2019-03-19 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2019-03-19
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - March 19, 2019

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the regular meeting of the board of education for March 19 2019 is called to order welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on this evening has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the Board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PPS TV services website as a reminder we now have our PPS Ombudsman Judy Martin attending all regular board meetings and she is standing up in the back Judy will be here to listen to the public comments and if appropriate provide additional support to families who need or want it Judy can be reached at 503-916-3045 or ombudsman pps.net we also have interpreters with us this evening and I'd like to ask them to come forward at this time introduce themselves in the language into which they'll be interpreting and inform the audience where they'll be located in the auditorium should someone need their assistance come on you soon in Spanish foreign okay thank you I'd like to note that item seven on the published agenda the level three complaint consideration has been postponed to a future date resolution 5858 related to the complaint has also been withdrawn from the business agenda and um board members are there any items in the remaining business agenda that you have questions on know what I'm going to have to depart before we get to the business agenda for my kids games but my questions have been sufficiently resolved anything else okay so we'll move right into the celebration portion of the tonight's festivities um we're going to be celebrating the Benson girls basketball team the Jefferson boys basketball team and the grant boys basketball team um PPS has many athletic teams throughout the district all of which are hugely important for the students who participate in them their families and the school community and many of them have won many competitions over the years and tonight we're going to be celebrating three of them the Jefferson girls won the 6A state championship oops foreign congratulations look at your shirt congratulations you didn't know that okay my apologies um the Benson girls won the 6A championship [Applause] um the Jefferson boys basketball team was the runner-up in the state championship [Applause] and the grant boys basketball team captured fourth place in the championship I'd like to introduce Marshall Haskins PPS athletic director to say a few words and introduce the teams [Applause] thank you and director Moore I am just truly excited and proud to be here today to share the successes of three of our teams and as you said direct the more we've had tremendous success during this winter we have state champion and swimming we had a couple state champions
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in wrestling it's just been a great winner but it was also a great fall uh but tonight celebrating the three teams here tonight um I'll start in reverse order I'll have uh Robert key from Grant High School uh coach key will you come up please [Applause] uh so could a grant team just come stand right here in front of me please as they're coming down this group of seniors has had a tremendous High School career they came in fourth this year partially because of a bad draw where they had to play Jefferson in the first round but last year they were able to capture the state championship themselves so they've had a great run and we're very proud of them but more importantly they're also a group of great student athletes representing Grant High School can we give them an please something uh uh coach key can you just come up maybe say one or two things and introduce the players that are here so to my right we have Junior Zion ball senior Ty Rankin freshman dondre Fair senior Aaron deloney senior ever Conrad [Applause] Junior Emmanuel Stewart [Applause] Junior laquandre Taylor [Applause] and a junior that I'm going to miss that's uh transferring to Grants Pass uh his parent his dad got a new job but Junior Katie Lee on the behalf of the Grant Community in our program a tremendous run for us I salute to the Benson Tech girls great job this year I watch you guys from afar as well and of course to our neighbors uh the Jefferson Democrats thank you guys you guys have done a great job all year I wish you all the best of luck okay don't leave yet don't leave yet I'm going to ask director Bailey to read the proclamation and then after that I'm going to ask the board members to go up and we'll do a photo up proud to wear this shirt honoring the Benson women but my class is 71. so Blue and Gray in here guys so Proclamation honoring Grant High School's boys basketball team whereas the Board of Education and superintendent recognize the significant accomplishment of the Grant High School boys basketball team who plays fourth in the OSAA class 6A state championship quarterfinals on March 6th whereas the Board of Education and superintendent wish to thank the students for their teamwork and tenacity throughout this season whereas the Board of Education and superintendent applaud the entire Grant Community of teachers students parents neighbors and the team's exceptional coach Robert key all of whom have supported and encouraged this team to be and play their very best now therefore the Board of Education and superintendent do hereby recognize and congratulate the grant generals boys basketball team on its accomplishment of an outstanding basketball season congratulations [Applause] okay we're we're all disrobing back here um give us a second
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[Applause] next thing uh can I have Coach Pat Strickland for Jefferson boys [Applause] I've just want to say to coach Strickland I actually was a Jefferson coach before him I thought I had set the pace for how I wanted to be he's actually triple my state championships I think so I think I make a good decision hire him as coach but I want to say to coach Strickland we're very very proud of the Jefferson team and Community I know sometimes coming in second doesn't feel good I try to tell some of the players when you're old as us so you'll go back and see your name on the blue thing and second won't fill that back so coach Strickland Jefferson High School [Applause] thank you [Applause] all the fellas come on up while the fellas are coming up uh on behalf of Jefferson boys basketball program we just want to thank the school board for having us tonight uh we also want to give a shout out to uh the best in techman and the grant generals for their accomplishment accomplishments this year um and I want to give a big kudos to our principals our vice principals our athletic director and the staff at Jefferson High School for making this a pretty good year for us and I will name the guys off um we'll start with Trey John Williams step out when I call your name he's a freshman he'll be back the next year we have Charles Douglas one of our graduating seniors this year we have uh Lamar Washington one of our another one of our freshmen and the next person we have John I'm not even going to try to pronounce his last name I've been having problems all year uh one of our graduating seniors and we have another senior Marcus ajonis another senior uh Trey Richmond [Applause] another senior Will Taylor I have a sophomore Cameron Robinson sophomore Nate kabange I have another senior Keelan Vance and we have another sophomore Jalen Adams [Applause] and once again thanks for having us in a picture don't forget okay so whereas the Board of Education and superintendent recognize the significant accomplishments of the Jefferson High School boys basketball team who placed second in the OSAA class 6A state championship on March 9 2019 whereas the Board of Education and superintendent wish to thank the students for their teamwork and tenacity throughout this season whereas the Board of Education and superintendent applaud the entire Jefferson Community of teachers students parents neighbors and the teams exceptional coach Pat Strickland all of whom have supported and encouraged this team to be and play their very best now therefore the Board of Education and superintendent to hereby recognize and congratulate that Jefferson Democrats boys basketball team on its accomplishment of an outstanding basketball season thank you and congratulations [Applause]
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[Applause] [Applause] coach Knox can you come down please [Applause] thank you as coach Knox is coming down I want to say um something on his behalf uh he might was going to lose to it but I'll say it publicly a coach of Knox applied for the boys at Benson basketball job six years ago and uh the principal and consultation with the District athletic director decided to hire someone else but in that meeting coach Knox said you know I could coach anything I'm coach girl I've coached girl I got a daughter but I would be an unbelievable boys basketball coach so he walks out I told Curtis to call an offer in the girls job Curtis talked with him as soon as he hung up with Curtis he called me and went have you guys lost your mind how did I get the boy's job I know I'm a better the best candidate possible I went to Oregon State I was a star blah blah blah I said Eric I think you're going to be a phenomenal girls coach he said he talked with his wife and thought about it and here we are today six years later first year he was on 24 and six years later he has a state championship can we give them a handful okay [Applause] Vincent Benson Texas come up here because this is more about you and your accomplishment than it is all [Applause] it's too hot too hot to wear a suit today uh to piggyback on what uh Marshall Haskins said I I have always learned that God gives you what you need not what you want and I needed them on so many levels and they needed each other um because you know I told our girls from from day one it's not about basketball for us it's about telling the story and I always get emotional but you know 38 years um until last Saturday who would have thought you know a team from the pil smallest school in the state tournament numerically 78 percent free and reduced lunch a third of our girls played in track shoes three years ago some girls couldn't even afford the participation fee and for us to be at the state tournament was a miracle with the limited resources we had but we realized that not having resource can sometimes serve as the resource and uh when we didn't have them slick shoes and the nice uniforms we had each other and there's something beautiful about a bond if you believe in it that can be transformational I'm reminded of a quote by Wes Moore that says young girls are more likely to believe in themselves if they know that there's someone somewhere who shares that belief to carry the burden of belief alone is too much for young shoulders we had belief right like you don't have to have exceptional Talent if you have exceptional belief and all year Mackenzie Porter who's doing an HBCU tour this week isn't here but she tried to tell everybody in the paper that we were going to win this I didn't believe her I even told her to calm the rhetoric down you know what I'm saying you're putting too much pressure but she saw something I didn't she she was Nostradamus in the moment and uh for some reason on Championship Saturday it was the most peaceful day of my life I've never been more peaceful about something than I was the day I got married like that was most peaceful day of my life the second most peaceful day was the state championship game and that's real talk and I knew we were going to win they knew more than I knew that we were going to win and during the game I knew we had the game I just didn't know at what point we had the game and uh and so I'm so proud of these girls because 38 years the pil has been overdue to see Elite girl basketball
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played at a high level in the city and so I am so freaking proud of these girls let's just give it up [Applause] they're amazing they're amazing basketball players but I would invite you as I introduce every one of their amazing basketball players but if you have time go online Google them at the state tournament and listen to their quotes barely said anything about basketball they were dialed into issues they understood that they represented something more than basketball and they kicked wide open the door for a lot of young girls in the city to play at a high level and I'm so proud of them uh at what they did and what that game meant to them and so what I want to do is introduce them right now first there's Taylor laude one of our seniors [Applause] she'll be getting a division one scholarship I'm very excited about that [Applause] Bria Dixon or Junior she'll be back to haunt the state [Applause] DD Norman a very fast athletic guard freshman Jordan Walnut uh one of our sophomores Ajay Yocum step forward one of our amazing juniors player I believe I'm saying it in faith she was already Pio played a year but I believe she deserves to be State played a year and balled out in the state championship game let's give it up for Sierra Ellington [Applause] and my last but not least my coaches who make me look way smarter than I am that's Dexter lasur Candace Flynn [Applause] and Kenny Flavor Flav cook my hikeman lastly I want to thank Curtis Wilson Roy San Anderson Scott Archer our amazing staff and counselors and Educators at our school I literally believe Benson is a magical place it is a magical place I don't know what's in the water but it is a magical place and that's literal not that water all right so I guess we take we know it's not in that water all right yes yes absolutely I want to say coach Knox was alluding to the last time a Pio girls basketball team won state tournament in the big classification Jefferson won 2008 2010 and 5A people have a tendency to believe that 6A is best so let's say it is for today's conversation then it's been since 1982. a school year 81 82 that we've had a girls basketball team win a state championship this is phenomenal give them a hand please [Applause] you want to hold it wait till then yeah okay all right okay a proclamation honoring Benson High School's 2019 state of Oregon girls basketball state champions whereas Board of Education and superintendent recognize the significant accomplishment of the Benson High School girls basketball team who won the OSAA class 6A state championship on March 9th 2019. whereas the Board of Education and superintendent wish to thank the students for their teamwork tenacity and sportsmanship throughout this season whereas the Board of Education and superintendent applaud the entire Benson community of teachers students parents neighbors and the team's exceptional coach Eric Knox all of whom have supported and encouraged this team to be and play their very best now therefore Board of Education and superintendent Proclaim March 19 2019 as a day to celebrate the historic success of the Benson textures girls basketball team [Applause] thank you
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all right [Applause] ladies cake will be available out in the lobby for those inclined okay okay we'll now move on to a student in public comments Miss Houston do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment yes we have five and our first two speakers are Chris Reiser and Beth bloomclot people make their way to the table the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide your comments to the board we value public input as it informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts Reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen without distraction from electronic devices or papers board members and the superintendent will not respond to comments or questions during public comment if you want to follow up from the board office please contact Ms Houston or Roseanne Powell the board manager guidelines for public input emphasize respect and consideration of others complaints about individual employees should be directed to the superintendent's office as a Personnel matter if you have additional materials or items you'd like to provide to the Border superintendent we ask that you give them to Ms Houston to distribute to the board and superintendent requests to make public comments should be made ahead of time by contacting the board office or checking with Ms Houston prior to the start of the board meeting to see if there are spots available once the board meeting has started we can no longer accept new requests for public comment okay presenters will have a total of three minutes to share your comments please Begin by stating your name and spelling your last name for the record during the first two minutes of your testimony a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when your time is up the red light will go on and a buzzer will sound we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments at that time we appreciate your input and thank you for your cooperation go ahead my name is Chris Reiser r-i-s-e-r good evening governance I once heard is knowing what is important what it means and what to do about it which is why I did not come here to talk to members of the board or to the administration I came to speak to the people about the board the administration and governance because they are not doing what is required of them in this singular moment of human history they don't seem to know what is important what it means or what to do about it our children do not need a guaranteed and viable curriculum our children need a guaranteed and viable future hate crime is on the rise everywhere 150 one racist left 50 dead in New Zealand and praised our president as a symbol of white identity one racist slashed the throats of three individuals on the max in Portland Portland Public Schools overseen by the individuals sitting at that desk was found by a Statewide audit to create barriers to the success of our students of color while simultaneously accelerating the success of students of European descent PPS is actively deepening the educational debt owed to the students this system has failed to serve since 1859. payment is overdue and they're stacking up interest and what is the status of ethnic studies in PPS mandated in 2016 to be offered in every High School in the district by this past fall do you or your neighbor's High School's kids have access to this curriculum without which American history is nothing but the story of indigenous Europeans becoming White we don't need so-called instructional leadership driven by the fear of artificial punishments and a ravenous effort to turn the next generation of human beings into test scores so that these folks can say that they've learned we need transformational leadership to remake all 100 000 of our public schools
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in this country 80 schools in this city into Research Laboratories for Democratic action in the face of an authoritarian totalitarian and fascist regime that might not even give up power in 2021 remember fascism is not only the hatred of non-aryan peoples but it is the idea that business is the best model for government decision making it's corporations like Nike having outsized influence on legislatures and school boards while failing to pay their taxes to the same we need our schools to be labs for solutions to racism sexism gender violence class inequality houselessness and climate change for goodness sake the UN ipcc issued a report stating conservatively that we have six to 12 years to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius below pre-industrial levels raise your hand if you've read the 20-page policy report for policy makers as 16 year old Greta tunberg says for way too long the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate's crisis but we'll make sure that they will not get away with it any longer we've done our homework and they have not from the mouths of babes one-third of the Himalayan ice caps will melt by the end of the century Journal journalist darja Mill states that we have about three degrees three degrees warming already baked into the oceans the one thing that we need more than hope is action once we start to act hope is everywhere so instead of looking for Hope Greta tunberg tells us look for Action then and only then will hope come so stop waiting for that leadership to do what is right we are the ones we've been waiting for take action thank you thank you good evening I'm Beth Blum klotz special education school bus driver thank you for having me here today I have to put my glasses on so I won't be looking at you but I I'm speaking um to you guys tonight um overall our greatest desire is to settle a fair and Equitable contract from beginning to completion as expeditiously as expeditiously and as amicably as possible the process for last year's negotiations left the feeling of distrust in the mouths of us drivers the district's negotiation team assured us on multiple occasions that they were bringing the information back to you the board however we found out that that was not true so we began showing up to all the different remaining school board meetings we understand that you are not here in years past where a lot of decisions were made to not give us like wage increases and and a fair and Equitable contract however we do feel that the attorney that you hired before was extremely disrespectful other Union groups also said the same thing we wholeheartedly disagree with having him and we ask you to reconsider if he is on your list to join us this year last year's contract results was a step in the right direction and we had to fight for every inch it really felt unnecessary for us drivers and embarrassing for the district in an effort to not go through what we went through last year we were taking the time to share our concerns today we really want to make it clear that if we come back here during the negotiations something is not going right last year the driver's side negotiated with Integrity we did our research we provided documentation whenever we were asked so we're hoping that our history encourages the district side to not waste time and money what you experienced last year the driver's energy the persistence and the dedication is just a fraction of what we're feeling this year the drivers have made it clear on multiple occasions in our meetings that they still want a fair increase in better working conditions we're really looking forward to collaborating and building a bridge of open and honest communication we'd like to remind you that we are employees who work for and with you we are an integral part of the Portland Public School Systems and we very much appreciate those of you who did the ride-alongs we believe your eyes were opened and you had an opportunity to see a smidgen of what we go through and what we do each and every day we are special education school bus drivers and we love what we do our students and their parents deserve consistency with regards to who their drivers are we want to continue and we want to be able to provide our families as well with the best support as possible we've lost so many drivers last year and this year even with the previous increase and the drivers this year who've left they would have stayed if we had a more fair and Equitable contract and we did start working and began the school year on time so we would really just like you to please to pay attention to what's going on in negotiations with us and um and last part is just that in I looked up today the job description and I feel like this might be part of our
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problem it's just so brief and so we can ask for Less we can we can offer less money with a brief description if we if we provide everybody with everything this is our Handbook of procedures and policies and responsibilities that we have and if people knew what they were coming into they some of them wouldn't even apply because they have no idea what they're getting themselves into with what's required with our position and what we you know the amount of responsibility that we have for some reason I'm feeling nervous tonight I don't know why it's been a while I guess but thank you thank you thank you [Applause] next we have Jimmy Apple hands and D White hi again uh Jimmy Apple hands app e-l-h-a-n-z I would like to thank the school board for giving me the time to speak tonight on behalf of Portland Public School bus drivers and Amalgamated Transit Union 757 I also want to thank you for reaching out to me to include a special needs school bus driver voice in The Guiding Coalition that just wrapped up last weekend I'm looking forward to see the installation when it's up in May it was a really great time to be there and I felt that I could speak freely and and let them know what I was thinking we are excited about starting our negotiations sooner this year with the hopes of a speedy and fair contract and I don't want to dwell too much on the past but I feel that I need to reiterate three main points I made last time I spoke back in August one I don't know if you didn't have a proposal when we first met back in June of 2017 or if you just didn't get around to giving it to us during the first day of negotiations but it is imperative for both parties to have and exchange proposals on day one number two do not bring outside lawyer Dan Rowan back to the table frankly he wasted everyone's time and money and we are not alone in thinking this either many of the other unions commented about this Portland Federation of school professionals specifically called him out during their contract signing last year three we were told last time during negotiations that there was no driver shortage when there clearly was and there still is while we have hired a few more drivers we have lost a lot of experienced drivers since the beginning of the school year our dispatchers are driving every single day they're driving routes when they need to be getting other things done including making sure our route changes get to us in time and payroll managers are driving our routes they're filling in on the radio and dispatch while those workers are out filling on routes and let let's move on to something we can all agree on Portland Public Schools are seriously underfunded I encourage the school board and everyone in this room to let your legislators know this lucky for you all that the joint committee on Ways and Means will be in town this Thursday the 21st for a public hearing at the PCC Cascade campus mahb Building Auditorium 104 from 5 30 to 7 30. this would be a great opportunity for people to speak directly to them and I encourage everyone to do so thank you [Applause] hello my name is Dee White I gave this testimony on February 20th 2019 to Portland City Council this was the seventh time in nine months that I have spoken before the council about the high levels of lead in our drinking water and this is all over Portland not just in the schools it is well established that even at low levels lead is a potent irreversible neurotoxin that is especially damaging to pregnant women and young children's developing brains a recent groundbreaking study also links lead to significant heart related deaths in the U.S every year among adults EPA scientist and water quality Engineers Nationwide know the more corrosive the water the more it will pull lead out of the plumbing and into our drinking water Portland has been an outlier for years with historically high levels while similar cities such as Seattle got to work decades ago and have shown significantly lower levels of lead ever since our local water officials have office obfuscated on the reasons why our lead levels remain so much higher than Seattle's over three times higher in fact why aren't our government officials at
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the state and local level earnestly and aggressively addressing this serious problem that has caused a silent Public Health threat and infrastructure damage in this community Portland remains at the top of the Heap with the highest lead levels of all large Public Water Systems in the U.S last year commissioner fish proclaimed there is no lead in our water this is absolutely deceptive word play since it conflates Portland's pure but corrosive Bull Run Source water with drinking water that the bureau has failed to properly manage it is disingenuous to pass blind to the schools in 2016 than to customer Plumbing in 2017 and 18 when it has been your responsibility meaning the Portland Water Bureau to accept responsibility as you are legally required to do and urgently protect our drinking water now as you meaning the Portland Water Bureau should have done over 20 years ago how is this acceptable my name is kavi um keen k-a-v-i and I'm here to speak on behalf of Peterson schools the non-organization the non-profit organization to teach mindfulness into the Portland Public School curriculum and I just want to be here to share my story with bees in schools as a former Wilson High School student and during my time I always came from a really not so good background of someone who's transgender and also Vietnamese however at the same time um I was rejected from my family and then also always at the same time experience a lot of ableism racism and even classism because Wilson was a was a school that didn't really see me for who I was until I found peace in schools where my life was changed pretty much where I did not need to be an alcoholic during my time at Wilson High School and even the fact that I found clarity through meditation and when I heard that um there wasn't going to be funding for peace in schools my mind was a shocked because I can think of that student someone like me or just that Junior student Junior High School student who's struggling right now and I wanted to let I want them to know that I'm speaking for them to know that they do have that chance and if they can still continue School regardless and if excuse me rough day but excuse me but what does it call but I do believe that if we're not able to find peace in schools it would be a big mistake and it will be um missing a large opportunity for many high schoolers thank you and yeah but that's all I have for today but thank you so much thank you okay thank you again everybody for your comments um next item is the student Representatives report and um we've made a slight change in the order of presentations that I hope will continue going forward um up till now the student Representatives report has been at the end of the meeting which puts a burden on the student representative so we are moving it to the top um a because we need to be attentive to their other responsibilities that the student representative has but also because um this is giving pride of place to students right at the top of the meeting where they ought to be thank you chair I wholeheartedly agree I think this is a great change and I'm excited to be able to give an update on what I've been doing and what the District student council has been doing further or um at the beginning of the meeting um so everyone can hear too so just a quick update um a lot has been going on since the last time I gave an update the District student council um just last week had a policy or went to the policy and governance meeting or committee meeting um to go over the changes and additions we've made to our policy that governs my position as well as a district student council and we're hoping to get that into first reading after the next policy and governance meeting so we're really excited about that and we're wanting to move that forward by the end of my term this year
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um also um as it was mentioned before tonight we have had we did close off the last meeting of our guiding Coalition just this weekend um I had to count but we had three District student council members be part of that um guiding Coalition as well as as well as me and we've put a lot of time into the students at those meetings we had a panel at our second meeting that students could talk about what they thought about their schools and how we can go forward as well so I really just wanted to thank all the people that have been working on the visioning meetings and we're going to announce what those goals are going to be shortly um and then also just real quick time is flying it's amazing um and just after so according to our policy just after return from spring break the district The District student council will be starting the process for our vote on next year student representative already so I'll keep the board and the public updated on that as well so that concludes my report thank you thank you superintendent's report thank you director Moore you're going to make it a hard act to follow now every time good evening directors uh students families Educators viewing public um that was a wonderful celebration uh congratulations again to all of our student athletes on remarkable uh winter seasons I was feeling a little vertically challenged earlier but thank you for representing the pil so so graciously so it's been a busy past few days so I'm going to focus my comments on that um starting um on this morning's event actually this morning was the annual Portland workforce alliance Expo which brings together thousands of students to the Portland Convention Center to explore potential careers we had over 200 companies and public agencies represented on the convention center floor and it was heartening to see so many of our students pouring in to visit booths I want to thank all the business and trade Partners who who participated incur and encourage them as I did this morning um in my greeting to to make sure and consider hiring a Portland Public School student as a summer intern uh Nick's making a lot of uh appearances here in my report tonight um I also want to thank all of our students who participated including the featured panel you see here on the screen starting on the left with Aurora who's a Jefferson senior uh and I just wanted to give you a glimpse of some of their comments and what they shared she let us know that she intends to be a special education teacher so that's wonderful she was very clear in her conviction that she wants equity for students whose abilities differ from some of their peers on the right we heard from Johanna a Roosevelt senior whose family fled the Congo for Kenya and then immigrated to the United States after spending time with a local architectural firm she now has the goal of becoming an architect and specializing in interior design so congratulations Joanna on on your goals there these there were many inspiring stories shared here including Kevin here who's who's with the microphone in the picture from Gresham High whose internship inspired him to pursue a career in the trades and really demonstrates how our students benefit when they have mentors within our local business and industry partners and I think our coach Knox put it well earlier when they know there's an adult who cares it makes all the world of difference uh it was a busy weekend uh flew back from Washington DC from attending the Council of great City Schools annual legislative and policy conference the Council of great City Schools represents the 74 74 of the largest school districts in America serving over 7 million of the students in this country I have the privilege of serving as an elected member of the executive committee and I would like to report out that at our business meeting this past Sunday my colleagues on the council's board of directors uh unanimously unanimously re-elected me for a new three-year term so this Gathering annually focuses on key education priority issues and provided the opportunity to interact with elected Congressional leaders and we received some federal legislative updates I'm going to share a little summary of some position statements that would that were shared with our directors among those uh priorities are in lobbying with not lobbying sharing with our Congressional leaders a request for increased funding for title one two four and idea formula grants uh Federal support for school building modernization efforts around the country a request that Congress take up approval of a DACA or DREAM Act bipartisan fix which impacts hundreds of thousands of
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students served by council member districts a clear stated position on the opposition to private school vouchers and a meaningful school safety and gun violence legislation to protect our students as as the council we are concerned about the proposed 8.5 billion budget cut to K-12 being proposed by the U.S Department of Education yesterday I was part of a small delegation and met with U.S Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to discuss a number of items including continued efforts across our states to implement the every student succeeds act otherwise known as Essa a few weeks ago we convened students representing some of the district's cultural diversity to participate in an engaging conversation about the role of student voice in affecting systemic change you can see sort of the physical declaration in the picture here about the power of giving students a platform here they are occupying the seats at the dais Dr Curtis Acosta worked with the students that evening masterfully facilitating a dialogue that gleaned information about students personal hopes and dreams while imparting words of wisdom to both students and staff about collaboration directed activism critical thinking and identity students shared candidly about their challenges and the importance of caring adults there's that theme again and seeing themselves represented in their academic experience at the close of the evening students activated their voices by participating in a visioning activity to determine what they want the future of public education to look like and speaking of of which on the topic of visioning it was mentioned here earlier we commenced our visioning process this past fall with the goal of engaging the entire Portland Community or certainly a cross-section of stakeholders to help us determine a vision for PPS and this was our Mantra let's let's dream together and we've been doing that for about six months now a community-wide exploration of the potential of our district to prepare our students for the future putting our Collective imagination creativity and best ideas to work we purposely structured our efforts to be inclusive and representative of our Dynamic and diverse PPS community our core Team Works regularly with our Consultants on design Logistics event planning and execution The Guiding Coalition serves as our steering committee and is made up of our board director Central administrative staff students parents Educators Civic leaders and community members and together we've reached out to thousands thousands of individuals throughout Portland with dozens of Engagement opportunities ranging from small group sessions to bigger come one come all school-based meetings what we have found is genuine enthusiasm on the part of the community to be a part of this process and as was mentioned just this last week and we hosted the third and final two-day meeting of our PPS visioning guiding Coalition we spent Friday evening and much of the day Saturday honing in on three foundational areas uh the first The Graduate Pro portrait what it it asks and hopes to Define what knowledge skills dispositions and mindsets will students need to be successful in their lives and careers we also spent a lot of time talking about the support of adults or Village that that will be required to support that kind of a graduate portrait what knowledge skills dispositions and mindsets will adults need in order to support students to attain The Graduate portrait and then thirdly then what are the system shifts how does the entire District need to shift in order to support that kind of vision for Student Success and so as another shot of Nick there as we've gathered our hopes and dreams for our students we've begun to see the early images of what you what we want to see in the PPS graduate in other words our community has emerged essential core skills knowledge and mindsets for our 50 000 students we'll need to have by the time they leave our school system so as I did earlier at the Portland workforce alliance Expo I'm going to give you a little sneak preview of the emerging draft student portrait it includes descriptors like our students should be competent Global stewards and ambassadors we know they need to be resilient flexible lifelong Learners they're going to require strong social emotional literacy skills we're going to want them to have a racial equity and social justice orientation we know they'll need to be collaborative creative Innovative problem solvers and it's going to be important that they're powerful effective empathetic communicators so we're excited that we're getting close to a final product but I wanted to give a quick little overview of our process to date we have some next steps we'll have a dedicated board work session with our superintendent's leadership team the core team and our
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Prospect Studios Consultants on April 2nd for those who want to hear uh many more details and then we're going to have our last Community event which will actually be a physical installation which will be on display on May 11th we want to encourage everyone to participate in that and then we're working towards a final document with the board on June 18th our hope is that by the close of June that our board is prepared and confident to vote on our resolution to to adopt the PPS Vision so I wanted to make sure you were aware of those upcoming dates feedback has been very positive we went through a little final exercise on Saturday uh folks listed many of their thank yous and I want to extend mine I want to thank everyone who's given their time and talents to to this work from everyone on our core team to The Guiding coalition to the board of education for being so actively engaged but in particular to the broad PPS School Community I think your engagement has been absolutely integral to getting us to where we are now which is approaching the final stages of realizing one of our goals for this school year and that's articulating a long-term vision for the Portland Public Schools so thank you that concludes my report for tonight I want to wish everyone a safe and wonderful spring break next week okay thank you the next item on the agenda is the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement project superintendent Guerrero would you like to introduce the item and um I'm going to ask director Bailey to manage the board discussion on this topic since he's taken a leading role in developing tonight's presentation sure and I'm going to limit my participation to introducing a couple of guests actually we have that are helping us on this topic um Mandy Putney policy and development manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation ODOT is here to provide an overview of the project and she's joined by Megan channel the major projects manager also for for ODOT and it looks like they have some supporting team members as well for what is sure to be an engaging conversation thank you for being here Channel I'm the ODOT region one major projects manager and the project manager for the I5 Rose Quarter Improvement project and I am joined by my colleague at the city of Portland Art Pierce I'm a policy planning and projects manager for the Bureau of transportation for peabot yeah all right so we're here tonight um to provide a project overview and share with you the information about the Project's environmental assessment um the ODOT in the city of Portland are long-standing Partners in this important Transportation investment in our Central City um with the purpose of this project to create improvements to our transportation system that will serve all users in the community so tonight we'll walk you through the proposed project the timeline and process and the current phase that we're in the key environmental findings and we'll focus specifically around the issues with Harriet Tubman Middle School we'll also talk about how to engage in the environmental assessment process and next steps for the project so this is an overall timeline again it's been a number of years in the making building from a robust planning process in 2010 to 2012 and we picked up with the environmental process in 2017 and reached an important Milestone of publishing the environmental assessment in February we're in the midst of the 45-day public comment review and the public comments are accepted through April 1st that doesn't mean that that is the last that we hear from the public will have a robust Community engagement process as we look towards the design and construction phases of the project as well with design kicking off in Spring of 2018 carrying through the end of 2022 and construction as early as 2023. so I'm going to turn it over to Art to kind of give us some background on how we got to where we are um and then I'll jump back to giving a project overview all right thank you as someone who's been with peabot for 20 years or a little over 20 years I can testify to the fact this has been a long conversation between the city of Portland and the state of Oregon in terms of deliberating of what might be the right level of improvements in this area as you will note from the graphic this conversation really started in Earnest in the late 80s in which the sort of scale and project cost of the project improvements was quite larger than it is today and through a whole series of
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collaborative processes and public input the project Improvement scale has shrunk considerably in the cost history and considerably one of the most notable moments in which we really came to the project that is now being proposed through the EA was through the north Northeast quadrant plan this was about a year and a half planning process where they looked at over 70 overall different options of what might be the the right Improvement for this location and that was sort of helped governed by a 30-person advisory committee so pretty lengthy process that specific proposal the proposal and facility plan that's now within the EA was brought before Portland City Council in 2012 through the north Northeast quadrant process and again through the Central City plan process just last year in May of last year so two recent Council actions um essentially confirming the the scale and scope of the project so as a as a refresher and reminder that you know the area that we are talking about for the project is the area between I-405 and I-84 along I-5 where the the section of I-5 Narrows to two lanes and includes both improvements within the the highway environment as well as surface improvements there um of course note to this uh specific conversation you'll see Harriet Tubman Middle School is highlighted there in purple I guess it is one of the other I think very important parts of the conversation that has really been uh sort of welcomed additional influence has been the work with Albina Vision on what is some of sort of the broader contextual Vision that might be able to be brought to this location I believe a by divisions come and presented to this group perhaps in the last year or so yeah okay so that also helps I think bring some additional you know um um so this is a conceptual uh illustration of the the changes and we'll show in more detail through a video and some other drawings of what the specifics of the project will be But it includes auxiliary Lane changes between um along the section between I-84 and 405 um and then Surface Street uh changes as well as caps over the freeway specifically where you're seeing those Highway covers showing on the drawing the project does also include a new bike pedestrian bridge at the Clackamas Street alignment which is in purple at the bottom of the screen and then a change between having a crossing at Flint Street to having a new Crossing at Hancock Dixon on the North End that does make some changes to the area around the school just just off this screen which I think we have better images of later yeah so we have a video that gives a little better description than what I just attempted to do but I think that's your I.T department is doing that for us so we'll just pause maybe yeah the I-5 Rose quarter Improvement project was created by the Oregon Department of Transportation and the City of Portland with input from the community to plan the transportation future of inner North and Northeast Portland the project will improve both local streets and I-5 in the Rose Quarter area support economic growth and result in a more reliable safer and better connected Community the project will improve safety and operations on I-5 by adding continuous 12-foot shoulders and a new ramp to ramp Lane in both directions of the highway between I-84 and I-405 the ramp to ramp Lanes will give drivers more time and space to merge reducing frequent crashes and congestion points ultimately saving over 2.5 million hours of travel time a year the project provides new connections across I-5 the first is A New Path over I-5 for people walking biking and rolling from the Northeast Clackamas Street area to the Rose Quarter creating a safer more comfortable way to get around the crossing will be a key part of the city's green Loop in improving bike and pedestrian access between the Willamette River the rose quarter and the Lloyd District the new replacement bridges over I-5 will be in the form of Highway covers these covers will provide space for wider sidewalks protected bike lanes and opportunities for new community spaces the project team will work with the local community to determine how the new space on top of the covers can become the best asset for the neighborhood the project will introduce a number of safety related improvements for bicycles and pedestrians here is a closer look at a concept for the Williams weidler multi-use path when the project is complete Williams Avenue between weidler and Ramsey will be exclusive to buses cyclists and pedestrians a new 36 foot wide multi-use path along Williams Avenue will provide separation from vehicles for cyclists and pedestrians moving through the interchange it will also reduce bicycle pedestrian conflicts with the existing I-5 south on rampant weidler the project team will work with the community as
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elements of the path or designed including the space between bicycles and pedestrians these improvements enhance key Connections in the local Street Network address Portland's Vision zero safety priorities and make the area more accessible to people who walk bike roll or access Transit one of the new highway covers will span I-5 and connect Vancouver Avenue with a new road that links North Hancock to North Dixon the existing Flint Street bridge will be removed and North Flint will end at Northeast Tillamook Street on the north side of I-5 the Hancock Dixon Crossing and multi-use path will provide a new direct connection between the North and Northeast neighborhoods and lower Albina The Crossing will provide an alternative to the Broadway and weidler intersections at Vancouver and Williams below at the highway level you can again see the new ramp to ramp lanes that will allow drivers more space to merge or eliminate the need to merge for the roughly 99 of drivers who use this segment of I-5 for local connections the reduction of traffic weaving on I-5 is expected to significantly reduce crash rates and improve travel times during the busiest times of the day as we turn and head south you can see a driver's view on I-5 here you can see the ramp to ramp Lane that connects I-405 to I-84 and experience traveling under the highway covers the I5 Rose Quarter Improvement project is an opportunity to create Community connections the project seeks to strengthen the area as a highly accessible and multimodal hub for moving people and goods for example improvements at the Broadway weidler interchange which sees over 5 000 bikers a day will improve safety and enhance the bike or commuter experience improvements on I-5 will allow freight trucks to move more smoothly through the area getting to their destinations quicker and the transportation improvements will act as a catalyst for future Redevelopment including high density development that includes employment and affordable housing that is consistent with current city plans ODOT and the City of Portland are planning for an improved Rose Quarter area where people walking biking and rolling can comfortably cross a bridge over I-5 that is designed just for them where cars and freight trucks on I-5 have more space and time to merge while traveling through the area and we're getting from the Broadway Bridge to the Lloyd district is easier for all we encourage you to join us in the ongoing Community conversations get involved and provide your input at i5rosequarter.org all right well we're switching back to the PowerPoint um while that looked um like it could be a final design I want to emphasize that it's um conceptual um really based on a preliminary concept and we have a lot of design work work with the community to do to confirm specifically how those elements including what goes on top of the highway covers the Clint's bicycle and pedestrian bridge and the Hancock Dixon Crossing what all those elements will look like so a framework by no means a final design but representing a concept for what could be as part of the project um so as I mentioned we are in the middle of the environmental assessment public comment period um kind of taking a step back what is an environmental assessment this is a federal document that's required when there's Federal funding or a federal action to be taken on a project and with this project being on an interstate system it does require a federal action and so the environmental assessment is building off of the planning work that art spoke to and comparing the recommended design concept or what we call the build alternative the project with a no build alternative or not building the project and we project out to year 2045 to really look at what are the long-term impacts and benefits of the project 20 years out from construction so that we ensure that we're looking at those long-term elements with the significant Transportation investment the Federal Highway Administration will take the findings from the environmental assessment along with all of the public comment that's received to inform the NEPA decision document and um there we selected an environmental assessment um because we couldn't confirm or presume up front whether the project had significant impacts or not significant impacts and so the environmental assessment process is that first stage to really help you do that evaluation looking at the same level of technical reports that you would for an environmental impact statement but doing the environmental assessment analysis up front to confirm what the level of impact would be these are the environmental study topics that we looked at again they're the same that would be included in an environmental impact statement studied
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at the same level in the technical reports which then feed into the environmental document and so tonight we are going to focus on a few of these topic areas based on our conversations and coordination that we had with Portland Public School staff and where we think you might have the most interest so for um motor vehicle transportation operations with the new auxiliary lanes and full shoulders on I-5 it does provide drivers more time and space to merge and weave and with the shoulders also allows disabled vehicles to move out of the way of through traffic or emergency responders to use that space to get to an incident if they need to but those elements do show a significant Improvement in operations on the highway system saving drivers over 2.5 million hours of delay each year and less time in your cars more time with your families and on the local Street system we also see some improvements in the operations as well and all of the local intersections within the interchange area continue to operate with acceptable levels of service for both state and city standards from a Transportation safety perspective again with the improvements on I-5 they do they will reduce frequent crashes that we see today with this segment of I-5 having the highest crash rate in the state of Oregon there also are a number of improvements to the local Street System including greater separation between modes of people driving people walking people biking and people rolling or accessing Transit and so that does add to significant safety improvements for all modes on the local Street system this is an example of a couple of those areas where we do see significance and improved separation between modes the first being that 36 foot wide multi-use path through the Broadway weidler Corridor and the new Clackamas bicycle and pedestrian bridge south of The Interchange coupled with the Hancock Dixon Crossing north of The Interchange those two new East-West Crossings give people traveling through this area an option to cross I-5 without having to go through the busy Broadway weidler interchange when we look specifically to the location near Harriet Tubman with Flint Street Flint Street today is used as the as a primary route for um people driving Freight included from North Northeast to access the Broadway Bridge with the project Flint Street south of Tillamook and crossing I-5 is removed and then a new Hancock Dixon connection provides that East-West connection that the video and art spoke to Flint Street would turn into Tillamook street so access to Tubman Middle School would still be available via Flint through Tillamook to the South or Russell to the north as it is today and so as you look towards the future route to the Broadway Bridge with Flint Street being closed Vehicles would no longer be able to use Flint meaning all the cars doing the cut through traffic in front of the middle school would no longer be making those trips Freight included they would either remain on Vancouver and have the ability to use the Hancock Dixon connection or stay on Russell to access the Broadway Bridge via MLK or interstate in terms of air quality and greenhouse gas emissions we did a Model following federal and state standards for emission projections and regardless of building the project or not as we look to year 2045 with increased fuel efficiency and a move towards electric vehicles in our Fleet there is a trend towards a reduction in air pollutant emissions when you look and compare building the project to not building the project in year 2045 there's a slight decrease in emissions associated with building the project because with the improved operations on I-5 you have less stop and go traffic less idling which are significant contributors to air pollutant emissions and that is same with the greenhouse gas emissions as well there is a slight reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as you compare the project to not building the project we also did an evaluation to look at carbon monoxide hot spots and none more identified in the project area in terms of noise again we did a robust noise analysis as part of the
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environmental assessment and did find and did have noise monitors and modeling done near Harriet Tubman and Lola salvina Park um and we did find that there would be small increases in noise levels associated with the project however those noise levels would be at a level that would be less than detectable by a human ear however because because the existing conditions present noise levels that exceed State thresholds we have proposed a sound wall in front of Harriet Tubman middle school and the park that would reduce noise levels below the existing noise levels today so you can see the numbers here so the existing noise levels today are at a 49 DBA without the project they're projected to stay the same and then with the project and the provision of the sound wall reducing down to 45 DBI um in terms of construction the project will have short-term construction impacts the project construction period overall is expected to be about four to five years that does not mean that the entire project area is under construction for that full period we will be developing in the design phase and with contractor input a construction phasing plan and staging plan to help minimize impacts to uses such as Harriet Tubman middle school and the traveling public through that construction period but that said yes there will be road closures yes there will be traffic delays during construction but we'll be one of the mitigation measures in the environmental assessment is to develop a traffic control plan that would work through in partnership with the city of Portland and making sure that we have safe and signed detour routes and communication with the public to keep everybody moving there will also be dust and dust and noise from the construction equipment but with the implementation of best management practices as specified in the environmental assessment using dust control measures and limiting sort of the equipment hours and time that they can be idling would reduce those impacts as you look to Harriet Tubman Middle School specifically the construction activities we will of course continue to coordinate with Portland Public Schools looking towards major construction activities to happen during summer periods to avoid impacts to to the students and staff at the school also looking at night time and and weekend opportunities for construction but main message there is that we are committed to continuing to work with you and Portland Public School staff and ensuring that we minimize construction impacts to the students and staff at Harriet Tubman and construction on I-5 are would not impact the school structure our design team did meet with Portland Public School staff prior to the opening of Harriet Tubman Middle School to discuss the slope stability on the west side and through those conversations at this point in design did not find the construction of the retaining wall in that location would impact the school structure so those are the key findings from the EA there are a number of ways to comment and we have held a number of events uh during the public comment period including an open house and a public hearing earlier this month um comments of course are welcome written letters sent in via email or mail you can also leave a recorded phone message or check out the online open house and submit comments electronically as we move forward the public engagement process will continue to be robust we'll be standing up a number of committees during the design phase including an overarching Community advisory committee to help inform and advise on the larger project we'll also have two focused committees one on dbe or disadvantaged business Enterprise and Workforce opportunity which is a program that we are creating to promote wealth generation and maximize maximize participation from the local small and minority-owned business Community as we work through design and construction we'll also be creating an Urban Design committee that will help us answer those key questions again around what are what is going on top of the highway covers what will that Clackamas bicycle and pedestrian bridge look like what is the distribution of bicycle and pedestrian facilities on the local Street systems and what will they look like and then with that public Urban Design charettes and workshops throughout 2019
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so with that I want to thank you for your time and available should you have any questions does anybody have any questions yes no I I have one but if I'll save mine for the end go ahead um well our staff Drew up a a memo outlining some issues that they have identified that [Music] um that do not seem to have been um clearly or sufficiently explored during the initial assessment environmental assessment um and I think the memo has been posted um and it includes a great many things including air quality and most of this is focused on the area around Tubman um so the question of air quality um and my understanding is that the monitoring equipment was not placed near the school so um it sort of begs the question how do you know that there's not going to be an impact at the school if you haven't monitored the air the current air quality at the school and if you've done any modeling if it's not based on the conditions at that location how how can we be assured that it's not going to have a negative impact negative health impact either short-term or long term on students and staff we have you know just the work that we have done around Tubman we've done a great deal of monitoring of air quality and we've taken we've spent a great deal of money to mitigate the current conditions and the the kinds of changes to traffic patterns that are outlined in this proposal um seem alarming to me um and um and I gotta wonder what kind of impact is it going to have on the air quality and um have you sufficiently assessed that to date um and this our staff noted a whole bunch of other things um the sound wall that's being proposed um what we do one at a time to give them a chance to respond okay well let me let me okay I'll limit my little my um questions to air quality um but I think the sound wall might have an impact on air quality because some of the modeling that that has been done to date um has been looking at the impact of building a wall and how that how that changes airflow and there's a real question about whether adding a wall is going to actually is going to mitigate either this we haven't looked at sound but um is it going to mitigate the pollution issues or is it actually going to direct the flow of air onto Tubman so okay I'll stop there sure so in terms of the air quality evaluation we did look at the entire project area including a specific look near Harriet Tubman to knowing with it being a sensitive resource and receptor and overall in the project area including at Tubman there is not an increase in pollutant emissions as part of the project with the improved operations so plus idling of vehicles on I-5 there actually is a slight reduction in emissions as part of the project as compared to not building the project so okay and that assumes that there will be a long-term decrease in congestion and
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Lord knows I am no expert in this but I've read a number of things a number of research studies okay for the Layman I will qualify that by that um that strongly suggests that just increasing capacity um over the Long Haul doesn't in fact decrease the the carrying capacity I mean it doesn't decrease congestion it doesn't decrease traffic it actually increases it over time because people get used to more space so you know okay I'm going to take I5 now whereas I might not have otherwise that's a pretty big assumption I think the yeah the the project is I'm not adding new through Lanes to I5 it's adding auxiliary Lanes or ramp to ramp connections um so the lane when you enter um from one entrance it it gets off right at the next exit so this is carrying um a new ramp to ramp connection from I-84 to I-405 in both directions and so there's still only two through Lanes in each direction as part of this project so it's not a capacity increasing project in terms of the long-term assumptions made in the air quality model it is looking to your 2045 with or without the project it's less about congestion and more about increased fuel efficiency and the type of vehicle Fleet that you'll see on the system that regardless of doing the project does show a decrease in emissions and then when you layer on the project again with the reduced idling on I-5 looking out to your 2045 and traffic projections to that point is showing a reduction in emissions so well I can appreciate your point of view on that we've been waiting for years for the Oregon legislature to deal with diesel and we're still waiting and where it looks like we're going to wait a couple more years so it's uh and that's a huge you come right after the money yeah um have a position on um clean diesel trucks um not that I'd be able to speak to I would just uh like to add on to director Moore's comments I don't expect you to respond to this uh also on air quality there is the issue of the lids to the freeway you're going to be adding and we know that there are examples it depends on the local topography but there are examples where Lids effectively serve as chimneys for pollution that occurs in this direction it would be further to the South so if those go on it is perfectly possible that we may be dramatically increasing the pollution at Harriet Tubman because it would include not just the pollution from I-5 but also the pollution from I-84 uh so we are very concerned about that uh and uh hope to have our people at Portland State be doing some modeling on it but I don't believe that any has been done up to this point what's the current crash rate in the area um the current crash rate um is so there's over 700 crashes that we've seen in the five-year period on this segment which is about three and a half times the state average the state average for a freeway that's for urban interstates oh in terms of anything more on air quality anybody win want to raise anything foreign just from a citizen point of view I have to wonder about what the air quality is going to be like on those covered areas since there's many of that would be so close to the edge of the freeway that I mean we spent Millions on Tubman um why wouldn't there be a similar effect you don't have to answer that um because I think we want to keep our Focus while free feel free to comment on any aspect I think we want to keep our focus on the impact on our properties uh uh okay anything more on air quality
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well you can't speak to it tonight I'd be interested in getting a follow-up on what odot's policy generally is so that um as we um since odots technically a neighbor of Harriet Tubman it would be nice to know what um just long-term their position on that is I think the other thing the question I had just along this line is on one of these slides that has pollutant emissions are slightly better with the project and same thing with um ghg emissions being slightly better so is so slightly better than bad may not be good so I'm just curious um what you think the current standard of that is going to be slightly better than and whether that's something that knowing that we have students their young students there what impact they would have on obviously it's obviously going through a residential neighborhood as well right so um existing conditions today in terms of air quality we are in attainment zone for being under thresholds that said knowing with I'm sorry um can you say that in layman's term sure sure so what that means is that when you look at the Portland metro area the the air quality pollutants are not an exceedance of regional or state standards for what would be considered non-attainment if you will and so um and that um that's part of a larger modeling in the metro area so in terms of standards as we look to your 2045 with the projection in emissions going down we're still below the standards and then again with the project further albeit slightly further reducing the emissions Associated um so is that modeling assume that um there's no stricter standards adopted I think the I am not a modeling expert but I believe that the model does take into account um sort of the projections in terms of improved fuel efficiency movement toward electric fleets and projections for for standards for each of those but not stricter regulatory standards I I don't actually know on that one yeah I'd be interested to know that just real quickly you know our our commissioner commissioner Daley is very concerned about diesel emissions specifically and so I think she would welcome talking more about uh specifics of this so thanks haven't we been going in the wrong direction in terms of if fuel efficiency in the last couple of years as in their men are sharp movement with the gas prices towards SUVs and less efficients yes so raises questions about your your assumptions um and I would just want to check if anything's changed but from my understand initially at least you haven't released uh the assumptions on modeling that that lie behind your assumptions on air pollution um so there's a technical report that is available on the rose quarter website that was published on February 15th with the environmental assessment and then there was some subsequent data requests that are supplemental to that information and so that is also available on the rose quarter website does that have a complete set of assumptions going into your model and how they're modeled it does yeah and all of the technical reports that are on the website also provide that information okay because we we spoke with a couple of Transportation Consultants one of whom is a former ODOT official who said the assumptions weren't there so we can talk offline about that oh I'm sorry more questions on there anything more on air mm-hmm well just one one more historical context from what I understand when if I was initially planned the school district said you're building it too close to then Elliott School and ODOT went ahead anyway um and here we are years later finding out how bad the health effects have been on children
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and having to spend Millions to clean up the air inside the school and not being able to do much about the error immediately around the school I have a couple of observations on soil stability moving down the memo uh the first is I I think it's a little disingenuous to just refer to the soil stability issues uh whether or not the hillside is currently moving when you're going to be carving away the Hillside and more importantly you're going to be pile driving into it to hold up the retaining wall and to do that you're going to have to feed piles in between the existing vertical piles that hold up Topman and I'm quite sure you don't know where those are because we don't know where those are that's going to be a a very neat trick if you can pull it off um and we have no idea what the consequences are going to be for the structural Integrity of the building if you hit one of them or if you hit multiple ones we are very concerned about that um also on oh uh right this on the same issue again I think it's disingenuous to talk about uh noise increases less than sound levels detectable by the human ear when you're going to be driving piles and I would assume that those are going to be screw driven not uh hammer driven but those still produce vibration yeah it's not detectable by the human ear but it is certainly detectable by The Human Experience and we know that it is very uh destructive to the learning environment to be having that going on uh and I would just refer to the district's experience with our kindergarten at the Ramona so again we have serious serious concerns with that a question for Mr Pierce um so um could you share um sort of what peabots approach and commissioner your dailies approach is to the the project and sort of how we might engage with our municipal government sure um so we've uh been a partner really for many years through the planning processes the north Northeast quadrant plan was a attempt at finding a compromise proposal really around both what the city's needs would be and odot's needs would be um so um you know we're really keeping an eye on the facility plan that was adopted by city council and adopted by the Oregon Transportation Commission as the the sort of guiding document of the components of the project that we agreed between the two bodies and so we're reinforcing that pretty continually that's the expectation that we're wanting to see from the project we do have I have two staff that are involved on the project team as well as technical staff that are supporting the project through technical evaluation so that's really the sort of direct way that we are participating as I understand it as odot's preparing to head into the design phase they're planning to have participation by the commissioner and and by Community groups into this next phase of the work I know they're having a meeting tomorrow to discuss this more um but so I think we're really looking to try to embed our Municipal leadership and Regional leadership into the project and through the next phase to help make sure that we are pressing for the best possible project in terms of the sort of direct leadership commissioner you daily art commissioner is the commissioner in charge of our Bureau so we're really looking for her support and Leadership through the process and the piece about the concern about the diesel pollution is that um I happen to hear today her talking about this so I I you know felt like I could say it with enough confidence I don't know exactly how it fits in our legislative strategy so that would be the follow-up work that I could do to have a great deal as well yeah sure yeah I just I'm not sure if I got the process right so I just wanted to check in on this so you've completed the environmental assessment and you have a finding of no significant impact so you wouldn't go to
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environmental impact statement we we're we have the we've published the environmental assessment um and there's not yet a NEPA decision document so that would be the next phase so um based on the technical analysis done in the environmental assessment and the public comment received Federal Highway Administration then takes that um that information to make their NEPA decision document and um if the determination is that there are no significant impacts um then you would do a finding of no significant impact if there's a determination that there are significant impacts then you would go through an environmental impact statement process so we can't presume the outcome of the NEPA process at this point um but based on the information that's currently in the environmental assessment there are no significant impacts that cannot be mitigated to a less than significant level so the public comment period could influence the NEPA decision like if we already feel like there's more information needed we can advocate for that to go to the Eis the environmental impact yeah now is now is really the time to focus in on comments very specific to the environmental assessment and as I said those will be considered by our federal Partners um in determining what the next step will be so I just had one more question so what's the substantive difference in the environmental information you would collect in the Eis versus the the environmental impact statement versus the environmental assessment so like how much more and what kind of data would you be collecting if you went to environmental impact statement so at a baseline we would be looking at the same technical resource areas that we evaluated in the environmental assessment we would also be doing the same level of technical analysis for each of those resource areas that we have done for the environmental assessment so the difference between the documents that we've prepared for the for the EA and what will If This Were an Eis what we would have prepared for in Eis are really one and the same so there's no substantial difference in your opinion not in my opinion no okay thank you okay then answer surprises me um yeah because if there's no substantial difference then then why have two separate processes it really so there's there's three different approaches that you can take um with the NEPA process the first is I'm sorry so can you explain again what NEPA is sure so NEPA is the National Environmental Policy Act and it is the um the federal act that requires when there is federal funding or a federal action or approval Federal approval needed on a project that you go through the federal process with NEPA and so there's three different approaches that you can take and the first is categorical exclusion and that is or a CE as you'll hear it referred to and that is when you know that your project you can definitively say that you do not have significant impacts with the project the them an environmental impact statement would be sort of the third tier and that's when you would definitively say we know we have significant impacts and even with mitigation we won't be able to mitigate those significant impacts or reduce those impacts to a less than significant level and you'd move towards a NEPA decision document in that case it's called a record of decision or a rod where you document your findings and the project the significant impacts that you have and then make the decision on whether you're willing to accept those significant impacts in light of the project the middle ground is an environmental assessment or an EA and you do an environmental assessment when you're not when you can't definitively say no we don't have significant impacts or yes we know we have significant impacts that we can't mitigate and so you do that evaluation to help bring really the the technical expertise to that process and so we've done the environmental assessment process the middle process to objectively look at what are the impacts and benefits of the project to help determine whether whether they are significant or not does that help kind of answer process yeah okay ex except then the Eis on top of that would require you to do what's
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differently so the EI the environmental impact statement process you do a draft environmental impact statement that would be a summary of the technical reports that you prepare for the project so the technical reports that we have prepared as part of the EA would be the same technical reports that you would prepare for an Eis the draft Eis then goes out for a 45-day public comment period and then public comment is accepted and then a final environmental impact statement is published based on the information in the environmental impact statement and public comment then the federal the federal agency would move towards their NEPA decision document which for an Eis would be your record of decision and which would Define sort of all of the findings from the environmental impact statement and making a determination if there are significant impacts if they're willing to accept those and continuing to move forward with the project okay um more questions we've talked about air qualities some about soil stability the sound wall and Noise construction impacts where construction impacts considered it all in the EA yeah they were so the short-term construction impacts for each of the resource areas are defined both in the environmental assessment document themselves and each of the technical reports and was the any potential impact on Harriet Tubman the the structural Integrity or the the surrender immigration I mean how how much did you look at the potential impacts on Harriet Tubman writ large like all of it was it specifically addressed in a technical report because our staff seems to think it was not so that the technical reports each have a differing um it's called an area of potential impact and so depending on the resource area sort of depends on how gross project level you're looking versus how detailed property by property you're looking and so on the whole yes we did we we knew we were making the assumption that Harriet Tubman was opening as we were doing the environmental assessment technical evaluation and so for issues such as air quality noise right-of-way property impacts we did look at those specific to the Tubman site not what I think I heard was you did not look specifically at any impact on the structural Integrity of the facility during construction so the environmental assessment is done really strategically really early in the design phase and so there's a lot of information that we still need to work out during the design phase as we have a design um team on board as we have a Contractor on board and so a lot of those specific decisions around how you construct a retaining wall how you construct the sound wall happen after the environmental review phase and so we look at it for more of a a footprint and high level evaluation of the construction impacts which makes sense from your perspective not so much from ours um you know we have a responsibility to preserve District property and to protect the health and safety of students and staff and I will admit I have not read all of your technical reports because even if I did I probably wouldn't understand them but our staff have and they have identified a pretty significant number of concerns that they believe have not been addressed in your assessment so and time was certainly an issue as well yes um you know 45 days is not a lifetime um so I mean for my money um I'm going to earn the side of caution um and and I'm going to ask for a full-on environmental impact statement so that we can have um
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we can have more assurances that this is not going to jeopardize either the health or safety of people or the Integrity of the property or disrupt the educational process right so okay so you you this project is going to be would you say four or five years total the construction period for the for the full project is assumed to be about four to five years but we will be preparing a construction phasing plan um in with our contractor to look at how we can sort of focus on key areas within the project area for construction one piece at a time okay so this so you you mentioned that you would try to focus it on Summer so two and a half months is the summer vacation I don't know much about construction but I'm pretty sure you can't do a project of this magnitude even in that small area in two and a half months so there's going to be some overlap with the school year we are we're yeah we're committed to continuing to work as we get to that phase continuing to work with you and your staff as we have more detail about the design and construction through that so I had another clarifying question did you about the environmental impact statement so will the environmental impact statement it I'm thinking it won't but will it look at construction impacts to the building or it sounded like that would be a separate study that you would do once you have the design so the environmental impact statement would look kind of at the same level as the environmental assessment did in terms of construction impacts really based on this five percent design that we have a lot of the um input into the the construction specifics in terms of timing type of walls um geotechnical evaluation that that standard to happen after the environmental process um and you know ODOT and I'm sure I can speak for the the city on this too but are you know committed of course to preserving the health and safety of our public Tubman students specifically and so you have you have our commitment that we will continue to work with your staff with your board on this project to make sure that we're minimizing impacts to to the school ODOT is well versed and has built many retaining walls on a number of our facilities adjacent to existing property trees and so our design team and working with our future construction team would have we of course are committed to working with you through those issues so so is it possible that you have construction issues that you couldn't mitigate I mean I understand what you're saying you're saying that you've done this before but you have a five percent design for construction now and that's what you've based potential impacts on in the EA what happens if you find out that there are significant impacts to the structural Integrity of the building at 60 percent design yeah so we've taken a conservative assumption right now in terms of what's assumed for the construction phase and impacts in the evaluation there's always going to be things that we don't know about that do come up in Project design and construction and so you know as those come up we we do work through those looking back at our environmental process and seeing where we need where we might need to go back and look at that work for example geotechnical information that would come forward at that time and the impact that would have on adjacent buildings the projects that I've been involved in um from Peabody you know we we do install um monitors to the adjacent structures so you're able to to confirm that you are not producing settlement you know that's that's part of the uh part of the process um and certainly as you're designing the rotating of all your um you know providing Shoring to the adjacent parcel so they don't slide like you know into the into the roadway so it's it's um not that it is not a significant issue for this specific building but it is pretty standard uh set of issues to be dealt with if you look at the retaining walls that were just built all along the 84 there's a lot of those kind of issues related to a whole bunch of different types of structures and hillsides that ODOT is just dealing with right how many of those had substandard fill underneath them I'm not sure sure yeah many of them were within 30 feet of a school um probably not of those probably none
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um any more questions a question on traffic uh now I did hear you say that the removal of the Flint Street overpass would not impede access to Tubman but of course we don't use the Flint overpass for access to Tubman we use it for egress from Tubman that's how the school buses get out so in your modeling of turning Flint into a dog leg onto Tillamook did you model getting a school bus to make a left-hand turn onto Tillamook and then off of Tillamook either a left unto Williams or a right onto Vancouver because that's what they would have to do and Tillamook is a very narrow Street our previous uh Chief Operating Officer said it couldn't be done is why I asked the question so I in terms of evaluation for the traffic we did we our traffic model does um include obviously the the closure of Flint as we look to the project um with this being early in design there's still a lot of work to be done on the sort of the the specific Road design um The Turning radii and so as we know as we continue to move through design it'll be important to have conversations with the school district and looking specifically at how um how the um how the school bus routes would be affected and what we would need to accommodate as part of that design I think that's very important for you to comment on actually as a daily Rider on Tillamook I have an issue with the school buses using Tillamook to access MLK so I think a deeper look at the school buses and the route that they're taking is a very important part of this upcoming design process so I see them every day so I know they're they're currently using Telemark very actively as well so okay we uh I just got the time signal um so thank you so much for coming and presenting and and we'll be in touch absolutely questions about our process and deliberation the opportunity to also hear from so the PBS Environmental staff on this at some point not not tonight but just at some point I'd be interested in this this was a great framework from our staff um well I think this is the reflection of our staff's input on this which goes back to my question which I posed by email who wrote this memo our staff uh oh uh I think Dan young had the lead on it but Claire is going to come tell us sorry it's just a memo from no one no so I believe there is um you have we do have staff in including Dan and then we also had some board members involved in the in the draft so there are multiple people in involved in the draft as a memo so who who how do we know who's I mean to Julia's point about it would be nice to hear from someone um I don't know anything about the The credibility or the research of this information put forward that says to ODOT from no one so if I could add um we were asked to pull together a staff team after ODOT presented to our team under Dan I don't want to speak for Dan and Claire um and with a lot of concerns about the process the project excuse me and that the comment period is closing April 1st so um the memo you see before you is summary of what staff has heard and the concerns we've developed about the project which culminates in a proposed position the board could take to propose that the the project go through the Eis the environmental impact statement route and not go for the no findings and proceed ahead just because there are a lot of questions raised so that's an internal document we created at the request of a couple of board members so you had something to think
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about in case the board wanted to weigh in in time for the April 1 deadline um so the companion resolution that we have with this memo and that makes sense what you just said um actually directs the superintendent to submit this memo and since the lineage back to staff expert assessment is pretty unclear to me it seems to me what we're actually trying to do here is arrive at a board position and that the board you're asking we're asking the board to submit this memo and to call for a full environmental impact statement not the superintendent director constant yes you are correct and that was an oversight we pulled these materials together quickly for you but we would recommend the board take the action and actually submit the formal comment so when we're ready for uh to consider this resolution I'll make a modest Amendment so what what amendment will that be um the board agrees to submit the memo I mean agreeing that we believe the memo as currently written is sufficient and is what we want to express to call for a full Eis I would just remove directs the superintendent and insert agrees the board agrees the superintendent will agrees to submit but it's still going to be a memo from PBS I mean right from from the from the board from the board it would need a preamble based on you know okay I'm just saying I'm I'm not an expert I mean a director Rosen has experience but it seems like we could take a position but it's based on which is why it was to have a further evaluation then um and so it's it's not that we have specific answers right now but we have enough questions that we need to go the next request the next level um and I think that's fairly captured in this I mean this this memo is not an assessment or uh analysis even of the existing conditions and doubting odot's assessments it's simply saying these are the questions that we have these are the areas where we feel that potentially the impacts to our schools wasn't we're not adequately considered and so let's direct let's go on the record saying we want to see deeper investigation as it pertains to Tubman but it's it's not going to be a memo from the school board I mean we didn't we didn't write this nor do we have the expertise and I don't think we have the credibility there may have been board members involved which I think is fine but it needs to be a PPS document I mean well I mean it wasn't so it came to us with no uh that was my point originally it came to us with no signature um as to who created it or who vetted it and so I mean maybe we just scrap this thorough memo and we say based on information brought forward by staff and you know questions we would like to see further analysis from ODOT on the impact specifically to Tubman school I I think the actual the memo is Well written um but it's just like I'm not prepared to say like I I'm qualified to be the it came from us just based on this I mean I'm assuming it's a PBS you know it's from Portland Public Schools and the board can submit it but it seems weird to have it come from there hold on and did um questions were raised throughout the meeting and so I I do think it's unusual um for us to have a resolution from from a board standpoint um directing staff to sign something I think that so we need some work on that but certainly there could be a memo to the board not you know from staff this is what was raised in the staff meeting and from that point then the board could ask for the next step with ODOT window is until April 1st yeah I think the purpose the purpose of the memo is to submit technical comments to the public process so
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it seems appropriate that the technical staff have written a memo that we want to submit as soon as possible to have these is part of the record we want these questions answered I'm not even convinced going to the Eis is what we want at this point we want these questions answered towards satisfaction to prove whether there is a significant impact so I guess I'm it's I guess I'm I'm thinking what Julia is thinking we should have the we should have a memo from the tech I don't know how what the board's role is at this point whether we need a resolution or not but it seems like the technical staff PPS has decided there are significant issues that need to be explored and we want to submit that as part of the public comment record so how do we just get to that so Madam chair suggests that um pursuant to director rosen's comments that we just take the two in the from off and the subject and just have a date and title it comment submitted by PBS on I5 Rose Quarter Improvement project environmental assessment and then it's a submission from the district and it can be the resolution can be that the board agrees or the formulation that director comstan has but I think we have a substance here it's just the formatting issue so I I moved that change in the underlying document available with that okay again these were these were created as a draft for you all to consider tonight being that it's your last meeting before April 1st so we're happy to take whatever format you decide on forward I I would just like to mention briefly I have been following this issue literally for two decades now and I deeply appreciate and I think the community should appreciate the extent to which you have heard they're very long-standing concerns around this thank you it's really important okay so um so we haven't um let's move the resolution and then we can amend amend it the the yeah or does this system qualify as a friendly amendment to delete we haven't put the resolution into discussion yet so let's let's do that um okay um that we adopt resolution 5856 PPS comments on the environmental assessment of the I-5 Broadway weidler facility plan okay director constant moves and director Anthony seconds adoption of resolution number 5856 okay discussion okay so I I think we've discussed that we want to amend so can somebody with uh Deputy Council yes Kane's blessing I think that uh this will constitute a friendly amendment to delete the three words direct the superintendent and replace with agrees yes okay uh well hang on okay um so can I just ask for clarification so do we still wanna I mean this is underlined and it looks like a document the name the title of a document um the board agrees that that PPS comments to submit comments to ODOT and just leave out the title right yeah okay just okay uh during the public comment period so so number three would Now read the board agrees to submit comments to ODOT during the EA public comment period period yeah yes short and sweet this is the form of the comments that we're going to submit okay can I make a friendly Amendment to the friendly Amendment how about we ditch number three all together and change number two to say therefore the board
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requests that PPS submit comments um supporting a full something like that full environmental impact statement I think we should just submit comments because they're basically what they're saying I'm saying is they've generated all the environmental information they're going to generate regardless so these are the questions we have now based on information frankly still makes no sense to me but well what what it would do is give us more time should they should we submit these and they not respond to them and go ahead and issue a finding of no significant impact um well it becomes part of their record regardless I think they do have to they do have to respond and it becomes a part of their record what well I mean I think no no I I agree but the the response could be much less than satisfactory I mean they responded to questions about air quality by saying well we we did some air quality monitoring and we we know from experience that needs to be on the site well the other thing I would suggest is that obviously we would copy the commissioner commissioner you daily and we could work through the city to get these questions answered I mean that's a separate with parallel track I think we would want to take a parallel yeah but I but this is as I understand it odot's driving this bus yeah right and not her purview you know odot's driving this bus am I wrong well I'm all right I'm just suggesting it doesn't have a significance over this especially considering that it's the board's cons the district's concerns right Okay so um okay so I just want to clarify so the the amendment on the table is just to uh to leave one and two as is change three to the board agrees to submit comments to ODOT during the EA public comment period okay it's already been moved and seconded so sure that would imply then that this draft document would be simply titled comments from Portland yes yes yeah okay okay we ready to vote so we're voting on the amendment to the resolution so all in favor say aye aye all opposed no any abstentions student representative paisler aye okay so uh the board votes to amend the resolution as stated do you have the language I do okay um okay so now we vote on the underlying resolution chairman okay would like to propose uh on the second page of the resolution item G end of the third line in the paragraph where it says increased noise pollution comma in there I would like inserted lack of school bus egress from Harriet Tubman Middle School with the removal of the Flint Street overpass comma so you're adding just an additional risk an additional risk okay so you're moving that Amendment I'm moving second okay director Anthony moves director at Bailey seconds the Amendments any discussion sorry restate it one more time sure lack of school bus egress from Harriet Tubman middle school with the removal of the Flint Street overpass comma comma so your point is that you don't believe
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that there is an alternative for routing buses and Harriet Tubman yeah I was given that on very good authority so the phrase is actually raised race substantial questions about so we have a substantial question about that question for staff um do you have an opinion on adding that to that section or do you share the concern I haven't checked um I I haven't checked that out I didn't know that it was going to be on the on the as a question tonight so I'm unaware something that was brought up before I think it even came up during our meeting with Oda I recall a few weeks ago so I'm I'm comfortable adding that because it is a question will that book okay thanks good thank you okay let's vote on that Amendment all in favor say aye aye opposed no student representative paisler aye okay the amendment is passed by votus 70 with the student representative voting yes um Okay add a word about vibrations not really I mean no that is part of their assessment right we've got noise pollution but not vibrations in particular well it's it's in the it's in the comments I believe isn't it isn't it I think it's in the comments specifically I mean there is Broad language about concerns about the stability social stability and structure so I think globally I would say it's covered by it I can't say that specifically called out one two three three four fifth paragraph down or third one from the bottom it's the last sentence there we go okay I'm good okay we ready to vote chair more yes we have one person signed up for public comment oh okay Aaron Brown I'll rejoin by phone for the budget discussion I'll make it quick good evening my name is Aaron Brown I live in the St John's neighborhood of North Portland and I'm an avid booster and supporter of Portland Public Schools I've been working with many of you on the safe and healthy schools campaign here to testify in support of your resolution today give a statement encouraging PPS to demonstrate leadership and ask for an environmental impact statement to evaluate the 500 million dollar freeway expansion that ODOT is proposing in the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School our campaign started in August of 2017 we've collected thousands of community signatures and Community groups there isn't I'm going to just give a little bit of context as to our campaign to stop this freeway just to you know give you extra information aside from the impacts of Tubman there isn't a single freeway expansion anywhere in North America that has ever solved traffic congestion uh chair board more was absolutely correct traffic's undeniably miserable I live in St John's I'm driving through the rose quarter frequently uh this has spending a half a billion dollars on a freeway expansion has never made traffic better there's this concept called induced demand you build more Lanes of traffic more people drive air pollution the census tract that Tubman is in has the seventh highest rate of risk of cancer of any census tract in the state of Oregon the air pollution in the area asthma heart diseases lung diseases diabetes poor student performance on and on and on I think everyone in this room knows how terrible the particulates from Automobiles and particularly trucks this freeway expansion is literally moving it into the backyard of Tubman the lanes are getting wider and they're moving even closer to the school that has enormous environmental justice implications when forty percent of stubborn students are African-American the district identifies 73.5 percent of students as underserved I just want you to know that the Harriet Tubman PTSA is about to put out a statement in opposition to this project as well so you are really standing with the Frontline communities of Tubman this project does an enormous disservice to the north northeast Portland families who are putting in the elbow grease to build a thriving integrated restored community at Harriet Tubman Middle School while the community's capacity to challenge this freeway expansion is comparatively low given all the numerous other challenges that they face that I'm sure you were all aware of the PTSA is expected to come out in and has indicated a willingness to steadfastly oppose this project I own only have a couple minutes so I can't go through everything there hasn't been a single traffic fatality on that stretch of freeway in over a decade meanwhile a 10th grader at uh um Madison High School was hit and nearly killed Crossing 82nd Avenue that's the street ODOT owns ODOT could be spending the money on traffic safety in our communities they're instead putting half a billion dollars into a freeway expansion we also didn't hear anything about climate we have 11 years to solve climate change 40 of Oregon's carbon emissions come from Transportation this is fossil fuel infrastructure I don't know how many PPS students took Friday off last week to go on a climate strike but in 2030 a Tubman Middle School student should be graduating college and he he or she should be moving forward into the workforce Ready To Survive and Thrive and not have to deal with climate
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dystopia we have 11 years to solve climate change PPS is uniquely positioned to help challenge these fossil fuel infrastructures and adequately stand up for the next generation of oregonians that are counting on you we are desperately counting on you I'm a bit younger than all of you except Nick he's much younger than I am he's counting on you I should just note really my last comments Oda was talking extensively about the community engagement they were doing I just want to list organizations that are in opposition to this project the Audubon Society organ walks organ Physicians for social responsibility Community Cycling Center opal environmental justice organ the Harriet Tubman PTSA the Irvington Community Association the Elliott student the Elliott neighbors Association 350 PDX depave the street trust neighbors for clean air the city's bicycle advisory committee and where I would be if this meeting didn't went late The Pedestrian advisory committee all of those groups and many others are actively looking through all of the data and are finding numerous problems with this right um I I just I know I'm out of time it's all right if I can just finish my comments if someone tells me if my night goes off I'll leave um there was the question about data that I just wanted to provide that that detail towards um so the environmental assessment document that was released on February 15th it had appendix a that had like the traffic study uh appendix is b c d e f and g and numerous other documents were just blank the document was listed as a draft of January 2015. we sent in a letter asking ODOT for that additional data we didn't get it until March 13th they gave us 630 pages of quantitative technical information that like I you know um all of the claims that you heard today about how this project is going to improve air quality improve traffic congestion and deal with climate change freeways don't do those things right like that doesn't check out that improve widening a freeway in the backyard of Tubman is going to improve the air quality there and all of those findings are based on data that ODOT first of all didn't originally release second of all we just got it and B we only have 19 days and 13 business days to look through those numbers for a 500 million dollar piece of fossil fuel infrastructure in the backyard of Harriet Tubman Middle School is this like Mad Libs like bad idea bad idea bad idea bad idea like Portland Public Schools is uniquely I will wrap up I know that you're worried about time you have the authority to ask ODOT for an extension in fact they should be giving a 45-day public comment period they didn't give us the original data until March 13th if your if PPS were to put on an additional statement saying we believe we need until April 26 which would be a 45-day public comment period from when the March 13th the actual data on which all of their findings are based on that we didn't have access to that would be enormously helpful for the community I want to thank you very much for your time okay we are not going to amend the resolution to that effect just saying um we need to vote on it okay why not okay we could does anybody want to do another amendment yes okay okay I will entertain a motion uh I I would we're going to be submitting comments you know I know but this is specifically asking them to ex um increase the comment okay I mean we're not going to be sending this we're going to be sending comments and we can amend the comments to that effect okay while we haven't talked about who's going to do the comments and since they need to be in relatively soon how we're going to do that as a board I'm director Bailey is going to get rid of the two from and the word subject and just make a header that says comment submitted by Portland Public Schools or Board of Education on I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement projects environmentally okay and we could we could just authorize the addition of a paragraph about the link the time okay and we don't need a resolution I can live with that okay any objections to that we we have a sense of the board that we're okay okay we're good we're good okay so so I just want to say I mean my comments so far have been fairly bloodless what Mr Brown said I mean thank you okay um okay so we are now going to vote on resolution number 5856 all in favor say aye aye all right all opposed no any abstentions student representative paisler aye attorney resolution number 5856 passes by voter 7-0 student
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representative paisler voting I technically six oops six zero sorry okay I'm intuiting Amy's vote but okay okay all right I just want to note we are way over time so okay next item is second reading um field trips foreign travel and other off-campus activities I'm going to ask director brim Edwards to Shepherd this thank you chair Moore so um this is the policy previously known as off-campus activities it's now the field trips foreign travel and other off-campus activities the recommendation from the policy and governance committee is for final approval this evening um just as back I'm going to provide some background because it's had a sort of winding windy path here um so working this policy began last year following the independent Whitehurst investigation the investigation report made a series of recommendations and two of them related to policy and so this is one of the two policy recommendations this policy should result in improved safety of students and guidance and improve guidance to schools increase Equitable access to off-campus activities and incorporates recommendations from the Whitehurst report the new policy does the following there is first well some of some of the languages retained from the previous policy but there's a statement of value of experiences for our students outside the classroom whether that those are field trips for the day or or extended travel both in the U.S and abroad um the policy also sets expectations of conduct a behavior on the part of all participants the policy now divides um travel into sort of two big areas district-sponsored activities and then non-school-sponsored activities and on each of these different types of activities or travel they provide guidance to schools on both for staff students and families in addition the policy has added to it a um a statement about I think a value statement of the district related to equity and also sort of some expectations and I want to just read it because this is new language in planning for off-campus activities staff members must avoid factors that might prohibit student participation including financial burden as well as hazards or barriers for students arising from discriminatory policies or practices in the destination or during Transit based on religion culture gender orientation orientation sexual identity or immigration status trips should be designed to promote healthy safe and inclusive experiences for all students and consider the identified special needs and require required accommodations of students with an individual education plan known as an IEP and or plans under Section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973. so that's that's an addition we had a first reading on the policy after some significant committee work and then it went out into the public comment period we received a significant amount of feedback and I want to thank the community members families parents staff who took the time to read the policy and based on their experiences provided some suggestions for for changes in the policy So based on that public comment that came from both students and families and working with the superintendent we made a number of modifications um to the policy including the following one there was a reference to eliminations of some administrative directives and that really wasn't necessary in the overall to have that in the overall staff report because administrative directives is not a board action it's the superintendents and the staffs in the resolution we also in the resolution that we have for us we also at the time decided that we wanted to add a um again this is based on community feedback a therefore resolved the board further instructs the superintendent to convene a working group to explore creation of a district-wide experiential learning component of the Middle grades curriculum and to report back to the board in a later than October 31st 2019 and recommendations coming out of that working group um and again one of the concerns that had been raised was that um
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the access to Middle grades experiential learning that's something that we value and that not all students have the opportunity to experience that so this is an opportunity to provide that to hopefully to all of our students so that was another change we also eliminated there was a five-day limitation on the length of the trips that was eliminated um foreign from the draft and then we when we when we took that out one of the concerns and why it had been added was there was a concern that extended trips were having impacts we're having positive impacts on the students who traveled but that there were disproportionate impacts in some cases in the school where students the students who weren't on the trip um remained in the school school so we also added language to it to address that because I think there was the full expectation that there's going to be continuity of learning um even if a group of students or even a larger group of students have left the school so we added language that said District staff responsible for overseeing extended travel must notify building building administrators in advance of the trip so the plans for continuity of curriculum and instruction can be assured for students remaining on campus those plans must be communicated to the school community and observe so that no disruption in curriculum or programming will occur for students remaining on campus so this was a way to provide support for students who may not be traveling and um so we made all those adjustments to the policy we indicated we were going to add language and the resolution around the um working group on the 8th grade experience and then we had another for we had another first reading and um I think yesterday was the end of the 21 Day comment period during that comment period we received additional comment and the other day the policy and governance committee had a meeting where we discussed the comments that we received so I'm just going to briefly discuss that we made one very small change but I also would just want to acknowledge that we did review all the public comments we received um and discuss them and some of them we felt there were different ways to address them the first batch of comments that we had would fall into the bucket of people Thanking us for making some modifications and supporting the changes that were in sort of the second version of the document there were a few comments that were submitted that indicated that they felt the it would be very hard for the district to provide Equitable experiences and so more in favor of having less travel because of the potential for inequities so I think we talked about that and we've it's been a concern it was a concern of the committee and we feel like this this there are some things that we've built into the the policy that should address that and then third there was a request that the board not to have to approve some of these trips that happen every year and we considered that that actually was actually in current policy it wasn't a new requirement so even but the comment came in that um the board should consider not approving that and we if you look at our business agendas even tonight we have a number of field trips we're approving and we discussed that and while some of the trips may seem rather routine and should be sort of on an auto approval the the discussion that we had in the committee is that especially with overseas travel events change geopolitical risk laws change policy changes state department advisories change and that we really couldn't get into a pattern of sort of pre-approval that every trip should go through a a a risk assessment and sort of the criteria of do they have the right number for chaperones what sort of travel arrangements are being made all the things that I think as as parents when you're students traveling that you expect sort of the district have a checklist and make sure that students are safe and there's some basic requirements met we did make one small change based on that comment that on uh We Struck One Word in section one five
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we had a statement that said in planning for off-campus activity staff members must avoid factors that might prohibit student participation including financial burden as well as any and I said any potential hazards and we drop we've we're striking the words potential because it just seemed to create a very very broad category um so really trying to to narrow it down the other discussion that we had is that there seemed to be a sense of from the comments that we received that a concern that there may be um sort of arbitrary decisions made by by the board or staff potentially in you know recommending approval or the board actually approving some of these trips and the risk management side of the a PPS is going to put together an outline of what criteria they currently use so that it's transparent of kind of the thing the things that the district looks at when they are making a recommendation to the board and I'll think I'll say during my five years that I've been on the board I don't think I've ever been on a board where there was a the board disapproved of a recommended trip I think there's a lot more happens before it even gets to the board um so we talked about really trying to be much more transparent so that people will feel comfortable as their their students are getting ready for things and they're raising money that that um they will know what what the criteria is and uh so those were the comments we received and so there's there's one deletion and the current draft we have before us um has that deletion already made so with that um I'm gonna think the community for uh engaging with us and sharing with us um the value that um in uh travel and outside of the classroom experiences I think it also this is a it was important for our fulfilling the work on the Whitehurst report and the recommendations that were made that we also modify the policy so with that the the policy coming out of the committee um with the one small change was a recommendation that the board uh move for final adoption this evening okay thank you um the board will now consider resolution number 5857 amendment of Board of Education policy 6.50.010 P off-campus activities do I have a motion in a second so director Anthony moves director brim Edwards seconds resolution number 585 second uh 5857 Ms Houston is there any public comment yes we have three Erica holder and Ann pernick sure and then the next speaker is Ann pernick death hi my name is Erica and I'm Luna and we're from Mount ever middle school and we're eighth graders that are in the Japanese immersion program in April we will be participating in the Japanese research residency along with 82 of our fellow classmates not only is this an important part of our educational journey in the Japanese immersion program it is also an opportunity to experience a Japanese culture firsthand although we have spent years speaking the language and learning about the many cultural aspects of Japan there's only so much you can do in a classroom we have been preparing and working towards this trip for nine years it has motivated me to do my through my work and the work of my classmates one of the biggest parts of this trip is a cross-cultural inquiry project which is where we select a topic pertaining to the cultural differences of America and Japan while we do a lot of research beforehand a majority of it is based around the research conducted in Japan my sister was part of the 2016 Japanese research residency and her topic was comparing the education system in American Japan while she was in Japan she was not only able to conduct her surveys and interviews but she was also able to experience an educational system herself as she shattered her host sister she is excited that I will be going on the trip too because going to Japan really helped broaden her knowledge of Japan and its culture it is important that the kids of my age get to have the opportunity to experience culture and lifestyle outside of what we have currently in the U.S my father who is in the military has gone
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to travel to so many different different places and has had my brother and I attend the Japanese immersion program because he has always felt as though he missed out on the opportunity to learn a new culture and language some of the parents of my fellow students are Japanese and would like their children to learn the language they grew up speaking this is why I feel that in this current age of diversity and inclusion children of my age need to be immersed in different languages having this kind of program in public schools makes it more accessible and that is really important I know that what I have had to say is short and form from the view of one individual I could go on and on about the program and what it means to me and meant to those who preceded me and those who will be impacted after I've moved on I ask that you have take what we the future are asking the heart give us the tools to grow and experience different cultures firsthand through our own eyes and be immersed in a world that is different from our day-to-day lives thank you for voting to adopt the proposed policy on foreign travel and for taking the time to acknowledge the importance of the Japanese research residency and working to make these kinds of opportunities available to all students not just emerging students thank you [Applause] and our last speaker will be litha Tani along with Ann pernick okay hi my name is Ann pernick and I'm on the board of shiren of Portland I'm representing the board tonight I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all and like the students before me we want to recommend a yes vote on the draft of the policy we do have some remaining concerns and we look forward to talking with you about those going forward it sounds like there's already been some effort related to laying out what will be necessary for the annual review and that's really helpful look forward to talking about that more and um and I think there are some remaining concerns still some of which talitha will go into after me we are strongly in favor of an 8th grade Capstone program across the district and we look forward to supporting that Advisory Group and to working with you all on that going forward to help create these new robust programs and we want to thank the many stakeholders the students the parents teachers and others who brought their concerns and ideas to this discussion some of them are here tonight thank you for being here tonight too and we look forward to consistent and continuous communication with you all going forward on this with uh with board and staff and look forward to working to improve these programs for all of the schools in the district thank you very much thank you I'm Lisa Tani t-a-w-n-e-y I'm the president of Jin Ren the parent support group at MLK Junior and Harriet Tubman supporting Mandarin immersion there and I want to thank you for the commitment to expanding DLI to the underserved communities making this opportunity the opportunity that these trips and these research residencies present really start at the kindergarten level so that commitment is is really crucial and I appreciate that and I want to thank you for the changes so far that that retain the opportunity for overseas travel for our for our community as well um two asks tonight the first is in our letter in February providing public comment we asked for some shifts some in language around the hazards paragraph um director brim Edwards described some changes that have already been made I think it is difficult for us to imagine that you could create a trip that avoided all factors that might prohibit student participation I would rather see staff directed to mitigate those factors as opposed to Simply avoid them our students are from low-income households and financial issues will be present and the question is what are we going to do about them we can't just avoid them we have to deal with them head on similarly that paragraph lists a range of potential hazards that students might encounter based on a range of issues it ignores race which is something that our parents have already raised and I think more fundamentally I would ask that it directs staff to address or develop approaches to those potential hazards again not simply avoid them are our families face these issues in Portland never mind in a cross-cultural setting um and finally my final so there's some specific language changes that I would ask you to consider in that paragraph to try to make it resonate with our
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community's experience lived experience both in the city and outside the city finally I would ask that you be very clear that we have a seat at the table as the administrative rules are created and the policy is implemented it is very difficult for us to field the kind of advocacy team that our colleagues have been able to field and I'm very grateful that our needs and their needs have aligned on this particular case but it's been incredibly instructive at how sort of how different the advocacy stance can be when you're not focused on for example a freeway being developed next to your school and you can focus on academics so we would really ask to have a seat at that conversation and we'd be happy to to participate as fully as possible but really expanding these programs to underserved schools was an important first step and we are committed to partnering with PPS to see that through and seeing these kids graduate fully bilingual and biliterate thank you thank you [Applause] the board will now consider resolution number 5857 Amendment oh sorry already did that is there any board discussion yes I would like to propose an amendment uh given the comments Ms Connie made uh for uh the paragraph on risk paragraph five I would suggest in planning for off-campus activities staff members must mitigate factors that might prohibit student participation including financial burden trips should be designed to promote healthy safe and inclusive experiences for all students staff members should develop approaches to the potential hazards that students May encounter from discriminatory policies or practices in the destination or during Transit based on race comma religion through to the end I'm not was that all one Amendment are you just adding a couple words I'm just oh I am changing a couple of words through three sentences um we did not discuss adding race um somehow I must have missed that in the comments my air we did have a committee discussion about the words mitigate versus uh versus a void and the committee made the decision to stay with the wording that we have and that's why we also remove the word potential so we did have a committee discussion and agreement unanimous agreement of leaving the words based on the interim general counsel's advice to us but we did we did not discuss adding the word race because again when I went through the comments I didn't notice that and that was an oversight on my part um so I don't know but okay I think we need to I think we need us I'm going to Second it so that we can actually have a discussion of the amendment second um I I want to um maybe address rather than mitigate might be a better word mitigate means to maybe lessen address means directly address and I think mixing the financial burden which I think we need to like avoid um we we should never have students not go on a trip because of their finances um the the hazard part of it again once you put in the word practices show me anywhere in this world where there aren't discriminatory practices of some sort or another they're they're everywhere so I don't how can you avoid that I think they need to be addressed or somewhere like that will we the discussion on the committee and maybe its practices is maybe laws there's you know countries where um it's not a practice it's the discriminatory treatment is actually a national policy or a law for example there are some countries it would not be
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I understand the distinction between the two but it says practices so do you want to just strike practices because what we're we're primarily getting at is not having our students go to places where there are laws or policies that are just discriminatory based on these classes um yeah I'm we might be surprised about some countries that have things on on their books so um I could probably live with that but I think there might be some interesting research that we could assign some students to look into for example um you know well I I mean I would suggest that um we've got some states then uh yeah but I mean I I would suggest that part of the job of anybody who's organizing one of these trips um is to perform due diligence around this you know precisely this kind of thing um so I mean I don't think we need to have a research study looking at the globe and you know it's it's it'd be a great project though yes okay it would take a very long time point taken well uh uh I I'd like to ask Council a question um just sure was there a reason um why we didn't have it in the um the list why we didn't have race as a as a factor um is there any objection to that none at all um so I I'm gonna um vote against the amendment because I think we had a discussion about this and we had a on advice of our Council and risk management relating to this particular language I if if depending what happens to the motion I would support adding the word race to that given it was an emission and it was never previously discussed but we did discuss the other issue in committee with four members of the board okay any further discussion on the amendment so I'll probably vote on them I'll vote no on the amendment but I think that I want to come back and pick up some pieces of it and have another go at it okay okay we're going to vote on the Amendments all in favor say aye aye all opposed say no no any abstentions student Representative paisler no okay the amendment fails by a vote of five to one student representative voting no okay let's hear more I'd like to move that we add the word race and I'm going to ask um Deputy Council Kane for where she would suggest inserting it in the the list I think as was suggested by um Mr Anthony at right after uh the word on so on Race comma religion comma culture okay director brim Edwards moves director Anthony seconds uh the amendment to the word race um any discussion okay we're ready to vote okay all in favor of the addition um say I I I'll opposed say no any abstentions student representative paisler aye okay the amendment passes by voter six to zero with student representative Paso voting yes okay anything else I think the policy and governance's persistence on this particular policy I think I said this before it's a good example of how iterative the process uh will be as we look at the broad array of our policies I think there were some important
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concerns and questions we had particularly related to student safety what was informative uh and and I know we all appreciated was the input from our students from the variety of programs um and it helped to prompt some some work that I think is well aligned with what we want to see over time in our Middle School redesign so uh I really welcome the opportunity for for staff uh to to engage with Community stakeholders as we talk about what experiential learning looks like across the whole span of grades but certainly starting in the Middle grades so I I do appreciate that staff's going to be very careful about developing administrative directives to match here and hope that there's an opportunity that makes sense for a community to look at that to make sure it's aligned but I think as homework for for staff certainly will be refreshing the ads as well as some pretty specific checklists at this point to make sure we have a detailed review process for for trips that are aligned with curricular goals uh one of the key ones is to also make sure that the continuity of program remains intact for students so anytime we take a detailed look at our policies we know that that will have an implication for making sure our school leaders are well aware and we'll be sure to add that to our program of learning with them and so we'll make sure that that that that takes place so thank you everybody for your work on there and for director brim Edwards leadership on this policy thank you so I have another amendment striking the words or practices from paragraph five I move that we strike the word the words or practices from paragraph five second okay director Bailey moves director Brent Edwards seconds an amendment striking the word or practices words or practices any discussion okay ready to vote all in favor of the amendment say aye aye all opposed say no any abstentions student representative paisler okay the amendment passes by a vote is 6-0 with student representative peso voting I and I have some questions okay okay uh on paragraph three and the first page I'm unclear do principles have the authority to approve regular off-campus field trips it says endorse and I'm not sure what endorse means I would can you or is the authority with the superintendent I think field trips that might happen during the course of a school day say a trip to the museum something in District I think what the policy was trying to distinguish are those that go beyond the bounds um and and so that that approval has always resided with our school leaders uh to to approve those teacher requests for for learning field trips during the course of the school day okay but it says superintendent will require schools and staff to submit field trip requests for review and approval or denial it doesn't say who approves or denies that's that's a passive tense and it's it's reading that I was really unclear to me where where the authority sat I'm sorry can you tell us director Bailey what paragraph your compare paragraph three on the first uh under article one is that the right yeah one one right first of all there's also a semicolon there before principles at the end of the in the second line and I'm wondering if that should be a period because then there's a capital P for principles conversion am I looking at the right one or am I looking at the wrong one I thought this is what I printed today the same here but I think we're hunting different what do you mean are you on one one one one
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that starts with as authorized no I'm down on three uh one three okay oh here here he goes yeah either the P needs to become a smaller case P or it needs to be a period okay it says the PE major I think we need a period there yes I think that's just uh one of those cleanup that thing doesn't require emotion um but that it's unclear to me in those first or really throughout this is who actually has Authority so that the principle Joe is not here but I'm trying to think reading that reading that first line it's it's unclear come on down Joe it is not out that says principles have authority to approve X superintendent must approve why or however whatever the hierarchy is here that's what that's what the hierarchy is to me endorse says you know I've got a little decal on my uh t-shirt and somebody's giving me some money but and perhaps substituting the word approval uh Joe do you want to speak to the current practice for field trips that occur just in the course of the day as you described uh do lie with the principle unless they are what we classify Wilderness or high risk challenge courses rope courses we do put those through the risk management review process and then and then all field trips in general start with the principle what we currently call approval to plan so that a staff member does have the endorsement or other other applicable word permitting that that staff member to begin developing their concept so um both you and the superintendent said both day trips in District now did you mean exactly that or does this also cover say trips across the river to Fort Vancouver or up the gorge to Multnomah Falls it it's I I I've it's come up sure absolutely if it's if it is a day trip those those examples for Vancouver would would would not necessarily go to risk management except we know that the current policy requires board approval for out of state so there's a there's a there's that hiccup that we're correcting with the new policy that a simple trip to Fort Vancouver in the course of a day does not require risk management or board approval Multnomah Falls Bonneville Dam anything near the water we would consider Wilderness hiking and so we would put that through the risk management review terrific thank you I really appreciate that there are some strange people who work in Vancouver you know okay so we got to watch Adam can I just point out number four under one says all out of state and foreign travel shall require prior board approval with the exception of travel up to 100 150 miles from the PBS headquarters thank you I thought I remembered that and I I didn't see it so thank you Glory of um approvals that used to be required for trips to cover there had been required for trips to Fort Vancouver and things that weren't that far away but literally crossed the river to director Bailey's point with the substitution of principles will approve regular off-campus field trips suffice instead of May endorse May approve shall have the authority to approve even better at that it was an important Clause after that though comma subject to risk management approval just saying just saying I just I just think two and three need to be reworked so I think it's real both both two and three here have you have a very awkward phrasings that so you have a period after planned activities and then a new sentence starts principals shall have the authority to approve regular off-campus field trips comma and the rest of the sentence
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so again we'll be reviewed by does that mean they must Grant Authority they must approve and I think that's what is intended is that if if there's all off-campus trips comprising more than one school day will be reviewed it says reviewed by but I think what's intended there is that both risk management and the area assistant superintendent must give their approval to is that absolutely there shouldn't be any field trips reviewed by is not giving approval to so I'm going to make it suggestion here I truly hate to do this no please let's just get it over there I can take okay I mean okay well it'll be another three three weeks and okay I mean we've had this policy for six months um so let's just get it through so um we're adding principals she'll have the authority to approve regular off-campus field trip subject to risk management approval occurring during the course of the school day semicolon and the next sentence if we're if we're amending I think a bunch of periods okay period all off-campus trips comprising more than one school day will be reviewed by both risk management and the supervising area assistant superintendent and Joe the question is is are you reviewing are you reviewing and approving I'd like to keep the reviewed by the risk by risk management and approved by the supervising area assistant superintendent but you think we should keep the chain of command there clear with the supervising principle assistant suit okay so we're going to add the word approved after and and approved by the supervising area assistant superintendent okay the the first sentence is still unclear so if we change it so that principles can approve have the authority to approve the first sentence still says any field trip so if a teacher takes a bunch of kids walks them down to the art museum and back does that have to go to the superintendent that's how the first sentence reads is that the superintendents is requiring that Joe correctly if I'm wrong is that that they have to submit field trips you can't just go off on a field trip without submitting a request a forum and the permission slip that goes with it for you know all the parents need to know there's their student is stepping off campus uh it says for review and approval or denial which implies that the superintendent has is going to approve or deny those field trip requests well then it goes on to say who's approving in the long run on sentence that now is separate sentence yes and I'm saying that first sentence then doesn't make any sense so you you could just change it to drive so it starts with school and staff shall submit a field trip requests for review and approval or denial prior to any planned activities period and then you have the list of approvals it was just adding in I think look I don't know what originally started but it was who would it help to break these out into bullet points I mean there's nothing here you know yeah I know this this is this is are we getting a word Smith here for God knows how long I'm sorry but the committee spent a lot of time it's been out for first reading for and Maya culpa May Maxima culpa okay so I'm just trying to get the first sentence if you just have school and staff shall submit field trip requests for review and approval or denial prior to any planned activities and then you have the next layers of how the approvals have happen period
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principals shall have the authority to approve regular off-campus field trips subject to risk management approval occurring during the course of one school day period I I think it might actually help to break him out into bullet points just okay I'm good I'm sorry it's just so do bullet points yeah okay so we would have a 3A 3B 3C okay yeah yeah and we just take off the first the superintendent we require I think that was just like I'll always suggestions all powerful all we were trying to say there is that there will be so there will be a field trip request form you know at the appropriate level yes it's um probably an artifact of the old policy and then when we get to the osba review [Laughter] um I'm sure the ad will make it sufficiently abundantly clear so okay can can we do like a bundle like what we just said are you good so I moved what we just said okay director Bailey moves director brim Edwards uh seconds uh amended language um okay any further discussion yeah yeah okay any further discussion okay um we're going to vote on this amendment so all in favor say aye all opposed say no any extensions student representative paisler aye okay the amendment passes by a vote is six to zero with student representative Hazel voting I okay anything else can I call the question okay okay um so we're going to vote on the uh on resolution uh 5857 as amended okay all in favor say aye aye all opposed say no any abstentions student representative paisler aye okay um resolution number 5857 as amended passes by voter six to zero with student representative peso voting okay okay [Applause] a little painful but it was worth it okay I want to thank the rest of the board for just allowing that extra time so that we can get it through I appreciate it so I okay right okay okay um okay so uh uh student representative paisler has to leave at this point because he's a student and has stuff to do good thing he's got to report that yeah and it's a good thing I'm going to see colleges tomorrow just this is a very early flight so positivity okay okay good luck okay um next discussion is uh on the 2019-20 budget chair more now that we're sufficiently warmed up uh an important uh installment on the 2019-20 budget development process you have uh quite the trio up here our Deputy Claire Hertz Cynthia lay our Chief Financial Officer and I'm not sure if everyone has had the opportunity to meet our new edition Jordan Eli is our budget director filling that slot so you're arriving at a good time we are certainly glad to have him join us as a team I am really excited to have a fully staffed Financial leadership team and I'll tell you just a little bit about Jordan um he I we're a small community in K-12 School Finance so we know each other right and Jordan actually comes from a family that his mother actually is in the profession as well so he grew up with it at the dinner table and so he has um you know it's in its blood in his genes so we're glad to have him here so all right so
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really looking at our budgeting process we will be using our best trying to figure out what I need to do you can still hear me okay all right best practices from government Finance Officers Association for school budgeting so continuing in that mode we have experience a highly collaborative process so far working interdepartmental in our budgeting and Staffing for schools so we're happy to bring this next tier in the budget process to you as a board and so we're going to be covering the principles we use to help guide our work and then give a budget update as well as more information on school Staffing and then our next steps in the budget process and at this point I'm going to turn it over to our CFO Cynthia lay to share the budget principles guiding this work the district develops the proposed budget for 2019-20 by incorporating the emerging vision of transforming PPS into one of the Premier public schools in the country the budget focuses on financial stability and builds upon strategies of impact instruction in curriculum staff development and multi-tiered system of support under the every student succeeds act also known as Essa the federal government requires we identify schools that need Improvement the comprehensive supports and intervention schools also known as CSI schools need the most Improvement and more supports in both academic and behavior interventions the next level is the targeted support and intervention schools also known as TSI at the next level and still need academic support title funding is used for English learners for Native and and migrant students students who are living in poverty neglected and delinquent delinquent the students experiencing homelessness the funds are used to supplement instructions efforts of a school and never is to be used as a to supplement the core programs Federal title funding is also intended to provide extra education of service for the underserved students the multi-tiered system Support also known as T mtmtff is a system that uses data to problem solve the academic and behavioral interventions and now I am going to turn to Jordan Ely our budget director and he will present the budget update hi thank you for having me tonight um since the board's last meeting the the Ways and Means Committee has proposed a budget 100 million dollars less than the governors the legislature's budget will go through several iterations meaning that our estimated state revenue will likely change several times between now and June staff continuously plans for changes to our funding level based on the priorities presented previously by Cynthia in the end the budget must balance with available resources and does not include funds from possible Revenue measures that have yet to pass among our voters if the co-chair's budget is approved this is the potential impact to PPS if you look at the slide here um superintendent Guerrero has has indicated at least tentatively that he would recommend furlough days over diminishing resources to our schools any further within the budget Department We are continuing to plan at the governor's proposed budget level because the planning process cannot respond to each iteration of the legislature's proposed budget in order to have teachers in our classroom in September we need to begin hiring in the spring the governor's budget is not enough to maintain current service levels and we are mindful that the quality education commission has identified 10.7 billion dollars as the funding level needed to meet Oregon's educational goals announcements have been made about shifts in the central office structure which will continue to evolve over time to meet organizational needs Investments and divestments will be constantly evaluated to support the values and vision of the district we have recently received the final reconciliation number for the 2017-18 fiscal year and the most recent estimate for the 2018-19 fiscal year from the Oregon Department of Education we have also received updated actuals for the transportation Grant from the Department
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of Education these total up to the 10 million dollars you see on the line for ssf state school fund adjustments changes to these values were caused by enrollment and property tax fluctuations across the state over the past two years but the result for Portland Public Schools is of course 10 million dollars in positive Revenue adjustments the state school fund is a dynamic calculation which changes with enrollment and property tax changes throughout the state our portion of the state's School fund is expected to decrease for 2019-20 due to lower than projected enrollment declining English language learners reduce students in poverty in a state school funding level that does not maintain current service levels however contractual obligations need to be honored and health care and retirement costs continue to increase beyond our efforts to align resources to support our core values the governor's budget will require us to draw down our reserves by seven million dollars in order to provide Equitable education opportunities for all of our students will indirect impacts be felt by the schools yes reducing services in certain areas will result in diminished services to the schools the focus of the 2019-20 budget is to achieve equitability for our students in the absence of new resources we must make difficult decisions to balance the budget we thought there may be a reduction when we were preparing this presentation in Mentor coaches but the we found out that the ode Grant has been shifted to the educator advancement Council so the funding level has not been impacted which is why we have restored up there it will remain the same as fiscal year 18 and 19. and with that I will hand it back to cfoa to um talked about the school Staffing model I'm sorry I'm sorry to interrupt the grant so the mentor coaches you originally said the grant is sun setting right it is not sunsetting right it well it's sunsetting from its existing from its current department but it has actually been moved into a different department so the impact of PPS is so it's a wash okay exactly okay can I ask a question about the um 70s staff member versus four furlough days how much money is that I did not I can look it up get back to you yeah all right go ahead really something different oh um so over the last I don't know how long it's been like 15 years I don't think PPS has it's been the one District that has on furloughed day because we have what 80 million dollars in a local option we have our tax money we have Foundation money we haven't ever furloughed so I'm curious what's changed because Maya's understanding is the local option funds are coming in even higher and there's districts that don't have a lot don't have local options at all so I'm interested in why or with our very generous local option we wouldn't be able to have sort of our basic school year which is short short as it is so I think it's important that the legislature understands that the the level of funding that they're bringing forward does create a shortfall for the district there could be other decisions made we do have a pers rates stabilization fund that we use some funds out of it but we're also mindful of how how many years it's taken to um bring that to to um develop that fund and then we have at least three total of six years that we can expect increased rates and we are trying to manage it so that it will last through those increases over the next three biennia and so we have opted to leave the remaining there so that we can make it through have a more stretched out you know making it through more a sustainable budget furlough days aren't necessarily sustainable but it is um our superintendent is concerned about continuing to erode programs and eroding um the needs to make excellence in the classroom and so this is a message to the legislature that we funding at the governor's level we have made the level
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reductions to balance to the governor's level of budget and when we go farther than that we're really not interested in continuing to erode our educational programs so we would be below the state mandated minimums or what numbers would be four days four days off of what number and where would that put us on these State minimums I think what we're trying to demonstrate here is that if we had to operate at that level which I hope is not going to be the case moving forward is to paint a picture for our constituents around what the impact would be so you know to try to quantify it a little bit and so in this case you know an estimate of that number of teaching positions 70 that's not a small number or another strategy available to school districts or furlough days I'd be the last person to want to see our school year get any shorter than it is but we want to be really clear with the impact would be and yes we benefit from the generosity of our voters in ways that even other districts don't but every conversation we've ever had at this Deus has been about how do we tick up additional ftes for more quality programming for our schools that are in need of additional support so I I don't know that there would be an impact for for this large number of positions um to be deleted out of our schools and that's certainly a discussion the board will need to have if we get to that point um I think when when urban districts you know are size and larger and certainly have been through even larger Cuts during the recession uh I think everybody needs to understand that this has to sort of in many ways impact everybody equitably um um and so uh versus continuing to to take it from the same unit for instance um so it's never a strategy any superintendent wants to put forward as a recommendation and I encourage us to remain Advocates there'll be an opportunity this week to do that when they're in town this Thursday evening we're just wanting to make sure that folks have a sense of the scale of the negative impact that it will have on on what we're trying to accomplish here and it is 7.6 million for either the four days or the essay 2.7 on the slide so that 7.6 is over the biennium the two years yeah okay but 3.7 million in one year 3.8 is not 70 teaching positions it's about half that I mean we'll have to get back to you yeah ballpark is a hundred thousand dollars fully fleshed out for a teaching position that should be right it it so we'll have to confirm the data later we're not in the place to do that right now the superintendent Guerrero I would mention while I have not done a scientific survey of the district I have talked with an awful lot of people uh staff and parents and uh universally people are saying that they would prefer the furlough to more staff Cuts uh saying exactly what you were just saying I I do have one quick question and I don't expect that this is gonna be in your heads at the moment but for future reference I would like to see it mentioned uh on page 10 slide 10 at the bottom where you have increased expenditures something I have heard referenced multiple times now is that the number of sped students we are going to have in the district is going to be going up fairly dramatically I have not seen that I recall I have not seen that Quantified in a dollar amount but see someone in the presentation tonight oh okay thank you uh I think that's going to be a good number to hit our legislators over the head with uh thank you great can I ask a little more broader reduction of contracts and services and it said it won't have direct impacts on schools I know that that's an area where a lot of our underserved populations have specific programs and also can you define what that area is a little more so there were some things that were one time only so for instance we we had a whole budget team that worked here last year there was contracted services that
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we now have a budget team that are staffed so um so that's an example of an area that where we're reducing services but there's throughout this whole budget there's many areas that we've reduced services so before we launch into the Staffing I feel compelled to um put some numbers to the budget shortfall coming out of the state um so the quality education model that Everyone likes to reference which was adopted in 1999 and has never been fully funded by the state of Oregon and its Infinite Wisdom according to the commissions own estimate or their calculations for the 2019-2021 biennium um current service level funding should be 10.734 billion dollars so um we are 1.9 billion dollars short that is a 22.4 percent shortfall that is not insignificant the governor's budget is 1.762 billion below qem the co-chair's budget is 1.862 billion short of qem and I've gone to a number of presentations recently where lots of references to the volatility of the tax system in in Oregon and how that explains a lot about you know the almost 30 years of disinvestment in public education and I just want to point out that in previous episodes of Statewide budget shortfalls and the budgets that we're talking about now are are creating budget shortfalls in as far as I know every school district in the state in previous years shortfalls were associated with economic recessions we are not in an economic recession we are in a period of unprecedented economic growth we are busted in the middle of a boom a boom of historic proportions with unprecedented corporate profitability the problem is the state is not capturing any of that because of the tax structure that we have so yeah I think it's long past time that we start sending some serious messages to Salem that if you're not going to give us the money we need to educate our kids then this is these are the consequences and in this case I personally I would rather make a statement with furlough days than with cutting staff when we're already cutting staff and we've been cutting staff for 30 years enough already okay well I'll add to that how can they justify the shortfalls that they're that we're anticipating when people like to say well we're you know in the lower half of graduation rates across the country actually we're thrown from the bottom okay having had a rant um please continue I mean one of the things is we have a personal kicker that's kicking that's going back at a high level and you know one of the things that um the state is looking at and I think we need to consider this as if um we get an additional investment and funds whether that goes to one of the buckets is increasing instructional time and while nobody wants to reduce Staffing um
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you know a child can't learn if they're not not in school and and I want to say the choices that have been made over the last 20 years have been made with you know full community support and you know Portland parents have been the ones who have than you know in the trenches in Salem driving the larger larger budget numbers and oh oftentimes it was really driven by not just saving programs but also wanting to have a school year in which the material can be covered so I think we have to be careful about who we're sending a message to and I just want to piggyback on director more of her comment about we are in the middle of um the booming of the mind of the economy and why is it we still having issues with the school funding and that is because the market share of K-12 over the last 10 years is shrinking um based on the governor's budget so that is the real question the real answers to your um to your comment and I would like to continue on um if I may with the school Staffing for our 50 000 students in Portland Public Schools our instruction instruction team consisting of the instructional leadership team and the School principles along with the central office staff that is the budget team the grant team the finance team the HR team work together to come up with the development of the starting model and the Staffing model focuses on Equitable access to Quality core programs for all students and uses involvement projections to determine the school Staffing allocations so they're starting for 2019-20 is based on the projections for October 2019 enrollment and they were done by Portland State University's population Research Center is also known as PRC and has been working for the district since 1999 they used a cohort survival method to forecast enrollment at individual schools where projected enrollment in any given school and grade is based on the previous year's um grade at that school with adjustment of how student Trends to progress but from grade to grade so they look back three years plus the projection to come up with the um the projection for the coming year so the PPS enrollment projections is done at the district level at the cluster level and at the school level kindergarten forecast is informed by the birth data collected from the county and the PRC projections are completed in in December so and this forecast can be changed for any expansions and the configuration change or any transfers and other factors associated with the transfer process and may or may not be known by the the PRC at the time that the projection would be made in December so our staffing formula for the general fund is the we start with allocating the FTE based on class size then we add a location for equity for underserved students then we add school-wide supports such as Administration counseling secretaries Etc and finally we add the additional FTE for special needs and English learners what's the general size of the equity allocation is it is it a percent or a is based on the um social economics so each School depending on the size of the school has a percentage and is as a mathematical and um yeah in the budget document there will be a couple of pages showing each school for each level of support the FTE assigned to each School right of the at the top the total Total Staffing right so depending on the school size that could either give you um a partial FTE or
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the larger school right it's a set aside across the entire District that amounts to seven to eight percent of Total Staffing but that doesn't mean each school gets seven to eight percent I just want to make that clear it's an equity allocation so the the equity portion goes specifically to schools that are serving underserved populations right now but it's not based on a formula by how much each school gets so if you had a say 80 historically underserved would you get a larger percentage than a school that was say 45 percent historically underserved students I and then the title um and all of those add up and then you also have the underserved and then you have the special needs and then you have the ell and then on top of that you have your PE you have the schools that have specific um subjects that you need to dedicate FTE so it is quite complex but we're able to break it down and present to you in such a way that when you look at the presentation of the a given school you can see the additional um FTE added for a particular type of the schools okay so um did that did I answer your question or do you still have some some lingering question um questions questions in your mind um so for example this would be eight percent of Total Staffing roughly roughly uh those non-administrative formula yeah right um and school-wide support would be another in terms of percent I don't have the person not a percentage that's not based on enrollment and it's got multiple criteria and then there's a need space pull out right that's not allocated until after the year starts that's right so the knee type of teachers so we need to support that school of that additional gift okay okay is what you're describing yeah yeah and that is um 60 FTE and this in the proposed budget will be 60 and we are looking about half of it um allocating early on based on needs and requests and the other half more later in the summer when we see what student accounts are looking like so technically set aside should be another little at 60 should be I have to see if it's within it could be yeah it depends on the size of the school too and I would talk about it in my next next several slides and if you have certain size of the school you get additional um VP or additional support of some kind depending on the choice of the principal at all going to classroom or can some of that be spent on school-wide support all going into classroom so we'll have to confirm that we can have Dr cuer answer that question since I know our principal supervisors have been giving their school leaders a direction in this case I thought there was some potential AP good evening so to answer the question specifically is I know that we're having questions coming in around how our Equity dollars spent and then what are some of the decision making around some of the positions that we are utilizing These funds on the principal supervisor specific the area assistant superintendents are working very very closely with each of the principles depending on what the school need is and what we're doing is that we're attaching it to their school to their school progress plans and making sure that we are making decisions that is going to be a value-add for children and for their school-wide plans moving forward some of the things for example that can be used with some of the additional dollars some of the principals have decided that they needed a school climate specialist to help with the school climate and culture work and
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to help with supervisory duties which would be towards their culture climate plans um other things also such as counselors are are positions that we sometimes will allocate depending on the need in the building this can also be used for school engagement Specialists I've we've also seen it also being used to continue to fund positions that they have previously funded in the past positions that have shown to be very successful regarding instruction or or in some type of capacity or access to kids I know that's very general but when we're looking at 79 different budgets it's definitely going to vary especially when we're looking at our schools that are in most need of support or asset schools we know that we have to be a lot more granular in decisions that we're making in terms of what positions we are appropriating based off of the funding that they're getting whether it is foundation whether it's Equity or whether it's General um I I know that this might it not be the venue to really kind of dig deep into what that looks like but all also do know that that's since we are prioritizing what we're how we're funding you know our media schools that is something that we've been working very closely you know with those schools in particular in terms of making sure that we're allocating four positions that are going to be the best served for kids I know that that's really I'm high in the sky and it didn't really probably answer at a granular level but that just kind of takes you through a little bit of a process in terms of how we're looking through it because there are really three major funding streams and then there's actually we go through the process like Claire was explaining around the set-aside process making sure that we satisfy the requirements of core first and foremost and the second thing that we're looking at is how we're prioritizing our asset schools which is the second major priority after we allocate the set aside to make sure that we're fulfilling those two requirements in our buildings then we go through a process of justification in terms of working with principals and how we're allocating our equity and Foundation dollars last year [Music] last year first time as far as I know there was a process of reviewing how the equity allocation was actually allocated at the school site and it sounds like we're continuing that yes ma'am and it's it it's um we're tweaking the process as we go and we're making it a little bit tighter to where you know um we're asking a lot more questions and we're asking the right questions in terms of how are we ensuring that that has the most value-added return on investment for kids because in some cases if um you know if we have been allocating typically for a certain position or positions and we're not seeing the return on investment then that's where my team is having those you know conversations with principals around in terms of how can we better allocate for something else that was going to get Maximum Impact for kids okay thank you okay thanks moving along um as a best practice we provide this information um so that you can see uh the night the 2018 PPS average class size in comparison to other large schools in in Oregon um PPS is has one of the smallest class size averages and includes classroom teachers PE art music teachers as well as special ed and ESL teachers and these are teachers in the classroom with students it's interesting because I haven't met any parent who's got a child in the class of 20. um so there's something about the way it's presented that may be um I think it's important to clarify if you're just dividing up the number of adult ftes by the number of children we have because it does not include social workers it does include anyone that is charged to an instructional level program so that means when you have a special ed classroom of 10 students that's included when you have a ESL teacher that is working in the school in addition to the regular classroom teacher that is again put into the average and so what's important is that all the districts are counting the same way this data is submitted the same way to Ode and so it is not necessarily an average class size of the third grade classes in across the district it's not used like that it's in
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a comparison of all classroom teachers and the number of students yeah it's just like parents though that's how they think of it and so just to go back to like the furlough discussion so if I if I were looking at this and be like you're suggesting four days when we're like way below these other ones the data doesn't necessarily support that programmatically we are short on staff so it's a presentation of the data of course this is this is you know as as Deputy Hertz described a comparator now we know what we might see on average in our classrooms what we can say is it's better than the typical uh and certainly we could choose to do with less ftes and assuredly we would move up the scale and what you would actually see in front of you when you walked into classroom would be a lot larger and so as you look at the other districts that are on this list not all of them have local option levies so the two lowest at the bottom but the smallest have local options on these so that does make a difference that's dedicated towards class size was just passed one didn't they and eugenius has one 2018 data the reductions in school Staffing this is a new slide and in CSI and title schools we did not change the class size ratio we have slight increases in class size in other schools and some schools may see reductions due to declining enrollment and we have combined very small class sizes at grades four and fifth into blend and I just want to again reiterate that there's no reduction in Title One funding there is a breaking news I think it was just yesterday that we heard from Leslie O'Dell um that title has been restored to the same level as in 1819. will that make us any change in your projection we have already made that change in the presentation so I'm just looking for a little right of course of course yeah and I appreciate that I also want to appreciate staff who worked through the weekend yes to re-engineer those allocations so schools could make better informed decisions that there were in fact more funds available to them and not impact on any staffing decisions where possible Right it's an effort of many many many staffs with many and late nights and weekends um you bet and also I would like to mention that on measure 98 funding um the um any um unspent um money by June 30th 2019 will not be carried over we will be starting a new um biennium with 2019-20 budget and we are anticipating the budget to be the same on this is um dependent about the four or five blends are the teachers who are since that's not a sort of widespread model but looks like it might be proposed for next year are the teachers who are going to be teaching that four or five blend going to get some sort of peak professional development or a special curriculum so that um so these are you're you're right on with with the the line of questioning director brim Edwards um as a career along four or five Spanish bilingual teacher I know the issues well uh but the team and teaching and learning uh is are really kind of tackling uh maybe our CIO could do a little commercial plug about we we have had some combination classes in the district but you're seeing sort of a forced hand to to implement more of them so that that has a curricular implication good evening board members um the district has had three or four schools that have for several years offered four or five combinations um and then those combinations each grade has that has received grade level curriculum we're expanding that to cover over 15 schools this year and so part of that will be ensuring the provision of resources that align to their grade level providing professional development so that they can work within a blended environment and ensure that the grade level standards are being met and that the curriculum is aligned to the grade which is a challenge sometimes when when you're working in a combination classroom um and so our our team has is putting together not only a guide but that guide will be followed up with some professional development to ensure that those those classes receive the supports
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that they need in order to effectively implement the demonstration of programs and so my assumption is we're going to those four of pipe Blends in the schools where the numbers would lead us to make make those um blends and so um if you have a sort of limited if a smaller school or our teachers being asked to volunteer are they volunteering or is this a this is you you may be a fourth grade teacher this year but next year you're going to be a four or five I'm just wondering what the the process is by which those choices are being made Maya and I speak from my understanding but Dr Claire could probably respond more completely a school like Skyline where their teachers are actually volunteering to work with with us because they've had uh combination classrooms for a while they were assigned to those classes initially but now they voluntarily work at those levels because they've now they team up to to do the planning but the original the initial assignment that's the question that I that I can't answer so this there's definitely sort of an an HR oriented process that has to happen as principals are making these Staffing decisions looks like Oscar wants to offer an example but about how that goes about yeah like Dr Valentina said we have several schools that have Blended classrooms not only in the four or five but other grades and uh first thing is we ask for volunteers but if we don't have volunteers that we have to work with the staff to say we have to balance our budget and so working with the four or five model and we are creating a plan that we're going to support you provide professional development and that structure that's going to support you so we have the conversations that were that are taking place right now with all of our principles and our staff and so right now I haven't heard from any of my principals or any principles that have staff that are not some of them we have to make sure that we get some more buy-in and understanding and how they're going to get support but so far we don't have any staff that are pushing back so I think what you're going to continue hearing is a few ways we're just really tightening the belt further none of these are strategies we would prefer to be implementing but we have a budget a balanced budget to submit to the board so these are the impacts that are going to continue to be felt in our schools these are these are not sort of decisions we would prefer to make we know that it presents a challenge when you create combination classrooms that are curriculum oriented we're going to ask our teachers to further differentiate when they have a span of two grade levels in front of them and so you're going to find more schools where where you're going to find classrooms like that so this is why we need to remain Advocates to make sure that we're being a little bit better about preserving the educational programming so which I think is what this next table is sure to conjure questions and confusion but we'll we'll see if we can explain this uh simply about where you see these ranges being impacted and how we've attempted to keep them as minimal as as possible um do a work in aligning our guidance principle with shifting resources to our most underserved student population the CSI and title School Staffing ratios remain unchanged from the 1819 year so that is the second column to your right okay and all other schools will have slight increase ranging from one to three in average class sizes all right so Blended classrooms at PPS include students from two grade levels receiving age appropriate instruction from the same teacher in the same classrooms can we go back yes um can you explain what co-located and program mean so that's when we have a dual immersion school it's co-located we have the English Trend and the Dual emergent strand so they're co-located right so we're both going to be blending fourth and fifth so you got Beach Kelly Bridger we do have some schools that are going to be doing that Bridger for example is one of my schools and they're going to be doing that we have some Blended
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classes Strand and someone to do a merchant side so for some schools it's one or the other well it depends on the number sometimes you have class sizes of 10 each if you don't have that many students or if you have too many students move out which that's what happened in some of our upper grades and so when you have the numbers that are too low then you have to blend them in order to be able to make the budget work okay here I'm going to be really blunt so historically when it comes to allocating resources in a school that has co-located programs generally speaking the neighborhood program took the hit and usually the DLI program did not is that still the case yes it's still the case and so so our and some of our schools what we have is we have for example at Bridger where we gave them the equity money and so sometimes they want to use that to create straight classes and so it so yes but the reason so it's um right now it's driven by numbers so it depends if there's less students on the um English side which would be the neighborhood School where they don't have enough to make another whole class then it would be on that side if DLI might have full classrooms so it's all just numbers driven at this point Okay so so we're not holding harmless this is what I want to know I mean because there has been a definite pattern in the past so I want some assurance that we're not holding harmless immersion programs from budget cuts and and making the neighborhood programs take all the hits no okay I promise another question I have is like the four or five Blends at these 18 schools that's a lot of schools um does that mean that every fourth and fifth grader is in a blended classroom or you might have two fourth grades two fifth grades and one Blended four five it depends on what the principal wants to do there are some schools where the principal is creating four fives in all the classrooms so that they can partner better and they can work on professional development and lesson plans together but that isn't something we required them to do it's it's just what some of them are deciding to do as they work as a team so it's 18 schools and it may be one four five or could be all the four or five right it's also important to note too that the the Staffing process has really just begun underway so a lot of this is preliminary and so as as the smts are getting updated and as as schools are starting to start craft their Master schedules moving into next year this this this is very preliminary I want to say that as well too because a lot of the principals have been working with our team to be very strategic and crafty in terms of how they're able to still do their Master without probably having to entirely do the Blends as well but this was something that again was on the table due to the budget constraints as as one of the top options in order for us to be able to meet the requirements but in some cases as we're working with principals you know principals are also finding other ways to do some of to do some of the work that they wanted to do and our team is working with them to do that so I just wanted to make sure that the board knew that that it's still very early because this process is still very early and I just hope that you know I wanted to make sure I put that out there so share more of none of this doesn't appear that any of these are in the neighborhood side of a co-located program with the exception of Kelly which is is both sides are combined so so uh chairman was saying you know for example at beach where you know there's a pretty good disparity good a pretty large disparity between the neighborhood side and the DLI side her question was well are is it the neighborhood side that would be taking the four or five combination when I look through these the only neighborhood side that is in these that's part of a co-located program is Kelly and both the neighborhood and the DLI
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program are looking at a combination four or five right but it's not the neighborhood side that's that's in this again very initial formulation which may change so um so these are 18 new schools that are doing a four five blend there are schools that have been doing a four or five blend right yes it is it's not currently blending at the top okay so this is verging on getting into weeds but I'm going to ask it um can I assume that there's some pedagogical rationale to doing a blend at fourth fifth as opposed to I don't know second third fourth taught um Blends and I taught them in every combination um it it's better to push the blends to the older grades where students have already learned to read and learned basic math there's a lot more teaching thematically at four or five so it enables you to do that kind of thematic teaching if if that's the way you're going to approach it um again we were trying to not only prioritize the CSI TSI and title schools but then also prioritize the younger where we could so when we looked at those ratio changes that you know everybody took one across the district we decided that it was better to kind of make a decision at the district level to say where those Blends would be instead of having them all over the place first of all we we think it's less effective for the young kids especially if teachers haven't done that or aren't choosing to do that the other thing is it's more difficult for us to support it when you know it's kind of random combinations all over the place this way we know who we have to support and like uh Dr Cuellar said some of this is preliminary because some of these are using Equity Funds or other things other funds to unblend so we're waiting to see how many there are but this allows us to support them I forget how many schools it is that are already blending I think it may be three or four and those principles have offered their teachers to help us work on the professional development because they actually love teaching the Blends and have done it with the new standards and new curriculum and so we'll be using our expert teachers in the district already to support the others do you want me to respond to the furlough question I'm sorry it was getting restroom break when the question came up about the furlough days no I think you got it answered okay well it's out there yeah all right so the definition of large school for the high school is 1 000 students or more and for K8 is 500 students or more so changes in grant funding so for measure eight we have talked about this no carry over amount for any unspent money at June 30th 2019 as we will be starting a new NM beginning with July 1 2019. measure 98 is dedicated for the 9th grade success teams chronic absenteeism post-secondary success CTE and a culturally relevant patagodi so that are the five things that is dedicated to be spent for measure 98 in 1920. for title um the plan is to abuse the allocation to increase School allocations continue support the learning um efforts Early Learning efforts to continued the school Improvement support and to continue with homeless student support these are the investments in school support for 2019-20 we have made some
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investments in school support in 1920 in the special ed area and curriculum and assessments for single administrative schools needing extra support we have added a halftime administrator or School climate specialist in addition we have committed to adding custodial and maintenance support to all schools in addition all schools will receive security upgrade from Bond go back the curriculum resources and assessments so is that the curriculum resources would they be considered part of the core material or there some for interventions you know for kids that are yes certainly behind or not meeting benchmarks so the allocation of those resources are designed to continue to to further the implementation of the guaranteeing available Curriculum by ensuring the resources language arts math moving forward for next year there will be also be a stronger emphasis in science because of ngss and so one of the things that we're doing at the elementary level is to focus on the curriculum design for elementary school science so that will be a part of that there will be some monies allocated up mtss implementation is an expensive Endeavor and a lot of it is going the first couple of years to professional development and support but we also have to pay attention to what resources are we going to include and those are questions that you've asked us for for quite a while now and so as we um provide the first phase of the professional development for our teachers and our administrators we're now looking at what are the resources that we're going to provide for tier two right so one of the things that we're doing right now is doing an inventory and all of the various resources that we have because they're not necessarily aligned to the work that we're trying to do once we do that we're able to identify where the gaps are but one thing that we eventually we're going to do is have a comprehensive uh tiering of resources so that align with tier two and tier three intervention supports so we're going to start gradually um because the focus is still on the professional development much of it being paid for by mtss funds but we're going to come back on the back end to provide that support for beginning to look at what are the resources that are going to support our teachers in the classroom for tier two reminding us that 20 of the kids are probably not meeting benchmarks might be more so each year those 20 of the kids that don't have appropriate interventions and training of teachers are following further and further behind that's a large group so I don't thank you for acknowledging that they need to be part of the conversation you're thinking about them but if I were a parent and my child were part of that 20 and I still didn't have a good plan or um or materials and I think it's both professional development and materials that are different than core materials that is what is effective for kids that are struggling right but and and as you know we know the challenges has been from the very from from the very beginning is not having a sound good first instruction program right so we haven't been able to provide that support at the first tier and so building a second year tier without having a solid foundation would would be a challenge well I think that's problematic for districts to think that way because I've seen many districts going through this is that um you have to think vertically and not just horizontally and so I just want to keep focusing on that yes we're going to build this tier but we need to think of all three of them because there's still a large percentage of kids that are going to need something markedly different interesting thank you director Esparza Brown I keep reminding people I keep having to remind people because apparently we for decades we've been cranking out people who can't do simple math that 20 of the district is 10 000 children that's a lot of kids but Ms lay I didn't want to ask on this slide uh the 6 million for special ed is that the amount we're having to additionally invest because of the increase in special ed numbers yes okay thank you but I would like uh Brenda bartnick to expand a little bit I I think certainly we've observed hundreds more of our youngest students entering with more IEPs exactly could you name some of the big areas that that 6 million is going to which are mainly in an obligated Service delivery
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the 6 million is going to address the increase in our special ed student population we have had an increase in over 300 students it's probably closer to 370 now so some of that will go to provide additional classrooms and supports speech therapy occupational therapy Learning Center teachers and then of course additional equipment that's required to address students IEPs additionally we are seeing an increase in our early childhood special ed students who are coming in through our doors so we will have an increase in our incoming Kinders and so that's to help support those students make that transition from Early Childhood special ed into kindergarten and our K-12 system we must keep data as to the types of you know the disability category the category identified with do we have the idea of the trends right now um I guess certainly there's a discussion but I'd be interested yeah we have all of that data through it's called spr and I our systems performance review and Improvement and so we do that um by age by disability code by race and then also by a percentage of placement into a special classroom so if you'd like I'll be happy to get that information for you that'd be great thank you I I think this slide here represents a really sparse investment in just some areas we need we need to keep alive so we would we would prefer to be providing a presentation where we're discussing our professional learning and leadership development catalog for next year where we're talking about evidence-based tier two intervention curriculum where we're talking about how to really blow out tag act an integrated ELD and libraries and Media Services and counseling and social workers and our behavioral interventions I mean it's not for shortage of understanding what it takes to build a high performing school system but this is this is the same conversation every one of my neighboring superintendents is having right now with their boards and and some of them don't have the benefit of some other supplements that we receive so it's really a dire circumstance and I think for so long we've gotten used to the low quality education model that um uh we're we're just tinkering around the edges now there's there's not a lot left on the bone okay I mean along those lines um so what I keep hearing what we all keep hearing is um the need for behavioral supports um always doing are we investing there there's a couple of um well one specific piece that's not on that slide we are allocating uh 275 000 for mental health uh supports and an increase for social emotional learning um it's a it's not even close to as much as we need but through the superintendent's priorities and the board priorities we know that that's a value add for a number of our students so while we're looking at behavioral supports through mental health we're also looking at building that pro-social behavior through our social emotional learning we have 11 schools that are in a pilot right now we are going to provide a program evaluation for the next year and then slowly try to increase that with training and purchasing of curriculum for additional schools it will be at a much smaller Pace unfortunately just because of the budget issue and then the other thing that we are doing is with our mtss rollout we are focusing not just on the academic side but also on the behavioral support side so we're looking through our PBIS our school climate and we are looking at vertically as well as horizontally through our tier one universal supports our tier two supports and then also our tier three supports we still are um funding and Staffing the rapid response team which really looks at those tier three supports district-wide so we are doing a number of those we're trying to look at it in a systematic fashion so we are focusing on our CSI TSI and our title schools in year one cohort but what we are doing even if they're not in the first cohort for schools we're providing principal training on April
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10th and 11th for all of our principals so that we can continue to help prepare them and have them be ready to benefit for that year two cohort can I ask a question about um these are just sort of some grade level staffing issues on a macro level um there was a lot of discussion over the last year or so about whether it's six glasses or seven classes in um Middle School and some schools had six and some had seven and some had combinations it sounds like or um dependent um I think I saw an email where there had been a decision by Pat not to provide a waiver and they're all going to be six period or some I'm curious what what we're what we're Staffing at and what so we're actually in the process of creating a report for you um that that has more specific information but I can speak generally we have three schools that have the seven period day the rest of the schools had six periods because of the Staffing level that's still where we remain Pat Uh isn't doesn't have a problem with continuing at least at this point with uh the the three schools that already had a seven period day if we moved to a seven period day we would need to negotiate that and have that conversation but right now we don't have enough Staffing to do that so generally we staff so that the middle schools can have a sick have a six period right now it's staff for six period so we're looking at the other ways that we can provide some flexibility we're looking at zero period and this is all the information that's going to be in the report that we have for you zero period and I'm forgetting that oh we also had a task force who came up with some recommendations one of the ones that we can move forward on is integrated ell services in schools where we have a lot of emergent bilinguals and we have six schools that are starting that pilot so that would allow some students the ell students to have another elective and we're also looking at the DLI requirements right now to see if we can provide some flexibility so kids could still be in the DLI program and be able to take an arts class and if you're in a under enrolled K-8 how many class periods do you get I would have to check with probably six yeah it's still six so you'll hear a little bit more on this I think Dr Curtis saluted I've asked staff to prepare sort of a uh a wrap-up of the 1819 school year as far as where we made some incremental improvements in our Middle School redesign and sort of what's on deck that we can continue to push forward for next year even in the absence of of robust funding to do that there's also a lot of variables that would need to be sorted out even if we had the resources including some labor commitments that we would have to work through but we are trying to be responsive to because we share the communities uh uh you know the challenges that that we know we're up against it's you know how do you participate both in language uh Mead health and PE requirements and still participate in arts and I think we all know that that's that's where the rub is and so how do we make those opportunities available not just in those School communities that can figure out a way to do it but make sure you know it may not may not be the model we want now you know want to see in the future but how do we make sure not close off those opportunities at any one of our schools no matter you know where you attend six seventh and eighth grade again another area we would prefer to go deeply and robustly and not able to at the moment our Deputy superintendent business and operations and players for the next steps and due to the likeness of the hour I am going to forego going through the schedule I think we've seen it before but it is in the presentation for anyone in the community that's interesting and interested in future meetings and with that we will get to the last slide which is questions and I think you've been asking them along the way but I just want to check in that is part those were the questions and answers that were came from both
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board members and cbrc that we said we would post there's four I think four to six times during the budget process we're collecting questions from all of you and then we're providing responses one of the questions was about a 10-year history and that's the 10-year history okay and we are posting those on the web for the community as well so my last question is sort of like the Middle School um question is are we Staffing high schools that will be in compliance with the instructional hours requirements I'm saying yes yeah the answer is yes one of the core things that we looked at when we're going through the Staffing process was number one was ensuring that we met the requirements for instructional hours and that every student met the requirement for core and so that was actually that was number one priority as we were not only going through the process but as we're also allocating set aside and also looking at all the supplementary funding as well are we good thank you all okay well I mean just to clarify we're not good but you know I think we're done for the moment we wish we could be more uplifting but we'll be going into a much deeper level of detail at one of our next upcoming dedicated work sessions so at that point we'll have greater Clarity around where things are landing with school Community discussions and decision making and we'll be able to provide a much more accurate roll-up at that point okay um all right so uh next item is the business agenda uh nobody pulled anything out of the business agenda so the board will now consider the remaining items in the business agenda with resolution 5858 removed and the board having already voted on resolutions five eight five six and five eight five seven are there any other changes okay do I have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda so sorry uh director Broome Edwards moves director Anthony seconds um uh is there any comment is there any public comment no okay is there any board discussion okay the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying aye aye um all opposed say no any abstentions okay the business agenda is approved by a vote of um are we six yes six to zero and student representative hazler has left okay next item board committee and Conference reports so um both the policy and governance committee met last week as did the audit committee and we'll be bringing items to the full board one thing I'd be interested in just based on a little bit what happened tonight that if there's a better mechanism for people who aren't on the Committees for um either the chair or other committee members to kind of keep people up to date on what we're moving so that when it gets to the with gets the board we've been able to structure things so that people get their questions answered in advance or can incorporate their thinking so people have ideas I'd be more than interest we do have the student rep policy hopefully we'll be coming to the board after spring break which will be a big big moment for Nick and part of Moses's Legacy okay the next meeting of the board will be a work session on April 2nd 2019. next week is spring break so hope everybody take some time to renew and refresh and

Sources

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

2019-03-19 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - March 19, 2019

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