2019-03-05 CUD Board Meeting

District	Chromaville Unified District
Date	missing
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular, work, retreat
Directors Present	Jerry Burnardo Sally Polk

This meeting was very long, but very productive.

Highlights

There will be more lunches during the day; the current proposal is three.

We have money from the federal government to print up signs announcing the extra lunches.

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting

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any item that will be voted on has been posted on the pps website under the board and meetings tab this meeting is being streamed live on pps tv services website and on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay times as of august 13th governor kate brown reinstated a statewide indoor mask requirement for all indoor public settings whether vaccinated or not in order to stop the highly contagious delta variant from spreading further tonight we have in place mitigation strategies to help keep us safe members of the public and staff board members and staff in attendance are wearing masks and most if not all are fully vaccinated both thank you i felt like i was yelling um the board members and staff in attendance are wearing masks and most if not all are fully vaccinated both at the recommendation of the multnomah county health department we have air purifiers placed throughout the boardroom and we have ample space for you to spread out and distance socially in in the audience so good evening i want to welcome the board the superintendent staff families students and guests tonight to start off tonight to start off tonight's meeting i'd like to share some agreements to help ground us in tonight's meeting and discussion um there should be a slide teed up in any case the meeting agreements i was reminded and i recognized were brought to my attention that we haven't co-created these agreements and i hope that we'll see these agreements um in terms of how we show up on our meetings um as a as a placeholder for doing the actual work of co-creating agreements uh that we can agree to um so the agreements have not been fully vetted i don't see them on the screen but there's a list of seven and i don't know cara if you have access okay so thank you the idea is that as a board i want us to be able to agree um to some meeting protocols such as you know understand why we're talking or not talking listen to understand and not respond be willing to make mistakes and be forgiving of those who do etc etc um i think that as we move forward we don't have to do this work right now in public but i would like for each of us to give some consideration to what our meeting ground rules will be for this year um we didn't have anything like ground rules in place and i'm just introducing this idea now in the spirit of improving our own practices we begin tonight with the board consent agenda board members are there any items you'd like to pull for discussion or or discuss we can set aside anything for discussion and vote at the end of the meeting ms bradshaw are there any changes to the consent agenda no board members are there any items you would like to pull from the consent agenda i have a question about the college board but i don't think it needs to be pulled from the consent agenda thank you um do i have a motion do you want to ask that question now or should we vote first let's uh let's put it on the table and then i'll ask my question great do i have a motion and a second to adopt the consent agenda so moved second director scott moved director constant seconds uh the adoption of the consent agenda is there any board discussion on the consent agenda so i had a question for staff about the college board contract and i see that staff is ready um so last year i know that students weren't able to take the psat and i understand that it's part of our equity vision that we encourage all students to be able to take it and have access so i'm concerned about juniors who haven't been able to take the psat um being able to do so this year and this is you know i want to publicly declare my conflict of interest here we just had our ethics training that my daughter is a junior and so um
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it was apparent to me that for her as she thinks about wanting to take the s.a.t it's important that she has an opportunity to to practice so that she's prepared for the test so i asked staff about what can we do for those students who have not yet taken the psat to allow access for all students to be able to to take the test so we so uh thank you for the question sean's trying to talk terry just keep talking and he'll turn it up thanks for the question we will be paying for uh students we will be paying for students to take the test who are juniors this year who would have who missed out on the opportunity last year to take it so we'll take care of that we'll amend the contract and i know some families have already as they've started you know doing school pay for ids and everything have already paid for the test um it i know some families are okay with paying for the test like mine is but um is should people ask for a refund or what's the process going to be for families so we'll come in here with principles the process for how they can refund that money but yeah will be paid for by the district all right thank you so much dr byrd thank you the board will now vote on resolutions 6362 and 6363 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions because consent agenda is approved um the sound is going out again by a vote of seven to zero with student representative weinberg unofficially voting yes yes thank you we now turn to student and public comment before we begin i'd like to review our guidelines for public comment first the board thanks you for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide your comments public input informs our informs and improves our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen to that end i would ask each of my colleagues to tuck their phones away during testimony so we can give our full attention to the people in front of us and i'll do the same our board office may follow up with board related issues raised during public testimony we request that any complaints about individual employees please be directed to the super to to the superintendent's office as a personnel matter and if you have additional materials or items you'd like to provide to the board or the superintendent we ask that you mail them to public comment all one word at pps.net publiccomment.pps.net please make sure when you begin your comment that you clearly state your name and spell your last name and you'll have two minutes to speak we typically have three minutes but we have enough people on a waiting list that if we can all limit our comments to two minutes we'll be able to hear from more of you so i appreciate your patience and and consideration for that you'll hear a sound after two minutes which means it's time to conclude your comments ms bradshaw do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment yes we'll start with xander levine good evening my name is xander levine l-e-v-i-n-e good evening board members my name is xander levine and i'll start with this that's a picture i took january 26 2021 it was my math class with 30 kids including myself with me being the only person who had his camera on this was how most of the year went students did not show their faces and school basically became a diy lesson by yourself with no one talking here's a clip that i took on that day while looking at that screen please listen this is online school that's it do my own that was not healthy that was the voice of a student who while in person loved school loved learning and was disappointed and at a loss for words it's incredibly exciting to hear that we're going back to school full-time five days a week i thought of being able to reconnect with my friends and teachers in an in-person setting brings a smile to my face we can't afford to go back to distance learning or should i say comprehensive distance learning which was not at all comprehensive let me be clear that's not the fault of my amazing teachers administrators or even a district it's merely the situation at hand and it can be better this year with masks in person
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while keeping distance online school is depressing sad and lonely no matter how you put it even students who had a strong social circle and opportunities to get involved still struggled students have endured enough change please remain committed to sending students back to school five days a week thank you thank you thank you we have cameron chen good evening uh my name is cameron chen spelled c-h-e-n um so today i'd like to speak on behalf of many students um who i speak with regularly um and to encourage the board to um move forward with the same fully um in-person learning like xander was talking about so i first wanted to talk about some parts of my experience as a student during comprehensive distance learning and i was very lonely i was the only one in my house for largely the whole entire day and i am a person that is very involved in lincoln leadership in many sports at lincoln and i was also on club swimming but even with all of that i was still very lonely all day i felt like i wasn't getting the full education's uh amount of education at uh at home that i was when i was in person and i felt like i was starting to struggle um being lonely i was i could feel that my mental health was starting to deteriorate and then i was slowly starting to have my grades were were slipping a little bit and me as someone with adhd i struggled deeply with having since since no one was around me to help uh keep me you know focused and in line with my work i didn't really have the means necessary to really do all of the work that i was supposed to um in a very timely manner um so i did a little bit of research and i think i want to talk about uh lolapalooza which is um as still as it sounds a music event that just happened uh recently in chicago and uh at that event there were 38 um 385 thousand attendees um who who were all um vaccinated and or uh tested three days prior to the event at the event those 385 000 members were all uh unmasked while they were while they were outside they were unmessed and very packed together at this big music event um in small and i guess large music venues but still um in very close quarters i think that after seeing what's happened at those at the at low palooza i think that at my school lincoln high school which is um which has 200 uh times less of the people um then at low palooza uh mast and indoors i think that it will be um a good decision to stay in person um uh sorry um and um uh yeah thank you i just want to encourage you all to move forward with the in-person plan thank you thank you [Applause] thank you samantha coltman hello all my name is samantha coltman c-o-l-t-m-a-n hi oh my gosh i'm so sorry and um my name's samantha coleman and i'm the associated student body president at lincoln high school i'm here to speak on behalf of my own experience with mental health during the comprehensive distant learning i want to start off by saying i know i'm not the only student who feels like another year in online learning feels absolutely impossible over the past year and a half i felt a darkness and wave of anxiety that i've never felt before before the pandemic i did struggle with anxiety but it was never this severe once we fell into the uncertainty of covid and distance from seeing people in person it all changed not only was there the anxiety of having covet vulnerable family members but there was this void of loneliness that no zoom call could fill we as kids need the in-person support not just from physically being around other students but having the presence of adults that are not just our parents i love my parents wholeheartedly but my whole world flipped upside down even with present parents once we started online school of course it felt unreal not only did it feel unnecessary as i could not absorb any material no matter if i was in bed or sitting at my desk i lost all motivation moving into the school year i felt optimistic and got some help it was weird i was never the kid who needed help i started treatment for my severe depressive disorder and
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generalized anxiety i wanted to be optimistic grades now counted maybe my motivation would return spoiler it didn't school felt pointless i would sit in my class and every opportunity i had i would turn off my camera and take a nap i promise you i'm the opposite of this unmotivated lonely team i had become i'm a varsity athlete and a full ib student but my loan but my mental health was so bad that it didn't even matter anymore however the for the first time in the past year and a half things got better when when i felt that things got better was during hybrid learning me and many other students who i know who fell in the same position as me got the support we missed and the motivation came back i just want to say that there's a 400 percent increase in depression anxiety and teens during the pandemic and that we really need to be in person that will really make the difference in making our studies possible thank you [Applause] thank you we have kelly mcdowell and and just to double check are we actually timing people at two minutes to allow to hear more testimony okay thank you who do we have next is kelly the doll here we'll move to shelly reads my name is shelley reitz r-e-e-t-z my full statement along with references has been sent to the members of the pps board i want to start by stating that i fully support pps's decision to reopen our schools full-time this fall today i'm not only speaking as a parent of a pps student but as a researcher who's focused the last decade of my career studied mental health issues and of children and adolescents over the past 18 months coven 19 has created a perfect storm of factors that has led to a sharp increase in unreported cases of child abuse and neglect as children are cut off from interactions with teachers can find at home with caregivers and families that are under an extreme amount of added stress our nation's system of detecting abuse and neglect is heavily reliant on reports by teachers who make up half of the mandatory reporters that a child regularly encounters when schools close down and there are no in-person face-to-face interactions between children and teachers child abuse reports plummet and these children suffer silently reports of child abuse and neglect to odhs dropped over 70 in a single month last march when school shut down however even as the reports declined there are many reasons to believe that abuse has only increased during the pandemic advocates at randall children's hospital are reporting that the cases that they're seeing are more extreme and horrific in terms of the level of abuse one study showed a significant increase in the incidence of pediatric abusive head trauma occurring in the months after the shutdown started in addition our children have been suffering disproportionately when it comes to mental and emotional health one recent cdc study reports a rise in adolescent suicide attempts during the pandemic emergency room visits for attempted suicide for girls age 12 to 17 were 50 percent higher than pre-pandemic levels as parents our children's safety is our top priority we need to be considering their health and safety from a whole health perspective one that takes mental emotional and physical health into account and we as a community have an obligation to protect the children that don't have advocates to speak out for their safety having our children back in school is the full time is a huge step towards normalcy that all of our children need thank you thank you ginger bazaar okay um so ginger hughsar g-i-n-g-r-h-u-i-z-a-r um i am here as a pps parent and a special education teacher um i am excited that we are coming back full time um because i agree with everything that's been said that i've heard but i'm also concerned about the way that we we come back because i want us to stay back and not have to shut down and not have a lot of disruptions for kids
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we have a lot of children who are still not able to be vaccinated yet so in our final hours every school is reporting a different lunch plan i know that we will have six weeks of expected outdoor lunches as we can but it will rain and kids will not all be that fully vaccinated before we're likely to be back inside some middle schools have three to six lunches planned some like the one i'm at are expected to push over 450 kids into the lunchroom at once unmasked in the cafeteria yesterday our superintendent reported that we have protocols as quickly isolating quarantine and contract tracing and i have to disagree where was that data collected because last year is it the attendance policy where kids could email and be counted as present is it when kids went home sick and then returned is it when my building had an unstaffed coveted space is it when kids entered staff doors and made it to the second floor without a mask is it when they watched a kid throw up on the school lawn and their parents walked them to summer camp anyway our policies are hardly proven ineffective but we have to be in proximity to students to understand that we don't what we have doesn't align with guidelines and what we need are guidelines that align with lunchroom capacity per square foot as a district so everybody has the same rules for safety why don't we have mass guidelines and provide proper masks why don't we have in-school testing protocols and tests available for asymptomatic exposed classes why don't we have smaller class sizes and cohorts why don't we have a recessed mass mandate and why don't we have an outdoor three-foot eating policy and why don't we use code relief plans to buy outdoor covered areas for lunches so we can share safety for all of our students and not some of our students thank you thank you have leanne moldovani i'm leanne moldovani and thank you for hearing my public comment so i'm not going to read what i prepared i just i listened to what some of the high school students have shared with us and i feel for them i really do i'm a parent of two children in elementary school and middle school and i can relate to the mental health suffering that my kids went through and the the ineffectiveness of distance learning however it is um it is still unclear to me as a parent uh what will happen if or when a school needs to shut down in the case of an outbreak within a cohort or a classroom or a school single parents or parents where their two working parents or parents who have essential worker types of positions cannot turn on a dime when the school shuts down and the kids are sent home either to quarantine or to revert back to distance learning it causes financial hardship it causes career disruption some cases my case i am probably going to lose my job when that happens so it's it's highly problematic to not have a plan that's been shared about what will happen if distance learning needs to take place and for the younger kids those who are unvaccinated many parents are unwilling to send their kids back into a public building and kids are afraid to do so the online learning academy which was offered was not well communicated to many families who did not realize that it was not no longer only open to uh families who are have a high risk household and therefore never never completed their application because they did not think that they were eligible for it so now they're placed on a waitlist these parents have a week to figure out if they are going to have to make some kind of arrangements and it i would like to have seen some kind of funding or support for those families who need the support at home to support something like the online learning academy or distance learning because it makes it impossible for those families to make a responsible choice thank you very much thank you thank you ramy ross is romy ross here right nadia coronado
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linda my lottie hi i'm linda my lottie spell mai hyphen lotti i have a senior at lincoln high school i first wanted to say the fact that we're even considered not going back to school full-time is a huge surprise for many of our parents so in the previous boards meetings the lack of support or voices from the student and family is not reflective of how we feel once we found out we all rallied we email each every one of your board members and as well as we organized on change.org a petition for families to sign and it was taken down within two to three days so but i do want to read from malora whittemeyer she has a senior and she emailed each one of you because she is actually a physician her son is kevin gotchi and she's currently a primary care physician at oshu and she's on duty tonight so she i am representing her we all want to first of all thank everyone for the dedication to our students and their education i ask you to please advocate and guarantee your student return in person learning this year the total online of online education has taken is immeasurable it will play out and be measured and analyzed for years to come as a women's health provider i can tell you countless stories of mothers either with at their limit committing suicide or contemplating it as they have lost their jobs and are not equipped emotionally or educationally to educate their children the fall amongst their youth yet to be fully tabulated we pride ourselves in portland as being progressive yet if we truly care for the underprivileged and underserved we will not be questioning returning to stu to in-person education teachers are essentially our essential worker just as so many of us of us are we have so many examples of success successful return to in-person learning across the nation as well as i would say jojo high school who has been in person for the last semesters how embarrassing that portland is the last hold on a city that refused to return to in person despite ample evidence of the safety advocacy to do so and personally i understand last year was different but now vaccinations are available so i am only really speaking to the high school because i understand certain age children are not able to get vaccinated and please see that as two completely it's a much more nuance between age groups and just like we all have to submit our children's immunization records we're fully supportive of vaccination and testing thank you thank you [Applause] thank you we have kelly chang hi my name is kelly chang c-h-a-n-g oh my god this is more nerve-wracking up here than like back there okay um i'm here tonight to share with you oh by the way i had three children in pps um during the pandemic they went from elementary to middle school to high school so okay i'm here tonight to share with you why in person school is pivotal for many immigrant families i know growing up my youngest okay i know growing up my parents would never have been able to come to these meetings because of work and limited english proficiency i'm here to hopefully speak for some of them i came to this country when i was 10 years old my mom spoke little english why my father brother and i spoke none my parents worked long hours daily we lived in an apartment on the side of a busy road my brother and i were both on free reduced lunches and meals since i didn't speak the language nor had any friends school was my whole world i went there daily to be with other children to eat lunch eat breakfast and to learn english it was in-person schooling which taught me the nuances of the english language and culture it was through these daily in-school days which allowed me to eventually make friends and have a sense of belonging to the community on weekends and on vacation days i was left alone with my brother in the apartment we longed for school to begin again as we were very lonely this feeling of loneliness is what i think most of our students feel during their 1.5 years away from school from in person school as i learned more english and the american culture i became the translator and the main guy
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for my parents to navigate through this new country in person school is not only does not only provide social connections and academic necessities it also has a macro effect of integrating and lifting immigrant families and and here's my daughter who has some words to say i have some words that i'd like to share having schools closed has really affected me negatively mentally and i'm really looking forward to them opening again so i can be able to have motivation for my everyday life again because i've been robbed of that thank you thank you thank you we have elaine waffle on a virtual call and hopefully we can hi yes can you hear me okay yes thank you so much my name is elaine walpole w-a-l-p-o-l-e and i'm a mom of two black students and a former contract facilitator of black studies for pps um what's kind of ironic about what you're hearing right now is that i can't be there to read this in person for the very reason i'm writing it my family is sick right now and this didn't really have to happen um on august 10th our kids went back to school one of whom is immunocompromised i was afraid and despite masks we've already been fighting illness for a week because cdl was unavailable we were left making the impossible choice to either put their physical health at risk by taking them in or risk their mental health by unrolling unenrolling them losing access to the school community and being forced back into the school's lottery system it was a pretty crippling choice and i pretty much didn't sleep for a week prior to the 10th i chose to bring them to school ultimately because without a continued cdl option we felt pressured to provide some sort of socialization and now i'm regretting that please understand the incredible value i have or value of having a consistent and familiar online support system right now for them cdl was not only a safe option not just from the disease but it also helped them feel emotionally secure during this really scary time at least for my kids their elementary school age now there's no winning it feels like it feels like we have to sacrifice one health outcome for another and honestly not providing cdl again as an option at least during the height of this virus feels like neglect kids are dying in the hospital where my sister is a nurse we could have continued learning in a safe environment if we chose instead of now staying home anyway getting tested for covid after every single cough sneeze or nose blow that is traumatic for them too we all deserve to feel safe and protected by the leaders of this city and my family is sick right now because we were not given that option this year cdl needs to be a mandatory option at least please let me be clear our brown and black community is suffering greatly from this disease there's no time for us to even grieve one coveted death before another death occurs and yet we are supposed to trust that those in power care for our families even though the safest schooling option has been stripped from us during the most dangerous time miss walpole yes i don't want to interrupt you and i don't know if you heard on our call we are limiting testimony to two minutes so we can hear from more people we had a waiting list uh signed up tonight so i'm sorry to cut you off but we're we're trying to hear from more people and um appreciate your testimony thank you no problem didn't hear the bell thank you do we have any additional there's nobody else signed up would you like me to go through the few people who were not did not answer or i'm sorry i'm having a hard time hearing you sorry um that is everybody who signed up would you like me to call the few names that did not come up yes yes please okay thank you is nadia coronado here or romy ross hi my name is mccrary i'm speaking on behalf of romy ross mom block equal giving circle and a few other community organizations i'm a pps graduate community excuse me i don't think your mic is on can you hear me now let's start over thank you my name is aj mccrary i'm speaking on behalf of romy ross uh equal giving circle and mom block i'm a community leader i'm a pps graduate i am a mom of a 15 year old who i pulled out of pbs because this district did not treat him well as a black child i am extremely worried about our choice as community leaders to be opening back
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up we are not considering or thinking about the children or parents of this community the high school kids going back to school make sense they can be vaccinated they can wear masks they can understand to wash their hands to social distance they can follow directions having children who cannot be vaccinated enclosed proximity to each other without we all know pps buildings are not safe do not have good ventilation do not have windows that open do not have water fountains at work a whole bunch of other issues including rodent messes and what have you this is irresponsible and dangerous one child dying or getting infected by covin is on y'all do you want that i don't i care about people that are on this board i care about people that are in this community we need to do better i have been unschooling my child for five years as a single parent who works in the community and does a whole bunch of work has like four jobs we can do better think better and be innovative and come up with better solutions that prioritize our children our teachers and our community as a whole i am asking and demanding that this board get more creative be innovative and truly do right by our community because again one child dying one child getting sick is irresponsible and completely unacceptable we expect better as community members and we can do better as community leaders thank you for this time thank you [Applause] thank you um is kelly mcdowell here that that concludes public comment thank you um thank you all for your comments i i really appreciate um your personal stories that you brought and your um your comments do help us and improve our work um i know it's easier for some people to get up here and testify and it's more difficult for others so um thank you for showing up um if you have feel free to connect with our board manager roseanne powell if you have something specifically you'd like to follow up with the board or the board office we're going to move to the student representatives report student representative weinberg would you please provide your report thank you to everyone who testified especially students thank you for sharing your personal stories i know it's very hard to come up here in front of everyone and then to be broadcasted for everyone to see to share your own personal stories so thank you um i'll actually be reaching out to you i have a couple questions on how we can do better for this next school year um coming out of kova 19 is really the reason why i wanted for my term up here to be focused on mental health as we come out of this pandemic i know a lot of students have struggled um with anxiety depression and everything that comes along with dealing with a pandemic at such a young age so i look forward to talking with you more and other students about how we can do better as we look to the new school year i asked um the dsc on what we're looking forward to and also what we're not looking forward to some of the highlights of what we're looking forward to is having hands-on activities the benson's rep definitely mentioned how much their cte learning was lost during distance learning and how much he will enjoy being back in person being able to do the things he loves a common theme was also being able to socialize with other students i think a lot of us missed out on that social aspect only being able to connect with a small group of our closest friends and losing out on our on our wider network of support that we have from our school communities another student was confident in pbs admin keeping students safe and i do think that is definitely a positive some things we are unsure about is of course the unsure element of returning back to in person how long are we going to stay in person are we going to be able to finish this year in person i know that's definitely on my mind as a graduating senior are we going to be able to have our graduation activities this school year and of course um our new year jitters going back to school is always exciting scary especially for our students going into high school middle school elementary school for the first time but with the fun twist of covid so we're all gonna have to be masked social distance so that's definitely a damper on our excitedness for the coming school year also another worry is around the transparency about what is going on within our district and about plans for what school will look like i know a lot of students parents teachers administrators are still unsure about what the school year will look like and i hope when we do reopen that we have
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that all cleared out thank you thank you student representative weinberg um superintendent would you like to provide your report superintendent if i may jackson i just want to um ask you to please continue to let the board know how we can support you in your work with the dsc and particularly in your focuses here on student mental health we're here for you thank you chair and good evening directors and buenos thought of this to community members and staff who are joining us here in person and to everyone live streaming from home this evening jackson and i have already had some good conversations around some of his goals for this school year and you know i was sharing with him briefly earlier how we're going to make some progress in a couple of those areas so stay tuned i'll let him share those announcements with you um well this is our first regular meeting of the board since the return of the sent much of our central office staff to our various buildings uh around the city which explains why many senior staff are here in attendance in person it's nice to see folks again we began cheerfully welcoming back colleagues last monday morning especially those who work in offices all around the city we're continuing to model and practice health and safety protocols including masking throughout the day but really what i want to say to to folks is i just want to share the appreciation and i've been sharing this with every employee group that i've been in front of the last couple weeks to all of our staff those who have worked and particularly non-stop and in person throughout the pandemic for the last 18 months those whose specific work has allowed us allowed us to open for hybrid last spring those who work throughout the summer in order to support and make possible a safe reopening of schools next week thank you thank you for your commitment and dedicated to dedication to our students and our school communities and i want to highlight one of those many talented staff members and district leaders and recognize her recent promotion i'm very pleased to announce dr lorna fast buffalo horse who will move into the role of area senior director in the office of school performance lorna has been a director in this on this team osp in multiple pathways to graduation since 2019 and we're really pleased to elevate her to this new expanded role lorna will be working with regional superintendent margaret calvert and support focus option middle and high schools as well as multiple pathways to graduation programs a little bit about lorna before joining osp she served 16 years as a high school principal including her final seven at alliance high school under her watch alliance was twice named one of the top 50 high schools in oregon she has also served seven years as a charter school director and principal and two years as the principal of seis bilingual high school on the roosevelt campus lorna has consistently gravitated towards schools and programs that support students who have dropped out of school or at risk of doing so and has along with her staff raised achievement and graduation rates for our students prior to becoming a principal lorna served in pps as a dean of students and multicultural coordinator and as an esl bilingual migrant education and indian educator coordinator for a district in washington state she's been a teacher of adult basic education ged classes esl across all the grade levels social studies spanish and credit recovery and pps as well as in shelton school district she's worked in treatment centers and at two community colleges all to say is lorna has a really broad and extensive experience she's also taught for northwest indian college and in the graduate schools of education at portland state university and lewis and clark college and we're so privileged to have her here this evening as is customary i would love to invite dr fast buffalo horse to share a few words with the board thank you superintendent guerrero and good evening to all of the board members and to everybody here i'm just really honored to be able to continue my work with pps and to expand it a little bit in the most recent position i've had i got to work with district-wide multiple pathways programs and i'm very lucky that i still get to work with those and have added a couple more as well as our focus option middle and high schools da vinci benson and jefferson and so it's just a real honor to be here i've been in this seat before arguing for a charter renewal um i've been here arguing or pleading for the multiple
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pathways building and i've seen all of those um come to fruition or coming to fruition and so it's just nice to be back and to see you all and um work in partnership with you so thank you many congratulations thank you thank you lorna congratulations uh as you know directors preparations for this fall have been unlike a typical year uh our team will continue to have a detailed back to school update in just a little bit on the agenda our main entree so what i'll say at the moment is in addition to all our health and safety strategies being implemented this first day of school will be markedly different for at least two of our school communities because students and staff will enter the doors of the beautifully modernized mcdaniel high school and the new state-of-the-art kellogg middle school as directors know we typically let our students and staff get to preview and experience their new buildings before we show off the final final version to the community in a grand opening we'll expect lots of media coverage and videos from our own team to showcase the exciting opening of these new educational buildings in portland we hope the whole community can join us this saturday august 28th at 10 a.m for the grand opening at kellogg middle school and again at mcdaniel high school's grand opening on september 18th at 11 a.m but wait there's more other school campus building projects have also continued in earnest here in north portland we're in the final stages of work on the phase four roosevelt building downtown work continues on the new lincoln high school campus and we're making progress on a brand new cte building at the marshall campus for benson tech students so once again thank you to portland voters for making all of these projects possible and now time for another vaccine public service announcement i want to personally remind everyone in our community that it is crucially important to get vaccinated important for you important for those who cannot get vaccinated important to our ability to open and operate our schools minimize disruptions to learning for students and ultimately hopefully our ability to finally put this pandemic as much as possible behind us as we've done throughout the summer we continue to host a number of vaccination clinics leading up to the start of the school year i was out at jefferson high school for today's clinic these are no cost no appointment no weight opportunities to receive a safe and effective vaccine thank you to our many partners the photos you see are for my visit to franklin high school last week where portland fire and rescue was our vaccination clinic partner and today at jefferson we had providence health as well as mesd nurses who spent most of the day at the school so many thanks to them for their partnership so once again if you're eligible we implore you please get vaccinated i'm going to just close with a snapshot here there's been many opportunities to engage with and speak to a very interested media here it's been in a busy couple of weeks since our last meeting one of the things that was important to me when i began at portland public schools was for us as a school system to be seen as leaders we're the largest school system in the state a member district in the league of the largest urban school systems in the u.s our actions should demonstrate leadership and often that means tough decisions but we should lead and especially when it comes to the well-being of our students and school communities our vaccine mandate announcement last week i think was an example of our actions leading to broader actions that will help more students schools and communities we don't have all the answers but our unique perspective can often be an encouragement to many others as i've shared in various employee gatherings in the last couple of weeks whether it's welcoming new teachers or welcoming back our principals i'm grateful unlike maybe in other places for never having to question our school boards and our broader community's commitment to taking every action necessary to protect our students staff and community for not wavering on a racial equity agenda for agreeing that we should make the most thoughtful even if difficult decisions that we can make i do not take for granted because i hear contrasting stories from my colleagues elsewhere in the state and across the country the board support our staffs and communities consensus and our playing this brand of leadership and role as a school system so i just want to express for this i am grateful and that concludes my remarks for this evening thank you thank you superintendent normally we would hear committee and conference reports at this point in the
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evening i know that board members are working with staff to finalize committee schedules for the year but i thought i would make an announcement about um who's chairing which committees um the audit committee will be chaired by director constance um and board members um scott i'm sorry board directors scott and hollins will be committee members the charter and alternative programs uh director greene will be chairing that committee with chair with um director lowry um attending the intergovernmental will be chaired by director lowry um and i'm sorry director hollins and director green will be on that committee i've got a typo here um the policy committee will be chaired by director brem edwards and attended by directors lowry green and myself facilities and operations which is formerly the school improvement bond committee um thank you to director scott for that suggestion to to rename will be chaired by director hollins attended by director con stam and director brim edwards there's an elections task force this year that will be led by vice chair scott directors holland and director brem edwards will also be attending that task force and that finally the southeast guiding coalition liaisons are directors lowry brim edwards and myself we'll be liaising to that that guiding coalition um we're now going to hear comments from the portland association of teachers president elizabeth teal the agreement between pat and portland public schools allows for the association to be provided time on the agenda of regular board meeting for brief comment there there is no time limit you know that but i i think you'd mentioned um three minutes earlier you don't have a time limit tonight we have pt president elizabeth teal here to provide brief comments thank you board director chair de pass and all board directors and superintendent guerrero there's nothing that we all want more than a safe return to in-person instruction we've been waiting for it and planning for it for such a long time and for the students we teach and their families and all of our educators we have to get it right and we have to get it right for the conditions that we are in now despite our the best laid plans and all of our hopes and expectations for this fall the delta variant has changed the rules and that makes the safety agreement that we worked so hard collectively last year even more important along with updates to to account for new recommendations and new regulations from the states i'm here to let you know that as of today the week that educators are starting work we still don't have agreements on what we can count on this fall for safety and it gives me a lot of a dismay to be telling you this today but i but i want to bring it to the table in hopes that we can come to uh solutions that make sense for everybody pat members still overwhelmingly support the previously agreed on safety standards from last year including universal mask wearing strong programs for covid testing and contact tracing adequate ventilation and which are i think we're in agreement those things will still be in place and as well as we partnered on moving forward a vaccine mandate for staff we want to do everything that we can to make our schools safe stable and equitable moving forward this year we're so glad that those things are in place however we still need assurance on some key commitments that relate to the reality that we're in right now we know the cdc recommends at least three feet of physical distancing per student and we know that pps has committed to families to providing that whenever possible we believe that we can meet this need for all of our families not just when it's already possible but making sure that we can problem solve those last remaining places so every student in every school in every classroom has this basic safety assurance in place we know that our students in grades kindergarten through sixth grade are not vaccinated maybe a few sixth graders but almost none of them are vaccinated and we know that families like you've heard tonight are struggling with their options and how to keep their kids safe and their family members safe we're asking pps to ask families what they want all of our families and make sure that there is an online option for students who want it and going along with that we know we have educators who have medical reasons why they cannot be vaccinated or who care for family members who are medically vulnerable we need to provide virtual positions to these educators so they don't lose their jobs because of this pandemic
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we believe these solutions work together to meet the needs of the moment the needs of educators the needs of families and the needs of students we think these are logical steps towards ensuring the safety and stability and equity this year for all of our students and staff we know that there are so many unanswered questions the virus keeps throwing new things at us and no matter how fast we work it's going to keep challenging us to find solutions and to be creative and work to work together and that is why it is all the more important of the things that we can control and put in place we do so on the front end we have one chance to get this right reopening schools this year and we have to do everything in our power including taking the time to do it district leaders must have the courage to join together with teachers and families to do whatever it takes to ensure the safety stability and equity for all of our students in this new school year we owe it to our communities do everything we can on the front end to keep them safe we don't want to have a year full of disruption we know that there are problems um and that we see them across the country with students being quarantined we need we have solutions we can put in place now and i believe that we can make make this happen but i do want to tell you it is there is an enormous amount of stress out there not having these agreements in place as schools are opening now i mean for educators and for students next week so thank you for taking the time to listen to these comments tonight and for help and move forward together for assurance for all of our educators students and families thank you thank you so we're going to get a back to school update um superintendent would you like to introduce this next item yes thank you chair again we have our three of our senior staff here for directors to present a back-to-school update so you'll hear from our deputy superintendent our chief operating officer and our chief of staff and they're going to run through some slides and they're prepared for um all the predicted questions uh we know that you will have want time to to ask and we know that our community has them as well and hopefully many of them are are posting them to our let's talk system for to include in our faqs uh but without further ado let me turn it over to staff who can introduce themselves um good evening directors and student representative weinberg tonight my colleagues and i will be providing you with an update a week before the start of school on september 1st as the superintendent mentioned i'm joined by our chief operating officer dan young and our deputy super intendent for instruction in school communities dr sean byrd directors we hope to go over this presentation first and welcome questions or comments at the end directors we are excited to see our students families educators community partners on the first day on september 1st as i shared last week multnomah county public health director jessica grinswe and other public health officials here and across the nation have shared that one of their top public health priorities is getting kids getting kids back and keeping kids in school this year this of course follows the directive from you the pps board of education which unanimously approved resolution 6316 to allow for a return to full at time five days a week in-person instruction while also mitigating the spread of cova 19 and creating an online option for those families and students who are unwilling or unable to return in person to on-person learning and so for tonight you will hear four specific details as we welcome students for the first day of school next week first as our community has seen firsthand public health guidance and rules are evolving each and every day both our academic and operational teams are literally and i'm not using that word figuratively been working around the clock to evolve create and respond to the shifting guidance we want to share with you tonight a few important updates that we'll share with our community in a comprehensive update early next week next we will share with you our preliminary student enrollment for the 21-22 school year as dr bird will note we are seeing low numbers for students in kindergarten but we're also welcoming students each and every day third we will also share with you a snapshot of our staffing journey for this upcoming school year with school beginning in eight days our hiring teams are also with steadfast determination working to welcome new colleagues at pps and lastly we wanted to share with you an update on our online learning academy including sharing with you the latest numbers of students enrolled in the program as we've been sharing with families in the broader community pps continues to follow local and national public health guidance and will implement implement layered health and safety measures across our schools we believe informed by public health experts that establishing these strong layered health and safety measures against cova 19
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will help maximize uninterrupted in-person learning experience for students here at pps we recognize that no single intervention is perfect at preventing the spread of coronavirus in consultation with public health experts we've identified at least nine effective health and safety measures to keep students and staff health and safe as possible against cova 19. of course some of the public health guidelines has shifted while much more detailed planning has gone into some of these areas that we wanted to make sure you heard it from us here i'm going to turn it over to dr byrd to walk us through some of the changes who will also share the mic with dan young thank you jonathan good evening directors and student representative weinberg as we all know vaccinations against covet 19 are the most important layer of protection against co against kova 19. across our communities and in hospitals across our region we are seeing the impact of kova 19 cases among the unvaccinated that is why as you know governor kate brown announced a day after we did that all staff volunteer and contractors will be required to be vaccinated against the coronavirus yesterday we communicated next steps with pps staff on how they will need to submit proof of vaccination as of today at 5 pm in about 24 hours we've received responses from close to 2500 of our staff members with over 95 percent of those affirming that they have been vaccinated against covet 19. for our students in broader community we're doing our part by hosting free covet 19 vaccine clinics across our schools as our superintendent mentioned earlier this week in internet students and anyone who still needs to get vaccinated can visit one of our comprehensive high schools to receive their shot on the screen there you see the dates of the upcoming vaccination clinics and we hope you will continue to promote via your social media accounts these opportunities for our communities another effective health strategies we've discussed is the usage of masks earlier today governor brown announced an outdoor mask mandate and in less than an hour we shared with our school principals that all adults and students will be required to wear masks at all times regardless of vaccination status whether people are indoors or outdoors this is particularly important for children who are outdoors for recess of course there are exceptions to this rule including when individuals are eating drinking or of course playing a musical instrument that requires the use of their mouth we currently have 1.8 million masks of age-appropriate masks in our warehouse which are available to all pps schools and are being delivered regularly and since this new rule today we are waiting to hear from the oregon school activities association or the osa and the oregon health authority about what this means for student athletes and competition we do know however based on the information shared publicly today that schools will be subject to the rule when holding outdoor outside public events spectator events and gatherings of the general public on school grounds we've already made the decision that masks will be required for competitive indoor sports in the fall i'm not going to turn it over to dan young chief operating officer who will give you an update on our efforts regarding physical distancing thank you dr byrd good evening directors uh as we shared with you last week our operations team and close partnership with school principals and area senior directors are actively evaluating each pps classroom across the district as of today i can report that based on current enrollment and schedule information about 97 of our middle schools and high school classrooms can accommodate a minimum of three foot of spacing uh prior to any specific intervention our effort of course is in accordance with rssl which clearly states that school districts should create and support physical distancing in all daily activities and instruction maintaining at least three feet between students to the extent possible and maintaining physical distancing should not preclude return to full-time in-person instruction for all students we plan to apply additional configuration changes to get us close to the three-foot distancing requirement including measures like removing ancillary furniture from classrooms rearranging desks or changing desk types moving or switching larger classes with smaller class sizes and or repurposing traditional non-classroom spaces to use as classrooms we are finalizing our space analysis for each pps elementary school classroom and plan to have this completed by tomorrow lastly we understand that that to the extent possible caveat of the three-foot guidance raises questions about how often there would be less than three foot allocated to each person in the classroom there are some immovable constraints of space and students that require us to find different solutions we cannot expand our classroom spaces through rebuilding them and we cannot limit the number of students we serve we must follow rssl guidelines to offer full-time in-person school for all of our students and we take our public health authority's direction that the public health priority for our children is in person school we continue to view each layer of safety as working in conjunction with all others while we focus on strengthening each layer to continue to find solutions
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to the multitude of challenges for each none is perfect the strength of our health and safety plan is ensuring that each layer is at its maximum capability for physical distancing we have very few to the extent possible exception classrooms and we are working through each one of those without compromising our mandate to offer full full-time instruction to every student last week week we shared with you directors our pps communicable disease monitoring protocol outlining the steps we will take to monitor infectious disease and illness in schools we know we you have this in your inbox but we also want to provide you with a physical copy here tonight as you can see this protocol was developed in close collaboration with multnomah county health department and the mesd school health services two critical partners who will conduct contact tracing and help monitor and minimize the spread of covet 19. as we shared the last board meeting we are meeting with and developing the necessary protocols to offer covet 19 testing for students and staff right now our staff is working on providing three different options for covet testing and screening one as mentioned before all staff will be required to be vaccinated and for those who cannot be vaccinated we will provide screening testing on a regular basis two for all staff and students while on school premises will have we will have symptomatic testing available for those showing signs of covid related symptoms and we will of course follow all safety protocols in regards to isolation and quarantine for multnomah county public health and three for students we will provide screening testing we're still working with the health officials to determine criteria for screening consent forms from parents etc and we'll have more to share very soon of the most important questions from family has been how will meal time work it's important to note that meal time are one of the most challenging times of the day to maintain health and safety measures as students congregate to eat both here in portland and across every school building in america based on recent discussions with our health public health partners we have asked schools to prioritize eating outside as much as possible and anticipate eating outside the majority of the time during the first six weeks of the school year if not more of course portland of course in portland outdoor eating is not always an option due to a variety of reasons therefore each school will develop a unique meal service safety plan that will be put in place when outside eating is not achievable each school's unique enrollment facility capacity and constraints staffing and schedule etc vary and as a result pps will have 81 different meal service plans but each plan will have the same aim including maximizing distancing to as much as six feet where possible limiting the time the students are unmasked eating to less than 15 minutes and utilizing a student seating chart or seat or sitting in cohorts when available and before i turn it back over to jonathan i want to share with you directors that are safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services plan which describes our layered mitigation strategies as posted online for public view and comment and we encourage our community to share their thoughts we will submit this plan for review to the oregon department of education before the due date of august 27th thank you dan since our last board meeting we've averaged just about one email communication to all families every day letting them know about the latest updates and sharing with them answers to common questions related to back to school we also recognize that with so many of us receiving so much information in our inbox and through many channels that it's important that we share with families a comprehensive back-to-school communication that outlines all they need to know for the first day of school our plan is to have that shared with families in all six supported languages by next monday august 30th this of course comes in addition to our back to school website pps.net forward slash back to school 2021 where families can find the latest standard operating procedures and answers to common commonly asked questions and speaking of commonly asked questions and answers and as directors know we've been getting questions feedback and concerns via our let's talk platform which has allowed us to focus on the most sought out information from parents in our faqs we plan to update the faqs and share an update via email to families by the end of the day this friday all right we also wanted to share with you a preliminary student enrollment information that we are closely monitoring ahead of the first day of school as you can see as of yesterday's enrollment data we are seeing a 3.1 decrease in enrollment from last year with the biggest decrease in kindergarten uh currently seeing a slight uh sitting at a change of about 15 of course kindergarten enrollment often happens late august and early september so we are expecting those numbers to change every day and for those families who are listening in today who have kindergarteners children who are not yet enrolled we're excited to welcome you to pps please
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visit your neighborhood school or contact our early education department to learn how you can enroll your child we're also proud to share with you that as of today we have identified 100 of our school principals to lead our schools for the upcoming year those announcements as you have seen in your inboxes over the last few days have been updated we're also excited for the new talent joining our school district and encouraged by so many of our seasoned professional administrators coming back to serve in interim positions as many of you know about a dozen school principals were promoted to and are transitioned to central office positions including some who will serve as mentors to school principals while there are 400 plus substitute educators ready to take jobs today we're working with over 250 substitute educators to complete their requirements to renew their substitute roles in the district and as of yesterday we had 190 of classroom vacancies however our hiring and talent team are aggressively working with candidates each day with them being at different stages in the hiring process so many of those people are in process to be on board into the district as we've also shared before we have a little over 350 custodial positions across our district and as of yesterday we are down to 40 vacant positions and again as you can imagine our hr team is working closely with dan and his team to fill those gaps before we turn it over to questions and comments i want to share an update on enrollment to date and clarify a few misconceptions about our online learning academy as of today 513 students are enrolled in the online learning academy with about 152 on the wait list on the screen behind you is the current enrollment and wait list as of today at 5 pm these numbers are dynamic and in flux while we did in fact have a priority deadline earlier this summer registration for the online learning academy has never closed and continues to remain open we've been monitoring the wait list and we have repeatedly been able to clear the wait list by allocating additional staff and adding virtual classrooms in addition some people who accept or who are offered a spot decline that spot so then we go to the white list and clear those people from the waitlist that's another way that we are able to clear it students are prioritized based on medical need and their high-risk status there have been questions raised about the district's offer of ola or online academy programs and whether families were aware that they had an online option the district focused its outreach on a survey to the 15 000 families who stayed in conference of distance learning last spring and made personal phone calls to over 1 000 of these families we worked with school-based counselors to identify students for specific outreach work to prioritize students served by our racial equity and social justice partners like sei latino network and erco and students who remained in distance learning for the entire school year all pps families were informed through a number of electronic communications this summer we also want to be realistic and upfront with our community there are constraints on the number of students we can enroll in the online learning academy this is not a new issue every specialized program here in our district has enrollment constraints every district in the united states is facing the same issue it is simply not feasible to offer unlimited enrollment however we continue to work our way through the waitlist and continue to have families add their students to the waitlist every day you have this commitment from us we will continue to work directly with every pps family and student to ensure they have all the resources and information they need as we welcome students back on september 1st and just some additional information for you about the online learning academy we we can send to you a breakdown of the enrollment by race if that is of interest to you with that i look forward to your comments and questions thank you um do we want to just open up the floor for questions then i have i have a short list of questions um but i offer not i don't need to go first i would like to see the breakdown for ola by backgrounds of all those students sure um and i noticed there were some things like we had 17 ninth graders and one on the waitlist and i'm assuming that that's because that's all still in flux yeah so all students when they go on when they apply so we have room in six through 12. but when they apply they go on the wait list but that's just so the system can perform the lottery because we do prioritize students with medical education ses so they are removed it's just a it's a technical process that's what i assumed but i've learned to ask about my assumptions thank you dr berg and uh director lowry in terms of uh i will send this via email so you have it in writing obviously this data is constantly in flux but in terms of enrollment by race as of today as of this data point uh 16.7 percent of students identify as latino or latin latinx 15.5 as multiple races 49.9 white 2 percent native american
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9.82 percent black slash african-american and 7.82 asian so chief garcia that tracks very closely with our overall enrollment yeah that's similar to our pps enrollment numbers correct uh go ahead thank you um thanks for the update really appreciate it um i have a specific question around lunch and i'm sure you're getting the emails that we're all getting as well and i really applaud the decision to do outdoor for at least six weeks and potentially longer i think that's a really it's a good way to continue to to put another mitigation strategy in place um one of the things that i've heard from parents you know who are getting now the specifics from their particular school some schools are sort of going with the six feet distance you know outside but other schools are going with three feet and i'm curious have we provided guidance to our principles i heard you say there are some limitations but i'm thinking particularly in this first six weeks while we're outside i would think there are fewer limitations in terms of the social distancing side of things yeah that's a great question so when outside the guidance is three-foot distance so to still maintain the three-foot distancing as far as um the cohorting requirements it doesn't when you're outside it doesn't have a distancing requirement but in our conversations with our public health advisors they said recommended still maintaining that three feet we think that's achievable outside so that's what the guidance is and our public health advisors have weighed in and said you know three feet outside kids unmasked should correct should be fine correct great thank you and then another question i got was about tents and one of the schools said that they were not going to be allowed to put up tents so could you talk a little bit about do we have policy around that or what's the what's the thinking so we're continuing even tomorrow we're having some conversations with our schools about what would be the best supports for outside lunch and so intense tents have some challenges that are problematic in some ways and they are also good only in certain circumstances but we want to have those conversations about what do those schools need is it tense is it seeding uh we saw all the schools are submitting their individual plans we saw one had a creative idea of having these plastic totes where their younger kids could sit on those sort of things so we're having those conversations and that's there's kind of two parts we want to make sure that we're able to support uh the outdoor lunches but we also make sure that each school has a plan for when they can't go outdoors so when there there is that situation we want them to know that there is a seating plan for when they're inside about creating as much spacing as they can limiting the time that they're that they have the mascots etc great and they are oregon kids so they can be outside even in rain and cold they grew up in it so yeah thank you appreciate that my mom used to say it's just water um are there any other questions um directors holland or green i have a couple questions yeah questions constant um first this is for you probably chief bird so have you made any staffing shifts in response to um what we're seeing as our enrollment numbers not yet so we have allocated additional staff to uh schools where they have over they're over the threshold uh we have inter are you asked about kindergarten specifically because the numbers are low we have not uh taken any stuff because we do anticipate those numbers are going to are going to come up as they do every year they're finding their way back yeah and then i just had a statement really for my colleagues um looking at those enrollment numbers like i personally believe that we need to uh look at high school enrollment balancing sooner rather than later it's been a festering issue for a long time and now when we look at these numbers i think it's getting indefensible jackson just said cleveland has cleveland's at 17 20 this year franklin's what's franklin it's like 20 21 51 us 2200. yeah so um this is an this is an issue that no board ever wants to tackle um but i i don't think there's a way that we can defensively um avoid that this year and particularly when you look at the the bulge in ninth grade so we can probably expect that trend to continue and i think the the good news there is and this is this is just my assumption but i think we're seeing a lot of families returning to our beautifully modernized buildings we're attracting a lot of families who have not been in our system prior to high school so that's a good thing but i think we can reasonably expect to see it to continue so i support uh tackling that really hard controversial work um this year sure just do it do just a little balancing exercise um and do you have um questions director
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holland holland do you want to go ahead yes thank you madam chair so i have a few questions um you talked about the constraints for online learning academy what are those constraints as far as if we can increase um those what are those constraints so we have been able to as i said clear the wait list the constraints really are at a certain point we have to open school so we people need to make a choice and they need to to remain uh there and so we have four vacancies right now in that program that we're continuing to fill that that's to serve the students that are already there so right now what we're doing is we're holding on the wait list for a minute that we have uh there's 150 people in there we're holding on that we're going to fill those positions we have to get teachers trained because it's a different platform that they use it's not the same as conference of distance learning it's an entirely different platform that takes some ramp up time and then we know that from many people in the community have talked to us about as soon as their child is able to get a vaccine they're going to want to return to their neighborhood school and so we can't just shift the staffing you know overnight that takes time to do so we have to be mindful of those constraints because uh you know as we continue to move through the semester so we are able to uh by prioritizing those students with health needs we were able to get them on the in this in the online program and we're continuing to look at that wait list and evaluate that about of the offers we've made we you know 92 people have then decided not to do it so we've been able to clear the waitlist that way too so we know that some people are continuing to evaluate their uh their decision and decide whether they want to stay in the neighborhood school or go back i you know so it's really about the logistics of it and making sure that we can staff both schools and as you heard we also have teacher vacancies that we're still filling so there's as we all know across the country there's a labor shortage in every uh in every um industry so we do have to at some point be prepared to open school with i thought this so i'll make sure i'm clear so basically we're saying either they have to make a if they make the choice of doing online learning they should anticipate having their kids in online learning for the year at least a semester at least through the semester okay and you talked about the vacancies and i'm i'm new at this so um is it normal to have as many vacancies a year yeah so a lot of those are actually in process they're not actually we're not interviewing for 190 positions a lot of those people are at some point in the process so you have to do your background check your licensure that takes some time sometimes there's a backlog in the state right now with tspc so it is um yeah it is and principles just returned to a couple of weeks ago so we had a lot it was a big number and then it went down really quickly so we anticipate those will continue to clear and we'll be ready to move to open school we also have our substitute educators that we're ready to uh fill in for in the instance that we wouldn't have somebody ready for the classroom for day one but our goal is to get the teachers ready for day one what's the denominator on that 190 out of uh out of for teachers yeah four thousand four thousand forty five hundred okay i just wanted to put it in context and uh director hollands if i may uh on august first we had 350 vacancies in classrooms and so kind of just gives you a sense of you know from august 1st to now the the work that the team has done to to bring folks on so this is a pretty natural thing that we see across school districts in america uh really wanting to make sure you know at the last in the last few weeks is when we start to see uh an influx okay and that's what i was asking because i was looking at that 350 number and it just seems pretty high so i didn't know if that's a normal theme for school districts or is that like a retention problem i didn't i was just trying to figure out what that was um the other thing as far as are we going to be listing all 81 school meal plans and when do we expect those plans to be posted they're all going to be submitted by end of day thursday we'll have a chance to review them so they get approved by both our nutrition services staff and the area senior directors and then we should be able to post them next week what day next week i don't know early next week i think i'll have a specific date but i can get back to you with specifics but dan will that be posted before school starts we'll do it by the end of day tuesday and just to clarify those plans are for when we can't eat outdoors that's the alternate plan yeah plan b yeah plan b are you are you uh finished dr holland got a couple more um so do we have a i'm getting a lot of questions as far as the whole matrix if we shut down piece is that a school district decision or is that a governor's decision if whatever numbers we get to if they shut down the schools again
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just want to make sure i understand your question so your question is who would who would mandate the closure of schools in the event that kovit there's it right yeah right individual school or the the talk about the entire is that if we get to a certain number is that a school district decision or is that the governor's decision i'm just well certainly there could be a decision at the state level that mandates a delay a closure we've seen it in this past 18 months that that's happened actually on a regular basis if the question is about when we see single cases or clusters of cases at what point is the quarantine number high enough to have us consider closing a school temporarily for instance i think that's what you're asking that would largely depend on the recommendation from our local public health officials about are we reaching the threshold where it makes sense to not just close down the cohort of the classroom or even the classroom wing but maybe the whole school community we would be working very closely with our public health officials to make that kind of a decision and do we have those how do we talk with them about what those metrics might be if so for instance of a class director hollins yes so we we have been in communications with local multnomah county public health as you know when the pandemic started and has evolved uh the state released some metrics right some thresholds when school districts would move from hybrid to cdl to in person et cetera the governor and the state of oregon removed those thresholds early in the summer and so in the last few weeks we have expressed an interest in learning and knowing what public health his recommendations would be in the chance that public health would decide that you know having enough people in a space is deemed harmful so working with public health officials to get that threshold and those measures are going to be really important you know we want to make sure that we're listening to the public health uh and and having them make the determination so uh similar to our isolation and isolation and quarantine protocol uh which were developed uh with multnomah county and mesd's uh health department uh they're the ones that really govern um and manage and and and share with us uh the steps that we need to to do to pro to to quarantine or isolate students or or staff okay so we do or don't have that threshold yet so there are no thresholds right now per the state of oregon if there are going to be some will we be letting how will we let the community know what those thresholds are once those thresholds are figured out yeah we would use all at all channels of communication so email communication social media etc if uh if if we do get to that point uh but again i i would say that as of today the governor or the state of oregon has not released any thresholds that would determine whether school districts would move from one one version of of of learning to to another thank you guys so much and i really i know you guys are doing great work and it's a lot of work so i really appreciate what you guys are doing thank you just an additional note to director holland's question around our newest educators many of us were there present thank you director to pass director constant for saying some welcoming remarks to them the other day along with pat's president um in an informal survey of the crowd you know how many of you are new to pps but come with a teaching experience a pretty significant percentage of the people raise their hand so not only are we welcoming people new to the profession but increasingly it appears people are are choosing pps as their employer of choice so we want to welcome those folks from wherever they're coming from uh to the family as well i know that uh director broome edwards is on the on the phone and has uh several questions um would you like to go ahead director broome edwards excuse me just a second i've got a connector in via my computer are you ready director remembers yes can should i go ahead yes please thank you um first of all i want to thank um for all the work that's gone into the preparation over the last um
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month and also the communications team for pushing out um a lot of information um and i think so several of my questions were answered um or and asked by director hollins i just want to clarify a couple things um i know that we have posted online the plan that we print plan to submit um can somebody and i don't know if this is cheap bird um share one uh how people provide feedback and then second or how community members might provide feedback on our plan and then second does it need to be approved or we just submit it and that's a great question uh so the the plan is on our website right now it's actually right on our main page when you click on it it gives you an option to provide feedback through let's talk and then let's talk has its own button to say this is what my feedback is for it's for the specific plan so that's the route that we're getting the feedback i have seen some people have been emailing me directly so that will be included as well and my understanding is that the plan is submitted to the state they do not specifically respond with an approval they take it in as information so the requirement is that we provide that we provide a mechanism for feedback um and i guess the question is um what sort of feedback that we received to date and are we making any changes based on that or are we moving ahead with the plan that we have posted right now yeah we certainly will make changes based upon the feedback i don't have a good summary of what that has been to date but we can take a look at that and provide that information but we will review everything that we get we will make changes to the plan as necessary and i'll also i suppose point out that the the substance of the plan is really our health and safety measures that have been in place for a while they've been available for a while so we've already gotten some feedback on those and those have been incorporated into the plan and how we've made changes so far but anything new that comes in over the next couple days we will look to incorporate into the plan and then how well will there be a presentation or something shared with parents of anything that say we have a snapshot of where we are today and um then between now and the first day of school uh what what's new what's changed something for example what i thought i heard earlier is some of the meal um plans um how we're gonna structure uh lunches aren't gonna be ready till the end of the day tuesday which is the day before um school starts so where is the parents going to be able to find the most current up-to-date information before that first day of school thank you for thank you for your question director um is this fun uh to answer your direct question uh on monday uh next monday we will be releasing uh comprehensive uh communication uh that includes all of the the latest health and safety measures uh as we know things are shifting every day and so uh we're really anticipating that that on monday we will share that with all families like a one stop email communication if you will in addition we also have our back to school website so pps.net forward slash back to school 2021 that also has much of that information as well great i just i'm sorry i have two more questions and just a comment i'll start with my comment one i want to thank the staff today i received a communication from yesterday from a representative with all born in about the concern that many families with medically fragile or immune compromised students may not have chosen the online um option because we weren't in the middle of the delta um variant surge and that things have changed people are interested in that so i want to thank um brenda martinick and chief byrd for willingness to have a conversation i know that those families were contacted at the early earlier stages um you know i just think we're in a different point in time right now with the delta variant so thanks to staff for their willingness to have that conversation um then the the second is around uh testing and so um i'm not sure i wrote down what was the plan for for the screen testing for students but it's not it's not clear to me what that looks like so the first day of school
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do we have some sort of random screen testing that will be implemented or well we have some process by which by the end of the first week all schools will have had some sort of screens all students will have had some sort of screen testing um what what's the plan for that versus for staff so uh thank you director edwards for student screen testing there's a meeting this friday with oha to lay out more of the details as you know this program was recently rolled out so we are learning more about the student screen testing in terms of staff that is a voluntary enrollment for staff members and they will if they elect to enroll in that they will receive a test kit at home that they'll mail back on and they'll do that every week and i'll get the results of that but for student testing we'll have more details much many more details after this friday uh when we have a meeting about the testing so that will be wrapped into the start of the school um communication that goes out at the beginning of next week correct yeah and then just the last question is probably a um sort of more future looking question is if we take the three percent enrollment decline this year on top of last year's enrollment decline um well it it may um be a catalyst for high school enrollment balancing i think it's a bigger call to action for you know where are those four percent you know four to five percent of the students who we've lost um you know where where did they go um what sort of planning do we need to do in order to bring them i'm hoping we bring them back if they're our students and then we continue to be able to serve them but i'm curious about um you know what impact they have with the numbers if beaverton or salem don't have similar declines we may not be the largest school district in in oregon um with those combined two-year declines so i'm interested like who's on point four look at looking at those what what happened to those students well i think it's a fair question director uh brim edwards because we're very concerned about monitoring our enrollment trends as well uh probably the best time to do that will be after the traditional 10 day count and the dust settles and and students have landed as we've pointed out previously pps like our other metro districts in the state most of their enrollment declines were experienced in the younger grades generally k-1-2 we're continuing to see that number now as they start to register back and since i have the mic i want to encourage our families we have available pre-school seats sign your student up we have available preschool seats many of them so we really want to get them in the pipeline early with early education but similarly for us it's the primary grades where we've seen the biggest decline but we'll look forward to sharing with with the board uh as soon as we have more concrete information year-over-year trends uh i made the same observation when i saw these numbers initially we're seeing a drop from last fall's number and last fall's number was already a little bit lower so that is something we should pay attention to i don't think it's unique to pps but it does beg the question where are they thank you superintendent guerrero looking forward to having that discussion thank you uh director green did you have questions yes i do i have a um i have a couple of questions um and forgive me because i'm new um and i'm learning a lot of this stuff when i was um when i was at peep um roosevelt if i would take kids on a field trip i had to fill out a um a field trip form and if i took 10 kids on the field trip i was required to bring all 10 back i couldn't say that well i took 10 i brought back seven so i got seventy percent so why aren't we happy with the fact that i brought back the seven versus being focused on the these three little kids that i lost and the problem with that was that in in that scenario we recognized that any kid lost was unacceptable right you know you can't take 10 kids on a field trip come back with seven and then expect to be praised because i brought back the seven
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my question for us as a district for us as a board i know that we're you know we we keep saying that we're going to listen to oha and we're going to listen to you know what the governor or a different one said but at what point do we do we say no kid getting sick is acceptable for us as a as a school district and say that you know we have to do something we have to do something different we've got a whole host of kids that cannot be vaccinated we know that they cannot be vaccinated and there's nothing right now that says that it's going to happen before school starts or before school ends but yet we're not providing those those families with an option that says we know that you can't at least do this so that this is what we're going to do for you right and so what i'm trying to understand is i i'm excited about our online our online program but that doesn't that doesn't meet the bill for all those families who are going to have kids that they know they're sending them to school unvaccinated they know that the delta variant is stronger than the previous the um the alpha variant the one that was here before and they know because they're kids that i don't care how much you tell them that you know i need you to stay three feet apart they're not really going to do it and then we see we see people put these same kids up the same kids and they say would you rather go back to school or do you want to stay at home but we don't trust these same kids to answer the decision of do you want to eat a healthy breakfast or would you rather have candy so we know what's best for them so we do it anyway but yet in this regard we want to try to disregard it as if well we want to listen to what they want i hear you but if my kids had their way they would have ate candy until they were like 13 they wouldn't have had teeth and because they would have just rotted out all of them and so what i'm trying to understand is why can't we as a district again i understand that i'm new there's a lot of protocols and stuff that i don't know but why can't we as a district say we don't care what the governor says or what oha or these different ones say if we see that we start losing we're on a trajectory where we have lost two kids in this school three kids have had to go home in this school three this is what we're going to do period whether somebody else likes it or not and i believe that because we like to be on the cutting edge we were on the cutting edge when we say we're going to mandate all teachers to um to be vaccinated why can't we be on the cutting edge when it comes to disregard and then why can't we be on the cutting edge and and i know that this will probably you know not everybody's going to clap for it or appreciate it but if you're going to come to school then and you want to be in the school then i need to know that you've got a vaccine if you haven't had a vaccine then you have to be tested period and it's it's not take away the the option you know that's that's the problem and and that's i'm saying that because i know it's my problem if you tell me i have this or this then i get to make a choice but when they came out with that 64-pack of color crayons i about lost my mind because you got too many different variations of red too many different variations of orange too many different very too many different variations and i literally lose my mind i don't know what to do but if you give me you either do it or you don't then i can make a choice why can't we as a district say that and a lot of it i didn't want it because gary said a lot but why can't we say if you're going to come to school it is a requirement that you be you be vaccinated um or if not you're going to do weekly testing if you your kids are below the vaccination um age then we're going to provide you a and you don't feel comfortable sending your kids back to school as a district we're going to reinvent and reinvest and figure out a way to do a um a distance learning option for you that does not um take you out of the the pps school system and put you into an online and online option and this is this is how we're going to do it and i know that it costs money and i know that there's a lot of money also coming down the pipeline that we can get our hands on that we can continue to do that and so those are my thoughts um that that i've been trying to put together i've got i didn't even go through them all i got a bunch of notes that i've written down but i figured i'd just stop right there um as not to take up too much time we didn't want to commit to you know keeping our meetings you know on time this year i know director scott is also a fan of that so but i appreciate your comments and most of the questions most of the questions i have have also been
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asked already i'm i'm concerned with what we do with the kids who are between vaccinations that are getting at benson for instance um vaccinated on the 30th and we'll have two weeks before they get a a fully before they're fully vaccinated and that's not just benson but that's some of the other schools that are getting vaccinated this week um i'm really concerned about accommodating um students that want a cdl option that are scared particularly for those families that are under 12. um and and actually just i'm going to be very frank right here i'm scared and i'm not scared of much i'm really not and i'm really really scared my tolerance for any disease that is preventable in this district is zero i don't want to see a child uh lose their life or be sick i really don't i don't i don't i i am scared i i fully have confidence in the protocols and the practices we put in place for the alpha variant i felt confident that with vaccinations but i now know about eight people that are sick that are vaccinated including um a former director um our former director julia sparza brown who says she followed every precaution she was vaccinated and she has a very bad case of covid that's about the ninth person i know that's gotten a breakthrough case so i am very very concerned that we don't have we we don't have a number that we can hang on um to say that you know at this is our tolerance level for covet cases in the district when we reach one percent anywhere we need to take precautions and i'm just i'm i'm just being really frank i'm i'm very very concerned um this delta variant is highly transmissible and it it is expected to peak on september 7th and um and we're running out of icu beds and children are getting sicker you know around the country so i just i'm just i want to just put it on the record that i'm planning on you know washing my hands and i want to visit you know see these children the kinder you know back to school i'm really excited um to see their new shoes and their backpacks and everything but i'm also there's a big part of me that's very scared for our community our community not just everybody all of our stakeholders i'm very very concerned chair to pass can i i i did want to say that you know one of the things that this board did is we did past two resolutions directing the superintendent not to offer cdl and we did pass the two resolutions saying full five-day in-person return so i think you know as we talk about things with delta has changed um it may be time for this board if if we want to do that to take responsibility and think about a resolution because we did we passed that earlier and so i think it's it's challenging for our staff if they've received direction from the board about how to reopen the school year and they're doing that and then we're up here saying you know we're concerned i think we need to put our money where our mouth is then and think about if we want to change direction then we need to to give our our staff some clarity on that sure and i i i appreciate that we made those decisions and we made those decisions before at a time when we were dealing with a different um variant and and we if we're we're at an educational facility in education our core mission is to educate kids we also have to we also have to be a learning organization as adults as a board as as staff when we get new information we have to react to it differently we need it's our responsibility to take in new information and make different decisions with it i'm sorry uh go ahead director scott um and thank you for your comments by the way director lowry i i know that we've we've we have directed staff to go one way and that and and the information that we're taking in has changed and i think my point is that it's really easy for us to make statements on the deus but we need to if we want to change direction we we need to make that clear to staff i completely understand and yes so so i guess so i don't disagree delta is is different and delta is scary and i get the numbers as as does everybody else and the briefings i want to make sure we circle back though to to the other side of this equation which is what happens to our kids when they're not in school and and i think that's what what i i'm afraid it got lost in last year's debate and i'm afraid it's getting it's getting lost a little bit here tonight as well we heard from students about you know how devastating that was we know that students nationwide lost between four and seven months of learning last year and and it was our students of color that were close to the
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seven months and so i think what we're trying to do and and what the district and the superintendent have been doing i think a really good job of is is balancing this is very scary covet is scary it was scary from the beginning the delta variant is scary the learning loss of our children over the last 15 months is is also scary and and our job is to balance those things and i know that i mean i i know i don't think there's any disagreement up here on the board about that i just i want to make sure we're saying that in the record as well we need to be figuring out a way that our students don't go into a third year of school with that same sort of sort of devastating loss and so i i honestly i feel really comfortable with the mitigation measures that are in place we've been following the public health guidance that we've gotten that says i mean our public health officials or our public health health advisors don't have any incentive to our public health advisors don't have any incentive to lie to us about what they think is safe we've been consulting with them all along and they say this is safe and so that is what gives me the confidence to say going into the school year it's safe i don't disagree at all that we need to be monitoring absolutely we need to be monitoring and if there are isolated outbreaks we need to deal with those if there are system-wide or district-wide outbreaks then by all means we need to have a conversation about why why that's happening i would be very nervous about making that decision now given all the work that that has gone into this and and i'm i'm not the chair so i might i would really ask that um the audience to please be respectful and not boo that's really bad audience behavior i don't appreciate it and if i can make a friendly suggestion you can clap but please don't boo my colleagues thank you i said jazzy no i just we need to act response we're adults and we need to act we can't boo people it's it's just not okay thanks chair to pass so i have a quick uh question for uh director scott um i understand as far as the work that's been going in and the loss that has been had learning loss um i just don't know how you justify that to a parent that a kid life has lost learning loss versus life loss i don't think that's really comparable um and i don't think what i think what a lot of folks are saying is they want to like have an option so as a parent i want to be able to have the option i don't care about what the board feels or how they think i want to be able to have the option to do what's best for my kid whatever that is to be able to have that option and i think what a lot of people are at least what i've been hearing is that with the online learning maybe expanding that so parents have that option to choose what they feel is best for their kids and not make it they have to either do one or the other but just have that option yeah and what i what i thought i heard from staff is is that with that wait list you continue to look at that and and continue to potentially add i i heard optimism there in terms of being able to get through i mean 150 people on the waitlist um you know so not a promise but at least you know continuing to to work through that yeah that demand for online learning is higher than what's on our wait list is that's what i suspect i i don't know how we would test that but i i believe just from the amount of mail i'm getting um i i believe that there's a demand for online learning there's families that just don't feel safe and we're talking about our enrollment data and i think that's directly related to people not having a sense of safety and it might be just safety for a time it's not forever i mean we will all have to behave differently from now on we're not going to ever eradicate covid but for the schools until we get children vaccinated i would rather err on the conservative side personally i'm going to push back a little bit on the notion about demand and just go back to what we heard from staff about outreach and about the pretty intense communication in a lot of different channels letting people know that the online option is available and here's how you um pursue it i think you know we do have we we have maxed out and we've seen that but i think our families know that it's an option um so i i'm i i i don't believe that there are a lot of um [Music] families who are seeking that option now who haven't made it known um in response to the the outreach i i do believe that people's views may be changing and people may be getting you know more nervous and scared as we get closer to the start of school
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which is totally reasonable um yeah it's okay to disagree with me but i i disagree with you i i sense that there's a higher demand now in this last week before school than there was two weeks ago or three weeks ago as you know we've got lots of fearful news coming up so you know i don't know how else we know the demand i mean we've contacted the 15 000 students that were in cdl and of those we've had 500 applicants no so well we've had about uh almost 700 almost 700 with the waiting list and the 500 that are enrolled plus the people that have applied got an offer and then rejected so there's more than that you know so probably closer to 800 i've actually gone through the system we're going to do another sweep another uh we're going to take another sweep at it tomorrow and uh in the coming days to say like if you if you're interested right now there's a wait list but you're welcome to please let us know of your interests and then we'll see where we are and we'll see what we can do is it dynamic situation yeah yeah we're responding to it every day we are taking people off that wait list so i i i do appreciate the um the changing nature of your jobs are you the logistical challenges are are tremendous tremendous and and the stress is also tremendous i i know i'm up at night um thinking about this for no reason really um except that we're opening in eight days and i wanna i just smith raised the three feet um online learning for all and educators needing virtual positions and i feel like hearing your then update like about uh dan your specifics about what does three feet and how your three percent of classrooms in middle and high school don't meet that and the steps you're taking to deal with that how you're going to do that for elementary school you've doubled the online learning right we've doubled it because it was one teacher for k through five and now it's two and we're continuing to be responsive to that i don't know about the piece about the educators having virtual positions but i feel like yes things are changing and i see our staff constantly adjusting to that including i'm really excited about the testing for students i think that's one of the things we've seen in school districts that have gone back like um i've contacted people i know around the country whose school started in august and who we aren't hearing about the school districts who have started in august with masking with very similar protocols to what pps has had similar vaccination rates similar community spread and they have not had big covet outbreaks they haven't had quarantine what makes the newspaper are the thing the things that are scary and yes this is scary yes we need to protect our kids and it's not this zero-sum game of either like kids dying or being online there's i think andrew said it perfectly about this tension we hold of not being in school we heard from that the the mom mrs chang about what that was like for her as you know the life um preserver for her in some ways and so it's complicated it's it's more like asking instead of candy or eggs it's like do you want um cereal or eggs like there's there's good to both and so it's how do we how do we live in this tension of there's not one right answer and we've got 50 000 students and how do we try to find a middle path that both honors those kids who desperately need to be in person create some safe spaces follows the public health guidelines and i think it's just going to be an incredibly stressful year as we continue to get new information and discern and and do our best for families but i just really want to thank our staff for like the the report we saw tonight had so many adjustments and updates and i just so appreciate your responsiveness and how we're continuing to do that um and i'm scared too and i'm also optimistic so it's that it's that tension of um i want our kids back i know it's good for them and i don't want anyone to get sick and so how do we continue to constantly adjust and monitor and things that make me feel better is like the audit report that we got last week of you know there weren't any findings and so how do we continue to build on that excellence as a team to keep our kids safe thank you um yeah and it's okay it's okay for us to hold two truths at once and and this is a really it is a difficult position to be in i i really like um director hollins you mentioned for people that are fearful of sending their kids back to have an option and i do feel i do think that you know it'd be great to see what the demand is once we do another sweep of that online learning academy i i sense it's it maybe it's just my mailbox but i sense that the demand is higher than what we think it is if i got this for choice a choice right now until we peak uh in mid-september or whatever madam chair i have one question when you talk about the sweep that's going out tomorrow is that is that going to be specific like the first one or is that just to everybody we're just going to send it out to uh to just gauge if there's any you know if we've missed anybody this another chance to do that and then if i could just add one clarification so some of you are
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probably getting mailed to about class sizes or this or that so that's also a very dynamic situation principles are adjusting their master schedule every day and so as we uh are working with our dan and i are working with principals to make sure can you have appropriate distancing in class some of the numbers we see on our on our data are not actually accurate so that there's there are scheduling errors that happen that they have to go on a hand schedule some students so some students may have the same may have two classes in one period so that's just a the computer schedules people and then we have to go and fix those errors and elementary schedules are put into the system uh at this time of the year because they are you know they stay together all day so i would just uh also just inform you that those things are going to be changing up until the first day of school even after the first day of school when we do balancing after uh 10 days we look at the class rosters and we we are balancing constantly so um and that's what we've also tried to assure people that uh we are monitoring it every day and we're we're going to continue to make changes so i appreciate that thank you um it's always interesting to me to hear the back end like the other side of the story it's also it's very instructive thank you um i know student representative has a couple of questions yeah i had a few questions so kind of my first question is when we have to quarantine individual students or cohorts what is the plan to like continue on teaching or continuing on learning for those students so great question and there's a you know it's a continuum so if it's uh one student that is quarantined there's going to be a few options for that student which we are still uh working out so in the old days you will if you're out for an extended period of time your mom or dad may come and get some work for you to do while you're home but you're going to be quarantined for 10 days so there's a few different options we have digital platforms that students use last year as you know you use them so we can make work available on that the district is prepared by the way k-12 to offer those lessons for every uh content area we have those loaded into our learning management system so teachers can use that they can substitute their own lessons for in place with the district grade ones on those digital platforms and then we're also talking about the possibility of students being able to join uh class by a g meet but you know it wouldn't the teacher would be teaching so you wouldn't have the full visual effect of it but um if you wanted to hear that would be that that's a possibility some teachers may so there's going to be a continuum of options that uh teachers have depending on the number of students that are in or out if it's a if it were let's just say we're a whole class then and everybody was quarantined then then that class would be in and you know would have class virtually uh cdl kind of uh option for those that period of quarantine so it kind of depends on the number of students that are out so if a class if an entire class needs to quarantine what would happen to that teacher of that class the teacher would still teach uh well as long as they were well and able to teach they would teach remotely as they did last year okay and then with the three percent of middle school and high schools classrooms not being able to accommodate the three feet are there specific schools or areas in the district that are [Music] higher than that three percent of not being able to accommodate are there any places where schools are trying harder or need to try harder to accommodate for the three feet so i would say that those are um so they're so it's three percent of classrooms across those schools in some cases we're able to uh just move a class so maybe it's just a teacher has one section that's like you know over the capacity of the class so we just move that period to somewhere in some cases it's going to be challenging at franklin and uh grant for example it wouldn't i could give them another teacher but it wouldn't matter because there's no space to put the other teacher so um that there are space constraints in in some of our high schools that are going to uh limit what we can do in some of our elementary schools for example the problem has been that the classroom was too small so we needed to have another teacher to create another section we've done that or where we can do that so it also depends on on the area okay and then do you have an example of a meal safety plan kind of what that would look like just yeah uh some good examples that we've seen uh i'm gonna forget specifically what school is so they're looking to maximize the distancing that's in their in the cafeteria so uh some schools what they're doing if they can get really close they might take a couple of tables and put them in the hall and so those will be on the hall and then they'll be able to maintain their spacing others are using different spaces within the building to maximize that so i know some schools are using the stages for example or they're using the gym to again maximize the distancing others are really looking to limit the time that students are sitting down and eating and saying you have 15 minutes to sit down and eat and if you need more time than that then you can either go outside or you can move to another area so lots of schools are using different options and they're being very creative and there's actually when i think we've got probably
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about 60 of them submitted so far uh it's really actually heartening to see how creative they are how confident they are that they can meet the spacing and then they can pull off the the indoor lunches and that's plan b right so where would we expect to see plan a's for lunch times posted there's no specific written plan what we were directed to the schools was to utilize the outside space to the maximum that they can so uh when they're when it's lunch time we want them to prioritize go outside first and if there's a situation that you that it's not appropriate to go outside then switch to plan b but and if i just to clarify or to add to that um in on our website on the pps.net forward slash back to school 2021 we have standard operating procedures we just included the meal a meal time a standard operating procedure which details a little bit more of what we've shared with our staff about outdoor outdoor meal time okay i don't know if it's on there but i have one quick question about that so at middle school we don't we have closed campuses but at high school we have open campuses obviously so for high schools are we expecting students to clear the school for that 40 clear the school minutes students will choose to exercise open campus and leave but there will be lunch there'll be cafeteria service and they'll be able to eat outside uh on the in school on the school grounds so we're not expecting them to to leave campus now okay and then final question um with the start of school communications will that be sent to students as well or just like families yeah we've been working on uh as you know we we have our student.pps.net account and so right now working with it to make sure that we're able to communicate some of the same communications that we share with families with students all right thank you um i think we've heard um i don't know if anybody has any final comments but we've kind of you i'll have i have one more just yes please thank you so if i love what you're saying about the sweep uh i mean the email going out tomorrow yeah we'll see if so if we find out that there's more folks who wants the um online learning what is our plans to do with that if we see there is an increase in numbers that parents do want to do that so we're going to look at the data that comes in and we're going to and then we'll come back with some recommendations uh based on that we'll i'll go talk to superintendent and again we you know we're going to try we're going to accommodate as many people as we can in that option and i'm hopeful because of what's happened the past three weeks we've been able to clear those lists pretty regularly so uh we're we just right now the only reason you see that many numbers on there right now quite honestly is because we took a pause to get the the school staffed up and then once we do that so that number would probably be lower today had we not taken the pause away for those processing to happen keep us posted we will um thank you staff um for your uh dedication and and for your hard work i know this this again is not a very challenging operating environment superintendent um just very stressful um just appreciate the time and attention you've given and you've heard the themes of you know spacing and lunch plans and it sounds like that's forthcoming we can expect updates tomorrow and tuesday and so yeah i appreciate it thank you so much we're adjourned unless we have any other business uh only to say it's our last board meeting before the first day of school which is in five working days so we're excited to welcome everyone back on top of that we are living in this context and so i just want credit for my homework because the board was very clear in six things it directed superintendent to accomplish and that was prioritize full-time in person school that's happening follow all federal state guidelines we have uh give families choice with a virtual learning option that is actually more rigorous and maintains a full day connection with teachers we're re-advertising that so that families can indicate a preference then we can evaluate where we may need to reassign and train staff to be ready for that we might need to have a short a soft start realistically just logistically to do that that was that was the fourth thing fifth thing uh work with all your partners mesd multnomah county community uh based partners we've done that all summer communication hopefully everybody has experienced the barrage of information and a comprehensive one that you heard is coming before the start of the school and then six you know uh work with ode governor's office and other state entities to influence and advocate and make sure that those guidelines really help serve students we've been
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very active in that regard so i just want to point out the board's six directions to superintendent i think uh you've seen evidence that you know we've done our best to to implement thank you i appreciate that and that the the work and the effort and the following of those directions is not lost on me um but i again had to be voice my concerns so i used an i statement about how i was feeling in my fear and not about any wasn't a judgment on anybody or anything but rather how i i was expressing my own um my own fear i appreciate that chair and i just want to make sure it's unambiguous to our community how much i share your care and concern for our students and for our employees we'll continue and i think we've been as careful as any school system can be around all of our health and safety mitigation strategies they won't be perfect i guarantee you but i know that everybody's going to do their best and we're going to try to make sure and take care of folks who really do need a different kind of choice for whatever their circumstance is and that's really what we've been working to try to do thank you i think we're adjourned

Event 2: Meeting SpongeBob

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Sources

Official Information on Places To See, https://stuff.example.org/places-to-see (accessed: 2022-05-26T16:40:37.000Z)
Example Corp. Everything Database, https://everything.example.com/88xvy67 (accessed: 2022-05-17T15:05:23.000Z)