaluations or to get into classrooms and make observations and we do that for all of our title one schools really provide substitutes for them new teachers can have an induction program there's still a mentor program there is my first-year teachers in music and your teachers have a mentor as well I'm sorry so that you're saying they get a substitute so they can so somebody else is leading they're building and managing things in the building correct yes first answer five or six days mm-hmm yes you're talking about the principal and the vice-principal right okay so one of the other challenges you're facing is you're co-located program you've got one strand of Spanish and two neighborhood correct and I know we noticed the the neighborhood class sizes were pretty small especially in K through two they're pretty small yeah and you have a looked like a lot of Latino students who are in not in the DLI program is that yes there's a there are some that are not in the DLI program some of that goes to the district processes for lottery and applications and all and capsizes on the DL ID numbers also and I can add to that so we do have as you know for the native English speakers I want to get into Dual Immersion there shopping around are going to from kinder connect to kinder Connect for our native Spanish speakers we actually have to recruit them we we have Yolanda who goes and knocks on doors and explains the program I think that in previous years we had the the English only movement and don't the the system or the culture the one has to be bilingual and so we have a lot of families that don't understand or don't believe that being bilingual is an asset so we have to really go out and recruit Yolanda was out sick during this time last year and so we couldn't really go out and record all the families and then with the transition of administrators we weren't able to get it we're not able to get all of the families to actually buy in into this model but we're working on it okay it would there have been room for all the Latino kindergartners to be in DLI if they so chose to I believe our do like classes are at the level or one away from their level for the most part
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especially in kindergarten first grade and especially in the K through five there was enough space for all of our neighborhood families and so but because not all of them got and they were able to let non neighborhood families into the program that were native Spanish speakers okay that seems like something we ought to change or look at changing its it I mean if our goal is to better serve those students then make sure all the neighborhood kids are served in a DLI program in their neighborhood school seems shout out to David Porter who just sent us all some very interesting data on specifically this point and I'll forward it yeah to you oh you have an Oscar yeah and I had it yeah pulled pulled up on my phone to review so give it two minute warning so Paul did you ever I would just like to make the point that we know that far and away our most effective way of reaching reall students is with a DLI program and reiterating with director bailey had to say but again i continue to hear fabulous things about what you're doing the student demographic a staff that generally you know is culturally responsive and has strategies for making sure second language learners can access content that we have a school culture that appreciates their culture that i mean a good unlist so there are a lot of things we can do to make sure that it is a welcoming a positive place for learning that question - of city schools that have high e/l populations really how many teachers are trained or have background in the instructor particularly branding teachers do they come in with endorsements or any coursework on teaching English learners it's we know the answer so most of I will say I am impressed in this district by our DLI program that we have that they do offer a lot of support for those teachers who are DLI teachers specifically not not so much for the neighborhood side teachers because they're in a different thing but they do offer a ton of support for those teachers I do see them coming back and employing strategies in their you have continued to have that diverse population too so it's just something to think of absolutely is the system I'm gonna call it thank you thank you very much so we have two two more schools so I'm gonna limit it to 15 minutes apiece and that will bring us to 10 p.m. good evening again now we have dr. Kathleen Elwood from Rosalie Heights Middle School and I cannot say enough about the work that she has done to open Rose Heights middle school it's truly impressive so dr. Ellen thank you and it's actually been a team effort I can't take all the credit our goals and priorities were established based on a lot of the ground work that we did last year if you remember we held monthly community meetings and gathered input from the community and based on the input that the community gave us my school site council chose 10 areas where we thought that we needed to work on top 10 priorities and then we had our community vote on their top three choices that are back to school night at our back-to-school night Wade posters up and basically anybody with a pulse who walked walked by if it got to vote as to what their top three priorities were including our students and our staff and so we got some great feedback that evening we had over 600 people attend our back-to-school night which was a great turnout and so the priorities that came up oddly enough matched what our data also said we needed because we also spent time last year meeting with our feeder schools to examine the data of our incoming students and determine what we needed so that was great to see that that those two things melted together so school climate I'm not gonna go through and read every word for you but school climate is a focus as well as making sure that our students are getting assistance as they need it that was a huge priority for our Latino families who actually wrote their comments in Spanish is not just the climate but wanting their students to be able to read and write and getting the support they needed and last but not least is having a shared vision and equity that community building my community if you remember decided that they weren't just concerned about our students becoming students but they're very concerned about how our students will contribute to the
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community in the future so moving along um so for school culture and climate we have a number of things going on most of the things on this particular slide are centered around our culturally responsive tiered Fedele inventory which we do twice a year it's been mentioned in the previous presentations and our school climate handbook so we do have a school climate team composed of parents teachers and now we've drafted a student or been able to convince a student to stay for pizza so hey whatever it takes and also they're realizing the value of their inputs so intrinsic motivators also and so in addition to reviewing our handbook which we are doing again this month we are also looking at doing a monthly review of our common area data without student names to determine if we need to put in additional structures and systems to help support students and being successful in our common areas we also have staff professional development that occurred during the additional pre-service days we received and is ongoing through the year we did a training a classroom management training called champs training through safe and civil schools which basically teaches teachers to have clear expectations for each activity they do in the classroom as well as positive reinforcement within the classroom so that they shouldn't just depend on those school tickets that we use as school-wide rewards but each teacher needs to have a comprehensive positive reinforcement plan and give students non-contingent attention and for our students who are trauma impacted many of them on that non-contingent attention just appreciating them as human beings regardless of their actions is absolutely vital for our success the other staff development that we have going on that I'm really excited about is training through the University of Oregon dr. Kent Mackintosh his bringing a team once a month I didn't want one-shot training but he's bringing a team once a month to our school to work with our teachers on implicit bias and recognizing when they are experiencing vulnerable decision points when they're making our times in the day when we're hungry when we're tired when implicit bias could impact our decision-making and often that happens and disciplinary situations and so they're teaching us de-escalation strategies for adults not just for students so um that trainings ongoing and then we will be doing monthly walkthroughs peer observations to look for examples of best practice and those strategies as we learn them so we're excited about that training and then we're also continuing to receive support from our our MTS s Department you've heard a lot about some of the groundwork we did last year was to create a multi-tiered systems of support rubric that addressed six different areas one was externalized behaviors those are the things you see reflected in office disciplinary referrals or referrals the second was internalized behaviors those are the behaviors the students who often slip below the surface and we determine those students using something called a universal screener that was developed by dr. Kathleen Lane and that's something our teachers do to determine if a student needs additional support we also look at reading we look at math we look at tardies and we look at attendance because our school has such a late time a late start time 915 many of our students are responsible for getting themselves to school so that attendance and being on time piece it's really important for us to have positive reinforcements as well as some corrective consequences of needed last but not least we are also field testing social-emotional curriculum through caring school communities through our advisory program and so that includes not only a reteaching of common area expectations but it's looking at the values that that we feel are important for students to have and which are celebrated assembly students are chosen and rewarded for showing those values those positive values and we've been doing things like tardy recognition program this Friday where anyone who had no tardies last week gets to participate in a free time and we had 483 out of our 577 students actually make that target so we're really excited about that that's a huge improvement for us all right I better move on since we have our 15 minute looking at our academics we wanted to make sure our students looking at our data from last year when our teams looked at the data what we saw was that over 60% of our students were tier 3 in reading meaning they need intensive supports individualized supports and over 65% were tier 3 and math meeting so you know individualized support and math so with that knowledge what I did with our equity team funding or their equity money as well as our title 1 funding we are a title 1 school is I created a student intervention team because one of
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the challenges I had at Irving Tanai previous assignment was that our student intervention team wasn't meeting as frequently as possible because it was dependent I'm using staff meeting time in order for teachers to participate I had no title 1 funding to pay anyone extra hourly to help support that so I created a team a student intervention specialist a literacy coach and a math coach and then we additionally have a full-time student assistance coordinator from the Family and Community Engagement department who is absolutely invaluable and our team is able to meet together with people from each discipline and our counselors to look at student data and our MTS s rubric and see if any of our students are falling into the category of tier 2 or tier 3 needing additional supports in other words in addition to that student intervention team we also have a start team a student attendance response team that specifically looks at just attendance and tardies as I said it's absolutely crucial for us that we're doing things including home visits to try to connect with families who have been difficult to contact and we also have a school discipline team that refused reviews disciplinary data and so the attendance team and the student discipline team take their information to the weekly student intervention team meeting and what we're hoping is that that will allow us to use data to make sure that none of our students slipped through the cracks basically and working along obviously community engagement is a huge priority for us in addition to our school site Council we have a transitional PA PTA and what I mean by transitional is that as a community we want to get more of our families involved so that our PTA and other organizations are more representative of our student population currently it's primarily white families who attended Rose way height specifically in a field space feel safe in that physical space so I have parents who are sitting in temporarily until we can get more involvement from other areas of our community that more continuous involvement and in order to try to connect with those communities we're holding community meetings off-site at places such as the Hacienda housing development tomorrow night Lee and Rose way Hearts Heights are holding a joint meeting at Broadway Vantage another housing development on Broadway by the Mack station they're on 82nd Street and we're also partnering with Orko to do things at the Asian Family Center so these are all areas where our families already feel comfortable and that's what we're hoping is that we can interconnect with those agencies and locations where families feel safe because what we found is that a number of our families did not fill out free and reduced lunch applications this year because they did not feel safe doing so and so that's a huge concern and so just making sure students eat is gonna require quite a bit of ground work while we've all what we also have is a principals Coffey's both in the morning in the evening and although it's decaf in the evenings and parents interested in equity group which is a group of parents committed to building cross-cultural awareness across our community and one branch of that group is currently doing white affinity training which is a white Ally training on a monthly basis with a local trainer what we've discovered is that there have been some schisms created between some of our communities in the district based on past action and so I've honestly found that while all these are fine you know having meeting set and announcing things the best way to connect with our families is just that interpersonal connection and with one group from Hacienda for example we've realized that the best in road is going to be through dance as strange as that sounds I'm a belly dance instructor and I met a parent who is a folklórico dancer and we're gonna do joint lessons and draw in families that way so it's unconventional I know but we've got to connect with our communities as human beings and any of you are welcome to put on a hip scarf and join us moving along so next step is to continue adding I'm reading an intervention groups we are seeing some gains with some of our students and what we're seeing is that the math assessment you've heard a lot about it already but they actually have a lovely graph that actually shows students the progress they've made and that visual we find is a huge motivator in and of itself is for students to see their growth we're doing a number of different instructional days I'm using our title one funding one is going to be collaborating with our ESL teachers we have 79 ESL students or eld students and we want to collaborate so that teachers can learn what each individual student
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needs to be successful we're gonna do the same for our students with individualized education plans and 504 plans is coordinating with case managers or general educators we're gonna be doing Department days and I was gonna really focus on the scope and sequence in the GVC but what I've realized is that many of my teachers did not have consistent training in the Common Core State Standards so like any teacher when you realize there's a gap you've got to back up and fill in that gap before you can move forward we're also gonna be taking some days to look at the Maps assessment scores I don't want just my coaches looking at the scores and determining who needs that extra intervention I want teachers to really become familiar with those scores and look at the strands where we're seeing consistent inconsistencies and scores where we can improve and where we're doing well already we're gonna continue trying to get community members on board and the master schedule is a huge huge challenge for us we are also a dual language school we have Spanish this year sixth grade students from Scott Elementary but in two years we also add Vietnamese so we're kind of doing a five year plan where we're looking at our student enrollment over the next five years and how the Spanish DLI program and co-located Vietnamese DLI program is going to impact hiring where students are housed and just what our program will look like so we're trying to plan ahead as much as possible as well as continue to work with our feeder schools we're really we really really really not just our elementary schools but our high school manners and we really want to create a K through 12 continuum so we are really looking forward to the time dr. Simpson has talked with us about I'm having time to plan together as a collective as a cluster or really looking forward to that time because we need to keep our students in the Madison cluster I know okay so we're rapidly running out of time so I don't want you to feel like we're not interested well I would love to have you show up and we have a principals coffee this Friday morning at nine o'clock you're welcome to join us or next Wednesday evening at 6:30 or you can come tomorrow to Broadway Vantage at six o'clock and see it all for yourselves so please join us okay thank you guys the team effort okay before it we have one question question question you could talk about what would be most valuable in terms of the articulation between your feeder schools and then the work that you do with Madison I know that you did a lot of work in your the year before here's a planning year of going into those school communities and meeting with the families but I mean what would be most important from the to get from the district to support that because I think this has been a sort of a long-term issue in the Madison cluster that there's been all these feeders into Madison sort of a disjointed middle grades experience so what is it that we can do to be helpful or supportive or yeah well what helped us last year was simply having planning time was being able to one of the things that we are granted last year was funding for substitutes to or for people who wanted to meet in the summer or after school to do planning together that's honestly what helped us the most is being able to have that opportunity to collaborate and I see Madison not just as my feeder schools but I'm Harrison Park also feeds into Madison and it would be lovely to have time to align with I'm Harrison Park and the feeder schools for Harrison Park also since we're really all part of that Madison family unless there are boundary changes coming up that may change that but up and as of right now we are all Madison schools we've also found a lot about rig'lar possibly being a partner because they a lot of our families live at Hacienda attend Riegler or Scott and so just doing things that are open to that community also since that's also a DLI school that connects with us or partners with us yeah there's looking ahead towards surf and rework and there might be some we should look at had some realignments there potentially around rig'lar around Harrison Park becoming a middle school or creating and dealing with that and that's also applies to land as well going forward that haven't having went
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as a k5 what allow us to do the better serve those students I think he's going to be introduced in the principal and something that we're doing in our cohort the Franklin and grand cohort were dividing and conquering so I'm thinking all of land and he's taking all of Harriet Tubman seem like the time has been well spent I first want to say guys I admire what you guys do as board members it takes a lot to come and go to work all day and come to these meetings all night so I just want to let you know I really appreciate that beside me is is is a wonderful what's that a wonderful wonderful principal beside me is Natasha Butler she's principal over Harriet Tubman so I'm gonna give it to her and let her go do a presentation okay good evening everyone you know it's past my bedtime in front of you I know that you have this presentation and for the sake of time I would just like to kind of accelerate it as you all know we moved into Harriet Tubman at an accelerated rate I would like to say overnight and focus or I should I say for us our goal has been to establish a strong school climate and with that being said also established protocols and non-negotiables and so realizing that with my inherited team anxiety and excitement feel the air so as a school leader I had to figure out a way to kind of calm the waters so that we could be ready to serve students and so we walked in with a motto that I created and that was simply to transfer know be ODS and so we could not worry about things of the past but we had to come with a fresh perspective that we were going to bill brick by brick to create a strong middle school program with that in mind our school climate team administration team really worked with staff over was that the work has been ongoing monthly daily and things that we talked about that we like to reinforce a daily with our staff it's number one to sweat the small stuff interrupts chaos every day is an emergency and talk less teach more and to not be afraid to talk about the issues of race and equity as we are providing instruction for our students if you look at the PowerPoint it basically says that our goal is to number one greater awareness of cultural differences and how race impacts a school community we are 41 percent african-american in our building and that has been a cultural shift for staff and students as far as how do we engage how do we move students how do we close the achievement gap knowledge of trauma-informed practices increase opportunities to celebrate milestones being or small and consistent school-wide expectations really teaching our students how to be good citizens and if I'm an academic instructional standpoint bo strong learning communities increased intervention support you heard a lot about that tonight that is also our goal increase academic rigor improve classroom management techniques and differentiate instruction successes instructional professional development staff training and intervention we talked a lot about intervention but realize that a lot of the staff had not had PD around intervention so once we identify students who needed more support did the teachers have the tools and the expertise to know how to offer that support and so with the help of our instructional coach and one of my educational assistants that was their focus to provide training to my teachers in ela around the issue of reading proficiency and this semester starting tomorrow we will actually begin a small intervention groups for all of our students that have been identified interventions and supports also would like to add that I received additional funding to be able to hire another educational assistant so it will allow me to use my instructional coach I already had an educational assistant and
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then one more part-time person again to conduct that small group work flexible scheduling to allow for remediation study skills and secondary and post-secondary preparation we have a partnership with OSU they are putting together beaver night they are working with us to really help us to define protocols and should I say engagement around the importance of being prepared and being ready and also coming in and working with our teachers to give them that perspective because oftentimes they don't know really what's ahead they haven't had an opportunity to be in high school or college settings of recent times and so really getting teachers to come out of their comfort zone to be able to know exactly how to plan for the future as well as for our students with our students in mind MTS s we are starting at work actually within the next week with our fit assessment and that department will be coming in and providing our team with professional development support as well and then our discipline team meets twice a month to review individual student discipline data and ways in which we can improve the climate and culture of our school Harriet Tubman community engagement when I looked at that PowerPoint I was like I must have been asleep when I put it together because there are other community partners that I fail to include but other programs that are in our schools include Caldera arts Nia the iwill program and OSU educational opportunities program Winterhawks yes or additional programs that are also in our building strong PTA group a lot of that was a birth last year I was able to develop a pair an ambassador group and so a lot of those parents were actively involved in helping me to establish a PTA group and so that's often running and then we have the Maurice Lucas foundation and self-enhancement which are also housed in our building most recently in school reflection so you've probably heard this term in school suspension didn't like the word suspension so I changed it to in-school reflection and it is a standalone classroom opportunity for those students who may get off the bus for example and are just not ready to start the school day they need a soft landing a place to go with someone to talk to to kind of propel them you know for their day to get them started to jumpstart and so we found ourselves just putting out fires and having a lot of side conversations with students and really what they needed was a concentrated amount of time with an adult to be able to talk about issues that were going on family life struggles in the classroom things that they didn't always want to make public and so that has been very successful in our building it's probably been going on now for about three weeks next steps increase leader leadership opportunities for students this semester we integrated two leadership classes we want to increase student voice it's their school we want to hear from them exhibition Harriet Tubman student store strong alignment was secondary and post-secondary institutions especially special excuse me professional development and special education systems that is an area of weakness as far as inclusion and how we service students with IEP s and so we really want to work with our staff and in that area as well as you heard earlier about tag we really have been pushing our teachers to really take an active interest in identifying talented and gifted students particularly students of color that are definitely underrepresented in our tap programs and before and after school tutoring and fortunately we have been blessed to have many different organizations from the Urban League to Emanuel hospital to various universities of students that want to come and offer support the trick is coordination because those individuals also have to be managed in your building but really utilizing the resources that we've been blessed with to create tutoring opportunities for our students to be able to capture what we cannot capture in the course of a school day to close out in our second semester is to finish out that you're strong just like my other team members that presented before me develop a master schedule next year we will inherit a Mandarin program and so just today we talked about what that will look like
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what supports we need to have in place so that that program will be foundationally strong in our building we will be conducting fifth grade open houses with that will be led by our student leadership classes continued work around guarantee viable curriculum and stronger collaboration with our feet of high schools to really prepare our eighth grader for high school as you know I mentioned to you in a previous presentation our 8th graders would have had three transitions to go from a k-8 with me for one year and now into high school and so we want to make sure that we don't leave them behind as they make their transition into high school so yes I mean the best way to to kind of give you numbers to kind of set a framework have 488 students forty-one percent of my students african-american 30% white 15% Latino and ten percent motorized shopping and all in one building whereby in my feeder schools which are earning Tain's save in King and boys Elliot they don't all have those same demographics and so I also as you know inherited those teachers coming from those four feet of schools and if they had a desire to come to Harriet Tubman and they had the tenure and the endorsements as a merge I had to inherit them and so with that it's just it's just a learning curve for everyone to perhaps and maybe going and being in a classroom for a significant period of time when 70% of your kids are at grade level whereas you may walk into my building and only 30% are at grade level and you've never been challenged to that degree so what does that look like and it's scenarios like that not knowing how to deal with families that have severe trauma how to connect how to create safe classroom community where everyone feels included and so we've been working and have a wonderful restorative justice coordinator that works inside the classrooms with teachers around helping them to build community and also to support teachers and so we spend time helping teachers to repair injury so when students feel disconnected from their teachers or or if their teacher feels like they can't reach the student that we create a space for them to talk because student is not going in the way and neither is a teacher so how do we how do we keep momentum strong for the betterment of the whole so I don't know if they name such a question so off the top of my head I have about 31 32 teachers one african-american teacher one biracial teacher and pretty one Hawaiian in one Asian and the rest away my support staff is a little bit whatevers but as far as my teaching staff not very diverse at all so I thank you for all the work you've done this year because I know not only were you building sort of an academic and a cultural foundation at the school but also just the whole issues with the facilities I know that just was an add another added piece to the complexity of the move-in and the transition into the building so thanks to you and your staff just a question about the if we're thinking ahead and to this next year's budget cycle or just our policy what what are some things that we could do that would be most helpful to support you and your staff are the things that you want to accomplish are things that
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you would view as such but the biggest biggest barriers and I think something that it helps with that is as we go throughout the year I came to Tubman and I I would ask you're now talking one of the reasons why I wanted to embrace Tubman it's because I have a background in supporting schools that are unique like some in Tubman it's like a case study in itself and I think kind of knowing what you're going to need right now may be a little bit premature because the we had we were just going into the second semester of the school year so we have a very limited amount of data to go off of right now so I think as we move on through the year we'll be able to say hey this is something that we need as we continue to work together and I can continue to coach her moving along with some of the barriers and obstacles that she's facing that you've already presented tonight we've talked about is you have like a need for literacy and when you have so many kids that need literacy interventions I mean it really goes back to you how can course start taking care of that but most secondary teachers aren't necessarily trained in literacy right so I mean that would be something that we can see already would be a need think and going back to director Graham Edwards earlier comment or question about student engagement we know that this is a huge problem in all of our middle schools and also its popular is you referenced classes that articulate on to high school as a comment for all four of our principals here tonight I've been disappointed to see that you have not been able to offer more electives more things that would engage students beyond the core offerings and I hope that adding more is certainly something that we could do in the coming year yes and I would also like to say that I cannot speak to all of the programming of my my team middle school team members but we have a robotics engineering program we have a stronger program we have a band program we have a dance program we have a leadership team program and so I think we have some we have a STEM program stem elective so we have some elective choices for our students we have a seven period day that allows students to have at least two elective choices and in the second semester we were able to survey students number one and also examine what did not work our first semester which is how our leadership class was birthed and so that we will lunch beginning tomorrow and so we do see the importance of elective choices we're going to be very intentional in creating a survey for incoming fifth graders that we will pass on to our fifth grade school feeder schools to give them an opportunity to share with us what it is that they want we made an attempt to do that last year some students as some schools were able to do it much more comprehensively than others so we didn't feel like we had a clear snapshot and so based off of lessons learned it is our goal to begin to customize a program that really speaks to the needs and the desires of the students in our in our school community very good thank you you're welcome time but at some future point I'm one these presentations were great and me D really appreciate what's going on at all the schools thank you thank you thank you and would like you to return I mean I think a discussion about what's going on with bullying in our middle schools I'd be interest interest in that because you know I understand how you frame it in terms of the structure you're trying to set up and I also like to know what's the reality that you see going on and the challenges well long and short I can close out with seeing that it's not so much in our community bullying as it is social media and so often times we are dealing with issues that do not start in
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my building they start before school and after school and it's via forgive me I'm not a part of it it's via snapchat Instagram house party you name it and so young people do not know the power of their words and so when information is translated incorrectly it then plays out in classroom it plays out in the hallways at recess and so it's not birth inside the hallways of Harriet Tubman a lot of times it comes into the doors and so and we're left to to get down to the bottom of it and then we find out that a lot of it is not rooted in here yet something it's rooted and after hours so there is a parenting issue that I think also needs to be addressed and really talking about the ill effects of social media and how it does impact learning and a school climate and culture support team talk about some of the work in this area around social media literacy and bullying and these are all being important topics some of our student leaders at the middle schools because all of you are developing student leadership teams sure if I can just offer sort of a closing sort of to this part of the program I think last year you recall we set some pretty audacious goals open to comprehensive middle schools pay attention with some more intensive care and attention for others you know a couple of other schools so you heard from all of those tonight so we opened the door but that was just the beginning and a semester in this mid-year check I think hopefully what you heard is similar kinds of work happening in all of these schools the only thing that varies is where are they on the continuum this is why a question like we don't want to get 79 unique budget asks if we're if we're all sort of following a particular theory of action the resource that you're prepared for to impact on your conditions and you know the unique sort of style of the of the school sort of will feed into a broader plan for differentiating supports to our schools so that a clear definition of equality middle school has all of those equitable opponents and access to electives and the things that we want to see but what you heard tonight hopefully is a pretty strong foundation setting for a very small amount of time I have to give kudos again to you know this work is impossible unless you just have outstanding school leaders I think yard you heard that was the case here this evening and and the work that their teams are are doing so even if it's a batch of all new teachers the fact that they are building collective agency and efficacy in their buildings is is admirable so I'll just say keep up the good work I'll embarrass you again on Thursday at our leadership meeting for what you shared here this evening so stay tuned because you know we have a lot more work to do but we're on our way I think thank you [Applause] strong principled leadership here but you know when we set out to embark on this work this was one of the most important aspects that we identified is that how critical it is to have strong principled leadership and also strong central support for our principals and this has been to me some of the most transformational work in this district so far this year so it it was incredibly gratifying to hear from each of you and not just because of the content of the work and the the rigor but also the way each of you express how personally identified you are with your communities it's it's we its meeting in the housing developments it's meeting in Hacienda it's you know everything you just talked about Natasha in terms of your many partnerships principal Butler so this is these are the ingredients that we needed in order for this work to start to take root so it's really gratifying to work an aligned way because I think what you hear in their journey right now is there are issues of human capital there's issues of core curriculum there's issues of and so we have a responsibility centrally to sort of support our schools in in those ways and so we're all we're all gonna keep focused on continuous improvement and getting better so that we're offering
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that support but thank you all for what you're doing on the ground and we're gonna try to keep doing our part here thank you thank you okay thank you everybody and we almost made the 10:00 p.m. deadline almost so the next item is the business agenda and we're going to reconvene briefly as a regular board meeting so that we can vote on the business agenda miss Houston are there any changes in the business agenda yes there is one okay thank you sure well I'd like to suggest just a recess for a minute or two because we might need to have a agenda item added on board travel it's I mean for more travel a lot of stately has to be approved Oh okay okay well we're preparing a new resolution do we have any public comment hi my name is Laurie Lyons Lachman and I'm a parent of a seventh grader at Oakley green and have been intending the site council meetings for the last two years I am thankful that we have middle schools in the Jefferson cluster and thankful that my student is part of the Aqua green family I'm here tonight because of the past P P I'm here tonight because in the past PPS has had a track record of abandoning initiatives and programs after three years my fear is that this will happen at aqua green not only do we need stability and leadership we need stability in mt e and more district support this year is true a true start for AA CLE prior to this year we have gone through a principal several interim principals last year we lost over half our staff currently only 31% of our staff have been at the school since 2016 policies have been developed and have been abandoned the district has made promises that have not come through we have seen caregivers pull their children out of ugly green for reasons related to safety and academics our school is constantly used in the press as an example of failure our site council meetings are filled with discussion of data that supports all of this but tonight you heard from our new principal Christina Howard miss Howard and her staff are truly starting from scratch and setting a new tone at ugly green around expectations of students and staff we have watched her jump in and tackle policies through school especially around safety and academics we have seen her and her staff push into classrooms and work with teachers and grow to grow in their positions we have seen her work on positive behavior systems for students we have seen her report out to ugly green community with transparency and
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tried to bring us together as a leader should for the first time the culture oddly is becoming student-centered this is a critical time for awfully our teachers and staff and students need to keep ugly green needs you to keep ugly green as a priority consistency is key and losing FTE on any level will continue to hurt our students ugly green is not on fire but we have a long way to go and our students need your support thank you good evening my name is Gabrielle Mercedes believer I am the parent of a current aqua green middle school student 3og graduates and to future og students Kristina principal Kristina Howard is appreciated this is the first principle we have had a doji there's an instructional leader and understands the importance of students social-emotional functional in active academic needs and the systems that support them including MTS s PBIS UDL RJ etc she understands the value of student data particularly formative assessments how to use data to inform instruction creating intervention classes for gaps in previous instruction how to use data and classroom observation to determine teacher professional development needs Oh G is on its third years of middle school again and our fourth principal it is our hope that our current principal Christina Howard will be able to stay for three years there yes / five but we'll continue to that it will take to continue to create and implement systems analyze data and create a positive school white culture and community what we know from our fall map data is students in sixth grade are coming into a cockily approximately one grade level below and reading and two plus grade levels below and math all grades are coming in below the national average sixth grade is coming into furthest behind two plus grade level blow and math is a significant academic gap that our students must overcome and our teachers must teach - this requires excellence in math instruction excellence intervention math strategies professional development for math teachers and a budget that reflects this math gap and a commitment to ensuring that our current OD students arrive in high school at a grade level and that her elementary school feeders are evaluated using the same maps data to strengthen academic core content direct instruction and that our elementary students are arriving at middle school at or above grade level for decades PPS has had a history of creating short-term enough initiatives without clear metrics to measure outcomes with a clean our third years of middle school it is imperative that we not become one of these 3-year initiatives this will take a strong budget commitment to ensure that our students receive access to the direct instruction they need and deserve since principal Howard's arrival at aqua green we have had for the first time open and transparent communication regulars like cancel meetings regular parent principal coffee meetings detailed map data clear student and staff expectations the development of systems principal Howard is collecting and analyzing accurate and reliable student behavior data for the first time prior data was not reliable or recorded consistently I am here tonight to ask that aqua continued to be an investment priority of the district professional development and staff retention continue to be a priority and budget investment our unique special education programs with to see beefeaters exactly be more than a staffing ratio and a budget and reflect student individual social-emotional functional and academic needs that PPS revisit the prior unfulfilled budget commitments by former senior leadership that included family engagement and communication support and lastly I ask that the district evaluate the history of George and Lane middle schools that also serve a high percentage of underserved students evaluate their map data where the gaps are with strategic investments they need and ensure that with Oakley our students are elevated with a commitment to stable leadership and economic resources our students deserve a free appropriate public education of excellence thank you thank you do we have any other public comment okay okay so I think I'm going to entertain a motion amendments to the resolution miss Hewson can I get a resolution number so resolution 5 7 9 6 the board approves travel by directors Rosen to Seattle directors constan and Bram Edwards to San Francisco for a vision process learning journey and directors Moore and Anthony to travel to Washington DC for the National School Boards Association conference period except for I'm gonna ask director Bailey and as far as a brown whether I should be adding if you want to cover the cost
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of my virtual journey I believe the rule is it's only if it's out of state so so we don't need to add okay so do you need me to read the business agenda but it's a resolution freestanding resolution we need to prove all board travel so I'm gonna reread it because there's a slight change yes with director Rosen okay [Music] great okay so director Anthony's travel as well as my travel to the National School Boards Association is being paid for by oh s ba Oregon School Boards Association so I thought we still had to approve it it's just there's a separate process for approving national funding exactly right so I think we just why don't we just leave it in and then okay I'm going to reread the resolution the board approves travels by Directors Rosen more an Anthony to Seattle and directors Const M and Bram Edwards to San Francisco for the vision process learning journey in addition directors more an Anthony traveling to the National School Boards Association conference in Washington DC second okay was that emotion okay resolution 5 7 9 6 has been moved by director brim Edwards seconded by director Bailey do we have any discussion do we have any public well we don't have any public oh okay all right so we're adding that to the business agenda so now we will vote on the business agenda are we voting to add it to the business agenda and then okay okay we're now gonna vote on resolution five seven nine six all those in favor say aye opposed say no abstain student representative Paisley yes resolution five seven nine six passes by a vote of seven to zero with student representative peaceful voting yes okay now we're gonna vote on the business agenda so madam chair before we get to the business agenda I'd like to flag a resolution that I'm gonna bring to the board next meeting it's relating to suspending approval of the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Portland and Portland Public Schools just as background for the broader community of my thinking here is as for those of us who were here on the board meeting and December 11th we were presented with the proposition that if we did not approve the intergovernmental agreement that the city of Portland would defund the school resource officers and so I think just speaking for myself but I think the sentiment was [Music] also suggested by other board members that we really felt we hadn't had adequate time to listen to students but the sort of compressed timeline with our last board meeting that need to do this be that we were told that was need to do it before the end of the year so we moved ahead I think without necessarily feeling like we had had an opportunity to fully listen to what our students wanted to share with us and so it's now become clear that the December 31st deadline has come and gone and it's been communicated to us that it may be several months so I'm gonna bring a resolution and I'll distribute it to everybody but essentially would suspend the proposed cost-sharing agreement provisions in the IgA specifically and then also to allow for
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potential modifications to spend the rest of the sections and that the board would have the option when it felt it was ready to move ahead to revoke the two suspensions but it's really designed to we were hurried into something that turns out it was a false timeline and this provides us with the timeline for us to act and appropriately engage with our students before we move ahead so I'm just gonna I'll share that I'll show the language but it's not to be moved tonight but just as a want to put it forward to give the board the option if they want that in the future okay just want to say the engagement needs to include staff as well as students great okay we can add that okay we're not gonna discuss it tonight item is the business agenda do I have a motion in a second to adopt the business agenda so moved okay director responsive structure constant seconds we have no public comment do we have any discussion yes on the flow analytics contracts so I realize this is part of our ending up with school use programs boundaries work it's not clear to me if flow analytics is going to be involved and to me the first piece of work is around our focus option schools and around dual language immersion alignments collocation all those issues are are they part of that work or is that work that we're doing internally when I look at their website it looks more like their GIS public process around boundaries and school siting but not around the education piece so in clarification around that when we're balancing the use of all of our facilities for both neighborhood schools and various programs we need to do that work together it's not something that you can separate out it is something that when you're looking at enrollment counts in programs and enrollment counts in schools it does work to get best to do that work together I think also deputy superintendent haven't they augmented their team with some subcontractors with other areas of expertise that are not apparent on their website especially in their in the RFP there were additional people there were people communication folks in community process and so that we did have three specific people that came and interviewed with us and when we went through the evaluation process and they were directly from the flow analytics but they also had additional people in the RFP available as we need them throughout the process so it is I'm waiting for this contract to be approved so that I can have my organizational meeting with them to map out our process we have had conversation in the interviews but it is not we don't have it all mapped out until we get into a face-to-face meeting once the contract is approved okay we have educational decisions to be made about expanding programs or contracting programs that doesn't seem to be even if you're talking about more community engagement yes that's important but that those educational decisions so we would count on our instructional our disco our school community and instructional leaders in the district to help us with work okay so that's part of that mapping process okay and we've got a work session coming up on kind of framing that it's a new February yes okay okay you know what the comprehensive study includes I'm reading from the bottom of page six it is about reviewing analyzing language immersion focus option and alternative
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program placement pros and cons of whole school versus co-located and so there's there is language in here in in the scope but I you know I know you're looking for some assurances that it's gonna be this encompassing but I I imagine their process all along is gonna need to take in staff input all along the way in these areas yeah it will it would be difficult to separate the two pieces out especially when you're talking about students being in buildings whether they're separate or together but in terms of instructional practice certainly we'll look to our instructional leaders to help guide that part of the process okay you know I just didn't see that they had the expertise to say hey you want two more of these or you want want to just stay where you are or or with the program regardless of where if it gets moved or whether it's time to pull the plug on that one and that seems to be a more bigger piece around and around our strategy of what's our portfolio of programs that we're looking for that's much much more of that we need to inform them that this is the direction we're going in rather than so interests everything yeah so I'm are they facility that are we doing that to focus them on the boundary and you know building usage so it it nothing is a standalone it it will be manic yeah you know I get that but there's there's there's also the outcomes of the process okay I mean there would be some guiding principles at the onset of this process right so it's clear what or valuing or looking for is a you know it is so the end result or outcome sort of takes those into account it if we want to make a statement about dual language immersion is a program we believe we want to promote and support that might be important to say for example for working to optimize you know where those programs are located and whether we're looking to expand them I I imagine we're gonna need to have some robust conversations about that yeah and and I'm just trying to get clear on the skill set that they're bringing that if that's part of the real house great I didn't that wasn't readily apparent if it's not part of their wheelhouse then we need to make sure that we have the team in place with the timeline feeding into where the process is that they are skilled at doing so that's that's what I'm trying to I hear you assess that okay any further discussion okay so I'm Katy Carducci I'm a parent at Alameda elementary school and my question is actually specifically about what just talked about and it's the guiding principles and values so how and when are those guiding principles and values conversations going to happen and will there be public involvement and how will existing district values specifically the district's racial equity value statement from 2010 be implemented because from the proposal and the RFP it looks like the only opportunity for public comment was on proposed boundary changes which from what I'm hearing sounds like that's gonna be rather late in the process thank you okay so I think this is going to be a an iterative process as they say but but we have I'm gonna go on the soapbox a little bit we're finally gonna do this thing that we've been talking about doing for well I've been talking about doing for 10 years so I'm I'm looking very much looking forward to this and and I want to thank all the staff for getting us to where we are today where we can actually imagine and I'm doing a full-on examination of the portfolio of schools we have in the programs and and balancing enrollments so that they're all of our facilities are used efficiently and effectively and all that
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good stuff we've been talking about forever but I do think it's a fair point that you raised in that you race director Bailey that we still need to have some opportunity to make sure that the work described in this RFP and the proposal that we're accepting right now does encompass what we hope everything that we hope to get out of this process and to the extent that it doesn't that we're able to clearly articulate what corollary processes are necessary in the district and who's accountable for them and what I mean it's it's also worth noting we're right in the middle of a visioning process so I imagine a fair number of the values that are going to be guiding this process are going to be surfaced through the visioning process have a station at our community gatherings be specifically around what are what are our core values because if we have those core values agreed-upon as part of this process it starts to feed into okay now we're doing a boundary process what are the values that are kind of guy to say again that's that's the first step because you know once you have your values then you have well which one comes first but at least sets the table for that so approving the contract tonight is a first step I think while many of us may have been thinking about this and talking about for a long time a lot of people in the community have not and I this is probably a case in which we can't possibly over communicate so whether it's what the process will be what the timeline is our approach in terms of values at the front end of the process I think will serve us well if we're gonna get this over the finish line and I know you've Deputy Superintendent Hertz been part of a boundary process elsewhere and you know a lot of times the first time somebody's going to engage in it is when they get a postcard from the district or read about it in the paper or hear about it from their PTA or just parents on the playground so I think we just have to remember that this is going to be a process that's going to need a lot of communication because this is not something that Portland has done very often or even and sort of we said our lifetimes in a large large scale way so I think the communication around this is going to be really critical and there will be this I anticipate this being a multi-year process the likelihood of us being able to get all of it done in one year is unlikely especially as we have facilities coming forward in future years so we will be taking our top priorities in terms of sent the ones that have urgent need in the first year and then continue as schools come open or available from leases ending or because we're refurbishing as school is currently vacant through bond proceeds so we'll continue to do the work in multiple multiple year tiers really challenging yes well it won't be all at once so I want to make that I don't want anyone to have that misunderstanding where we need to act okay all in favor of the approving the business agenda please say yes yes all opposed say no student representative pieces yes business agenda passes by vote of seven zeros with student representative hazel burning yes just think the staff in the risk management office and the superintendent for providing some flexibility for students one of the items on the business agenda you know sometimes it's important to stick by their rules and also to make sure that our students are safe and other times when flexibility is warranted it's good to be flexible so I want to thank the staff for showing that for the Jefferson dancers program yeah report out when they get back yeah okay do we have any other business okay
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the the next regular meeting of the Board of Education is January 29 and we

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)

2019-01-22 PPS School Board Work Session

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Event 1: Board of Education-Work Session January 22, 2019

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