2019-07-16 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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District Portland Public Schools
Date 2019-07-16
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Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - July 16, 2019

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all right welcome the regular meeting of the Board of Education for July 16 2019 is called to order welcome to everyone present and to our television viewers director Bailey is absent but on the phone for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted the meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PBS TV Services website before we proceed board members are there any items you would like to pull from the tonight's business agenda for a separate discussion and vote item to pull for a separate discussion but I will have the one item related to that has the advanced authorization I'll just be okay thank you very much before we begin the public comment period I would like to review our 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 one quick reminder any oversized signs need to be in the back way and signs in the audience should not be held in a way that obstruct others viewing of the meeting board members in the superintendent will not respond to comments or questions during public comment but our board office will follow up as needed on 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 would like to provide to the board or superintendent we ask that you give them to board manager Rosanna Powell to distribute to us presenters will have a total of three minutes to share your comments please begin by stating their name and spelling your last name for the record during the first two minutes of your testimony a green light will appear when you have one minute remaining a yellow light will go on and when your time is up the red light will go on and a buzzer we'll sound we respectfully ask that you conclude your comments at that time we appreciate your input and thank you for your cooperation Ms Huff do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment tonight no yes we do okay no student comment one public okay please come forward Norma is it how good evening board my name is Noreen huff Hou gh I'm a special education parent involved in a number of special education advocacy organizations with PPS I'm here today to comment on the new revision of the Student Conduct and disciplinary policy while I support the overall shift and changes in the policy I ask the decision makers again rethink stakeholder engagement and ensure that special education is a key element in the discussion going forward reading the new policy I applaud the restorative justice and trauma-informed approaches that were presented and I appreciate the recognition of the large inequities that currently exist in the system between different buildings that we have across the whole district well I support these policy changes I'm here again to talk to you about stakeholder engagement in the lack of transparency in this process your intro memo states that you solicited info from high school students parents and staff I'm pleased to see that you engage students in this process including those at meek however high school students are not those who are most likely to experience disciplinary issues within our system from 2018 data PPS published major disciplinary issues only involve about 3 percent of our high school students however middle school students those in CBO programs those and alternative programs and those in Pioneer have significantly higher rates of interaction with our disciplinary system and those stakeholders were not engaged in this process at all talking to well behaved comprehensive middle school student or high school students does not equal the same thing as those who are actually being suspended and expelled in our system you spoke to staff at two schools both with very low disciplinary and heard from 37 parents in a Google survey their survey was never sent out to parents via PPS stakeholder parent groups like speak were not asked to contribute in any way and I tried to find this on the PBS website but outside of the memo for today's meeting this link in this Google survey were not published on the website anywhere I keep
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pushing the district to engage stakeholders but it should not just be a checklist of we talked to students staff and we talked to parents it actually has to be the students staff and parents who are part of that proposal and whose policy changes will be impacted right now the district does not release data specific to disciplinary issues in special education however national studies have found the three largest factors for students being referred for discipline procedures our first special education they're the largest impacted group then students of color and those student then students who live in low-income communities within Portland when you look at the largest number of students who are engaged in disciplinary issues our largest school is George of twenty percent of their students and this is a school that has large proportions of all three groups that are particularly targeted so I assume we follow the national trends this issue is particularly concerning for special education students because under the IDE a students with disabilities are not to be disciplined for behaviors that directly arrived from their disability that's the federal law there are many specifics to this requirement but schools are basically first required to make sure that they actually followed the IEP before they do discipline and then change the IEP to better meet the students needs before disciplinary actions are taken this issue is regularly violated in PPS schools over the last year I've had multiple people approach and worked with multiple advocacy on this on this topic I'm sorry I have a little bit longer much of the language in the proposed policy change is very generalized but this new policy will result in more equitable treatment which I applaud but we need to include the federal language that's required under the law in our new policy by including that we will ensure that the teachers staff in the district are aware that special education treatment should be different and it needs to be a mandatory part of the trainings and the discussion going forward not have special education at the table when you're discussing student discipline issues special education stakeholders need to be part of this process special education law needs to be included in this policy and special education discipline needs to be a main topic before you go forward after this first read thank you thank you for your comments and please I hope you'll give written copy of your testimony to Rose Ann Powell thank you right superintendent Guerrero do you have a report for us this evening good evening doctors just a couple items briefly it is summertime school's out although I think I mentioned previously we do have quite a number of students Summer Scholars participating in programming which I had a chance to visit with I mentioned the last time but it's not just a time for student learning it's also an important time for adult learning during the summer and starting with senior leadership we're coming off of a week where we did a lot of reflection on our work to date and some of our steps moving forward that was that was a valuable sort of pause and in our day to day work to be able to do that and we're looking forward to planning opportunities for many other of our staff and educators which includes our what we're making a tradition here are our annual Leadership Institute so we're looking forward to we're deep in the planning for four days of professional learning opportunities for our school leaders and administrators throughout the school district so we're excited about the experience that that were planning or it's going to be a positive experience we believe but also going to cover a wide ranging topics that are that are pretty relevant to to the work in our schools the the professional development that we're preparing to to implement this August is not just for our school leaders but also for all of our new teachers as they come aboard to do some onboarding with them as well as support staff our school secretaries for instance we bring them together we're trying to be better about being a good employer and including our employee groups as they return to the start of a new school year so we're deep in the planning for many of those events that are coming up and we'll be sharing more details with the board as we get closer and then the only other mention that I wanted to make this evening in advance it is until Saturday August 24th but I hope our listening audience will make note of it in their calendar this is our largest volunteer event of the year this is project community care at over 70 schools we're hoping neighbors
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and volunteers will pitch in to help beautify our schools in preparation in advance of our students returning for the first day of school it's a wonderful event I know that the board district administrators leadership principals and school staff you know have we've had the privilege of participating and helping our schools with projects that they've listed out if you're interested in being a part of the event you can find the details on our website and we really count on this important level of support from the broader community so mark your calendar that's all I have for tonight just those two items it's been getting better and better each year for the past few years more participation we do encourage everybody to come out thank you for that report next item on our agenda is the discussion of perspective renewal of our Local Option levy deputy superintendent Claire Hertz it's coming forward to frame this issue for us and I want to acknowledge that director Bailey is on the phone and he has been leading our board effort to to organize around bringing the levy forward I know it's difficult sometimes to hear and be heard on the phone but director Bailey I hope you're able to participate in this conversation executive chief of staff stephanie Soudan as we've been working in partnership both in looking at the financial aspects as well as the communication components of this work and both are very important so as we look at a local option levy we do have a timeline there for recommendation from staff to put something forward on the November general election ballot this year and we are recommending that we stay at the same dollar ninety-nine per thousand rate as we have in the past so I was asked earlier today what would happen if we lowered it a little bit so if if we and this is just a really rough analysis because remembering that a local option levies calculated individually on each piece of property based on the difference between the measure 5 and measure 50 tax rate so so because of that to get a truly accurate one we'd have to look at every property and today we used some averages so just to be clear it's not a full analysis whereas the report that was sent to you was based on looking at all the properties ok so if we were to look at lowering the rate if we wanted to collect in 2021 the same as what we were collecting in 1920 we could lower it at 8 cents so down to a dollar 91 however that would be collecting the same revenue and if we want to keep the same staffing ratio for for our class class sizes then it's important that we keep up with salary and benefits and salary benefits are anticipated to continue to grow and so there was while the assessed value has continued to grow on a you know I I can say about four to five percent is maybe even five and a half percent is our assessed value growth over the last five years our local option levy revenue generated anywhere in back in 2016 it was twenty one percent increase where as in 1819 it's only a 4% increase so as real market value changes and then if it has an accelerated rate it goes up quickly but then if as a tapers off it flattens out so I just want us to be aware that it is a levy rate that is influenced quickly by what is happening with the real market value okay so in turn so in term our recommendation would still be to maintain the dollar ninety-nine and we would then be able to continue to maintain a similar staffing ratio as we have now I think I would just add board of directors this is a five year levy that was passed in 2014 by seventy percent of voters approval rate we originally said it would the
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goal was to fund six hundred and forty positions and each year we've been able to fund significantly higher than that you'll see that in the staff report as much as eight hundred and seventy positions were actually attributed to the levy in the last school year and so [Music] there's a significant impact to the budget immediately should this not be referred and considered we're looking at around eight hundred teaching positions that we would have to eliminate in order to make up for the difference of loss is it correct that this renewal does not actually come up for a year but we're looking to renew at this rate what the board is currently considering is to go before the voters in November well we have to submit our tax levy in July of each year so we need to make sure in terms of timing that we would have it in place by June 30th so by the May election we would need to have this in place for the following years tax levy or tax assessment when I open it up to board members for questions of staff or board discussion through a little bit the limit in terms of the state school fund formula so looking at this sheet that's okay so there are three different methods of limiting the receipts collected and hits impact on the state school fund so if we go over if you look under 2019 you'll see in the three different calculations the lowest one is the $2,000 per ad MW at 116 million 835 so if we were to collect more than that then we would receive less state school fund and we would never want to levy attacks on our local taxpayers that didn't benefit our district so solely support our district it wouldn't it wouldn't be advisable yeah so how close and I apologize if this is in here so how close are we going to be to that limit with with this tax rate 96 million projected for 1920 and so what happens because you're doing a five-year levy it's very because of the real market value fluctuation that the tax rates can fluctuate significantly and so for instance in 2015 we had 13% increase in revenue in 2016 we had 21% so you remember what was happening with the real market justjust to be clear and make sure I'm misunderstanding but it's not it's it's it's the it's the assessed value that the tax is being levied on it's actually no it's the gap between the measure 5 rate and the measure 50 rate and one the measure 5 is based on real market right 50 on assess rate and so it's it's it's as I believe as properties we're coming out of compression that problem tax compression coming out of the recession is why we saw that increase but but but because real market values were going out that compression you was released but current attacks itself is on assessed value it's a calculation of the gap between the to go okay so what I'm concerned about is because of it's very difficult to predict so you want to leave some cushions right so you don't ever end up in that position and so we continue on about 9 percent six percent four percent and then and now we're looking at three percent so it's going down right now but it could go back up depending on what happens in to property values over a five-year period so I would never want to put us in a position of having get reaching that limitation so we would just definitely levy a lower tax rate so we don't yeah but your projections are that we won't exceed that limit so I'm wondering on the background err there is historical data from 2015 to 2019 but and for each year it has the number of teaching positions can you say they actually that doesn't have the actual amount that was
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raised T of those numbers I do for which year which years are you looking for pardon okay so for 1516 we raised 76 million six hundred thousand in 2017 84 million two thousand eighteen eighty nine point six were estimated for 2018 nineteen ninety three point three and then for 2020 ninety-six so this is I'm not sure if this is a question for staff or just for a larger board discussion but when I'm looking at the local option rates on page 10 of the Piper Jaffray PBS is significantly above most other districts by about 40 cents so in the one hand it's very appealing to have those resources to fund what I think is having the ability to adequately resource a lot of the needs that we've had just the teacher staffing but we're at the higher end of the of the spectrum and like in some ways just as a taxpayer it's and you know adding on top of if you're a resident of Portland you've got the art tax the PBS bond parks metros parks the housing bond that Oregon Historical Society I mean a whole host of things there it's like although it'd be so on the other side there's this so one side we have the ability to do I think staff our schools in a way we wouldn't obviously if we didn't have that but on the other hand just sort of the overall tax burden and I'm curious about the conversation that we could have with some of our other partners particularly Metro because while we're sort of right in the center of metro with there the conversation about having a significant transportation bond and we're ones that would be new not not a just level funding some curious the status cuz collectively people in Portland are just they've got it all and not everybody within Metro has every single one of the taxes that we have helpful if we knew anyone from Metro pardon [Laughter] so we have I think there have been elected to elected discussions and staff discussions early on but you raise a good point that we need to be coordinated and be aware of what else is on the ballot Metro has referred their renewal of their parks levy which I believe is not a change and rate it's just a continuation continuation I mean I fully think we should get our elbows out and get out there just I'm concerned about the overall there's like more coming in and what impact that has so say metro comes in with I mean I've heard a number of highs like a twenty billion dollar region-wide transportation one what impact that has on our ability to go out for a bond a local option we have not had a formal conversation about the transportation potential transportation bond measure that Metro would put forward in 2020 but you raise a good point that it would compete with our bond measure if you if the board decides to refer that or anything that it just seems like you should try and get it coordinated absolutely I think director from Edwards point is a really good one there's a there's an intergovernmental conversation that needs to happen about funding it's both this year and next year you know in terms of that I do want to sort of make a little bit as we talked about that the high rate you know compared to other districts that I mean I also think we need to put it in the historical context of of an Oregon property tax you know property taxes were limited by measure five and and and measure 50 and as a result I think there is actually an argument one of the reasons why our levies have been supported I think is because there is when you talk about price of government and people's willingness to pay for government it is higher in in the Portland you know area than it is in other places and so I want to make sure we don't lose that and I wouldn't want us to necessarily bring our tax rate down and lose teachers if in fact because of this you know 20 or 30 years in tax limitations our voters actually are quite comfortable paying for schools through this mechanism
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I guess I'm worried that we won't be able to keep that and the bond when everything else comes in so maybe it and part of the issue is a lot of it is based on the property tax so is there another mechanism that we have this inner mental conversation about that we were able to accomplish regional objectives and other libraries are looking at looking at doing a bond as well which would be new so there's a number of new things coming online and you know does it all need to be property tax or some other way to look at the funding of essential public services so that we don't you know squeeze each other out and PBS doesn't end up with less than what it is that we think we need in order to deliver our services so just to address that so somebody correct me if I'm wrong but there is a net outflow of financial resources from Portland to the rest of the state through the state school fund on the other hand local option levy money that is generated here stays here so I don't think it would be I don't think it would be in our students best interest for us to decrease unnecessarily the levy rate that we're using because that is our check on the well um you know the stupid way the state funds public education frankly aren't the local option levy is really the only thing we have available that we can control that will guard against the the kind of outflow of resources so just to play things the other way versus going down one of the conversations that we had an hour we're talking about goal-setting was that having some really specific targeted focused resources around some of the some of the goals we are going to be setting and because we're doing goal-setting after the budget I'm wondering if there's an increment for resource over and above the current rate to resource that are we going to need to wait till next year so just as a flip the flip argument to decreasing the rate is there a reason to increase it to fund something that we've identified as a priority that we haven't put into the budget and I think that's what directors have to sort of balance and discuss and debate if you're asking me as superintendent can can I do more can i implement more strategies to reach a board identified goal say it's a reading goal and it allows me the opportunity to staff our schools with instructional coaches or reading specialists or more training sure that would make a difference even if we were just FTE we could make sure that we could better case manage students who were meeting grade-level expectations for instance so just by way of process so this is our second conversation as a board considering our options as far as bringing the referral back to the voters the renewal back to the voters we have proposed having a town hall public Town Hall next week July 23rd which has not been publicly posted yet but will be public posted tomorrow I believe then the board will revisit this discussion on August 6th in a work session and depending on further discussion look to bring a proposal for a referral resolution back to the board on August 13th do I have that right that timeline and if you could just walk back deputy superintendent Hertz to what you opened the conversation with because I don't
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believe it's in the documentation that we have that the basically what you said to put it in very simple terms is that it's a it's a wash the growth in the property tax base relative to the growth and the growth in the expenses of our teachers can you put any finer point on that how commensurate those two figures are so what I can say is for 1819 we had a 4% growth in revenue and that's very similar probably our our benefit rate actually went up higher in 1819 actually in 1910 at 20 because of increases in benefits costs that there are it is higher than that and so there is each year that's a little fluctuation so really when you average it out over the 5 we it comes very close to our actual costs in staffing in salaries and benefits director Bailey do you have anything you'd like to add to this discussion maybe we lost him so I think one thing that might be worth just broaching as a question so historically we have designated yes director mores speaking right now but we want to hear from you when she's done do you want to take him before okay so we have designated the local option levy to be used pretty much exclusively for teachers that is not a requirement by the state that's that's something that we have decided and and I just I mean I think it's a fine idea but I think it's probably worth talking about do we want to continue to do that or do we I mean to get to your point do we want to have some flexibility in how we use the local option living money so just just to that point so the way that we've always done it I think is the way that of the voters like we're most receptive to receiving it I think there'd be and given this is for the out year it was worth looking at it through the equity lens of whether you want to leave say the majority of it for teachers and then an increment for some really specific strategies that we wait that we that the superintendent and staff have identified and fund that but I think it's I think it's a good conversation to have because this is sort of just the way we've always done it but it really it's it's equal maybe but not have an equity of component to it and it be interested in the superintendent just this meeting or another meeting yeah again I think we can make a more compelling case or a campaign we can tie it to something concrete invisible intangible to to our stakeholders and especially if it affords us the opportunity to accelerate some some strategies so whether it's additional arts educators to complete our pathways or added librarians as part of a literacy effort or CTE teachers we if we could tie it back to some some specific goals so that people would see that personnel because I think people is very visible you know I could see how maybe that would be one way to be a little bit more diverse in the portfolio of how we use those or leverage those resources and although I think it's enticing to think about supporting specific strategies this is enough teachers that we will see a difference in overall class sizes if we start to decrease that and I think we want to be careful how what language we use in the levy and the ballot measure itself and we want to I mean we've run into this problem before where kind of things were promises were made that were difficult to track and we have resolved that
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problem in the past I mean we have resolved the problem but I think we'd want to be a little careful about making promises about you know specific levels of different kinds of teachers and because this is it would be over the course of five years and needs might change they're not waiting for a change just just to be clear I just think it's worth talking about it director Bailey the assessed value and the market selling you ship actually gets generated so I think I think the prudent middle course so that we continue to generate revenue to support teachers and make sure we don't get into the would favor just keeping it simple and saying this one goes strictly to teachers classroom teachers superior thank you any further discussion or issues so eighteen eighteen nineteen it's eight hundred and seventy teacher teaching positions at ninety three million and we're projecting in nineteen twenty it's a ninety-six million but only eight hundred teachers so we have it would actually be hired that was just around okay so is it closer to eight seventy it would be closer to eight seventy yes okay so essentially the three be about the same number of teachers and increase in this rate is tracks are lines against the increases and benefits and the roll up costs the only approximate I'm gonna change in that statement is it's not just the assessed value you have to look at and probably I've got some slides here from OSP a that I'll be happy to send to you guys you can see that there's really a calculation between the real market value and the assessed value has to be individual to each property so I'll send you more information but I won't try to explain it now fair enough but I guess that the High Line is just the increases in the amount of revenue coming in approximately aligned with our overall cost increases for the same number of teachers so wash yes okay when when you blend it out over time that is correct I think there are fluctuations from here to here okay so again next superintendent just to elaborate a little further that fluctuation then therefore while we've always met the goal of 640 teaching positions it's very dear dear right it's gone from 757 to 827 to 790 to 870 and so if we maintained the levy rate could we continue to approximate those levels but it won't be exact yes that's correct and so what's happening is the revenue is slowing down and growth so that's something that's why I'm being very careful with my words is because I don't want to you know we were really trying to project real market value for properties for the next five years is not something that's easily done and I would say I mean the real danger is a property market crash right we saw that in two thousand eight nine ten eleven and when real market value goes down we need to be thinking about that over the next five years possibility although we have ample wiggle room as far as the commitment that we're making to the taxpayers for lack of a more technical term okay any further discussion this evening can use remind me again the process I know you said it's just so next week we'll have a town hall that should be posted tomorrow
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to get input from the public on the staff report that has been posted tonight and discussion we've had so that's just public input then on August 6 we will take this up again at our work session so any any questions board members have of staff between now and then let's bring those forward I know these materials came in a little bit late so we haven't had all had you know that much time to digest this analysis so August 6 we'll revisit this issue and discuss whether we're prepared to bring forward a proposal at the board meeting on August 13th which is aligned with our filing deadlines and such okay that is the filing deadline I'll guess 15 16 16 so we would have to adopt something okay thank you all right thank you very much thank you to our taxpayers all right the next item on our agenda this evening is a resolution to bring forward phase one of an internal performance audit plan before we move on to that I want to just do a bit of housekeeping with the departure of director anthony and director rosen who served previously on the board Audit Committee there's a need to appoint two temporary members until the board has a discussion in August about how we organize ourselves what committees we have and who will serve on which committees in the meantime I would like to appoint director de Paz and myself as temporary members to the board's Audit Committee so that we can continue some important current work I look forward to working with both director brim Edwards and director to pass on this committee and director berm Edwards can you bring forward this resolution please yes Thank You chair Consta and welcome new temporary audit committee members glad to have you so tonight everybody should have and there's been posted phase one of the proposed 2019-20 audit plan and back in January for those who are on the board you might remember that deputy superintendent for business and operation hurts and I presented the board sort of a six month audit committee plan that really involved primarily standing up the the audit function and the audit committee I'm getting the planning done doing some planning work around the both the audit plan secretary state's audit response and also the bond budget gap and also one of the items on the committee's agenda was the development and well the receiving the recommendations from the internal performance auditor and around the 2019 2020 audit plan and so just to be clear with everybody the two big areas that are sort of off the that are not included in the scope for the internal performance auditor is financial audit the annual financial auditing because we have that done anyway by another firm that we have every year and then we also they don't not include it as anything related to the bond as well because we also have a bond performance auditor so the the plan scope is excludes those two big topics so by our policy the auditor develops a draft plan and presents it to the committee our auditor Mary Katherine Moore surveyed the 2016 PPS district-wide operational and business services risk assessment and also the 2018 Secretary of State audit and spoke both with staff and external parties to develop sort of some conceptual audit topics based on risk factors tonight we have before us two elements of the larger audit plan for the board's review and consideration the audit committee that was in existence last year advanced this forward and they're around two topics one is around purchasing cards or P cards and that's not actually a full audit it's a review and the second topic area focus area is contracts and I don't know deputy superintendent Hertz if you would like to say something or our auditor Mary Katherine Moore I'd like to say something
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introduce our internal auditor Mary Katherine Moore and she is been on for a few months and gotten you kind of gotten their feel for the district and getting to know people and understanding how things operate here as well as working with the audit committee and listening carefully and redoing a lot of reading about past risk assessments as director brim Edwards mentioned earlier so I just wanted to let you know there was a face with the name and because she does serve the at the pleasure of the board and I just wanted to make sure you've got to meet her tonight thank you welcome so is everybody you can see we have the two topic areas and the other topics that had been developed that have been developed and discussed in the audit committee after consulting with the WD superintendent Hertz we're gonna have further discussions and the committee and with the both to new committee members and the new board members and we also have a new community member who is serving on the Audit Committee it'll be a good time for us to I think re review the recommendations that came from the auditor and have a discussion with leadership and then make some decisions about how we want to proceed that tonight's board action and board consideration in action will allow our auditor to get auditing which I think it's an important concept and I do want to say that we're in the process of scheduling a full board discussion around a proposed audit plan to me this is one of the most important areas of work for the board since the auditor and potentially auditors do report directly to the board so this is an area where that really requires our deep engagement as a full board so as director Berman's Ward says this enables our auditor to get started and then we will collectively revisit other recommended topics for future audits and finalize our long-term plan does anyone have any questions I'm excited to get started thank you committees work it's a very limited subset of people okay we will now consider resolution number five nine three five resolution to approve phase one of the 2019 2020 internal performance audit plan do I have a motion and second move so director more moves and director Scott a seconds of motion to adopt resolution five nine three five is there any further board discussion we will now vote on resolution 5 9 3 5 all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no resolution 5 935 is approved by a vote of 7 to 0 thank you thank you deputy superintendent Hertz or more thank you for your work on this all right we are back to you director brim Edwards with work coming out of our board policy and Governance Committee great Thank You chair constan so in a minute I'm gonna ask Carol Hawkins to present some of the highlights of the changes but just to provide some background again we're sort of in a transition point with a change in this has been ongoing work and we want to bring everybody up to speed with where we are in the process so last year out of the white the Whitehurst report there was this whole series of recommendations and this is one of the last ones that is in the process of being developed to be implemented and what so this recommend specific recommendation was a development of a policy that would provide more specific guidelines to our staff on interactions with our students and just to be clear about the process this is our second first reading so we had a first reading last year we received substantial community input there was lots of community there was a fair amount of committee discussion we then had a demand a bargain from the
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Portland Association of teachers and given that we want to have this policy be clear and useful to staff and also holding on to that student safety goal that we have that there was conversations as part of the interest-based bargaining discussions about the policy and so coming out of that there we've had subsequent committee discussions and I want to thank director Moore and director Khan stam who are both committee members with me for adding to the discussion we had and I think the refinement and clarifications of several points and the policies and so coming out of that committee discussion we are going to have a first a second first reading of the policy and I think we can expect that so for the new board members you all will have an opportunity to get a briefing get all your questions answered it's quite it's a calm complex and I think somewhat groundbreaking policy there's not a model that we could just pull from you know a host of other districts so we'll want all of you you all to understand the different elements of it and certainly bring fresh eyes and some good questions I think because lots of us had been looking at for eight months and this will be an opportunity for you all to tell us what where we missed something or this isn't clear or you only knew that because you've been sort of wallowing in the process or marinating in the process for a long time and if somebody looking at it with fresh eyes or a parent it wouldn't be understandable so we're looking forward to the feedback from all of you and with that I'm going to ask Carol Hawkins to share just a brief overview of the changes since the last first reading thank you well as Jerry moment Edwards mentioned we did have a discussion during our recent IBB process around the policy pardon me okay okay thanks anyway around the policy and came out of that process with p80 with several pages of clarifications ideas that they had for improving the policy and lots of good conversations around our shared goal of keeping student safety as the primary driver of the policy and the changes that we were going to make after that after that IBB process then John and I came back and incorporated all of those many many edits and suggestions and changes to the policy and then forwarded that revised policy to our internal leadership as well as those on the bargaining team so that we could get additional input the significant changes were not around the intent of the policy they're really around clarification about our expectations for teachers and trying to make those very clear so the people can both read the policy and understand it from the perspective of an educator but also as a parent and as a student we've included a number of examples we've changed our language somewhat to reflect some of the training that we received as ivb participants around healthy behaviors healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships which seems to be more easy for most of us to understand and weave in places where the language was vague we tried to provide clarity we also recognized that many of these behaviors come down to intent and so we recognize that there will still be some language that is open to interpretation and the intent of the educator I would just ask John if he has anything to add since he worked very closely on the on the draft with me I think that's a good summary of the two main issues that were addressed out of the bargaining really I think for the focus on healthy relationships and there was a fair amount of language at it at the beginning and then that more defined section that actually laid out some behavior that was considered red line type behavior weighted training courtesy of Rita that really delved into that during the bargaining from was it Cara's Northwest that really kind of set out parameters around what is considered red line I suppose behavior that is clearly prohibited and unacceptable and more
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things that are fought that followed the question of boundaries issues and so p80 coming out of that bargaining really wanted a little bit more defined description of what red line behaviors we were concerned about and wanted to find in policy and so we went back and I think that section is hopefully going to be helpful going forward in giving know something that is clear for both be IT but also from the district's perspective and an HR perspective define section that really sets out what red line behaviors are so there's no question about that going forward I think to get to the heart of what you're describing what the discussion has mostly been about is identifying those red line behaviors without in any way unintentionally impeding the important supportive relationships and nurturing relationships that teachers have with students because it's in sloppy policymaking there were a lot of opportunities to go too far and to impinge on those very important characteristics and activities that we expect of our teachers so that's where the tension lies I think I think the two sections intersect like that too with the partial the portion that we described at the beginning focusing on healthy relationships and then that latter portion focusing on the red line behavior and what kind of pulling those things together in the policy they cover everything that you just described and then hopefully continuing to use that same language as we roll out training across the district with the healthy behaviors unhealthy behaviors and then identifying the green behaviors the red behaviors and then the more difficult behaviors which are those yellow or coachable behaviors where we can move people back into the into the green zone I just want to reiterate what director Bryn Madrid said which again a little difficult for our new board members coming into this pretty complicated issue midstream so we're having either individual or two-by-twos briefings on the policy and that'll be your special invitation to provide input during this 21-day period and all the other outreach typical outreach will go on as well in terms of reaching out to stakeholders and hopefully collecting a lot of input on this complex and important policy like to add no just when I think staff again this was in the very beginning sort of a novel and new area of policy development for us but I also think just nationally there's not great guidelines so I think we knew at the beginning at the outset it was not going to be a quick process so just recap the next steps for everybody we'll be looking forward after tonight we'll have sent out the revised first reading to all of our represented employee groups so they'll have a chance to look at the revisions we'll have a series of discussions obviously the public anybody and the public can provide comment through the normal way it's posted on the website with an opportunity to comment there will be a policy and governance committee meeting on August 5th where we will incorporate feedback have for the discussion about comments that were raised make decisions on whether we want to make further revisions to the policy and then either make a decision they'll probably bring that back to the full board with a summary of what the public comment that we comment from our represented employees that we've received so that's the next big yes exactly and of course any board member who's not on the committee is always welcome to join and participate in the discussion so August 5th and just want to thank the staff for continuing to move things forward I think one thing that's important to note if people are looking at the red line it looks like it's there's been massive changes since the last red line but it's not actually large changes it's moving pieces around actually I think the changes are rather targeted and very specific and not necessarily a wholesale change from the last first reading which is important to note which is why we gave everybody a clean version which is easier to read so we also have one more first reading this evening a rescission we have a rescission and a new policy thank you so this is another policy that both a pulse
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policy revision but also a suggested rescission that came out of the policy and Governance Committee and I'm going to ask Brenda martynuk to come forward and just provide some highlights of the changes then a brief description of why we're suggesting the rescission of policy I would like to note as we head into the 21-day public comment period it would just based on tonight's public comments that we had during at the beginning of the meeting that it would be useful to share this with all of our sort of parent advisory groups that we have SP ack the tag out group a whole host of them so that we can get a broader base of feedback as possible if that's we can proactively do that versus just having people react to the public comment area so with that please go ahead yes and I spoke with the parent that spoke tonight and so her and I've already connected so tonight you have a rescission yeah rescission of current board policy and then we are incorporating or updating our Student Conduct and discipline policy there's some primary things that we have included in here we have included updated language around how we talk about students we have also included trauma-informed practices and trauma-informed training and expectations for staff and we have also used more restorative practices and then support for how we can support through behavioral expectations through tiered supports and some behavioral supports as well so just to be clear so the rescission is a board policy called program for disruptive students yes was first adopted in 1971 and sounds like it yes so that course is proposing to go away and then there are some significant differences to the proposed student discipline policy that's from what has been in effect and I'm wondering director more you were actively engaged in this discussion if you want to add anything to the changes that are being made to the policy well I think as was noted there's a lot of language around trauma-informed practices and restorative practices and providing supports and kind of looking at behavior issues as communication of need and and trying to find appropriate responses rather than yet rather than focusing on punishment or discipline and anyway I wanted to thank the staff we had a lot of discussion just just went back and forth a few times and I mean I really appreciated the responsiveness and I think it I think it makes for a better policy I do I do agree that where the timing is unfortunate because you know we're now in the middle of the summer and it's going to be difficult to do outreach the the rationale behind getting it getting this moving now rather than waiting until the fall which would allow for more engagement is that this is going to be associated with a new Student Handbook that's correct which is going to be aligned with this in terms of you know approach to behavior so we want to make sure that that the those these two documents both the policy and the handbook are aligned and I think I think the plan is that we're going to do some some targeted outreach as as much as possible and then if we discover areas that need some improvement we can we can come back to
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the policy and and make whatever amendments might be necessary yes and we have started I mean we we started the engagement process with our community staff administrators family is back I think we started this in March so there has been a large opportunity for engagement at different levels in fact we also provided engagement opportunities in our Student Success Center with our students who are on delayed expulsion and also in our insights class with parents and students at first-time offenses so we have engaged a variety of different populations but in speaking with the parent here tonight we're going to make sure that we send information out and get input from additional groups may I ask a question about your engagement practice are these engagements in person or how are you talking to these groups and who's who's missing they are so they're all in in person we have had a variety of different types of groups so we've had focus groups specifically with students and with staff we have had administrators and different teachers that have been involved in developing the policy itself and having input in that we had a number of different family opportunities one specifically was at the insights class during the class where we talked about it and then we actually did a Google survey to get some feedback that way so we've done it in a variety of different ways mm-hmm in terms of your survey did you get good response rates or the idea honey we didn't get a great response rate from the Google survey but we did in the discussions with the families there's over 65 people who attend each one of them excellent things just in terms of a first read-through and compared to old 1971 policy I think it's it's it looks really good the right century I know right my only my only comment was you know we used the term trauma-informed care and trauma informed practices drama form approach which which is more commonly used now in the field but I don't I don't think it's widely understood in the community and so well there is a definition section I think it'd be worth defining that a little bit more comprehensively like what do we mean by that what's the history of it where is it coming from it's absolutely the right approach but I'm not sure to the layperson that it it necessarily and in practice it's it looks very different in different environments so yeah so one of the things that we did talk about it the committee was that mohamad ooh a fair amount of training associated with this not just for school school personnel but also for our families because this is a different way of approaching behavioral issues so we're yeah we're gonna have to do some I think pretty significant outreach to school communities and we are yes we're currently putting together a two-year training plan for trauma-informed practices because one of the things that is gonna crop up I mean we talked about this at the committee there is an inherent tension between a trauma-informed approach and consist consistency of application of kind of standards of behavior and that's going to be a tricky one to navigate so we're all going to have to kind of get on the same page around there although we do not have a particularly trauma-informed policy or practice now and we also don't have consistency of application so in my opinion any other board discussion or questions should you want me to just wrap up with next steps yet for this so as with the last policy that we discussed any public comment that we receive whether it was here tonight do the public comment or at the board Dyess discussion about that at the next policy Governance Committee meeting which is on August 5th and I think it's worth noting also that in addition to a need to clear need to update our policies that this was also something that was a finding in the Secretary of State's audit and
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completed when it's finished also Maxine I know that you wanted to circulate this with students I want to make sure that we if students have been put by the the fifth would be great but you could stop by the fifth even later we take it as well so thanks for thanks for your willingness to engage students also in something that I know that there's a high degree of interest in and to try to find them in the summer all right all of tonight's policies will be posted on the board website and the public comment period is 21 days with the last day to comment being August 6 2019 on these put on these policies contact information for public comment will be posted with this policy thank you very much yes director Bailey this has been a topic of conversation in the policy and Governance Committee and the practice has evolved and improved but still working on it definitely as evidenced by the public comment tonight I was gonna say I'd love to work with director Bailey on that I do community engagement and public involvement in my day job and would love to help inform that process or those practices anything else director Bailey okay okay we will move on to consideration of the business agenda is how far there are any changes to the business agenda all right do I have a motion in a second to adopt the business agenda so moved director Bailey moves and director excuse me director Broome Edwards moves and director Lowry seconds the adoption of the business agenda miss huff is there any public comment on the business agenda is there any board discussion on the business agenda I just had one item but I have so much paper here tonight thank you so I want there's been a notification of the board of this today but want to just also flag it just from a broader perspective since one of the topics that we're working on our focus areas just in terms of operational side of the board's work is sort of creating some consistency around our contracts and we have a personal service contract for solution tree that is has an advanced authorization before the contract has been let and in a discussion with Emily cortege from contracts we've agreed that going forward any time we have an advanced authorization there's gonna be a template that explains to the board so the board doesn't need to ask why something's getting in advanced authorization which is somewhat of an exception to the process so we'll have that that just travels with the contract on the front end because sometimes there are in this particular case we have a big gap between tonight's board meeting and the next one which is not until August 13th so it will allow the district to get us work done but also to provide some transparency to the community about why we're providing trained advance authorization it's worth noting that once it has this advanced authorization all the rules for contracts apply throughout the rest of the process so it's not like there's some exception and then none of the rules apply but there's a one-time exception it'll be explained what why the urgency or why we're going that route and then it goes right back into the other process so just another
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process and improvement of the board's review of our contracts yeah thanks for bringing that up and to our contracts manager for agreeing to just create this template and again it's pretty unusual for us to have these requests for advanced authorization but that's that's what we'll we'll need and expect moving forward all right is there any public comment on the business agenda all right so we have moved and seconded the business agenda all in favor please say yes yes and you have any opposed okay the business agenda is adopted 7 to 0 thank you very much do we have any conference reports for board committee reports so I think we've seen the work of the policy and governance committee our next meeting is the fifth which we already discussed we have one other item on that agenda it will be a meals and travel policy that was also recommended coming out of the Secretary of State's yeah sorry okay it's the we don't and the Secretary of State's audit recommended that we develop a more explicit policy so we have one so this is building it out so that'll be the third topic on the August fifth board meeting the other piece now that the board office is fully staffed we sort of best practice will try and have the minutes out to the rest of the rest of the board so if you're not on the committee that you'll get the committee meetings minutes and so you'll be up-to-date so if there's something that you're interested in you can pick up the phone to remember the committee or just know what's going to be coming to the board so I think the board office staff for doing that and then the second piece is the audit will be scheduling an audit committee meeting just to move a couple other items of business so that will probably be at some point in August and back to the business of committees likely at our next full board meeting in on August 13th we'll have our conversation scheduled around what committees do we want to have how do we want to organize ourselves because that's we need to revisit that now and we are a newly constituted board all right any other items at hand all right thank you we are adjourned you


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