2019-06-25 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2019-06-25
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - June 25, 2019

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we're going to start with that i'm sorry i've got to read the last paragraph thanking everybody okay we ready this regular meeting of the board of education for june 25th 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 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 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 gracias foreign thank you uh before we proceed uh with the rest of the meeting uh board members are there any items you'd like to pull from the business agenda for a separate discussion and vote okay [Music] so we'll move on to student and public comment before we begin the public comment period i'd like to review the guidelines for public comment the board thanks the community for taking the time to attend this meeting and provide your comments to the board we value public input as it informs our work and we look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen without distraction from electronic devices or papers um board members will not respond to comments or questions during public comment but our board office will follow up on board board related issues raised during public testimony 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 board of superintendent we ask that you give them to ms powell to distribute to us 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 the 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 ms powell do we have anybody signed up for student or public comment we have two we have virginia lefort and steve buehl hi um my name is virginia lafort l a space capital f-o-r-t-e um i came here tonight to speak about the allocation of 2017 bond funds um as we all recall voters earmarked 150 million dollars of the latest and largest bond in oregon history for remediation of lead-based paint security systems fire sprinklers and alarms radon checks new roofs and the list goes on and on and on um and that's just you know like i said to name a few but this 150 million dollars in funding was called out during the development of the language for the voters when they decided whether or not to support the 2017 bond it was made clear by the bond committee of which i was a member as was director brim edwards that this funding would not be co-mingled with any improvements related to the modernization of the high schools the funding was intended for existing buildings at the time pps estimated that its deferred maintenance bill was 1.2 billion dollars so 150 million dollars was just scratching the surface through a public records request for budget summaries and a gl detail report specifically for the 2017 bond funds took about six maybe 60 seconds to find eight million dollars of middle school conversion costs billed to the bond with
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only 2 million repaid early retirement benefits billed to bond funds 116 000 of group health insurance benefits billed to bond funds 877 000 for a bond performance audit expenses bill to the bond and 225 000 in credits for the 2015 pat settlement accrual also described as unemployment compensation and marshall swing space 2012 bond and again that was just a few minutes of going through the data of that 150 million dollars that i was talking about at the beginning 79 million dollars over half has been reclassified out of environmental health and safety projects leaving us with less than half for what was considered to be an environmental health and safety bond how did i find this out through a public records request which brings me to my next point i read with great interest and surprise i did not know about it the editorial in yesterday's oregonian pat and several board members committed to an agreement requiring pps to delay the release of public records for seven days so that pat can weigh in on whether or not it should be produced the law is very clear pps is to produce public records without undue delay seven days to potentially argue over whether or not to produce records is an illegal undue delay pat has argued that this simply codifies the law that's a misrepresentation of the law state law requires that a union rep must be notified of exempted records being produced exempted records are related to things like medical issues which makes sense this agreement requires the union to be notified of all records being produced and to delay that production public records must be produced according to the law this ensures that we're all treated equally and i'm certain that the three parents mentioned in this public records request that was submitted by papsa a couple of years ago not only was it the three parents board members members of the press it's it's well i'm not gonna say what i really think but it's a public records request and those parents that were named by public school administrators didn't have any courtesy of being notified that their principals were requesting public record communications between them and board members if that is an intimidation i don't know what is so you just you don't get special treatment the laws are written the way they are to ensure again that we're all treated the same pps is trying to rebuild trust after spending two hundred thousand dollars trying to hide public records misappropriating bond funds we've spent eight hundred thousand dollars not six hundred thousand when you look at the detail on this bond performance audit all of this is detracting from public trust we need to follow the law be transparent because we have to pass future bonds in order to keep our students and staff safe and we're not going to get there by fudging and hiding information so that's really all i have to say so i'm a little nervous i don't know that's a great question i mean mr buell can you if you if you can hold your comments until my time's up i don't know where it is my name is steve buell buel i'd like to take this time to publicly thank paul anthony for his work on portland school board there has probably never been a director who has worked harder than paul at his job his dedication to his community has been massive and his dedication particularly to the health and welfare of the children in our schools is probably unparalleled in the history of portland school board but what really set paul apart was that he constantly put children at the forefront of his decision making this is a very rare trait for big city school board members it has a maximum of education that what is good for teachers is generally good for children also a happy and respected teacher makes a better teacher and since teachers interact with children daily for hours it makes sense but it is different for school board members and administrators a board member often gets caught up with being important satisfying their peer group of adults be they administrators other board members or supporters and friends or making decisions based on politics and since these people don't interact daily with children their own needs can get pushed to the forefront this need is more powerful than people realize and pretty much overtakes the actions of a school board member and often other public officials as well children and what is good for them often get left behind paul withstood these influences and kept children right up front all the time i thank him for that and so should every right-minded citizen of our fair city there is a lesson here for the three new
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school board members can you withstand the pressure and keep children at the forefront of your decisions so that for once we could have a school board which truly puts the needs of children ahead of the needs of adults it is much harder than you think thank you paul thank you again for your comments please feel free to connect with the board manager roseanne powell if you have something specifically you want to follow up at the board or board office superintendents report superintendent guerrero would you like to provide your report yes thank you chair more we have a few slides we're going to put up good evening directors um while the school year has come to a close for our students uh there's no slowing down at pbs as evidenced by tonight's ambitious agenda by the board and staff actively providing summer professional learning activity and doing a lot of uh planning for the coming school year um i'll be a little bit brief but i did want to share a few important announcements let me start by talking about some leadership changes in the district i want to congratulate dr craig cuellar who has occupied the role of chief of schools at pps overseeing our principal supervisors who are charged with supporting all of our schools i have promoted him to be our next deputy superintendent for instruction and school communities moving forward dr cuellar's new scope of responsibility will expand to include not just the school portfolio but also student support services and teaching and learning craig has proven to be a positive collaborator and has always remained focused on supporting our school communities to produce continued improvement and capacity building he understands the importance of working alongside our educators school leaders and staff in our shared goal of raising outcomes for students he and i see eye to eye and share a common theory of action and philosophy about leadership and as a new member of the district's executive leadership team i look forward to partnering with him even more closely i'm thrilled to have him in this position and roll effective july 1st we've also filled two other critical vacancies a chief of system performance and a new title ix director dr russell brown comes to pps from maryland where he has served as chief of accountability and performance management for the baltimore county public schools his arrival is a big milestone in our journey to become a more data driven and data literate organization russell is a nationally respected leader whose deep research background includes the management and conducting of program assessments accountability structures and boundary review processes in baltimore he implemented a new performance management system designed a new model for enrollment projections a model that's proven 99 accurate and led continuous improvement processes in that large urban school district prior to baltimore russell was deputy chief of organizational accountability at cleveland municipal school district he's written and presented extensively on issues such as student safety student achievement testing and educational research partnerships he's also worked professionally as a university instructor and a children's mental health therapist russell's extensive subject matter expertise and stellar track record at two large urban school districts illustrates why we're so fortunate to have him join our leadership team here at pps i look forward to introducing him to you in person as soon as he finishes his relocation here to portland dr o'banion comes to pps from portland state university where she has worked since 2001 and has served as director of the learning center and previously as associate director since 2016 she's a highly trained title ix investigator with multiple credentials including with the oregon attorney general's task force for sexual assault prevention and title ix investigation and compliance certification from fisher and phillips dr o'banion earned two degrees from portland state a master of science and post-secondary adult and continuing education and she also possesses a doctorate of education and educational leadership in this crucial position she will be taking the lead and assuming assuring that the district complies with title ix the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination in schools she will make sure that students families educators administrators and the pps community are providing quality learning and development opportunities and will assist in investigations on title ix issues i very much look forward to
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having these two very experienced professionals joining our team and we're coming to the end of pride month as always pps was well represented during last weekend's pride parade through downtown portland i was pleased to be able to join this annual celebration of our lgbtq communities and happy to see such support both from within our district and throughout the greater community i also wanted to just give a brief update on our summer offering summer scholars our main program is already off and running session one started on june 17th and will wrap up on june july 30th the second session gets underway on july 8th this is a credit recovery program that serves about 3 000 students that's about 1500 per session and this year for the first time we're also going to proceed with offering a summer arts academy we wanted to make sure and pilot this we'll be hosting it at tubman middle school for about 150 students other programs also will include our sun steam academy a mandarin dli language camp which is our nationally recognized early kindergarten transition program and of course child care programs throughout the district my hope is that as we move forward and with enhanced resources from the student success act that we can expand on extended learning opportunities for students in the coming years so tonight marks another huge milestone for the development of our vision we spent months engaging hundreds of students family school and district leaders as well as community stakeholders in a deep conversation about our shared vision for the future of the district and our graduates together we have described and articulated a graduate portrait which is what we want our future graduates to know and be able to do in their quest to become global leaders we also collaborated in identifying the educator essentials and the system shifts that are going to be necessary to support students to achieve this portrait tonight is the board's opportunity to make the final product of all of this work our vision pps reimagined official i look forward to that discussion i also look forward to rolling this out to the broader community so that they can see the ideas and aspirations that stakeholders in the broader community have for have defined for the future of our students and district i want to thank the dozens and dozens of people who had a hand in making this a reality especially the members of the core team and the guiding coalition who spent so many hours in planning events recording responses meeting with stakeholders engaging in dialogue and so many other tasks and projects i also want to thank sonia and fiona our team from prospect studio whose professional guidance and careful facilitation ensured the initiative made it to you tonight we're going to hear from them a little later in our program and also tonight we hope to put the final bow on our 2019-20 budget i also want to thank and acknowledge the tscc for reviewing our budget and holding its hearing earlier this afternoon and for affirmatively approving the pps budget prior to our board's final note final vote tonight and again i look forward to the summation of what's been an intense but very productive effort to allocate our dollars in a future focused and equitable manner i'm convinced this budget puts us in a position to accelerate some of the foundational work we've been doing all year aimed at better ensuring outcomes and equitable opportunities for all of our students uh the document's been described as more transparent and understandable and we're glad that we were able to produce that type of a document i want to make sure and thank and appreciate our talented budget and financial crew led by deputy superintendent claire hertz chief financial officer cynthia lay and their teams and finally again in my report without acknowledging and honoring our departing board members who we just recognized before tonight's meeting director rosen for your steady hand calm and thoughtful approach to even the most contentious issues and we've had a few we'll miss you director anthony for your dedication constantly to uncovering the details and maintaining a deep advocacy for the importance of our supporting our students director esparza brown your deep knowledge of literacy and special education your experience as the only director of color on the board has provided a critical perspective and nick uh if i feel like we've been like celebrating your departure for a few weeks but never enough i want to make sure and call out your courage and conviction and making sure student voices remain always represented thank you all of you for your service thank you thank you and uh i would like to ask nick paisler to present his final student representative report here we go
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um i kind of said a little bit of that was impromptu up there so i kind of said said a little bit of it up there um but i guess my my thoughts for this final student rep report was just again looking back over the year and kind of reviewing what um i worked on and what i in tandem with working with the district student council worked on and so you know bringing things up as the um our leadership summit in december and getting kids together for that event and making that um a yearly event that we're going to take on and so like maxine next year we'll work on that um we amped up our social media platform so we're trying to as you know for more outreach and more communication to our um pps community um and really just trying to elevate student voice and importance on the board so there was a i've there was a lot of meetings this past year where i invited um students to come and sit in and get let them know more about the board let them know more about the district i'm in what the district office does so i'm really excited to see that continue and then um our past or our few final dsc meetings this year we're kind of working towards um you know voting in next year's um student representative which is now maxine and i'm super excited for her next year and i'm really hoping that with her experience from being at the district for two years and working closely with me this year um on many things that we that we took care of this year i'm really excited for her to keep continuing what we've been doing um and i do wish her the best of luck next year and um yeah i'm just i'm i'm really happy that i got to spend this year at this table and um learn a lot meet a lot of great people i mean this is an amazing building there's so many amazing people here and i think it's just going to get better i know it's going to get better so um it's all it's all up from here thank you thank you and thank you again for all your work this year of course and we all wish you the best and i i should just make note um nick has to go to work early in the morning so he is not going to stay for the rest of this meeting which will likely be rather lengthy so at some point he's going to he's going to get up and leave um but i hope at some point he'll come back and visit us oh yeah i'm going to be all over twitter just watch out [Laughter] okay the next item is the superintendent's evaluation earlier this this year the board of education adopted the standards for superintendent guerrero's performance evaluation for the 2018-19 school year using a modification of the oregon school board association's framework for superintendent evaluation and correlated it with the district and board shared work plan we use these standards for superintendent guerrero's current performance evaluation for the period of july 1 2018 through june 30th 2019. the board has reviewed the superintendent's performance in light of the performance standards and the progress of the shared work plan and earlier shared this evaluation with the superintendent board members would you like to provide comments somebody go okay five or six years of you know not having to turn it on so i want to preface my comments about the superintendent's evaluation by saying that i am going to support the extension of the superintendent's contract for two years which is our next agenda item so i'll just smush my comments together and i'm doing that in uh with a um sort of a focus that not only have we had a year and a half of great progress but i think we have really benefited from strong and stable leadership and student focus leadership and that is what you've provided and i'm looking forward for another two years or three years altogether um i do want to say that this was if i look at what we the work plan that we agreed upon it was a foundational year and a year in which um really getting pps back on track so the partial year one was sort of getting systems going and this was another year of that and i think we are sort of set to really accelerate the work in the next year and i think that makes me really optimistic i do want to note that and this isn't this is really for the board that there was a fundamental weakness in the evaluation system this year the both the instrument
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but also the goal setting it happened late we it was more active activity focused um and really systems building focus and going forward i'm looking forward to us having use in concert and um with the superintendent setting student-focused goals that um really bring a crispness to um the work ahead and that there's you know i want to acknowledge that there was so much hard work that happened this year um by the superintendent and the entire leadership team and under your leadership um and um next year having that focused specifically on student outcomes i think is what is going to really be the key for our community and our students and again that's not a it's more a board focused issue that we have that the this year's evaluation was more activity-based but next year i think all the pieces are in place to have an excellent year and we've had both in the written evaluation but also the conversation we had last week i think was a really full and comprehensive discussion about all the good things that happened last year and the conditions that need to and things that need to happen this coming year to make it one in which we're all proud to be a part of and with you at the helm of the leadership so thank you for your really hard work this year i agree julia with what you had to say both in terms of the process of the evaluation but also the the role of the board and i think we all acknowledged that it was an unusual year because in your second year we were definitely still engaged in rebuilding this system and completing the hiring of your senior management team and significantly restructuring a lot of the way that work gets done from the central office and the way that our schools get supported and so i think there was a general sense in this evaluation process that we have most of those systems in place and this year it's about culture it's about really investing in the culture of our organization and supporting all of our building leaders and all of our teachers both with the nuts and bolts of a standards-based curriculum but also just with leadership development and professional development and really making sure that the work of the central office is focused in service to our schools and i think that's that's the the guiding ethos that you have used in terms of how you've decided to rebuild the central office but it's important for us to always keep that in mind and i think we're all excited our continuing board members as well as our incoming board members about the board having much more of a focus on spending our time looking at student achievement metrics and some of our student achievement numbers are you know really sobering and that's why we all do this work that's why our professional educators do this work too to really move the systems and the way to the way that we want to see the system moved is by our kids doing better by more kids being able to read in the third grade and by more kids who are passing high school math actually being proficient at high school math and being prepared to do well in in college and so i think this is the year where um that hopefully it will become evident to the public that that's how we're going to spend our time and we really couldn't do that if the fundamental work of rebuilding the systems and getting the right people in place wasn't done and i think that that you've really done that and we look forward to um just starting to see some of the fruits of that labor this year and i think that was a lot of what we focused on in this evaluation process so next year a cleaner evaluation that adheres cleaner in the sense of what our expectations are and how we lay them out and how it adheres to best practice for school boards because this is one of our very most important roles evaluating the superintendent and i think we're all excited about seeing that shift in how we do our work but we're very i'll speak for myself just grateful for your efforts your incredible dedication to this role you arrived with very few systems in place and um now we're seeing most everything functioning well and needing to uh you know needing to tune to things in a slightly less hair on fire kind of way okay
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well i have been in public schools prior to my work at portland state for about 18 years and in that time i've been part of five school districts and seen many superintendents and many school staffs and in that time frankly i have not seen anybody work as hard and with such dedication and urgency as you have in the short time that you've been here to make the changes that we need and so many of those systems have been created here i mean it was a tremendous amount of work in the last 21 months and i concur with everybody that we now have systems in place that the pivot will be looking at student outcomes but i also know that you are dedicated to not just some students but to move the dial for all of our students and particularly those that have been left behind by policies and processes in the past so for me i am incredibly um grateful for your leadership here and for taking us on and the tremendous work that has been required to rebuild us and as i leave i don't want to leave for far but in my you know this role is i am very optimistic that there is so much in place to continue really moving us towards that high performing districts i have no doubt that this district will get there under the current team and with your leadership so as from my perspective i'm grateful and you've done a tremendous amount of work and i see the work because i also have been involved in school districts as part of my life um and really feel like um we one of our most important roles certainly is to hire and supervise the superintendent and i think we did an outstanding job that is you know one of the things that i think as a board member i'm most proud of there's work to do and we know as amy says director constance said there's uh the next level of work i think the next iteration will be on culture and really establishing relationships but for me that work of putting systems in place was foundational that has to come first and you really dedicated your focus to to lean the bricks here that will move us ahead so i i thank you very much and it has been an amazing amount of work and i am honored to have been a part of this um and excited to see where we're going to go as a district in the next year in the coming years and i'll move ahead too to say that i will i'm very much in support of a contract extension as well thank you so uh i want to agree with a lot that's been said my number one message for you for the coming year would be dial it down a notch you've heard me say this before this is a marathon this isn't a sprint we all understood the urgency that you brought to the work and the incredible hours you've put in and now now it's time for uh a more sustainable pace um i i speak as somebody who knows where we were two years ago but also knows where we were 20 years ago in this district many of the issues that you have led us in and your team it's not a not a solo effort over the last two years have been issues that have been dogging this district for decades and to see the progress that you have brought in the last two years just reaffirms what director esparza brown said about where you stand compared to certainly compared to uh well i'll just say compared to other superintendents um whether it's we finally have an educational vision that we'll be voting on tonight don't want to get ahead of the game that's just all you know foundational and values uh that set us up for a strategic plan that we have not had for decades how can you have an organization this large without a strategic plan well that kind of explains why we haven't gotten the results that we wanted for our kids the progress made on student safety and watching their waitress report recommendations done done done done done just about wrapped up um you work in the legislative session your work in collaboration with other
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superintendents around the state with cosa with our educational partners like portland state and portland community college you've really established us and played an incredible leadership role there the division process is really a blueprint going forward for how we engage with the community and and with students um again all these things and and i wanna my slight disagreement with the earlier comments we have the start of systems in place that's still more work to go on those systems so a big start on the balanced assessment system where we have common assessments across the district which is a big piece of of bringing equity to results in the classroom which is the core of why you're here for our students we've got a good start but more work to do there but again that hasn't been around for the two decades i've been involved in our schools we heard from the okay tscc tax supervising something committee conservation commission conservation committee so this is an independent group that looks at the budgets of all public bodies in the county and today they they reaffirmed that our budget process and budget documents were much improved over the previous year and of course we had a a clean budget um a clean budget audit the the focus on the budget on student outcomes so especially for students receiving special education services for the enhancement of our multi-tiered systems of support the social and emotional support of our learners which are totally integrated with curriculum that you bring and on and on so many positives across the board in so many different realms thank you um okay i won't i won't say too much since it's pretty much all been said um but i i want to echo what everybody else said um i think in the space of 21 months an enormous amount of work has been accomplished just an astonishing amount of work um the bad news is that it was all completely necessary when you walked in the door pps was in trouble in real trouble and when we talk about the foundational work i'm not sure that the public out there really understands how foundational this work has had to be we're talking basic structures totally absent i mean the amount of work that is required that has been required to just dig us out of holes that have been dug over the last at least two decades has been has been enormous and i think what we're looking at is a completely unprecedented scope and pace of change in pps um and it's all in the right direction and i mean i i agree that we've well i've been watching it all um you and your team have done all the work here um and um you have built um this new structures and processes that were completely absent before um i don't think we're finished yet with i mean i i tend to agree with director bailey like we are well on our way but there's still a lot more foundational work left to do but we are now poised i think uh at a new a new era for pps i mean in the space of 21 months you have brought pps to the point where we really can start talking about improving student outcomes um and you know free for as long as i've been paying attention people pps has talked about it but we've never had the ability to actually do much or [Music]
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or to even know what we were doing out there in schools and i've you have you have brought a focus on students that has been absent in pps for far too long and so like others thank you for everything you've done um thank you to your team thank you to all the teachers and the principals and the counselors and the everybody out there in schools who are who are doing the work on a day-to-day basis to transform this district for for students um it's been a it's been a busy two years it's been an exhausting two years um but i think we're we're now at a point where students in particular are going to start seeing changes it's going to start showing up in outcomes for students it's it's going to start showing up in more equitable offerings in in programming um it's gonna you know in this next year i think we're gonna really start seeing [Music] some dramatic changes in in school climate and in you know a change in the organizational culture to to one of continuous improvement and and really focusing on student outcomes i'm looking forward to it we we are already engaged as a board in developing goals and we as a board have pledged to have a a small set of very specific goals in place by august 15th that will serve as the kind of um the focus for the work over the next year and um in you know working in collaboration with with you and the staff to come up with metrics that are really going to drive the kind of change our students deserve so um okay i went on longer than i intended to thank you may i chair um thank you directors i i appreciate the expression of confidence thank you for recognizing the rate of progress in a relatively short amount of time uh in an organization of this size in nature i mean it's been 21 months and i actually have to give credit for that progress to the people on the front line our educators our support staff our principals uh senior staff and their departments it's a conversation that's infusing every layer of the organization this is not a one-person endeavor and i think we're pleased with the rate of progress but we're not going to be satisfied until we start to see the needle move for all kids in this district which has to start with equitable supports interventions making sure they have the opportunity they have a right to uh and then i think we can we can expect uh those outcomes to to follow uh district improvement is not a linear process and so uh there will you know i can only commit that there will continue to be sort of ups and downs but a continued move uh northeast uh uh which is sort of high performing high functioning uh characteristics of a well-functioning school system so we're going to stay committed to that it would have been difficult to head out to schools and raise our expectations without having our own house in order which is why you saw a focus a bit more inward on the central office so that we would be stable and our core functions would be in place so that we can we can begin the work to work more closely in partnership with our school leaders in diagnosing and assessing their development and their capacity and how we can leverage the resources we have to support that that learning school systems are learning organizations and so we're going to keep making that investment of time and energy and i'm going to continue spending time uh visiting schools as i always do uh checking in with our students teachers and principals and look forward to doing even more of that as we embark sort of on this next chapter of work which by nature has to work really closely with our school leaders because there are agents of change on the ground and our job is to serve and support and be responsive to them and they also deserve the opportunity to develop their own leadership and so we're excited about uh a number of initiatives we'll we'll be launching this coming fall i look forward to
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describing those that are going to focus uh exactly on on that goal uh elevating our school leaders ability to lead continuous improvement and serve as instructional leaders and to really leverage the moves that they make every single day in our school community so i look forward to working hand in hand with our team on that so i came to portland i knew it would be a challenge it hasn't it hasn't let me down in that regard as i always say around the office i'm never bored every day is another 14-hour opportunity to make a difference for kids so i look forward to to continuing in that vein although i'm taking director bailey's uh advice to to turn it down a notch given this is a marathon but it was uh a little bit necessary in the beginning uh but we're not in triage mode anymore uh and that's a good place to be so uh just an appreciation to to the broader team here at portland uh who who's really made this uh this joy of we say joyful learning and but you have to have joyful leadership as well so thank you for as hard and challenging and complex as the work is we do this because we're sort of built for this and we know that it's intended to make a difference for children and students everywhere so thank you for the continued opportunity okay so i'd be remiss if i didn't raise this um so the board is rightly focused on uh your leadership because that's that's our our job um and you're really focused on the centralized system because i think the the central office systems and leadership um you know had there were big gaps uh when you arrived and that's what we're focused on so i'm really glad to hear you speak of the broader system again from the board standpoint we're really focused on your leadership and the the system here but um you're focusing on the broader system this next year and the feedback loops and really creating and supporting our school leaders and then the classroom leaders that we have is what is going to make the difference in the in our students outcomes and so i don't want to just leave the impression that we're just focused on the system here at the central office um but you you're focusing on and supporting the broader school system and leaders in in it is going to make be what gets us to our next step one advantage of having served as a para and a teacher and a principal always in title one schools and under-served communities is understanding and my research as an educator uh as a graduate student is in understanding how all layers of the organization how all the parts have to work in coherent ways uh to get at shared goals and so i've understood that from the very beginning that uh once we stabilize that we would we would need to turn our attention that direction so i'm looking forward to that work because that's actually what i enjoy most and you gave a very nice little tutorial on that at the tscc hearing this afternoon um okay the board will now consider resolution number 5907 a resolution to approve the superintendent's performance appraisal do i have a motion so moved second uh director of response to brown moves director constance seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5907 mrs powell is there any public comment is there any board discussion on this resolution okay the board will now vote on resolution 5907 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed say no any abstentions resolution 591 5907 is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative paisler voting yes okay congratulations okay the next item is the superintendent's contract extension the board of education has reviewed superintendent guadalupe guerrero's performance and determined that he has been a strong leader of the district since he was hired in 2017 and that the district is well served by extending his contract for two additional years through june 30 2022 on the terms set forth in the amended contract board members would you like to provide any comments okay the board will now consider resolution number 5914 a resolution to authorize superintendent contract extension do i have a motion so moved director bailey moves director constance
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seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5907 ms powell is there any public comment nope okay any further board discussion the board will now vote on resolution 591 5907 5914. sorry you got two different numbers here okay all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed say no any abstentions resolution five nine one four is approved by about a seven to zero that's student representative paisley voting yep okay there you go congratulations you get to vote yep on your last night it will be an honor to serve through june 20 22. thank you okay um so we're moving on to a second reading of the reserves fund policy i need to announce that there is a correction to be made on the policy and i know that's a surprise to all because it was just brought to my attention two minutes ago and that is under section two i'm looking at the clean copy if that's the easiest to read probably and i'm looking i'm getting what's on the website currently what's posted there and it says in the section two in the first sentence it ends with from five to ten percent of annual general fund it should be revenues instead of reserves the word should be changed from reserves to revenues can you repeat that please okay so if you're on the second section it starts with it is the goal of the board to fund and maintain a reserve in the general fund that shall range from five percent to ten percent of annual general fund revenue that's what it says okay the in the copy that we were given it says revenue i'm so glad but what's posted on the web says reserve so i'm i'm concerned about which was the final version um i think note to someone out there that we need to change the document that's posted yes okay we'll update that after at the end of the board meeting i'm sorry we'll update it at the end of the board meeting okay okay thank you and i'm sorry so the answer was it will be updated at the end of the board meeting thank you okay okay um so this is a policy that has been before the board already this is the second reading we had no additional public comment during the 21 days and just as a refresher that the key changes were still retaining the goal of setting adequate reserves this policy removes the dates that were actually embedded in the policy which is not best practice we also added some language to the policy that lays out and this is for future future boards lays out the appropriate times when reserves should be used and when they shouldn't be used and we've also added new language that defines when when reserves are expended that there needs to be a plan to replenish them within three fiscal years so this very much retains i think the spirit that of the of the policy uh it tightens it up removes some dates and i think makes clear that there's a commitment from the board and the district leadership to maintain reserves and to use them appropriately and when they're when they're used appropriately then to replenish them so that we're ready for the next time that we need to use them appropriately and i want to thank the cbrc and director moore who provided a lot of history about the reserve policy and i think improved improve the language um so and if it's important that we adopt it this evening the second reading because it ensures that our budget that we're about ready to to adopt is aligned with the policy i want to reiterate the thanks to the cbrc and just say that this was an example of i think a really constructive policy making process because this did change fairly significantly from the first time it was brought forward to the policy and governance committee and through a lot of really deep discussion and a little bit of back and forth and a lot of
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insights from community members and the cbrc taking their role very seriously and making sure that as an appointed body of this organization that they really were respected in their function was really important um and i think we did agree at a much better policy and um i'd like to point out something that um may escape notice uh from those who haven't been knee-deep in this kind of stuff [Music] so in paragraph two of the board policy it makes mention of um the goals for the operating contingency it's the five to ten percent that we that you mentioned uh will be set as part of the district's long-range financial plan and [Music] the policy thereby assumes that there will be a long-range financial plan for the district which would be the first time in living memory as far as i know that the district has ever had one so um this is i think this book this policy in addition to governing the reserve funds can also be used to insist that there be a long-range plan for the district so that is all to the good um okay so um the board will now consider resolution number 5908 a resolution to adopt an amendment of reserves fund policy 8.10.025 p do i have a motion second director sponsor brown moves director brim edwards seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5908 miss powell is there any public comment no there isn't is there any board discussion yes i will be voting yes on this and in the interim when i first read the initial version i think pointed out that a layperson could not understand much of the language in this and i still as a not lame person have trouble comprehending exactly what's in here so i will be voting yesterday and i have volunteered to help with a rewrite that while including the technical definitions also includes plain english so that not only school district accountants but the average person can't understand what exactly we have in mind here okay the board will now vote on resolution 5908 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed say no any abstentions resolution 5908 is approved by voter 7-0 thank you thank you madam chair during this last matter uh ms powell has pointed out that there was an error in the chair script and we have an incorrect resolution number on the matter of the superintendent's contract extension so i'd like to ask to re-vote on resolution five nine one five five nine one four is the healthy and safety schools plan which is in the business agenda which he will vote on later that's already done with that so you have either approved it you have approved it and you will vote on it later but we already approved it we don't need but i i would like you to have a redo on the very important matter of the superintendent's contract extension resolution five nine one five so moved second okay uh director bailey moves uh director esparza brown seconds a resolution to uh a motion to adopt resolution 5915. okay all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all those say no any abstentions okay resolution 5915 to extend the superintendent's contract by an additional two years just to clarify um is approved by voter 7-0 thank you again board and have i told you how detail-oriented and attentive
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our staff is thank you to our board manager and general counsel thank you indeed and just in case anybody's anybody's wondering we have now done this twice so we really mean this okay um next item is uh step three appeal uh complaint number twenty nineteen zero three so okay my name is hutchinson and i'm here today to talk about the safety of students at all the pps schools and specifically my own school wilson high school i'm not sure if any of you have been in school shooting i can say i have and it's one of the most terrifying things i ever faced in my entire life on october 19 2016 i sat in a different high school in california i was the freshman this was about the last couple months of school i was in my last period of me watching a movie and my class was on the lower level on the ground floor of the school and we all had heard a loud rapid succession of noise and over the intercom our principal had said that we are in a lockdown and laid out all the steps to follow as the sound of what i knew that to be gunfire um continued and in ninth grade i was the only one small enough to fit in a cabinet and so i shoved myself in the cabinet and i hid there and i texted my mom because if you call your phone rings and it gives you away to the school shooter and of course none of us need to do but the windows in the classroom could have been easily shot out and the gunman could have walked into our classroom and killed all of us and of course i texted my mom that i was afraid they'd come in and she told me to remain completely silent and that she was coming in that afternoon four teens were shot we learned days later after two of the first shoes were arrested that it was a gang hit on a 15 year old girl and if i recall correctly it never made national news but it was such a huge impact on our community and just a dinner school but i also want to point out that a man made the news either because the lives of children of color in a school like mine are never treated with the same value as the children from neighborhoods like southwest portland which rings the events of today well april 1st is when the false lockdown happened at wilson high school students in sunny hook connecticut parkland florida both communities just like southwest portland experienced mass killings of innocent children teachers and still in some of their communities pbs included act as if it won't happen in our neighborhoods and i think that is one of the most unreliable points of views we can actually take because every neighborhood is susceptible to mass shootings to school shootings and it is a fault if we do not look at them and say that there are things that can be done to keep our students safe and that should be the board's you know top priority to keep their students in the schools from freshman middle school elementary all safe because our safety matters and we can't learn properly if we fear for our lives in the schools and to be honest when i was back in san francisco in my school i felt safer there than i feel here in wilson even with the false lockdown because there are not procedures put in place correctly to protect the students and of course my mother and my brother will talk a little bit on this later but there needs to be for a follow through i have gone through the complaint process i've written my complaints i've gotten very nice responses back i've been told that you know things will be happening but there's bit i've been given no timeline i've been given no dates of when these things will be happening when they will be put in place and there's no accountability so who do i need to go to and when a culture of secrecy and communication of debriefing or mental health services are actually available for students to go and talk for us to say what will happen for our safe to be put in mind i don't need you know platitudes of oh we'll get on this right away i need action and i need it now i'm lyndon hutchinson here is the chain of events that happened during 3rd period april 1st at wilson i was in my gym i was in gym for pe the gym doors are locked from the outside but there was a loud knock on the door and two girls ran in telling us that we were in lockdown we had no idea we were in in a lockdown because the gym does not have an intercom we have been through uh pre-planned drills which clearly in hindsight were ridiculous failures if it had been a true lockdown and the shooters were the ones knocking on the door we would have all been in danger in the drill the t in the drills the teachers and the entire school knew ahead of time and when the drill would happen so apparently there was not an effort to create a true planned plan to communicate throughout the school this became obvious because if students are in the gym they don't know they are in lockdown and will be in danger the teachers directed us to the the
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teacher directed us to the back of the gym that faces the outside uh wall of the and door my my teacher said the lock the locker room doors are not secure enough and someone could barge in so we were not going uh going to hide in the locker room she did not know what was going on in the school she told us that we would run out the building if someone came in the other doors thankfully the girls that had came came to the doors minutes before uh were not shooters during the lockdown kids were talking and laughing while a girl from the special needs class was crying and kids were consoling her i was terrified the minute the minute the administration knew it was an accidental alarm the same information sent to parents should have gone to staff and students i felt a a fight or flight instinct and i was on a on an on high alert my mom said the adrenaline in my body was making me feel this way i was so annoyed that kids were laughing and talking and some kids stood up as if uh as if nothing was hap really happening the arrogance was annoying after 15 minutes of terror and no information the security guard came in with a key and told us to go to our next class we were we still had no idea what was going on and we were being told to go to the next class thankfully my mom texted me an email from this acting principal telling parents that students will be notified and i learned and i learned and i learned about this false alarm how is it that an email to my mom texted back to me was the only real information the class received i am now convinced that we have no real system no real security no cameras no buzzers and no intercom systems because living in a place of privilege people in a bubble thinking it won't happen here but that's exactly what happened in parkland and park roads last month a fall sorry a false sense of security makes it even more dangerous everyone feels comfortable saying we don't have the money for these systems but aren't our lives worth it i am mandated mandated to sit in school nine months eight hours a day and accountability is needed when and how will these be addressed we want timeline and who do we need to go to if it doesn't happen thank you so as a parent of these two amazing advocates it's very hard for me i'm gonna get emotional it's very hard for me to sit here and listen to um to my children um who really frankly for an entire year at a brand new school in portland we moved from out of state in july have had lots and lots of issues of safety and security lots of issues of inequity they are people of color there have been lots and lots of issues at wilson high school i'm because i'm going to get emotional i'm going to read my statement as well um i'm saddened actually that we have to be here in front of all of you i i had really wanted a meeting with principal guerrero and was told that that was not possible um and we just have had many many steps where people again have given answers that were very well meaning but not as both of my children have said had a backing of accountability the issue that we continue to struggle with are that the administration's statements which are which may may be accurate at this point but but in reading articles um since 2018 when we moved here an article in the portland tribune about the bond money and then finding out that it wasn't going to be used yet and then talking with brian martinic in september after the communications department sent out a notice from pps listing all of the items that were going to be in schools and going and i personally went and talked to the business manager and the acting principal at that time who said they had never heard anything of that and that it was a funding issue and that there wasn't going to be money for that and then having brian martin nick tell me that that was not accurate and that by the end of october there would be uh systems in place and that they were collecting bids and then to have another article in a newspaper in december saying that this was going to happen and then another and and it they're they're just as my children have pointed out there's the the timeline for bond funding of 2017 and child safety
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really needs the rubber needs to hit the road now um with regards to what happened at wilson um so uh i i know that the staff that wrote these emails were well-meaning i i know i'm going to list that molly emmons wrote our the the first appeal and she was very specific in that there is going to be talking to uh of staff at wilson and there's going to be um certain things that are like alarms uh are going to happen and locked doors are going to happen but again there's no timeline for any of those things there's not any specificity or any real accountability when is when is this going to happen um clara hertz wrote the oh sorry am i okay claire hertz had written our um our second appeal and and again with great specificity but disregarded that my daughter had a substitute teacher who did not know what to do my daughter had to tell her class what to do in a lockdown and and yet my daughter and i and my son received an email saying that substitute teachers have a card and they have a folder and they have training but but but disregarding people's actual reality of what happened that day is really problematic telling my son that anyone who's in a part of the building that doesn't have an intercom has a walkie-talkie when in fact they do not and that that that pe teacher did not have a walkie-talkie that pe teacher did not receive a text that pe teacher did not receive an email until well after i received an email and so i i know that the people sending us emails were very well meaning in what what they were saying but it just seems like there's a very lax nature about the reality of having to live through this situation and not having specifics that are going to follow that um there's just a few other things i wanted to say um so since since the april first lockdown it was very hard because this whole appeal process was very long but there have been multiple lockouts which are different than lockdowns but most teachers in wilson do not know the difference and i understand that you are going to say they are trained but my children have now been through multiple lockouts at wilson since april 1st where teachers confused lockdown and lockout and again my children had to tell them no this is a lock out not a lockdown it was painfully clear to my children that some of the staff didn't know that the difference overall there is a climate of secrecy a lack of transparency and communication at wilson students and parents do not receive information wilson i understand that we also have a new principle i'm really hopeful that that will change but the administration at wilson is not just the principal and the people that are still there really need to to receive additional direction wilson has continued to have incidents they've had incidents with knives they've had threats of guns there have been incidents with guns there's been hate speech and hate symbols and anti-semitism and theft and car break-ins my son's desk had a swastika on it in the fall and i am still alarmed and shocked that no communication has gone home with any of these incidents to any parent the reason i know these incidents are because i have children who are advocates i tell other parents and their kids are like oh yeah that happened but they don't tell their parents and neither does the school there's no fte allocated for this important work and the only school social worker at wilson was unassigned this year it is my hope that the new leadership will change but sadly the recent real world events of the gun at park rose i truly believe that looking at what happens at wilson they are not prepared and that the children and the staff in that building are not safe i did personally meet with the director at the jewish federation because i could get no response from staff at pps or staff at the school they referred me to the adl i personally met with the education director of the adl which is based out of seattle they have amazing programs that are in place in tigert just down the street that's why i got to meet with them because they were there about the equity work and about the educational work that they've done with the administration and the children and i i really want this for pps i moved to portland i live in portland i want my children who are now going it to be a senior and um a sophomore and i have another child going to be a sophomore um to to feel safe in in their buildings um uh we would so with the bottom line is as they've they've already mentioned we would like
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a list of measures and their completion dates to be shared with the entire wilson community we would like them to be shared with parents and staff and students we would like to know when and how parents will be involved in budget reviews there has been a all of this lack of safety and security things have been cut from the budget and we don't even have safety and security as it is i know that there's a daily shooting or gun incident in schools all the time i do know that as my daughter mentioned that hers was not did not make national news um but it's important and and i i just i really implore you to to not only say that you're going to take this seriously but really make sure as they have so articulately put it that there is accountability that if if you tell me you're hiring an electrician which i got in either molly or claire's emails that that that i then know that that phone system which is the only intercom to those classrooms the classrooms that have intercoms my daughters went to her next classroom that teacher didn't have an intercom that worked on their phone so even though she was in a classroom that had a working phone with a substitute that didn't know what to do she went to a the next classroom and they said they didn't know because their intercom didn't work so whether you hire an electrician if there's not going to be accountability where someone goes from phone to phone and checks and then someone is really responsible for making sure that on a regular basis this happens that no matter how many times you tell me that you have things there needs to be a an evaluation there needs to be something that is qual quantifiable a an evaluation of these are the steps that are going to happen so that they can go to school and feel safe and i can know that that they are safe thank you for letting me ramble there for a minute thank you for thank you for bringing this forward and i'm sorry that you had the experience and and that you i'm sorry that you had your experience in california and i'm sorry that you were re-triggered here um so i'm going to i'm going to turn to superintendent guerrero and um i think we have staff prepared to provide some information in response yeah i'd also like to add that every one of our students is entitled to a safe learning environment uh thank you for for sharing your recent experience uh uh it's unfortunate we're sorry about that clearly we need to take a close look at our our procedures and our protocols so that they're consistent whether they exist or they need to be refreshed there needs to be common knowledge about it this is an area that we've recognized that we need to do a better job at thankfully we have uh resources set aside from the 2017 bond and so i'm going to invite our deputy superintendent to highlight a few features of some of the work that will certainly uh be a part of our campuses that are directly related to student safety and security for example we know that video cameras and intercoms and a lot of that work is commencing this summer and will continue throughout the course of the school year for example so that some of the blind spots and the intercom gaps can be addressed but so there are timelines there on some of those projects i'm a little less familiar with some of the details but if i could invite deputy superintendent hertz and certainly our chief operating officers is present here as well to to give you more concrete responses to to some of the concerns you've raised which we recognize exist in many campuses around the district and buildings that haven't had the benefit of some safety and modernization work i would like to begin with thanking the hutchinson family for bringing this issue forward and it actually made us go through the whole system and really check to verify everything that we said we have in place is functioning and and working well and i would say that by doing that we have improved our practice and i'll share some of that with you so i have also offered to meet with the family and i still extend that offer if if that would be something you'd like to do i'd be more than willing happy and willing to share additional information and consider your concerns so the bids and contracts are in place for wilson high school our first um we've had two out of the three bids go out and we've awarded two and we're
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in the process we're evaluating the third with the goal of all schools by next spring being our security projects will be completed wilson high school is in the first round so the work is beginning this summer and will finish this fall the um could you yes very quickly summarize those three contracts and in terms of outcomes so what what their cameras locks so let me give you um an example of wilson and that will give you an idea okay specifically at wilson the preliminary design shows them receiving electronic door locks and video intercoms at the main entrance in front of the school as well as the ada entrance in the rear of the school additionally we are adding card swipe readers at several exterior entrances speakers are being added in hallways the gymnasium locker rooms auditorium music choir rooms and at several exterior areas these speakers are tied into the school's voice over i p system and messaging heard through these speakers will be the same heard on classroom phones the other thing is we did a full audit of all the wilson high school telephones and the repairs have been completed and yes we have hot actually hired the electrician now and he's uh in place and as we're installing all the new equipment the electrician is being trained on how to you know service and maintain the equipment and learning right as they're installing i have spoken with the new principal at wilson high school and he's also offered to meet with the hutchinson family as as well and to address any concerns they have about wilson high school we um the so in terms of the pa system um the questions about that the 2017 bond program will pay for adding speakers to all areas where emergency announcements cannot be heard so any area in a school that currently doesn't have announcements we'll have that and that is again coming through in three sets of projects to cover all of our schools and will be completed by next spring so in terms of their questions about communication and ensuring that wills and staff have a better understanding of lockdown guidelines and who decides receiving the emergency lockdown messages so as part of the improvement plan of the lessons learned from the accidental lockdown our emergency management department has drafted and sent out communication guidelines to all schools these guidelines instruct schools on the communication protocol on the invent of an accidental activation of the emergency messaging system as well as the communication during an actual emergency event so we are also updating our school messenger system as a resource to communicate with students in the coming year the misunderstanding about the district's protocol came from a substitute teacher substitutes are trained in these processes before they are permitted to work as substitute teachers they also carry the directions on how to respond to these emergency situations on the back of their electronic key card every substitute receives a folder containing emergency information as they and begin their job for the day wilson high school staff are well versed in lockdown guidelines they trained it last august at the beginning of the year with their school resource officer and have done both of the required drills in addition to this incident one of the reasons the school didn't make an announcement over the voiceover ip is because the training around releasing communications communication states the only way to ensure the person sending the email or making the announcement wasn't under duress was to go through the school and unlock doors with keys to let students and staff know the lockout was in error so it did take some time but it was following protocol to make sure that people had direct communication we aired on the side of caution reducing further issues by sticking to protocol the updated guidelines were immediately shared with the office staff and were shared with all staff in an all staff meeting on may 14th staff also had the opportunity to debrief the lockout teachers were informed in person when someone keyed into the room to announce the end of the incident the principal emailed parents once it had been established that the lockdown was an accident and staff had been deployed to clear the classrooms the principal did not did send an email out to staff excuse me the principal did send an email out to staff after the incident was completely concluded and debriefed when the team who cleared the building with the team who cleared the building emergency management staff is available to conduct additional training with the wilson staff as needed and the school has trained instructional leaders
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who then trained their departments on how to activate the emergency system so it's been well thought out at wilson high school i will also share with you our chief human resource officer is conducting a substitute training and in this fall and that they will have a academy and this will be required training for all substitutes before they can work in the district for the coming year so and there was question about um knowing that a national security team has seen and improved our plan that we have for the bond program and we worked closely first with our law enforcement partners in the city and county bureaus of emergency management and in august 2018 the district had a security reviewed completed by new dawn security to help us plan our security capital program we have hired a former portland police bureau captain to review our security protocols security staff have undergone training from the fema as well as school safety training to the u.s department of education the security projects to be completed in all schools by spring 2020 include video intercoms installed on the main entryways system override buttons to provide automatic lockout control in an emergency voice over ip system updates to add visual monitoring adding video monitors and support computers for front desk areas of schools with cameras adding public address systems speakers in hallways gyms and external areas of schools that do not already have them new signage to direct school visitors to main entry and require them to check in at the main office um there's additional questions about the cameras but i believe this here is a repeat but we are spending a total of nine million dollars on security from the 2017 bond and staff intends to request for additional security resources in the 2020 bond um for an addition and additional security cameras that are throughout our schools speakers are included in the current bond and again will be installed everywhere needed for emergency messages to be heard heard in the school um so there was a question about for 15 minutes during third period i did not know that this was a false alarm i was in the gym for pe the gym doors are locked from the outside but there was a loud knock on the door and two girls ran in telling us we were on lockdown the gym does not have an intercom so i said staff supervising students in an area in which the voice over ip cannot be heard like such as the gym or cafeteria have a walkie-talkie or a staff runner will notify them of an emergency in a timely way in an actual lockdown it is not safe to send someone to the space school staff are texted when radios need to be silenced when hiding from an intruder so again having the this is what was in place last year but with the new um systems we're putting in next year that that piece won't be necessary i think i've probably answered enough um of the questions there's i that we had um lots of communication back and forth but i still what's important to me is that all students have a safe school to attend and feel comfortable at school and we want to make sure that we're being responsive to your concerns and again we welcome you to to meet with me and the principal or at the principal as alone and whatever would be helpful to you as a family do you have any uh board discussion good so here's the contradiction and i think it's the contradiction that you all heard is all substitutes are trained and yet in practice we had a substitute who was not effective and i'm not pointing fingers at them i know as a state employee of the state of washington i go through these trainings every year that doesn't make me proficient and that's you know just because you graduate doesn't mean you can you have proficience so that's a question i have going forward is does our training lead to a proficiency in action and clearly in this case it
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didn't and that's that's something to look at do we need to change our training to be more so that we're get that proficiency i think what would also help that substitute in the future is that they would have heard that the gym will now have an intercom where they'll be able to um the speakers from the ceilings they'll be able to hear the announcements the substitute wasn't in the gym okay the substitute wasn't in the gym and the gym teacher didn't have a walkie-talkie okay all right and and and that's the second contradiction when you say this is our protocol that this is what actually happened um i i guess if i was a parent bringing the complaint i'd be are you telling me i'm crazy um so we we have to have a better response than that i understand what the protocol is but if that's not happening there's a breakdown and we we don't have an effective system so respond that's the level we need to respond to not that this is our protocol that makes sense and um well i would just add that's along the same lines of just my only real um comment on this other than really being grateful for all of you bringing this forward because it's going to help us improve our practices at all of our schools but i think the response is really thorough in terms of being able to explain what is scheduled for wilson and what changes we might be able to make in terms of protocols but like you scott i would like to see some sort of follow-up on um once the work is done confirming that it was done confirming that people were were trained confirming that we have the protocols in place that everybody who's supposed to have a walkie-talkie has a walkie-talkie just some kind of reality checks on the commitments because i i think that it's to me very satisfying to see everything that is slated to occur or that should have already occurred and a little more attention to it but we just need to make sure that it actually actually happens and is thoroughly implemented so can i finish because can we change either lock down or lock out because i know that's confusing that's just by its very nature the two words are so similar is there any way to come up with changing one of those words it's a national standard and so people have to be i don't know but i'm going to speak a is that all the doors are locked and business as usual happens in the school and teachers have to understand that like they have to be highly proficient at that they need to understand when there was a lockout my daughter was walking in the hall a teacher came out in the hall and grabbed her and pulled her into the yoga room saying that they were in a lockdown and she said no we're not we're in a lockout and so those two words are national standard words and teachers need to be trained to understand what the difference is thank you yes yeah right i understand and that's another and they're on our so we carry them with us so that we can refer and remember oh sorry i just wanted to say to to to the points that are being made with regards to the accountability piece i i understand that people are supposed to carry cards i understand that they're supposed to be trained i understand that they're supposed to know what the difference is what i'm telling you is that they don't and and the fact that they don't is the is the problem to to scott's point and to amy's point is that we really need to make sure they i don't know what the system is to make sure but you know it's alarming when a child who's already been in a shooting is being pulled out of a hall into a classroom and being told that they're in lockdown when she just came from another room and knew that it was a lockout and therefore she was free to be in in the hallway now she doesn't know if she missed a message that we're now in lockdown because the teacher who pulled her in did not know the difference between those two words and those practices and that's that's the that is the issue there are also posters in classrooms but we'll make sure that there are new
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posters coming out this fall to be refreshed throughout this our schools so does so one of my questions that i want to thank you again and both of you for so eloquently bringing this this situation forward and your concerns um it does the truth so i don't know you know when they get training an initial uh new teacher and new substitute training but um like you know we've had a lot of um video kinds of trainings are there videos to reinforce this so you get an initial training you know maybe an annual review of what the processes are would that be something that might be helpful because you know people are maybe given a lot of written information that may be easier to comprehend written and a video that goes along with it so i'm sure just kind of looking up or looking at the depth of our training and ways to kind of reinforce test annually you know those assessments that the kids have to take yeah perhaps an assessment that has the critical things and if you don't pass the assessment it's not in your file that you are able to to understand those things then you might need some additional training i i don't i mean i'm not here to give all the answers but i i i know that my children are assessed all the time and don't get to be highly proficient if they are not assessing at that level and so i would like there to be high proficiency in if there is a an incident i would like i would like to know that that person is trained whether there's a brochure on the wall or there's a card that somebody carries they they're not proficient right and i'm i'm sorry that they're not but they're not yes so um i don't want to sound glib here at all um but if you're if you were here for the comments that we made about um what's been happening over the last two years in terms of having to build structures and processes and protocols we still have work to do and i think this is one of the areas where we need to work on um i mean i i don't the lord knows i am not an expert security but i also know that we we are not up to speed as a district um or individuals within the district on what would be required in the event of a seismic event i mean there are lots of there are lots of safety related um safety related practices um that we need to really nail down and and really train people on um and i i mean i'm just going to echo what everybody said thank you for bringing this to our attention um it's i'm i'm sorry that you had to i'm sorry that this happened i'm sorry that it it it brought up past experiences that were traumatic um and we're going to use this as an opportunity to do better and i think we've identified a fair number of actions that we can take and and are taking on a i think on an accelerated timeline um and and we need to do better and and we will be asking for we'll be getting updates on on the progress toward achieving the um the things that the district has committed to um chair thank you yes so thank you again for for bringing this concern forward uh one thing we learned in boy scouts is be prepared and uh having a procedure or protocol is something you have to practice and drill all the time and you learn from doing that so you heard us highlight a few things that are part of our our district-wide action planning in this area of safety and security and thankful that you know wilson's in that first round um but all of our buildings need you know to be similarly have their safety issues addressed and because the good citizens of portland have made an investment in our public schools in this area i'd like to ask deputy superintendent hertz and rco dan young to when the work is completed and ready for final test at wilson high just as an example of the work that will be happening across all of our schools please invite me to that final test as well as any interested board members and the hutchinson family
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to join us for that and i know that i will trust our assistant superintendent joe lafontaine raise your hand for high schools i know that he will be working with a new principal at wilson high school on a number of areas and even though there's been some prior training staff turns over and so it will be important for them to familiarize themselves with the safety improvements and how they need to incorporate those into their security steps as well so i know that he will make sure that that's part of our educators training as they come back from the summer as well and uh we'll continue to to give thought about uh whether it's substitute teachers or any other uh adult uh being familiar you know uh with with uh procedures and uh what we mean by certain protocols it needs it needs to be automatic and uh in the moment is not is not the time uh to figure it out so thank you uh thank you to our two students for for bringing this forth uh it's definitely alerted us to a lot of work that is slated to take place in this area but it's it's a good example and will highlight for me what we need to do across the district so i look forward to the improvements happening over the coming months at wilson high school and what i want you to do is to go back to school in the fall and be reassured that those those issues have been addressed so um i want to thank you for your advocacy as well there's been a lot of discussion about training um which i think will make an important difference but i want to focus just for a moment on perhaps the board's role on the infrastructure side of things in um 2017 when we had the bond stakeholder advisory group um there actually was a fairly long discussion about the how much money in the bond the 790 ultimately was the 790 million bond would be put into health and safety and accessibility so that was everything from lead water lead and paint safety and security issues seismic upgrades ada improvements and it was a discussion was 150 million too much it clearly was what um the voters were focused on when they approved that because we were coming off of the lead in the water crisis and there was a 220 million dollar package for health health and safety and accessibility and then there was 150 and um during that discussion um there was um from from my perspective i was interested in dialing up the 150 million dollar number um there was a lot of pressure to get the three high schools in middle school and then how much you could how much you could then put into health safety and accessibility and then also how much you actually could contract um during the four years um but at the time we just the decision was only was made to put only five million dollars into security system upgrades and one of the issues i raised of course the most recent tragedy at that time had been a sandy hook of course we hadn't had parkland at the time either the decision was made to go for a smaller number so that we could rebuild um the three high schools and also kellogg middle school um i think when we get to our planning of our next bond there really should be some some deep thinking about um how we make the split between the modernization the full school modernizations which then you get the full school modernization so they get the seismic and i mean they get the if you're in that school it's been modernized you have security the seismic protection everything um but the reality is if this is a 30-year bond program we're going to have students in schools that potentially aren't very safe if we continue to put the vast majority of the funds primarily into modernizations so while the staff is really there sort of their responsibility to improve and make sure the training and communications um protocols are in place when the board is working with this with um osm on the next bond package we'll have an opportunity to make some decisions on investments that can touch every school and you know think about whether we want to be waiting for 10 to 20 years to make some of those upgrades or whether we actually want to make a bigger batch of those now so i think
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this is a good reminder that we we have students in unmodernized buildings and we're going to have them in those buildings for quite some time and that we'll have an opportunity to have i think a full discussion so thank thank you for raising it because it's easy to get attached to those new buildings and everything they have and not be focused on that we still have these old buildings that need improvements and i uh good so there's there's a tension there because the more we put into current in some cases band-aids we push off the modernization and we know the earthquake is a huge risk going forward and so while we might make our schools safer in some ways we put that issue off and it's uh we wrestled it with that in 2012 2017 and there's it's uh it's it's a real issue how do you balance that and i guess i would say two things before we close this out one [Music] as we prepare for the 2020 bond i am i am hopeful that we're going to have a a bond development process that allows for a um a great deal of community input in the decision making where the community can weigh in on these points of tension where i mean we do only have x amount of money and we need to make really wrenching decisions about how we spend it and i i think when we when we create the process to develop the package of projects that will be covered under the 2020 bond that this is going to be one of the things that we need to wrestle with and the second thing i will say is it would be helpful if both the state and the federal government would take safety issues seriously and in more than just hopes and prayers but would actually throw some cash at this issue so that school districts who have been underfunded for 30 years would be able to address these things in more than just band-aids and in order to do that the legislature would actually have to actually be in session so that's all i'll say there but thank you again for bringing us forward finally we can we get phone codes that aren't cannot be confused with checking messages okay um i'm sure that's going to be on the list um okay so the board will now consider resolution number 5917 a resolution to uphold the superintendent's decision on a step 3 appeal complaint number 201903 do i have a motion that a second i'll second director rosen moves director moore seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5917 is there any public comment okay um the board will now vote on resolution 5917 all in favor please indicate by saying yes can we can we have a little bit of discussion first okay for discussion um and we've run into this before with the complaint process where we certainly recognize validities of statements made and can we can we close out a complaint process but agreeing to plow ahead and address your concerns outside of that quasi-legalistic process we've done that before um or somehow outlined the process for follow-up and execution yeah my understanding is i thought that's what we just did okay and so maybe maybe you're looking at formalizing it in some in some way um i i thought what i heard from the superintendent and deputy superintendent hertz was a commitment on communications and on training um and we've got our piece to do on the actual facilities peace and
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um i think in addition to that what we heard was a commitment to keep the hutchinson family in the loop and with regular regular updates on the progress made um particularly in wilson um but i imagine you have concerns about the rest of the district as well so i i think so certainly this is the prerogative of the hutchinson family and and the board can only suggest we we can keep it open until we come back in the fall and report out on all the action steps that we highlighted this evening so that you can be assured that there was accountability in taking care of those issues that were raised by the hutchinson students and [Music] i haven't had a chance to say yet but thank you very much for bringing this up your experiences are entirely consistent with my own children's experiences and it's a very important topic to me and i also want to point out that [Music] yes clearly there are problems with implementation that are not at all consistent with procedure but also the procedures in many cases are not terribly good and are themselves inconsistent and i would point out what what you mentioned uh these two sentences which together are are just really something else staff supervising students in areas in which the voip cannot be heard i.e in the gym cafeteria outside etc have a walkie-talkie or a staff runner will notify them of an emergency in a timely way in an actual lockdown it is not safe to send someone to the space so you've got a system that only works in a drill i don't think this is a good system okay thank you okay so um i think i'm going to need some direction here so i i think what we have just discussed is suspending resolution of this complaint yes i think you can make a motion to table to uh a point in the future or with specificity or with some general direction i think that's the motion and it would um it would require um waiving the time limitations that are established in policy correct yes but the the family has agreed to that okay it's in division 22 but i think with a family's consent i think that that is okay take care like what we did as a quakers right right okay so someone's two tables second sec do we need to um are we amending what we already first think was just tabling right there was a pending motion to approve the resolution right so why don't you finish that out and vote it down and then have a new motion or you can withdraw that motion but i'm happy that we withdraw the prior motion on this complaint i can't okay so can we vote on just vote on withdrawing withdrawing okay um so all in favor of withdrawing the resolution 5917 say aye aye all opposed no okay by a vote of seven to zero we have voted to um to withdraw resolution five nine one seven right so now i'd like you to have a motion to table how you want to define its return before the board okay okay do we want to um i think that the outstanding question is do we want to put a time limit on this or not so the project will be completed later this fall but i need to look to said it said november yeah i i just want to confirm with the latest because when we first responded to this we were not as far along in the bidding and contracting i just want to confirm timeline i apologize this is the question when
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the wilson project will be completed yeah it's scheduled for late fall so towards the end of this year it is a part of the first package that is under contract right now so we can certainly do a check in with the family with an update in as after school opens with what we've gotten in place for the start of school and then we can do we could do a second one after the construction work is completed so the first one on procedures and the second one on the physical installation okay so um are you willing to accept a common understanding that you will be kept up to date on progress and and we'll bring this back this complaint back for resolution can we say december 1st december 15th you tell me what's i i think we're comfortable coming back in december and if there's some change and it's maybe a little bit after that we can communicate that then i think that's a fine deadline for us to come back okay let's say december 1st sure yes okay but we can always come back earlier but i okay so so can somebody craft some language for actual resolution yes i'm working on this making sure i get the language just right and okay forgive me for not having been through the tabling process i want to make sure we don't inadvertently kill what we're trying to postpone okay um what i'd like to do is take the intent of the board and come back let you move on to the next agenda item and come back to that motion in a few minutes okay that's all right is that okay okay all right so we're gonna hold this in a bands and then we're gonna move on to the next thing which is um the adoption of the district's vision in the fall of 2018 the board of education and the superintendent of portland public schools commissioned a community-wide process to tap into the wisdom of our students our educators in our broader community to help us reimagine pps for a rapidly changing world the community-wide process engaged thousands of diverse stakeholders including students families educators district staff and civic business community and philanthropic leaders who produced nearly 16 000 data points which became the basis for the various elements of the vision this eight-month journey included a broad range of activities including a student summit three guiding coalition sessions almost 40 city-wide and targeted community engagement sessions two community-wide surveys learning journeys and work sessions with the board of education this vision is our community's vivid picture of the world we want to create one that allows us to imagine and think differently about our path to a better school system for every child as the executive sponsors of the vision process we the board members are deeply grateful to the people of portland who continue to demonstrate their belief in the importance of public education their support for pps and their dedication to this process and the community based vision that will guide our work to best serve every student in every school every day superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce this item thank you chair moore um i'm i'm i'm very excited and pleased to share with a broader community this co-constructed vision portland public schools reimagined over the over the past school year we've been in conversation with students families principals teachers non-profit leaders and and community stakeholders to get our collective best thinking on what the future of pps should should be to ensure that all of our students walk across the stage on graduation day possessing characteristics valued by the people of portland here at the desk tonight is our chief engagement officer jonathan garcia joining us will be folks who are familiar to us from this process as partners from prospect studios fiona hovenden sonia lopes and jane quang who are going to be providing a brief overview of what we'll be sharing with you tonight in every public school system in america it's it's it's critical it's vital that the broader community be really clear in defining what it believes to be a whole and complete education what it desires to uh have as traits in its graduates this articulated vision for a reimagined school system developed by the broader portland community is one that focuses on developing our children and youth to be compassionate critical thinkers able to collaborate and solve complex problems
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graduates who are prepared to lead a more socially just world as we know a vision is a bold leap into the future it paints a vivid picture of the world we want to create it it identifies a destination our north star per se that inspires collective action it guides strategies and drives sustained growth a vision helps us step outside the present and imagine what is possible it liberates our imaginations to think differently about our path forward this vision our vision focuses on what we want to be true for our graduates because as we know pps exists in a rapidly changing and complex world you don't have to look far beyond the fact that the future of work and learning is evolving swiftly jobs and careers that exist now that didn't exist five years ago and that trend is likely to continue and we want our students to be adaptable we want them to be able to thrive when they graduate we want our graduates to discover their passions be proactive about learning and life paths and adapt to change while maintaining their hopes plans and values in meeting the future by anticipating change developing adaptability and resilience and addressing injustices this vision aims to create an educational system that will prepare our graduates for their best possible futures while i'm particularly excited what i'm particularly excited on is that this captures and is informed by the historical context in portland and its future aspirations that we know will take a collective effort we hope that this vision portland reimagined as a call to action for our broader community with our school system playing a critical role in preparing our future parlanders to both thrive in and improve the world thank you superintendent guerrero so as you shared this vision it was a collective uh effort by so many people um as a reminder this shared vision was co-developed by our guiding coalition a group of approximately 90 people from across portland representing diverse communities and viewpoints we had high school students representing schools across our school system we had new educators and veteran educators those who teach in our special ed classrooms in preschool and our students uh and in our students who are about to graduate teachers who teach stem music spanish we had a school administrators who support students in magic buildings in our k-5s our middle schools our comprehensive high schools and our alternative programs we also had our labor partners our business leaders our nonprofit providers our elected officials and colleagues in higher education our guiding coalition represented the true diversity of our community both by language socio-economic status geographical location race and gender we're proud and are and thankful for all of you who have spent who spent weekends helping shape the vision for pbs we also hosted over 35 city-wide and targeted community meetings and online surveys these were large gatherings and focus meetings meetings with migrant parents visiting black churches head start parents dyslexia advocates special education families and the ptas we partnered with our labor partners to welcome educators to share their voice and lastly we met with a diverse group of students students in our community transition program students who identify as part of the lgbtq community latino black and students in leadership in an array of leadership programs in total we engaged thousands of stakeholders and produced nearly 16 data points 16 000 data points all which became the basis for the various elements of our vision this journey here just journey map here depicts the timeline and sequence of community engagement activities from fall 2018 leading up to a community exhibition at omsi last month these activities include a student summit three guiding coalition sessions many city-wide and targeted community engagement sessions two community-wide surveys learning journeys and work sessions with the board of education i want to thank our staff who helped to host these community meetings and want to acknowledge our pps school communities who for opening up their doors and welcoming our broader community to help shape this vision specifically i want to thank fabian lane jackson beverly cleary madison pioneer secondary benson lincoln harriet tubman grant jefferson wilson roosevelt and the regular community for welcoming our community our broader community with open arms during our community sessions and so as a point of privilege i'd like to introduce you all to andrew he's a graduate of wilson high school andrew was one of our guiding coalition members who brought our diverse student perspectives to the shaping of this vision i'm going to ask him to share a few thoughts about the process as a graduate and as a graduate of pps what this work means for him and the legacy he's going to leave behind so this was a really special process i
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was it was an honor to be a part of to leverage my voice and my experience as a member of the pps community since kindergarten through this process i attended capitol hill and then jackson and wilson high school and i've been happy with my experience through pps however there have been still things that i wish that as after i graduated this year had been more prepared for as i'm entering into college so this experience allowed me to gather um my thoughts together and think about my experience as a whole um through the k-12 journey and think about what i wish that my future neighbors my future friends and family and my future children will have through the pps um through their pps experience and so i had the opportunity to work together with members for the community to think about how graduates should look like in the future how teachers should look like in the future and what type of things we need to do as a school system to make those things happen this included traveling to seattle just visit schools on the cutting edge of these um of education to see what we can do to be more like that and to be more equity focused to be on the cutting edge of technology as well as being forward thinkers in the education community in general i was really thrilled that students were involved in this process because i think often times even though students should be the center of the education process their voice can be left out and during this process the student voice was elevated in every situation through student panels student involvement in general and then those whole process started with a student summit which i summit which is a testament to what this process is for it's for our graduates and i'm i'm very happy with everything that we came up with through this with the graduate portrait with the system changes and with the adult portrait and um i'm just really pleased that i was able to be a part of it so andrew andrew is going to be a beaver yes this fall and i know that you are between two majors and do you want to talk about that yes so let me preface this with saying like i never thought i wanted to be a teacher ever so um i'm still deciding between engineering and teaching but honestly this whole process the whole visioning process has made me can have education beyond like on my mind of actually majoring in i think through this process i saw how empowering it is especially for this community in general and how education can be used as a tool for um minorities in our community and for elevating those that are less fortunate and i think that this process kind of was an eye-opening to me that the power of education thank you before he heads out any questions before i comments as a somebody in education i highly encourage you to go into education but i also want to thank you for all the time that you put into this um and and it was it's been a really great process so it's great to hear you tonight thank you for being here thank you all you're working thank you guys yeah just just to add in i think sorry for my last comment um of all the time that we spent in the community one of the most powerful sessions were the most powerful sessions were when students were talking about what they what they needed from the adults in the system and what they what they envisioned for their future and i think one of the the best qualities of this vision is that i think we've actually captured that but we would have never been able to capture it if students hadn't actively participated and i can imagine what my response would have been if i had been asked as a student to like come to a bunch of meetings and talk to adults and sit around and sort of discuss the future 30 years from now so i applaud you for your willingness to do that because it i think our vision really reflects primarily the students who spoke up and participate in the process so thanks of course i'm biased andrew so whether you choose education or engineering we're going to be working relentlessly at making the vision a reality so there'll be a place for you to continue making your contribution here at pps we'll be waiting for you thank you and andrew is one of many as you all have shared many students and so this is this captures uh some of our students uh that were part of our guiding coalition um so i'm going to turn it over to our team at prospect studio to lead the rest of the conversation thank you i'm jonathan um so um i know you have the report in
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front of you but i'm going to take a few minutes to summarize starting with the the graduate portrait what it is um what your community has identified as the most critical elements of the graduate portrait and to articulate just a couple of important implications for the work um so we think of the graduate portrait as the heart of the community's educational vision your graduate portrait is your promise to your students and families that the adults actions and systems transformation work will be driven by decisions that helps every student work towards a graduate portrait your graduate portrait is a very ambitious description of your community's desires and what it wants for its students what it wants its students to know to be and to be able to do in order to thrive in their lives and in their careers and your graduate portrait reflects what your community values as the most critical knowledge skills and dispositions for success so first and foremost although i'm not going in specific order i will tend to start sort of from the bottom and and move up um so first and foremost um is to graduate students who are skilled creative problem solvers who can collaborate with others understand problems from multiple perspectives and develop solutions that truly meet the needs of people your graduate portrait will also graduate i mean your graduate students who demonstrate mastery of core academic knowledge and skills as well as a deep appreciation for and experience with the arts and practical knowledge of self-care as critical thinkers they can analyze information from multiple perspectives and can effectively use current and future technology to support problem solving as racial equity leaders students actively take part in making our society more just by developing their own knowledge agency and advocacy skills to challenge injustice one thing we know about the future is that it's always evolving and changing students are prepared to navigate and adapt to life's challenges knowing they can use their assets their networks and mindset of continuous learning to keep moving towards growth and fulfillment as powerful communicators they are clear logical persuasive and compelling through various modes of written verbal and digital communication and they are also effective listeners which results in more empathetic and authentic communication content these knowledge and skills are nestled in graduates who are nested in graduates who feel positive and confident about their personal and cultural identities they operate from a strength-based perspective demonstrating empathy curiosity respect interest in the points of views of others and finally graduates are prepared to live and work in a global society understanding their responsibilities to the environment seeing themselves as a connected in a connected local national and global system and feeling optimistic about their future through inspirational real world experiences this heart of your vision your graduate portrait will rely on adults to transform systems to enable this future to be true to the graduate promise there are design implications and challenges your commitment to the same graduate portrait for every student implies different designs actively involving those with different lived experiences and perspectives in the design process to meet the needs of different needs to meet the needs of different students second it is the need to develop a graduate portrait continuum that breaks down the ultimate desired outcomes into developmental phases that can answer questions such as what would a racial equity leader in development look like in fourth grade what does awareness of personal bias look like in a kindergartener guideposts for the learners as well as adults who support them will need to be developed to help you actualize your graduate portrait so i'm going to turn it over to jenny now to talk about the educator essentials thank you sonya as you heard from sonia walking through the graduate portrait it is a bold and aspirational vision for portland public school districts graduates and in order to reach them we know that this vision will include the support what we end up calling the educator essentials which are the knowledge skills dispositions that are fundamental for educators so while this is not one-to-one though there are parallels with the graduate portrait they are complementary by every mean
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and when we say educator essentials we in this context we do use educator broadly we're talking about all the adults in the system who supports our students and even though some of the language you'll see in the document in front of you are specific to classroom teachers the majority of the language underscores exactly that that every adult's contribution in the system impacts students be it directly or indirectly and therefore it impacts student success and therefore is important for all adults in the system there are nine educator essential elements as you can see and they have many overlapping themes i'm pointing out several of them tonight and i know you all will be reading more closely again but some of these elements emphasize and educators of course their dedication to their practice so being knowledgeable and committed to lifelong learning as well as continuously improving their work through self-awareness and reflection we know that educators are proactive problem solvers and will continue to be by being adaptive resilient and open to change and that they anticipate impactful trends in education that will be relevant for their students and therefore they are innovative global and pragmatic and as we know problem solving isn't done alone and so educators are focused on building strong relationships and they do this by being consistent and reliable someone that can be counted on by their colleagues and allies both internally and externally and therefore they must also be community-minded connected and collaborative with the other adults in the system and of course this collaboration is in service of every student and family as we think about a more equitable system and so educators are caring empathetic and relational with this empathy focused on being inclusive and responsive to diverse learners and therefore educators must be bold by being racial equity and social justice centered as they are critical actors making this system a more equitable one one that this vision underscores so as we heard earlier from sonia the graduate portrait outlines what a graduate a graduate of pps should be prepared to do they will be prepared and confident leaders of a more just future and for this to come to fruition we know that these fundamentals that we have on the screen is not just what educators should arrive with but that the educators in the system will wrestle with and develop these as well as model for and inspire them within students similar to the graduate portrait there are implications obviously from these educator essentials um i think while there are some that come to mind the core piece that the educator essential really highlights is that this is a collective and iterative nature and this work has really just begun and so what you see here is a high level thinking that will guide pps toward the direction of how they want how you all want to invest in your people but coming out of this the work really does begin with further engagement as we saw so much engagement has happened but even more specific engagement with teachers and educators and other adults so that it becomes more and more clear what each element looks like in practice for people in a diversity of roles and backgrounds and ultimately you want to continue to look at this in order to track that you are on the right track towards supporting each and every portland student and successfully achieving the graduate portrait by the time they graduate pps so with that i'm going to turn it over to fiona to talk about system shifts you so if the um if the nine elements of the graduate portrait are going to become true for students as they graduate pps and if the nine elements of the educator essentials are going to be true for the adults who work with students every day the system itself will have to change to support that so the educational system shifts are focused on the school district as a whole they describe 11 key ways in which the entire system has to change in order to support the promise of the graduate portrait and the educator essentials three of those system shifts um directly support graduate portrait and educator essentials elements so racial equity align systems and structures embeds racial equity into the decision-making and action taking system wide support for global stewards and ambassadors signals the importance of the global awareness and of climate justice
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and this is both for students and for educators and particularly with regard to professional development and learning opportunities and a culture of physical and emotional safety takes proactive measures to create the conditions in which students can be reflective and empathetic and feel safe as they focus on their learning supported by adults who can model the same traits the other system shifts really commit to creating the conditions for change more broadly um so two of the shifts commit to system-wide supports for inclusive learning so equity-centered inclusive learning for students and adults and mindful inclusive practices that support the continuum of students with disabilities will ensure that each and every student can achieve the graduate portrait and that educate support educators to know how to and supports educators to know how to use the supports that they will be finished with two of the shifts support flexibility of time and place with a move towards more flexible environments and a reconsideration of where learning happens and how long it takes flexible future focused environments and redefining time and place for personalized learning will help the district to meet all students where they are the remaining four shifts which include transformative curriculum and pedagogy which includes standard-based standards-based curriculum and linguistically and culturally responsive curriculum with equitable supports cultivating system-wide learning and a diverse workforce which which commits to thoughtful equitable continuous learning for adults schools as community hubs which commits to schools being connected to their communities and offering multiple services to support student learning um and a connected and transformative district each all of those four together assert that this district is making a commitment to being a connected continuous learning organization that will honor its diverse communities and continue to evolve to meet students needs in a changing world so those are the the system shifts the changes that will need to happen system-wide and obviously they're big there's a lot of work to be done there so this is not an overnight thing so in terms of the implications here um these shifts represent a major commitment and a major promise that you're making to your community and probably you know it'll be a sort of a decades work really with to see them come to fruition through a series of aligned strategic plans which you'll be launching soon um persistent action and the partnership of the broader community i'm going to turn it over to director bailey to take on this next slide so a number of years ago before i was on the board i served on a district committee and one of the first things we did was say well we've got a task what are the values that are going to guide our work what a what are the pps values and there were no pps values so we spent a couple of meetings cranking out values word smithing and then we got to the work of the committee a couple of years after that i was on another committee well one of the values got and we went through the same exact process spending really a month or more doing that work um so one of the curveballs that we threw at our consultants was to say we need we need uh some pps core values to come out of this process and they very nicely altered the process so that that got built in that we got a really positive community input into those core values so i'm not going to read them all they're all they're all there for us to be held accountable to those going forward and how we operate as a board and as a district going from here thank you director bailey i want to thank explicitly again every member of our community students families educators community members both those who participated in the shaping of the vision who gave feedback who gave input who came to the installation who contributed a post-it note this is this is a reflection of you our community so as superintendent um i have the responsibility and honor to be the steward of this vision and partner with
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each and every one of you to make this a reality uh so that all these countless hours uh these thousands of sticky notes you left behind uh the great conversations that we've had that they come to fruition all that time and effort i recon i want to recognize uh gets us one step closer to really now with this vision work towards a definition of what we mean when we say a premier school system that we want for for our children this is my second rodeo with the prospect studio team thank you for your facilitation and you're shepherding us through this process there's a lot of school districts around the country that are realizing defining a collective vision is important and you might find some some similarities with how people are calling that out in the way of their graduate profiles i think what distinguishes this one in portland however is it goes not just one step further it goes two steps further it says if this is what we want for our graduates it understands that the adults around them have to also exhibit and model and develop in those skill areas as well and that can only happen not classroom and site and side by side but as a system and so we have to make those those shifts as well what i like that's unique about our portland setting is that it also has placed and planted a flag on issues of racial equity on climate justice and re-emphasizes again the importance of our students whose future that we're talking about so to everybody um thank you i want to express my appreciation and i know the team and staff and are happy to take your questions sorry superintendent guerrero so we do have one more slide and so this is you know again just a reminder this is a call of action uh it is about um you know individual effort collective impact so it will require every classroom educator every paraprofessional pps staff and administrator it will require parents business leaders elected officials non-profit leaders philanthropists and most importantly our students to build a collective social movement to make this vision a reality this is our share our community's shared outcomes the next step in our journey is to make this a reality and that begins now and we want to hear our community's ideas on how to realize this vision and we want you all to join us on this journey so this board we're going to turn it over to the board for questions and comments any questions or comments i guess the comment just in that um oh yeah turning that on it was a tremendous work and it was daunting and to think how is this how are they going to do this and come up with something that's this cohesive vision and he did it it's really amazing it's something to be incredibly proud of your work but but the work of our community that it took to lead this so i just want to express my gratitude and know that now as i'm moving off to just a role as a community member um it's impressive and it will be something i'll continue to you know share with our community and and to i think it's going to help engage the community continue to engage them so thanks again for the tremendous work and thank you to our community that have been involved in this process and jonathan and for spearheading it it's amazing the the other thing as i'm deeply grateful for the um the stakeholder groups that you this process engaged with that aren't usually heard from or asked for their you know um involvement in so that was pretty magnificent thanks anybody else i just want to thank um the team but primarily for ending on the last slide um so there's a saying you know you get you have to go slow to go fast um and i think there could be people in our community whose kids aren't being currently served where this could have been a very frustr it could be a very frustrating process for them to have watched this big long community visioning process that's very abstract talking about kids from the far distant future um and yet i we needed to go slow to go fast um and i think now is the time that we go
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fast and so ending with the call of action i think is is really um what we want to message out to the community that um we've we have a compelling vision that i i really believe um reflects what we want for our kids and so um let's go get it um so thanks for ending with the charge to all of us to not just admire the the vision but actually put it into practice and get get acting i'd like to say to you all that um somehow in this process we created a lot of energy which is not always easy to do in public processes and in the time that we spent together um there was so much authentic idea generation and vulnerability and sharing of ideas and sharing of dreams and you know dash dreams or ways that people have been let down by this system but there really was a lot of openness and energy and vulnerability in the process which you just don't don't see very often and part of that was a lot of really great work up front in terms of getting a very degree diverse group of people in the room for the for this whole process and i think it was especially gratifying at the very end to see after the graduate portrait and everything was installed at amazing it was gorgeous hot day and we had so many families come and they were so excited and a lot of people commented on seeing you know what they had expressed show up in in what was there for this vision and um you know we all have fatigue from greater or lesser degrees of involvement with this school district in the past um with you know public engagement that just doesn't get any traction or doesn't feel authentic or feels like checking a box and um was really not the sense that that's how people felt who were engaged in this process so thank you for for creating that that magic however you did in terms of of orchestrating things and um again this is the first step and we look forward to translating it into our real marching orders so i remember when a couple of us said we want a community process that will involve oh i don't know roughly 40 meetings and and i remember the look on everyone's face it was a little horrified um and and there was a there was you know one second of hesitation and then immediately followed by well okay then and and then you leapt in with both feet all of you um i i i this was an amazing effort i think i think it exceeded even even my wildest dreams of what a community process could look like and uh i vividly remember being in a couple of those community meetings where um at least one person often several said you know what i've been doing these things with pps for i don't know 15 years and tell me why this is going to be any difference and and we said you're going to have to just suspend disbelief for a moment because it's going to be different um and i think we've we've demonstrated for this first phase that this was different um i i i mean to echo what amy was saying i i think we engage with the community in a very different way i think it was much more authentic much more productive i think it was exciting it was it was everything you want a community engagement process to be and it rarely is but the next step is um now we got to do it and so i too am glad that you ended on this call to action slide because now we got to do stuff um and and in order for this to actually happen um pps needs to get its act together and we need to be very intentional and and we need to be focused on the kinds of things that we want to deliver to kids but it is very clear we cannot do this by ourselves um this is in order for this vision to come to fruition we have to have
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community involvement um real authentic like all in you know leap in with both feet every all hands on deck these are all of our children and this entire community needs to needs to help us we need to know when to ask and what to ask for and when people offer to help we need to be able to let them which has been problematic in pps in the past um so i mean we've got to do our stuff but but if if communities are really going to be um if schools are really going to be community hubs then we need the community in there um so anyway thank you for all the work this is it's a beautiful document it was a beautiful thing to watch and i'm looking forward to phase two and if we may one one last comment from our prospect studio team okay we would just like to also say um a few thank yous so um thank you very much to the to the board of education to chair more and particularly to director bailey who rolled up his sleeves and worked with the core team but thank you all for your leadership and sponsorship of this process because without that signaling from the top nobody takes it seriously so thank you for that um and thank you for superintendent guerrero for bringing us in thank you for letting us do this work it's been a great pleasure and a great honor we'd also like to thank i'd like to sort of mention a couple of other people nick paisler who's the outgoing student representative who did a fantastic job and showed great leadership with the student work that was really great and also to cheryl pittman who did some fantastic work behind the scenes to help everything go smoothly um i'd like to also extend our immense thank you to the core team director constant you talked about the magic a little bit of magic around a different kind of um stakeholder engagement and i think part of that magic was the advice and the and the um collaboration we're able to have with this cross-departmental district team they dedicated so many days at first i put hours but it's really days and days helping to coordinate this work facilitate tables at convenings facilitate you know stations at every community engagement session all while fulfilling their regular i know the roles in the district and this work could not have been accomplished successfully without their dedication commitment and honesty and insights um sometimes they had to tell us you know that um something could be done better because they know they've got their ear to the ground and and they know that so um i just i this team was so incredible we wanted to just kind of recognize and name each of them so again director bailey for your boards as a board representative to the core team thank you for being there every step of the way it wasn't just a representative that kind of you know as a figurehead you were one of the core team members and we really appreciate your insight and leadership um and then the others loretta benjamin samuels dr jill bryant stephanie cameron dos gupta danny ledesma dr kimberly mateer roseanne powell david roy alyssa shore dr aurora theri and courtney wesling and a special shout out to jonathan garcia your chief engagement officer and better known as really the team lead on this project thank you jonathan for your unwavering dedication your constant coordination and your tenacity working collaboratively with us through your vacations through your weekends as needed always available to ensure this work moves forward successfully moved forward successfully and we thank you not only for your leadership but your make things happen disposition which really helped to shepherd this process and as chair moore mentioned the community being really involved we also wanted to take the time to thank the 90 or so guiding coalition members who also gave up their weekends to do this work with us as well as the admin team who are instrumental in pulling together those almost hundred people guiding coalitions and going through the day and making sure everybody was well hydrated and whatnot and then especially at the guiding coalition as we saw with andrew harker and as director brim edwards mentioned the students at in the guiding coalition were instrumental as we see from the
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graphic and as we know in at the heart of the vision truly is the students and so we also wanted to name the students by name that we saw some of them on the photos but want to name along with nick and along with andrew there was cara bush hilario gonzalez elish cook faisal osman tori siegel carmela thomas simon wenger and shayla zhen thank you to them as well okay thank you the board will now consider resolution number 5909 a resolution adopting portland public schools reimagined preparing our students to lead change and improve the world as the district's vision do i have a motion so moved director of sponsor brown moves director brim edwards seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5909 is there any public comment is there any further board discussion just uh thank you to sarah granger going way back if you're out there somewhere um this goes back to 2011 coming out of the failed bond and the lucky lab group that she really helps kick off that process and that some of us were involved in um asked for an educational vision the jefferson critical friends for those of you are involved in that interesting process again time and again people came and testified saying we need an educational vision um earlier when we were talking about our superintendent's performance about how many things that have been on the burner so long that are now finally actually happening this is one of them yeah amen okay the board will now vote on resolution 5909 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all the posts say no any abstentions okay resolution 5909 is approved by voter 7-0 thank you thank you good work okay so before we move on to the next item we want to return to the complaint and uh i have wording on a new resolution this would be resolution 5921 and this is a motion to hold complaint number 201903 in abeyance until december 3rd 2019. okay do i have a motion second director bailey moves director brim edward edwards seconds um all in favor say yes yes all opposed say no any abstentions okay resolution 5921 passes by a vote of seven to zero okay thank you again okay um so we move on to the next item um and i just want to point out we're about half an hour behind schedule um so just keep that in mind as we actually think we started about 20 minutes late too so for us uh yeah but we're still okay just keep in mind and we voted on some things twice that's true we could go for three um okay next item benson campus master plan revisions and updates uh i'm gonna let do a little reprise of what's happened at the conclusion of the benson polytech high school pre-designed diligence process in february 2017 board resolution 5394 referred the benson polytechnic high school modernization to voters in may 2017. after adoption of board resolution 5160 which directed the development of educational specifications and a master plan for the benson campus the board directed the superintendent to return to the board of education with a location analysis for multiple pathways to graduation programs following community engagement with a variety of stakeholders the board approved a new building dedicated to alliance reconnection program and services dart clinton and teen parent program and child care services that will be located on the existing parking lot area of the benson campus and requested an evaluation of alliance at meek campus programming
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that will include feasibility of co-locating in the new mpg building on the benson campus how's that for a sentence after reviewing several options the board asked staff to bring back to the board a resolution to relocate alliance at meek into the planning and pre-design for the new mpg building in the existing parking lot on the benson campus superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce the item i'm going to ask our ceo dan young to introduce staff and guests that are joining us on this topic which we're glad to bring back here this evening to keep us on track thank you and good evening superintendent uh board chair and directors i'm dan young i'm here with brian earlier who's senior project manager on the benson project i have to admit that chairman you more or less stole my thunder right there that was going to about be my intro but the only final piece to that is that is a nice quick recap we did present the analysis at the may 21 board work session there appeared to be strong support with co-locating uniting the alliance programs on the mpg building on the benson parking lot at that meeting so in your packets today is a revised staff report and resolution and staff has prepared tonight to answer any questions that you may have any questions say something about it but i also want to just ask the question um what's the status of the parking i was looking through the um the documents and i'm not saying something about the parking because i know at one point there was a sign um potentially a significant financial commitment to add some sort of parking as i said which i wasn't supportive of but so i'm curious what's the status real quick i'll do a quick answer and let brian add some details so uh there had been express to the team from the stakeholders that there's going to be a loss of some parking and parking is at a premium out there so the team did an analysis of what it would take to add some additional structured parking which is not cheap by any means uh so that's what is in the analysis at the work session it did not appear that that was an option that looked favorable so that is not a part of the recommendation but the information is still in there we do still continue to look at other potential parking solutions out there none of those are really fully baked so we don't want to bring those forward but the team is still very cognizant of if there is a way to bring additional parking that that is something that would be desirable so just to summarize there's nothing in it now but you may you would come you would come back if there were um something added and just for what it's worth i'm not i'm not against parking in general because um but it's so close to max um and just the financial costs and sort of the trade-offs involved yes we would definitely if there was if there was something of significance of course there was any source yes we would definitely come back with that i think what we hear and again i don't want to speak for the team is that because of all the unique programs and the different times they use the facility that having parking uh is a nice feature that they have out there they there will still be parking on site so they're not losing at all by any means and you can park on much of the street out there at the moment but that could go away in the future so we're cognizant of that as well and to quantify that's that option one maintains 115 parking spots to not just for benson but the multiple pathway program staff and activities as well which we heard from the principals you know should should go a long way to meeting the majority of their needs yes that's correct any other questions or so i'm just going to make a comment i i since this is especially since it's your last meeting um director rosen i just want to say thank you because i think we were sitting up stairs in a room late at night wondering what we were going to do with this project i think we were really stuck and you encouraged us to look at option one and i think this option the brilliance of it is that it does the right thing for the students in the program that are going from multiple pathways to graduation and i also think it's the a wise choice for taxpayers and that i think we get some synergies and students are going to have the ability to have some shared services whether it's the health clinic the teen parent program food pantry clothing closet and that's i think makes that makes a lot of sense so i just want to um thank you for that contribution it's fitting that we're voting it on on your last your last
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night [Music] thank you staff for working this through because um going back to our conversation when we first came forward with the um alliance proposal we said hmm isn't this only half of alliance and um it kind of slowed things down and wasn't what was expected but it was clear that it wasn't an equitable solution to just keep alliance uh separated because that's a artifact of history so we are doing the right thing so i just want to point out if we look at the pps core values that we just approved one of them is students at the center another one is racial equity and social justice respect relationships partnerships collaboration yeah i think this checks a number of boxes on these values so thank you for all the work that you've done i i think it's long past time that students in the multiple pathways programs had the kinds of facilities had a facility that would truly meet their needs and be the kind of learning environment that they need that they deserve i just have one thing to say and i remember [Music] when we first started talking about the multiple pathways program i just wanted to say that i really appreciated superintendent guerrero and staff going back to each of the programs asking what they wanted and taking it seriously and i think that's how we ended up where we are and this is really the right thing to do as rita said or as chair morrison okay did you okay um so the board will now consider resolution number 5910 did we do this already no no okay a resolution authorizing benson campus master plan revisions and updates do i have a motion so moved director bailey moves director constance seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5910 ms powell is there any public comment is there any further board discussion okay the board will now vote on resolution 5910 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed say no any abstentions resolution 5910 is approved by voter70 thank you thank you thank you thank you dan and team and if i could ask assistant superintendent lafontaine and uh karina wolf to to convey to our school leaders tonight's decision thank you okay uh the next item uh amendments to the 2019-20 agreement between portland association of teachers in portland public schools on friday june 15th the portland association of teachers ratified a number of amendments to our current collective bargaining contract which runs through june 30th 2020. the amendments cover a number of areas and the vote comes after a series of interest-based bargaining sessions between pps and pat we have been pleased by how throughout the process both sides have remained steadfastly focused on how to best ensure healthy interactions between teachers and students superintendent guerrero would you like to introduce the item i'll be glad to introduce our chief of hr sharon reese who will tell us more good evening i'm sharon reece your chief of human resources and i'm joined this evening by our senior legal counsel john stellwagen who is in addition to being an house attorney for us i was also a member of the pps interest-based bargaining team as you know as part of our agreement with p-a-t on a one-year contract extension entered into earlier this year we engaged in interest-based bargaining to address articles related to investigations and record-keeping as well as the draft professional conduct policy our interests were founded on and continue to be founded on protecting students from predatory behavior including implementing the white horse report recommendations and ensuring fair and thorough investigations of potentially career altering allegations against educators and so i'm going to walk through a couple of the highlights for the collective bargaining agreement
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we agreed that letters of expectation will also be retained in personnel files for six years which is an increase from the current three years letters of expectation and other disciplinary action will remain in investigation files indefinitely pbs will ensure employees receive written notification of investigation findings within 30 days of the conclusion of the investigation and sexual misconduct investigations will be conducted by subject matter expert in keeping with the white house recommendations paid administrative leave pending investigation will be revised and our is revised in our collective bargaining agreement to add an option for the district to temporarily reassign employees rather than place them in paid administrative leave um and in addition we made commitments uh regarding our some revisions to our professional conduct policy that led to the withdrawal and resolution of the demand to bargain that pat had submitted previously um i know we're we also made some commitments on the public records request which i believe is coming up in an and i will forego comments about that until we address that uh resolution so we welcome your questions any questions no questions so go ahead good this is the time to say something i could come up with some questions but i asked them already so i'm going to support the contract changes i think there's some important provisions that were added and i'm glad they were added in a spirit of collaborative collaboratively um developed and those things would include subject matter experts for sexual misconduct um those will have investigators that have some expertise i think that's really important in the past we haven't been explicit about that prioritizing investigations for those that are on paid administrative leave think it's the right thing to do the fact that letters of expectations will be retained for six years instead of three is also an important change there's also some things that aren't in the contract document that i think are important one is a clear statement from the district that investigation files will be kept centrally and indefinitely and investigation files will not be purged or eliminated but they'll be kept centrally so that we don't have gaps in our knowledge i also want to just point out because when you look at the contract language it's like well there's not that you know it seems um could be fairly sparse but it i think that's the totality of everything together it's the trainings the title nine directors um an investment that we're about ready to make later tonight in the adoption of a centralized electronic file filing system so those are all positive things where i see coming together a more comprehensive system i will say i was disappointed that we came out of the process without i think i was expecting some specific written feedback from the portland association of teachers on the professional conduct policy we um had it's been out for our first reading since october 2018 they demanded to bargain it and i really believe that our policy will be better with their input and sort of their insights because they live it every day and i just think the policy will be better with a better understanding both what their concerns are and recommendations they have because the policy in essence provides the guidelines and expectations for appropriate contact between staff and students but while we didn't get feedback from iv from the ibb process i want to thank carol hawkins for sure she's not here tonight but i want to thank her she has provided a set of revisions of her understanding of some of the concerns that were raised of the process and those revisions will be considered at our thursday meeting of the policy and governance committee um so i think that's on on our way so carol came out of a very intent time intensive process and um turned around a set of
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revisions that i think will allow us to put you know one more piece of the puzzle together um so you know i think if we get all those pieces together including tonight's contract changes that if misconduct occurs or if there's alleged misconduct that will have better processes for the investigations and the district's commitment to a centralized system of retaining investigative files will mean that many of the gaps that existed two or three years ago will no longer be exist and will be better protecting our students and also really providing clear guidance to staff of how to interact with our students but so that we get the the great value that comes out of our staff having strong relationships with students but that we also know that we're ensuring sort of student safety and appropriate guidelines so i'm going to be supportive of the contract changes and i want to thank the members of the ibb team for moving the process forward i want to add director brian edwards that credit also goes to mr stahl wagon to my right who worked uh many hours alongside carol hawkins in producing that draft policy it's our strong intention uh to provide the the necessary staff input and interest-based bargaining uh team input so that that policy is ready to go by the beginning of school thank you one of the values that i want to speak to that is embedded in a couple of different places here also is part of our training is really looking at our process for investigations because one of the problems that we were trying to address here was a lack of clear protocols around how to follow up on concerns so it was very dependent on the leadership in the building or the relationship between the teacher and you know the building leader or someone in central office and what is really important to me here is that every concern about professional misconduct will now be investigated and that means it will be documented in some way and some of those might be very simple and they might be dispensed within a day and some of them may end up being complex and have you know considerable ramifications but through a combination of language and training and then records retention we now are able to keep track of all those concerns and to you know keep them over time and that's a huge huge difference so it's not just about how we deal with stuff on the back end and how long we keep the records it's about the fact that their records are being generated from concerns which was not the case and along with that and we talked about this um earlier um and not part of this uh agreement but if we have a practice of every time we have a new principle in a building that they do a file check to come up to come up to speed that that's if that's that's i think should be part of our orientation process and it should be should be called out as that and not something that we should do or happens a lot of time but happens every time that i think would be closing one last little loop thank you director bailey i completely agree and uh you just want to make the point that yes this is a greatly improved procedure but procedures procedures aren't going to do us any good if people aren't going to follow them and this really is going to take a culture shift in portland public and superintendent guerrero i do want to say i think you've done a terrific job starting that culture shift and it's terribly important but again we have to see reports records investigations actually generated thank you so i want to
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speak as a member of the ibb team for pps um interest-based bargaining um is intended to provide a forum for um for two parties who are in a negotiating relationship um to to focus on shared interests and um pbs has in the past made somewhat fitful efforts in that direction um but i have to say um i sat through i believe every moment of it with the exception of two and a half hours that i spent at the roosevelt graduation um it was it was intensive it was long um there was um universal participation um and and i have to say in this instance i think the ibb process lived up to its promise i thought this was um a a a really kind of okay words overused but i'll use it anyway it was it was kind of inspiring to see how these two two parties who have historically been in a um challenging relationship um really embrace the central uh um commitment to child safety and well-being um and i think what we've come up with as a result is a a series of changes to the contract that were identified in the whitehurst investigation report as being problematic in in making it difficult potentially impossible for the district to identify um educated people in buildings um who who were exhibiting uh questionable behavior and who might be putting children at risk um and if you go back and look at the whitehurst reports what it says pretty clearly is that most of the problems were internal to pps administration that we did not have the structures and the systems and the processes and the protocols and the behaviors in place that would allow us to as a district to protect children um in the intervening years since the whitehurst investigation was um was delivered to us it's important to note that there has been a tremendous amount of work done by pps on its own structures to create the systems that are going to preserve the safety of children in addition to that we have i mean it's been huge work in hr and thank you to you two and everyone else up there we have created new training systems new trainings are around child well-being and helping people identify predatory behaviors we have new protocols that ensure that that everybody is getting the trainings and we have systems to to double check on that and we have um i mean there's been a whole series uh we have a title ix director we have new policies that are in place around um uh sexual um not misconduct uh so i'm talking about the the the new curriculum around for students around um healthy behaviors healthy teen behavior um and that has been a huge lift we have engaged with outside experts in the field who are giving trainings to middle school teachers they'll soon be giving trainings to our principals we've we've set up a whole series of um we put a whole series of changes in motion that are going to that are going to protect children this is one of the this is one of the last pieces that we
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needed to tackle and we did it and we did it in a spirit of cooperation and a shared commitment to protect children this is a difficult topic for me so forgive me um i'm proud of the work that the ibt ibb team did on both sides um and uh i want to um i want to read a uh a comment from joy ellis who was one of the members of the investigation team on the whitehurst investigation she has she has read the agreement that we came up with and she has offered her commentary and i'm quoting here i should point out she was she was part of the investigation team for the whitehurst report and after that she has been doing some work on a consulting basis with pps specifically around sexual conduct issues quote um i have worked with pps as a consultant since may 2018 and for the past year i have witnessed pps working to follow through on the recommendations in the investigation report i think pps has made significant strides to making the district a safer place for students and is certainly moving in the right direction significantly the district has been focused on trying to bring about a culture shift that would have a lasting effect on the safety and well-being of the students rather than just checking the box on the recommendations in the report that is harder work and will have more lasting effects and i'm impressed you went for the long-term approach having the investigation file stored and maintained centrally by hr and having a record of all investigations whether they result in discipline or not is a huge gain for the district assuming someone is reviewing the database the district should now be able to detect a pattern of misconduct that it previously was not able to detect also if you train the administrators in their support staff well then anything of value in the supervisor files should end up in the investigation files unquote i think it's significant that one of the investigators has has given a positive recommendation uh but she has a positive view of the changes that we have enacted here um and and i just want to say one last thing um child predators are not large in number but they are huge in impact huge um any child serving agency has to assume that somewhere there is going to be at least the potential for behavior that will harm children i am very confident that among educators it is exceedingly rare exceedingly rare to have an educator who would engage deliberately in this kind of conduct but if there is even one it's too many and we are now taking steps that will make it possible for pps to do everything that is humanly possible to ensure that we are doing what we can to protect students so there you go and just because you already said it once tonight i'll save you from having to say it again chair more but thank you for all that great context setting about all the work that's been done in response to the white horse report and the very last piece is our legislative agenda which was as high a priority as all of these other pieces so if we can get those senators to come back to the chamber i think we're going to pass our very important piece of legislation that that came directly from the board's advocacy in response to this report that changes the terms in terms of what constitutes
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sexual misconduct as well as a couple of other really really important provisions and that's the last leg on the stool the professional conduct policy and the professional conduct policy right so which we had some in the process of ibb with the external presentation from cares northwest really sheds some great light on how to make sure that our professional conduct policy adheres with best practices in terms of creating a definition of what behaviors are you know how to define behaviors that are cause for concern that was really really an enlightening part of this process and what healthy relationships look like and that the culture should be focused on promoting healthy relationships between adults and children not outlawing caring relationships so i just had one sort of final thought because i say when you look at the contract language it's like oh it's um there's not as much changes as you might think because it's part of this bigger web of work but there also were a number of protocols and practices that were agreed to and i think it's still somewhat of a mystery to the larger community about what those things were not only maybe principals who might be expected to actually implement some of the things but other staff members whether it's teachers parents and community members so i think they're it would be valuable for us to sort of be able to communicate to the broader community what those things are so there's the contract which we're voting on tonight and then these other things and what do they mean and how does it play out so that we all have a common understanding because i think that's when you get sort of a seamless system as everybody has the same understanding of what the roles and responsibilities and expectations are going to be and i think and i know some of it still needs to be written but we need to be able to describe it to people because lots of people different people have roles in making sure that the agreements come to life okay the board will now consider resolution number 5911 a resolution to approve amendments to the 2019-20 agreement between portland association of teachers and school district number 1j multnomah county oregon do i have a motion second director constant moves director brim edwards seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5911. ms powell is there any public comment is there any further board discussion okay the board will now vote on resolution 5911 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please say no any abstentions resolution 5911 is approved by a vote of 7-0 thank you that was big yeah i'm just cranking through the big ones tonight okay the next item is resolution to endorse public records processing guidance as part of the pps memorandum of agreement with the portland association of teachers um so i want to frame this up a little bit um so i think there's been some considerable misunderstanding about um about the nature and the impact of um of the changes that we're proposing and do do you want to give just a very brief kind of factual description of what the i'd be happy to so the purpose of the memorandum of agreement which has not yet been finalized but is in process uh is to better inform and educate our employees about what the public records law requirements are and how they impact their work and to clarify the existing process for notification to employees and provide
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transparency to that that notice specifically a seven day notice informs the public records officers mandatory review of the privacy exemption with information of that by its very nature is likely known exclusively to the employee so specifically what we committed to is preparing a frequently asked questions type of document that provides details to employees about what a public records request is how it's processed and describes commonly asserted exemptions so an overview or summary of those issues we also agreed to send out annual reminders to employees about email and other materials being subject to public records requests we think this will both improve our employees understanding as well as the district's ability to respond to public records requests and as is consistent with our current policies employees are going to have that opportunity to be informed of the records requests and to provide information if it is relevant on potentially sensitive personal or private information as well as identify any records that would be related to the public records request we agreed to a seven day notice period and there have been assumptions or conclusions that a seven day notice would create delay in our process that assumption or conclusion in my opinion is inconsistent with our experience about the process uh and how long it takes and how we how we move through those reviews and the application of those statutory exemptions that we have to review so if i can um say a few things um actually it's more than a few things um so i i i think it's very important to be clear that the proposed memorandum of agreement does not represent any change to our public records policy which is called public access to district records number 2.50.010 p for those i want to look it up the state statute governing public records imposes a test that public agencies must apply to balance the public interest against an individual's right to privacy in responding to records requests when considering personal or private records it also requires that there be no under undue delay in providing the materials to requesters the change in implementation practices that this agreement contemplates will rarely if ever impact the district's duty or ability to respond to public records requests so one the records policy we adopted not only conforms with the state statute but goes even further in requiring that the district quote construe the public interest liberally in favor of disclosure unquote that bias towards disclosure remains unchanged pps also has a responsibility to consider possible privacy concerns of employees our policy as adopted by the board in 2018 includes a requirement to notify employees when a public records request may potentially involve quote sensitive personal or private information unquote this is intended to provide an opportunity for employees to alert the public records officer to any extenuating circumstances that might warrant the assertion of privacy rights for example if the public records request process were being used for malicious purposes in the context of a domestic violence situation or for harassment the district would be required to consider denial of a request to protect the safety of that employee a recent ruling by the d.a on a case in the neighboring school district confirms that privacy rights may be asserted in extreme cases in order for the district to apply the obligatory balancing tests test employees must be provided a reasonable amount of time to become aware of the records request and inform the public records officer of any special circumstances in the course of discussions with pat we agreed that a 24-hour window which has been the district's practice
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in in the last year or so was unreasonably short and could potentially endanger an employee the minor change in administrative protocols that we contemplate here provides more clarity on the time available to employees to express privacy concerns and allows the district sufficient time to properly assess the applicability of the personal privacy exemption under the statute since the bias toward disclosure stated in our public records policy remains unchanged we anticipate that few of any requests will be denied the district also has a responsibility to produce records without undue delay since passage of this policy pps has endeavored to respond to all requests as quickly as possible and we do not expect that this minor change in implementation will have or we expect that this minor change in implementation will have little or no impact on the district responsiveness going forward currently the average public records request gets a response in 19 days 71 percent of them are completed within 15 business days 86 are completed within 60 days moreover in light of the volume of public records requests which is i believe the numbers 256 requests in 2018 alone that produced tens of thousands of documents we still have what i think is a pretty remarkable track record of producing documents in light of the volume pps has recent recently allocated an additional 0.5 fte to the task of doing records reviews demonstrating our commitment to fulsome compliance with the statute we believe that this change in protocol will better inform the identification of responsive records and will not result into in any delay on the district's timeline fulfillment of public records requests we are confident that requesters will not experience any meaningful change in our current responsiveness to requests as a result of this minor adjustment to internal protocols i i totally understand why people are skeptical given pps's history of um of um how should i put it not non-responsiveness you know bias toward lack of transparency in the past uh i completely understand why somebody would would immediately leap to a conclusion that this is an attempt to hide the ball as a member of the ibb team what i can say is not only was it not pps's team's interest in delaying in any way public disclosure it was also not pats what they were talking about genuinely was protecting their members from harassment and and um a situation that could be that could have life-changing impacts because of the personal nature of the information that would be disclosed so i'm pretty sure nothing i said is going to convince anybody who is determined to think the worst of pps but i felt compelled to make a try any other question any other comments very briefly uh thank you chair moore uh after an exhaustive review of the statutes i completely agree and thank you for putting it so well i think the other thing that's worth pointing out is that there is nothing in this minor change to protocols that broadens the potential for exemptions the personal privacy exempt exemption still stands this does not add anything to it to sweep in more um requests under that exemption uh so so to think that it sort of opens the floodgates in anywhere in any way um also is not accurate which of us at the end of a long day has not blown off looking at email until a day later um
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and on that basis or two okay true confessions here um and on that basis alone 24 hours is way too short of time uh the assumption that this is going to add seven days on to a release period is mistaken you know i think it's important and respectful in a situation like this to ask the person who actually does the job how is this going to impact release times and ryan who's again these are some of these data requests are humongous he's done incredible work and he's very clear on what you said that this is in in most cases not going to affect the release time at all um and only a you know we're talking a day or two delay for in most of these cases on the few that actually where there might be an extension so no material impact i also want to say taking a step back and thinking about uh the business that we do as a board and is this the right venue for dealing with with an issue like this and i don't think it is this isn't policy this is a procedure the 24-hour turnaround that ryan adopted was i think his decision or maybe his and his supervisors and he's the one that um again we have an interest in making sure our policy is followed that there is absolute um fast as possible releasing data but following the disclosure guidelines as well to protecting privacy the two things that we have to balance um and i think it's uh it is an administrative protocol um that should have happened through that venue and not through a huge board discussion um and and that has been um misframed in the media so um i'm not going to support the resolution um and i think there's a real balancing act um and there's an intention inherent in our public records policy and the tension is that we're a public institution and we need to do our business in public and that most the vast majority of our records are public records and we also need to protect highly sensitive or personal information of our staff that may fall under the personal privacy exemption so how do we weigh that and we also need to follow the not on the letter the spirit of undo delay um and just as some background for why i'm going to land on the no so starting in august of 2017 the policy and governance at that time task force started a long process to revise our policy around public records and to director moore's point um you know i think there there wasn't a clear policy and certainly there wasn't a default um to transparency and to release and not to like maximize our use of exemptions so we started the process um with i think a goal in mind of what we wanted to accomplish and we also wanted to accommodate some changes in the public records laws we had a long public process um with active communication community uh participation from community members reporters editors the society of professional journalisms um i think it's probably the most input we've received on any of our policies and over a long sustained period of time i was just looking at the number of meetings we had on the topic and we had multiple first first readings because that furthered through their iterations and at a certain point in time when we were ready to move the policy we had demand a bargain from the portland association of teachers and they brought forward three changes and the three changes were all i think fairly closely related one was adding a sentence to the policy to maintain confidentiality through a records appeal process because obviously if you release the record and there's an appeal process that you haven't protected you potentially haven't protected something that might fall under that exemption then they all pat also added language um
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asked for language that said upon receiving a public records request seeking potentially sensitive personal or private information related to a staff member the district shall notify the staff member and the staff members union if represented in writing of the existence and nature of the records request and then they had a third request as well those first two um pieces we adopted the policy we discussed it we thought they were reasonable and we adopted in they also ask that we incorporate other language which was the time a five-day review period and we decided not to include that in so while um it's not in our policy we did discuss it and deliberately decide not to include it and i want to share why um i was comfortable with that um because i did think that we should put in language into the policy that we were going to notify an employee but why i was comfortable with us not adding the set review period so there was this tension of undue delay but also i was comfortable because our public records office hr and the general counsel's office i think really bring a care and a thoughtfulness and respect for our employees to their work and at the time i believe they brought that care and thoughtfulness and balanced it with both the letter and the spirit of the public records law so we had to keep records moving comply with a no undue delay but also being really thoughtful about the impact of employees on different records requests so this past year since we the board the board adopted the policy without that review language and this past year we've had hundreds of public records requests as um chairmoor mentioned um but there's not any evidence to suggest that records fitting the definition of the perf personal privacy exemptions were released um because i believe staff continued to bring that care and thoughtfulness to their work and um they did they did their job and there wasn't the release of uh many pub records that were later to be contested um so i understand the concern of teachers because essentially um you know the we didn't have that same system of public records and sort of the care and thoughtfulness of how things um were reviewed so i can understand why they would have that potential concern but i think this last year demonstrated that demonstrates that we can comply with the letter in the spirit of the law and be mindful and protective of those records that employees can justify that there is a personal privacy exemption um so given that this was outside of the scope of what the board had originally discussed about what was going to be bargained in ibb and the fact that i believe staff continues to bring great care to the work and the way in which they handle our employees records especially ones that are highly sensitive and the fact that this was agreed to in a non-public process i'm not going to be able to be supportive of making the change in this way i feel like we we had a process in which people in good faith came and presented their points of view and you know sometimes the board made a decision to support um the point of view of staff other times as long as it wasn't in conflict with the public the spirit and the letter of the hub records law and other times we agreed with community members about the approach we were going to take so i would have i think we get stronger opinions we're stronger policies when it's we have all the stakeholders at the table and then we can make the decisions based on that i'm assuming this is going to pass tonight and i'm going to continue to assume that the public records office are going to be able to sort of hold these dual values which are protecting our employees and any highly sensitive information but also to follow the letter of the spirit of the law i want to do want to note that today we received public comment from the society of professional journalists expressing um i think just some they expressed a number of opinions but um sort of in conclusion that the moa that includes this should be carefully crafted and vetted by the public i don't think that's an unreasonable expectation and that hope that staff assuming this resolution
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is going to be adopted that they do consult with other stakeholders in the process and how we craft this in a way that both honors our and respects and takes care of our employees sensitive records and allows us to fully comply with the letter in the spirit of public records so i'm also going to be a no vote on the resolution i agree with everything julius said i can't say it as eloquently i just i don't um i just have a few points i don't agree with the obviously with the inclusion of the seven day review period i feel like exactly what julia said we set policy we did it through a very public process we got a lot of feedback and we already discussed this issue so i think we're undermining the work that we've already done and now we are revisiting this issue in private um since the policy has worked to date i don't see why we need to make a change and i would feel a lot more comfortable if we were going to say the mla would be negotiated but it would be vetted publicly consistent with the way we set the policy originally this is not a change to our policy director for matters i appreciate um the framing of um the respect and care and the recognition of how the departments here in the central office approach these issues with respect and care and thoughtfulness i certainly my intention is to approach all of my work with respect care thoughtfulness and accountability as well and that is my experience with the human resources team with our legal team and certainly with our public records office and our public records officer in how these issues are approached i would like to make two points one is that no matter how much care and respect and thoughtfulness those groups bring to the public records review we don't necessarily have the information that an employee who is this is subject to a public records request and disclosure would have about the application of the privacy exemption and it is ensuring that we have that information in the process that i think is is critical to our approach so intent those intentions also need to be informed the second thing i would say is in my discussions with our public records officer i would agree that we have not we don't believe we have had a situation where we have released information that should have applied a privacy exemption should have applied but we have had situations where information that was provided to the employee excuse me provided by the employee did impact our public records officer's decision to exert the exemption and once information is disclosed uh then that's a bell that cannot be on wrong so we take that uh concern and that that obligation very seriously that's the process working when they provide information and we make a decision based on that right yes that's correct yes is there more discussion i have a modest amendment to the language of this resolution that i'd like to bring forward but we can finish any discussion here before well we have to do a motion in a second before we can do that okay the board would not consider resolution number 5912 resolution to endorse public records processing guidance as part of pps memorandum of agreement with portland association of teachers do i have a motion second director of sponsor brown moves director anthony seconds the motion to adopt resolution 5912 uh is it can i is there any public comment okay okay any board discussion
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any further board discussion i would still think that um i'm in in somewhat in agreement that this memorandum is not the way to go that um whether it gets voted up or down we could have just done it without a memorandum and i think that would have been a much cleaner process and i i see no reason why we can't just do it without a memorandum and do it administratively and figure out what's what's the right 24 hours just because it's worked so far with 24 hours doesn't mean there isn't um a chance i mean i think it it's if anything it increases the chance of something going wrong in the future um so administratively changing that timeline makes sense to me using the best judgment of our staff but it didn't wasn't that wasn't the agreement that would be in mla the agreement was that it would uh sit in an moa that's correct versus us just doing it administratively i mean that's which which by the way will be more transparent than doing it just administratively which we could have done well i don't think we should have done it either way but so you're you're happy with 24 hours no i believe the they prov they've provided the care and protected our employees sensitive information i'm asking again you're happy with 24 hours i think i think it hasn't always been 24 hours that may be the standard but my my understanding from conversations with the office is that they take care to get if they feel like they need the information and the records are particularly sensitive that it's not my understanding that 24 hours is a hard and fast they just press the button and send it off i don't know if you want except what it is okay um i'd like to move a resolution please and excuse me an amendment to this resolution and um you know one of the things that uh is really most germane to me about this conversation is making sure that not only do we not broaden the potential for being looser on our definitions of personal privacy but also that we don't construe in any way that we are are broadening that and um the way this resolution is written i i concur with the concern expressed by the society of professional journalists about the language which um our language is the board of education hereby endorses the inclusion in the moa of the seven day review period for employees when public records requests potentially include sensitive personal or private information which is that is not the language of the statute that's the language of our policy and i would feel more comfortable with this proposed language the board of education hereby endorses the inclusion in the moa of the seven day review period for employees for public records requests that the district flags is potentially being subject to a personal privacy exemption this will allow employees to provide information that enables the district to assess whether a personal privacy exemption is applicable under the public records law and the i think this is a salient point from the society of professional journalists um that in contrast to the district's language quoted above the only statute that allows for any sort of delay applies only to records to which certain exemptions apply it does not mention quote potentially sensitive personal or private documents so it's i would just like to change that so that it only refers to the personal privacy exemption and i can i'll read that proposed language again but this um actually brings up a broader issue which we haven't addressed tonight which is that uh this is not a blanket delay or doesn't allow for the potential of a blanket delay it only allows for and and excuse me it's inappropriate to use the word delay at all it only allows for that potential in the few cases where it appears that the personal privacy exemption may be applicable under the law
03h 50m 00s
otherwise it does not kick in the employee's ability to review or delay and i'm not sure that's been made entirely clear from our conversation tonight so that actually raises the question so it's a it's a good point if i raise the question that i don't know who's the public records expert but so say there's a request for information that names a public employee employee of ours and we don't have any idea whether it's sensitive or not are we notifying them when we get the request that names their name and that starts with seven days or is that when they get notified then and then when the the information actually the public information officer gets the record and he reviews it is that when he notifies the employee again because he's seen what it is it's it's my understanding that our public records officer will proactively notify an employee who's specifically named in a request and uh perhaps senior director cameron has a different or would like to add to this so i will defer i'm just trying to understand when the process yes and and i think it um there's such a wide variety of possibilities with how records are requested so in your example a record's requested about an employee we may not know um the contents of those records at the time but our records officer does notify the employee that a record has been requested and this is the nature of that request so there's a possibility if the nature of the request right up front indicates a personal privacy exemption may apply then yes i i think in practice the clock starts then if if it's not evident and it is uncovered later in the review of those records then i think it's later in the process perhaps as those records are being reviewed what i know and how ryan is currently applying or our public records officer is currently applying this practice is it will begin to start sooner in the process when it's not evident at the beginning so as he's reviewing records normally we would wait till the end of the process before notifying you know the employee that here's what the records are now that will happen sooner the minute an employee's information is uncovered so i think that's um that's that's why we're comfortable knowing that it's not going to you know tack it on to the end or delay it from going out the door so i want to be i want to be clear that there are concurrent processes that are happening and then a notification doesn't happen at the end when uh the records the contemplated application of this is not that uh ryan waits until the end of the of the legal review of the gathering of the information all of that once it becomes clear in the process that there's a employee who may be impacted that is when the notice uh happens so that um the notification and those other processes and reviews are running concurrently i'm sorry i'm confused so yes sorry that's that's why in the analysis and in the conversation in ibb it was clear that it was very unlikely to result in a delay because that notification happens concurrent with the discovery and with the queue of all the requests and how they're processed so but does the notifications start when the request comes in those that i understand there's like named and then there's oh it turns out they're impacted but if it's your named one so username the public records officer sends out a a notice like you're named and that's what starts the seven days it depends on the nature of the request i think and so if the if the nature of the request makes it clear that it's likely to uh involve records that identify some sort of privacy or that involves some sort of privacy exemption he's most likely going to send out a notice at that time there are some times where a request is more vague or general where it may not come to light until he's doing the review and learning what records are responsive that he then identifies that it's a uh something that would bring to light or involve an assertion of the privacy exemption so it really is kind of case dependent but uh as a result because we think there's typically um some time that that it's in the process uh it's not not anticipated
03h 55m 00s
that it's gonna be at the very end and cause undue delay by attacking on a seven seven day window at the end of every one of these if that was contemplated i think we would have had a different discussion but instead uh it's it's anticipated that it's going to be sometime during the collecting of of documents and determining what's the response what's responsive that that that at that point he's going to provide the notice and as he's completing the the request and coordinating with that individual that that's the seven day window is going to occur during that time period not thereby not resulting in ideally not not typically resulting in any sort of delay and if it is delayed i think it would be short it is case by case does that fit the definition of undo delay short i'm just curious i'm not a lawyer i'm just wondering i i think well i they don't know that i don't think short is is contemplated that's that's my probably paraphrasing but i think uh that we anticipate that it's not going to result in undue delay i think that was affirmed by the state public records officer when we asked for guidance on this okay so we have we have a motion for the existing resolution on the table do we have a motion for do you have language that you'd like to yes and again the the meat of this is um just to remove the language that says potentially include sensitive personal or private information and basically replace it with language that says that may trigger the privacy exemption and the reason being and i'm going to take this straight from the society of professional journalists is the current pps language in sbj's view risks being interpreted broadly in conflict with organs records law instruction confirmed by a 2016 supreme court ruling that exemptions being interpreted narrowly in favor of disclosure so um i move an amendment to resolution 5912 the board of education hereby endorses the inclusion in the moa of the seven day review period for employees for public records requests that the district flags as potentially being subject to a personal privacy exemption period this will allow employees to provide information that enables the district to assess whether a personal privacy exemption is applicable under the public records laws do you have that language okay you have it okay so um so we have uh do i have a motion and a second emotion i have motion do we have a second okay director constant moves uh director esparza brown seconds a motion to amend the resolution with the language as stated okay do we have any discussion okay all in favor of accepting the amended language say yes yes yes all opposed no no any abstentions okay the um the motion to amend the resolution passes by a vote of six to zero six to one um okay so now um we vote on the underlying resolution number 5912 as amended all in favor say aye aye opposed no no uh the resolution 5912 passes by a vote of five to two um one abstention one abstention sorry okay uh okay so based on governance okay resolution you didn't ask for a discussion can you please tell me who voted no and who abstained directors brim edwards and rosen voted no director bailey abstained okay so resolution 5912 passes by a vote of four [Music] to two with one abstention okay thank you okay next item
04h 00m 00s
next item is uh adoption of the 20 1920 budget i will now recess the board from its regular meeting and convene as the budget committee uh superintendent guerrero would you like to make any comments about the 2019-2020 budget cfo cynthia lay resolution 5912 to impose tax and adoption yes good evening um board chair member of the boards and superintendent guerrero i am here presenting to you the resolution to adopt the 2019-20 budget that was approved by the budget committee and also to levy taxes for the year of 2019-20. and i am asking that you will approve adopt the adoption of the 2019-20 budget as approved second well hang on hey he just moved the board will now consider resolution 5913 to impose tax and adoption of the fiscal year 2019-20 budget for school district number 1j multnomah county oregon do i have a motion in a second second director bailey moves director constant seconds the motion to adopt resolution number 5913 ms powell is there any public comment okay is there any board discussion so i'm gonna um spare spare any discussion but um i would like instead of having this discussion tonight um at the last meeting as we were approving the budget there was quite a lengthy discussion about how we were going to be allocating some additional fte and i would like a report that tells us when in the adopted budget where we landed on all the blended classrooms but more importantly we also had i think seven fte seven or eight fte that went to um take make make a step towards more equitable middle grades offerings and i have um sent a series of questions but i'd like to just get an understanding of how we're heading into the next budget or how that landed because i know it was a little bit last minute and um here we are in into may how we're going to staff this so i'd love to at some point i'd love to i'd like to request that um after the budget's approved that we get a report on where those fte went how it improved equity yes so thank you director brim edwards the board identified a couple priority areas of course the allocation of those fds is pretty management oriented but i did provide the board in my last update and communication the specific schools where those positions ended up and spoke to the four or five blends as well as uh the middle schools and so our principal supervisors as they normally would with a staffing allocation are working with principals about how what kinds of electives they'll open up what makes sense at their particular school community and so that's the process we're we're undergoing now but uh per sort of the the boards expressed interest in alleviating in those areas we worked pretty quickly to distribute those right and if i may further add that the staff is working on reconciliation between the approved budget version with the um adopted as well as in the september when we have the warm bodies in the seats we will do another reconciliation then i am proposing to bring back to the board a reconciliation of all the fde sometimes in the late fall would that be acceptable or would you like the information a little bit sooner so i i don't um i can't speak for anybody else what i primarily am interested in is the sort of spirit of not not where the fte landed but that we actually improved the middle grades offering at the under enrolled k-8s and so i just wanted to see how that gets played out sure so i'm less concerned about whether it was like 0.4 fte or i i want to understand that we're actually that
04h 05m 00s
how we're impacting students in a positive way that are have been in a very inequitable absolutely great experience absolutely i think when we left the conversation in that last budget discussion um uh deputy superintendent cuellar was unsure whether or not um he would be able to you know create the schedule changes and hire the teachers to fulfill that request for seven additional fte so he he needed to go back and see if pragmatically he could make that happen definitely his team could make that happen so i think that's what we're looking for is to see were we able to deploy those resources for next year or was it not practical right most thank you so much for um for reminding me of that i am certainly we'll go back to the team and get some answers and together we will bring back to the board and some answers on that matter thank you is there any other questions i'm not sure what you're conveying for cfo lee yes so i know that our chief of schools is working with our principal supervisors those allocations have been made to specific schools which i shared with the board now they're working with principals around factors like scheduling and personnel and the assignment process of employees and you know getting some input from community around some of those offerings they may want to expand in so that that's the process that we've been engaging in so it'll be an improvement uh it won't be perfect it never is uh but i think it'll be a step forward yeah superintendent thank you for the clarification and i think what i was just trying to convey is that we will continue to report back to the board probably through um either the superintendent or dr guerrero of the progress and of any new development would that be okay great thank you is there any other questions and i can answer the board tonight thank you very much thank you and as always if you have any questions just let me know later thank you okay the board will now vote on resolution 5913 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed say no no any abstentions resolution five nine one three is approved by a vote of six to one with um six to one um i will now enjoy adjourn the board as the budget committee and call the board back into its regular session the board will now consider the remainder of its business agenda are there any items on the business agenda that you'd like to pull out for dis separate discussion and vote okay miss powell are there any changes to the business agenda no um do we have any public comment okay um do i have a motion and a second to adopt the business agenda so moved second uh director constant moves director brim edwards seconds the adoption of the business agenda is there any board discussion okay um all in favor of adopting the business agenda say yes yes oppose say no any abstentions the business agenda is approved by a vote of seven to zero

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)

2019-06-25 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - June 25, 2019

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