2019-08-13 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

District	Portland Public Schools
Date	2019-08-13
Time	missing
Venue	missing
Meeting Type	regular
Directors Present	missing

Documents / Media

Transcripts

Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - August 13, 2019

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good evening good evening the board meeting of the Board of Education for August 13 2019 is called to order for tonight's meeting any item that will be voted on has been posted as required by state law this meeting is being televised live and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the board website for replay times this meeting is also being streamed live on our PPS TV services website before we proceed board members are there any items you would like to pull from tonight's business agenda for a separate discussion and vote if yes we would ask that the appropriate staff remain available to respond to any questions okay we can leave that to the end student and public comment before we begin the public comment period I'd 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 us we value public input as it informs our work and we will look forward to hearing your thoughts reflections and concerns our responsibility as a board is to actively listen without destruction distraction from electronic devices or papers one quick reminder any oversight signs need to be in the back for a 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 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 the board or 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 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 a 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 miss half do we have anyone signed up for student or public comment this evening yes we have Libra Ford great welcome testing good evening directors my name is Libra ford i am the chief operating officer at self enhancement incorporated and a partner with this school district I am excited to be here my last name is spelled fo are de please don't forget the e I'm here to say well thank you for the partnership we're excited for another year of working with you guys as you consider our upcoming contract for this year in addition to that I want to also talk about the fact that we've been together like a relationship for a very long time and we're excited to continue the good and continue to work towards improving the challenging areas with you I also want to give you a quiz kwi Z K remember as we get all these great new funds coming our way that kids must be considered first W don't forget what is working there are lots of things working in this school district fund them well don't leave them out I be innovative in all of the gaps where we're missing funding especially with new funding coming our way and lastly Z remember with Zig Ziglar has said about kids kids go where there is excitement but they stay where there is love SEI has been loving children a school district for over 40 years we want to continue to do that we don't want to be forgotten not just in the good but also in the challenging we're ready to fight with you as we always have so please remember all of those things thank you have a good evening thank you for your partnership superintendent cadet Oh would you like to provide your report director Moore you'll be staying after class good evening directors and good evening to our present and listening audience
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just a few things as we're getting close to the opening of the school year the countdown has begun this morning our leadership team did a quick status check on our staffing our facilities or transportation preparations were we're in good shape but what I want to focus on today are three areas the first one is where we're coming off of one of the most important weeks for us as educational leaders as the building and central office administrative leadership in PPS this was we planned a second annual professional development week for our school principals assistant principals and and other staff which was held at Franklin High School this past week four days of intensive learning and sharing of promising practices and some moments of inspiration our new school leaders actually did five days because they started on Monday they got a little bit of a head start themselves to provide some orientation into our school district but the theme this year of our Leadership Institute was stronger together each as we provide professional development and training for our school leaders we try to be attentive to their input and feedback and which was quite positive as last year was good but this year I think was even better and we're going to take a lot of the lessons learned in all the occasions when we come together worth our school leaders this year as well as planning into next year as we debrief we covered some key priority areas where we know our school leaders are the key agents of change of school improvement particularly in the knowledge base and the skill set and the leadership moves and in the supports all towards our marched for excellence but also racial equity which was an important theme of our Leadership Institute we heard it throughout the four-day experience we also continue to deepen our understanding of our core curriculum work our student support our MTS s multi-tiered system of supports work and a lot of conversation around those leadership domains that our school leaders really have within their sphere of influence to exercise within their school communities we also heard from some national experts subject matter experts both externally but also those within our own school system sharing and deepening our knowledge base there as well there was it's a good opportunity for us to also elevate our school spirit as we launch into the new school year you see here a picture of our early education or Head Start team we placed it at the center of our conversations our newly published vision this is going to continue to be a very instructive document for us as leaders in the school system and continuing to sort of really unpack and understand those skills and dispositions of our graduate of portrait as well as the educator essentials and the system shifts required to make this vision a reality so I know throughout the week we continue to return to it and we'll continue to work with our school communities so that we all have a clear understanding of the thinking that went into our vision work on Friday we capped off the week we had Governor Brown who attended and wished our school leaders a positive school opening and spoke about the opportunity of the Student Success act from this past legislative session nice way to cap off a really critical week for us I want to thank our directors for being present and helping with the celebration at the end I know you probably weren't expecting to demonstrate dance moves but it was consistent with the school spirit that we wanted to make sure and show our leaders as in collaboration with the second thing I wanted to mention is I was also joined by a number of directors earlier today we had a sneak preview tour with Congressman or all Blum an hour at Grant High School we know most of you probably haven't seen it but it is magnificent and we're really kind of waiting to unveil it all for our students actually on the first day of school but we want to invite the broader community to join us for the grand opening on September 7th we'll share I'll share a couple of the observations that I know our congressmen Blumenau are noticed and that is Grant High School is a wonderful example of what modernization can do to make our school facilities more safe and secure more green more technologically savvy and accessible to all of our students especially students with disabilities so
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all of these features were things that were highlighted as we walked around the campus and it's just simply impressive what we always enjoy seeing with so many of our facilities modernization projects is the Tynan of some of the old aspects of the building into the new design here we are standing in what used to be the old gymnasium which is a brand-new Art Center for our students at the school so we're excited to welcome our students there on the first day of school we have had a lot of activity going on this summer not just with our adults we did proceed with the summer arts program for students and they had an opportunity to select a major discipline area in the arts and also explore a the summer arts academy was hosted at Harriet Tubman middle school Thank You principal Butler for opening your doors for students from 15 schools representing the Jefferson Madison and Roosevelt clusters over half of the students who participated are students of color and Thank You director Moore for being there with me on the final or showcase performance at the end of the Institute but to give our audience and directors a little bit of a flavor I think we have a short little video clip highlighting the Summer Arts Academy [Music] but I felt like he was just I don't know looking for a way to bring it up all the noise you're gonna be hearing today is because of all the arts programming happening in our building I thought I would be fun to like get out of the house and like do stuff interact with people cuz usually I just sit on my couch so PBS I wanted to offer this program for the first time to our kids in the north-northeast schools it's a free program that offers dance theater band and arts to kids that might not normally get to do that over the summer my mom's just like oh hey I signed you up for the senior program you're gonna go sisters gonna be doing art and I'm like and now that I'm here I'm like oh my god why was I so like difficult about this you would be such a good actor you'd be really good at being an actor so I was like okay I'll go to theater camp in here today we're working on stop-motion animation we've explored all sorts of different media's of like these and whiteboards or even animating our own bodies as puppets while continuing to work on music through the summer keeps their skills up they will basically be the leaders in in their respective schools what I would hope these kids take away from the summer our program is something that they can do outside of school that sticks with them that they want to keep creating and expanding on their knowledge I mean what I really hope is look they just realized that they are all artists what I loved about the air camp was just meeting how these people because they're all so great I want them to enjoy it and absolutely love what they're doing to love to dance to love to play their instrument to love to be onstage or make art whatever it is I want them to love it and have something that's truly their thing well there you have it hopefully you got a little bit of flavor for what the experience was like from a student and educator perspective gratitude to so many of our visual and performing arts teachers who stepped up to work this summer with with our students as I think you probably noted in the video that was a lot of individualized and small group and instruction and kids got to explore some arts disciplines that maybe wasn't there their typical one so as men as bashed arts education champion my hope is that next summer we just continue to expand and enhance our summer arts academy and open that up to many more students Wells like to feature our students artistic talents we did a little bit of that last week throughout the Leadership Institute but we actually have some very special guests here this evening and that's two students who participated in the Arts Academy last week if I could ask them to come up with your permission chair I think this is our student perspective portion of the agenda if I could ask I Oh Dan Arland Matson and tyonne Butler to come forward we would love to hear how the Summer Arts Academy went for you welcome hello my name is Tiana but where I am 13 years old and I go to Harriet Tubman middle school I would like to begin by
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thanking mr. to be a part of the experience that lasted two weeks from July 22nd through August 2nd I also wish the experience could have been longer and I hope that it will continue next summer the camp gave me a chance to meet new people from other schools and those strong bonds with them I actually took the bus every morning and built relationships with peers from other schools I have preferred prepared they camp to last a little longer to really enhance our skills and make us better dancers the classes that I took were African dance African drumming jazz and hip-hop my favorite classes were African dance in hip-hop I would also like to thank the people who taught this mr. Tsai ku and mr. bunkie overall my favorite part of camp was meeting new people from different schools being taught by teachers from other schools and hearing about their personal stories and changes they had to face and getting to learn different types of dances I also think that this showcase went really well and I love that it gave us a chance to showcase our hard work to family and friends I also think that this could be at least a four week camp experience so we can really become stronger and more confident thank you for giving me this opportunity hello my name is IO dinner line Manson and I'm a seven going into seventh grade at Harriet Tubman middle school tonight I'm testifying about a wonderful program that I was so lucky to be a part of this year I participated in two weeks of PBS arts camp at Harriet Tubman which is the first matter I'd like to speak to you about Harriet Tubman has just reopened last year meaning it has a lack of extracurriculars in comparison to other schools so if this program is funded next year it would better advertised it would be very much it would very much benefit the school and its students also miss Pierce worked really hard this summer and I think it would be great to be able to participate next year this year I participated in African dance stop-motion animation and if I've which were my two favorite classes I like to thank miss Pierce for helping this program happened this year and say cout and mr. boogie for teaching African dance thank you both so much thank you again to our talented students our visual performing arts teachers who made this happen in short order and a very deserted kudos to Kristen Bryson as part of our three-person Central evapo team for for really her leadership in this area so you heard from our students we know it's possible and we look forward to in fact doing what they've just suggested and that's expanding on the opportunity for the coming summer that concludes my report for tonight and that was truly amazing that we got that off the ground so quickly and I also want to recognize our staff who was instrumental in putting together the Leadership Institute last week that was no small undertaking in the details were really fantastic from the nutritional services and how they showed up to just everything available for our educators and it was we really had a lot of positive feedback from our principals and assistant principals who are quite inspired for this new school year so thank you so much can I just say a couple words about the student showcase it was it was impressive in in any case I mean the the performances were were really extremely good and there was there were paintings and there was cloth and and stop action videos and in pottery I mean it was just across the board so it was impressive in any case the fact that it all happened in two weeks was really extraordinary the the quality of the performances and all of the work was was really amazing I'm I'm speaking as a non artist I was blown away and and I think and there it was a packed house including everybody from you know not just the students but they're their siblings and their parents and their grandparents and community members it was a great thing and I look
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forward to a an expanded version next year I want to address the students that were here my name is Michelle I went to performing arts high school here in Portland and I had a chance to show off my dance skills last Friday and I was the best dancer here so keep up wasn't even close there was nobody even close truth be told she was the only dancer there so at least on the stage there was some dancing going on in the audience so I just wanted to add one thing so it's great to be able to see what happened during the summer because I think a lot of people think like doors closed at the end of the school year and that's it until they open again and I know we also had some other programs that ran the summer I visited the migrant education program and also Michelle and I visited the early kindergarten program and it'd be great to get sort of a compilation of what happened this summer because as we think especially as we head into next year's budget what types of things should we be offering during the summer that provides a fuller complement I think a great example of tonight of you know not all kids there's lots of things that can happen during the summer time that meets both the fun quotient and learning quote motion so I think that would be great to get this fall as we head into next year I know a lot of times we're having a trailing conversation but that time we get to the budget it's the plans planning would have already needed to take place I think this is a great example or touchstone to use for that planning going forward I'm glad you brought it up one of the buckets and the Student Success act is actually intended to help support extended learning opportunities which is something we want to build our own extend our own and capacity for for providing an array of programming for our students PPS for a while now due to the divestment has really only offered some limited summer school for students who need credit recovery and then a few other state or federally funded programming like like micronet and so there's there's a smaller array of activities there we can certainly provide you with an inventory of that but but our goal is really to extend the learning through you know in a more year-round basis and into other areas so it may not be visual performing arts for everybody but there's certainly no shortage of ideas for for a catalog of summer program opportunities for students of all ages so we look forward to seeing what that could look like and we'll have some lead time and hopefully some resources to be able to do that for next summer we have a chance to review draft goals and metrics with the superintendent and as part of that discussion superintendent potato is bringing forward a set of proposed rules like that superintendent Carrillo to provide an overview and you'll have a chance to review and I want to go back to our conversation really constructive and open process for us in terms of winnowing down it's good we good in terms of winnowing down our goals and really I think having an opportunity to have open discussion about what we want to get to we weren't quite there last time and I know we had some we had a lot of data requests as well some of which we were not able to have completely answered tonight given the leadership Institute and the fact that we just had a week from our last work session but this is just our next installment and then we'll have we'll look to approve our goals at our next work session so superintendent do you want to introduce us to what this next iteration looks like based on our discussion last week yes thank you for underlining that chair Kahn's time this has been an iterative process and tonight's no different staff has been listening very carefully to your discussion mainly in work session so so tonight here we're bringing it to the regular meeting and we do have senior staff here on deck who will speak in some detail to some of the goal areas but from the very beginning I think you know there's a little bit of tension here and that we want to be leaning towards this the community's definition of a PPS graduate as captured in the portrait you see the statement here and so how do you
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quantify that how do you through metrics show that our students are actually becoming better collaborators more empathetic etc and we also know we have as part of our responsibilities ensuring that students meet some important academic milestones and so you know these goals continue to evolve but we closed the last work session discussion and talking about a limited set of goals but certainly some that talk about and we heard almost unanimity here around making sure that students are able to read so they can read for content and access core knowledge and so that a third grade reading goal seemed pretty important and will for the audience's benefit talk about that in a second similarly with mathematics especially since that foundation is so important as they go into the middle grades you see a third goal here which is different from what you've seen and this is an attempt to kind of compromise and get at and this is a little bit verbose here of a description but to try to capture well what would it look like if we engaged in in students learning journey k12 this middle grades experience where you started to able to observe and have students demonstrate those their skills and dispositions described in the graduated portrait we want to do in this area so can we have a goal area that perhaps isn't a test based metric for instance and try to come up with some creative ways to gauge whether students are actually improving in some of these areas and so what would it look like if a student through portfolio presentation or panel presentation was able to describe their middle grades experience in a number of different ways and so we'll talk about that this evening as well and then we'll end our presentation to talk a little bit about this unanswered question around what does college career ready mean and sort of what are some proxies for measuring success towards towards that so we'll have the staff and a little bit briefer fashion than we did last week knowing we've only had a small amount of time since walk through these just so so everyone has the benefit of that so if I can ask team to come down for this first one on literacy I have our chief academic officer dr. Valentino good name for president superintendent board members on the the goal the first goal on third-grade reading has as a narrative has not really changed the focus is still on improving the achievement for our students in in reading at the 3rd grade at the 3rd grade level the conversation in the general remains constant from the last conversation that that we had I think what has now adjusted is the data that provides baseline so the metrics remain constant is the Oregon state assessment system for proficiency and then for progress and growth it is the map assessment at 3rd grade the other baseline data information on that previous slide remains the same this is an additional slide that has been added to provide you with additional context and so when you look at the proficiency rates they range based on demographic group from as high as the white students by performing at 70% of the students performing at proficiency to 19% which includes our migrant students in our English language learners it also provides you with the number tested and the gap in their proficiency levels by percentage this this this sort of articulates the present state in the performance of our students and that's to serve as a baseline for you when you look at them at the subsequent slide which actually then looks at if you can go to the next slide please
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so in the in the the baseline of percentage proficient I believe that that is the the distance between the all students and their in in their gap if I'm not mistaken but it's actually percentage points right and then the next slide that dr. sucks put together is now the is a target scenario following the expectations identified in the goal the center the target scenario would would look as follows for the specific student groups identified on the first column so I think we heard board directors say in our previous discussion is we wanted to really be able to articulate the end size if you see a - it's because the student group is too small and we want to maintain we don't want to identify our students per se so that's why you see that but we have included the proficiency level there for your information but if we were to work at that 1/4 growth and you see what that target would look like and to the point that the superintendent has made if you if you actually are including the quarter then don't forget that we're actually asking these students in the subgroup to actually grow the number plus a court but 25% I don't understand the e ll the 200 and is that 204 number account of or percent it says percent formatting error as a count its account okay so these are all projected 20 20 to 20 20 20 20 - yes third-grade populations assuming the same number of students that we have this year we know that will shift but we don't know what it's going to look like this is intended to give us a ballpark because the cohort won't be identical in the following year so somebody in four years might be looking back and going not sure this question should be - um but we had our initial goal setting discussions we looked at the data and the data that I think stood out for most of us was the we have four subgroups that are in either 19 to 21 percent only of the students meeting great level benchmark that's black Pacific Islander yellow and migrant and at the time I think there was a lot of focus on that specific group about how much lower in the way that the the goal has been set it is assuming across across the board the one fourth percent correct the way it's drafted now yes and so I'm interested in knowing sort of what would it make not this session but maybe the next one what would it take for acknowledging that there's even larger gaps if there were you know specific resources applied could we make it even bigger gain I know that they get they're getting a larger number in theory because the the one-fourth between the highest and lowest is more where's that that writer that's all the same but if we could look at that as an option of additional resources versus treating all the subgroups right the same and I'd like to say I'd like to second that analysis as well and question I appreciate I'm having the data disaggregated by race but would love to see exactly that how we can close those gaps that are that are greater I think we were all astounded at our first sort of data literacy session because I don't know that there historically was a lot of
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transparency here so in the interests of accountability we've provided that and we've also sort of given you the actual number of students we're talking about and it's important to recognize what the gap actually is and some of those percentage markers are unacceptably high and so we want to do two things here we want to we want to strive for excellence and lift all students performance which theoretically would increase the gap but we also want to show acceleration for those student groups and so to suggest that we would close all those gaps within four years which note district has done in the country what would it look like to be pretty assertive about the interventions and the supports which would be distinct and customized in many ways for each of these student groups is I think sort of the discussion at hand that would take resources some of it just takes time much of it requires capacity building and the right case management working with our school leaders so what is a smart goal that's attainable and allistic look like because we're talking about percentages of improvement that haven't been demonstrated in any urban school system and so how can we be audacious about it but also put some muscle behind it so that you know staff can can have their mandate to to move forth it also means prioritizing our time and effort if we're going to do that I can't think of a more noble cause but how do we sequence this work the work that we need to do with various student groups in some ways is common Universal but we also have to get pretty differentiated when it comes to to some of the student groups all of which involve a certain level of capacity and resourcing so just I guess just I would be interested in knowing sort of like here's what we think what it would take and to be aggressive and just put it out there because even with the aggressive five-year targets we still would have students and those sub and those four groups below 50% that at benchmark so I guess I would be interested in hearing like here's what we think were the highest leverage highest return on investments to really drive that even if it's a you know it's creating disproportionate from the other groups and I also think now is the time to do that because we're going to have instead of a reallocation of resources which I would be supportive even if we didn't have any money in but we're gonna have a new set of resources and I think this is the perfect time but I guess I would want to hear from you like here's how if we really put all the chips on those or more chips on that piece like what what could be possible well certainly if we're going to apply a racial equity lens we have to do that it would be great in PPS to model when at the state level via a black student success and natives do success plan and our Latino Student Success plan if we could point to some strategies that are being demonstrated here I also want to point out in district and school improvement you're not going to see this perfect diagonal line of linear improvement either you're gonna see a slow curve of building upwards as you build capacity and then acceleration will start to appear if you stay focused so we haven't tasked the staff with now talking about these are the goal areas we're starting to land on what are those three to five high leverage strategies at a systems level that we would be prepared to lead across those schools where we particularly see concentrations of these student groups I think superintendent too as part of our process as a board you know we're focused on our goal setting now and then after that we'll be focused on okay what are the accountability metrics that we're going to set so that we can really track these and part of that will be being able to take a deep dive with staff to understand okay help us understand what the strategies are that are going to help us reach these goals we're setting and we've been in this kind of delicate balance where we want to have really bold aspirational goals but we also they need to be achievable and they need to be reasonable and so at that latter part of the process where we're digging more into the strategies and then we're having accountability metrics on the strategies then as we move into the budget process that's when we can talk about well how could we fortify the
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certain strategies that you may be recommending with more of a allocation of resources so it's just kind of playing out this whole process that we're really at the beginning of now I think we're exactly where I'm happy where we're at many many district leaders governance teams around the country don't get to this point they haven't with their community defined division and they haven't immersed themselves in the performance data and ask themselves if we're going to performance manage our key responsibilities and educating students what are those indicators key performance metrics which is why we're putting a lot more attention into this area for the coming year once we've landed on the general goal areas absolutely that is going to be a large part of what you see articulated in our multi-year strategic plan which will be tied to a multi-year financial plan recommendation so we're starting to sort of sketch out what some of those strategies would look like knowing that some of these would would be pretty standard and we have a lot of growth that we need to demonstrate and there are some evidence-based practices out there and some of them just take time it doesn't matter how many dollars you pour into it you're still talking about the same teacher adopting practice and so but we can bring a different level of specialization to bear with with resources for sure with your permission I'll move on to the next goal area it's probably similar in some of the questioning that you're raising so the question is for both of these is if we're just looking and it's been raised before but what I reiterate if we're just looking at benchmark and we've seen it before in this district you get a perverse incentive if you're a building leader to focus on the kids who are right below the benchmark and if they're further behind well you'll you'll still provide services but you're really gonna pour your extra resources into a kind of a triage thing and so I want to make sure we don't have a perverse incentive here and also and and we were talking about this seeing more of a disaggregated distribution rather than you know percent above or below to see where students are on the scale right so we're conscious of that and want to be mindful of not encouraging but the fact is the gaps are so large you're you're not going to meet these targets by just focusing on kids on the bubble you know you're gonna have to do some wholesale change in practice if you're going to get at it but we definitely want to be sensitive to you know not being test driven per se to get the number that we want to see and I want to agree with director Bram Edwards I you know this this presumes sort of a certain budget package around resources and PD and strategies and so on there's probably as you say it takes time so there's probably a diminishing returns you can you can pour more money in but just to see some alternatives basically a budget outline in terms of where we put resources because to me this is this is priority number one he backing on that sorry I think that would be good I think it would also be helpful to get to put this in in a context so if you if you looked at a district that had had extraordinary success in in raising achievement levels what did that look like so I mean we're looking at this kind of in isolation and it would be I think it would be helpful for me at least to get a sense of how aggressive is this in the larger scheme of things because when whenever you're looking at improvement in really any kind of practice there's got to be a lead time you're not going to get you're not gonna get four percent growth every year you're going to start off with probably one percent and then it'll grow to two so you've just doubled and then you know over so it would be I think it would be helpful to know what is realistic I think the next time aggressive but realistic
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the next time we have this conversation we'll have the benefit of our new director of system performance dr. Russell Brown and that's exactly what we can expect to learn from I think absolutely and for illustrative purposes you know it's just been kind of three three three realistically two two three four or three five seven those those are pretty aggressive margins of improvement overall but I think we all feel the urgency regarding some of our students are rather far behind and we've got to do a whole lot better no matter what we do they have to be progressing at a super accelerated rate and that's going to require a particularly specialized support plan so and that's going to require partners in this work and our families being engaged in very specific ways so I'm already previewing a little bit about what some of that work would entail but just to get through this why don't I just I wouldn't want to I mean if we made big progress in reducing the number of students who are way below benchmark to me that's the success but that doesn't get picked up in this particular measure so that right if we can figure out some ways to add to that that would be great I think we're all trying to find that balance of progress mathematics was the topic area as an indicator for for fifth grade dr. Sarah Davis or dr. Valentino either one of you want to cover this winner hi and so as with the reading goal this one has not significantly changed what has changed is the disaggregation of data on the following two slides and so we just kind of we have have more nuanced metrics to kind of see where we are and and ways to move forward with growth I'm sorry so the double-digit percentages are just sobering for for all of us to see how historically this this trend has persisted not unlike in other large urban school systems when we're trying to get at here is we want to make accelerated progress in these areas as our as our steam leader you're hearing the conversation and what's attainable what's realistic if resource was not and a not you know a barrier what would aggressive performance look like and we have I mean there are just some amazing things that we can do within mathematics we have a great cadre of teachers m'as not it has not gotten significant focus for a long time and as many of you may have heard me say our society does not genuinely believe that all students can succeed in mathematics and so even as you look out across legislative initiatives they almost always focus on literacy because as a society we believe that everyone can read but we don't as a society believe that everyone can do math and so like just having this as one of our goals now like we're taking that first step that as a district we're saying we really deeply believe that every every student can learn mathematics and just from my own experience I was not successful in k-12 mathematics I graduated in the third quarter of my high school class I got into college on SAT scores because I'm one of those annoying people who tests well but because my family had money I was allowed to be fairly unsuccessful my freshman and sophomore year in college but then I learned how to be a student in college and I got those chances and I fell in love with math as an adult after the graphing calculator came out and math became a puzzle and patterns and problem-solving and interactive and that's why I'm so passionate about it because it can be that for every single student in our schools and so yeah we have huge amounts of growth but we have such an ability and a potential to make
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unbelievable and significant changes in our in our students lives moving forward but but yeah we really need to make those I really appreciated you know I've heard the kids in kindergarten through second grade are sort of learning to read and then after a third grade they're reading to learn and asking you what's the math equivalent of that is that if children by fifth grade meet these key indicators in math then it's a much greater indicator of their success at being able to find that puzzle and that pattern that you did with your graphing calculator and and fractions are that key indicator but fractions are one of the standards at the 5th grade but there there's a problem-solving functionality with I mean anything can be taught with rote memorization but to truly deeply understand fractions if we can get our kids graduating fifth grade with that deep understanding of fractions and a whole number division and then I was talking with some of you like if I say the number nine it should have a three Ness to you like nine should like like you should be able to 9s and threes should somehow be you know and that's but that's fractions and that's that's number sense and all students can do that they just need to have the opportunities to interact and engage with it as a as a puzzle and problem solving and with manipulatives and multiple ways of solving it and talking about the cool ways that they all the problems and so so I we have a big step to take but I am absolutely positive that that we can be successful I'm just curious so you had to pick one an elementary school and you picked 5th grade but is there like a third grade corollary because I'm just wondering if you looked at that third grade math data disaggregated whether it be very similar to the third grade reading and we're just it's unfortunately worse pardon it's unfortunately worse for for mathematics and so the to hit that fifth grade goal we will be doing a significant lift pre-k 5 and so if if every student leaving 5th grade with a deep understanding and number since we will have to so the the theory of action that goes into it will have to be a PK 5 theory of action and I I know the superintendent has that as as part of his mindset any schools as does the the chief academic officer and so we could all you know we could set those benchmarks interims but but those are the types of things that kind of lean into the theory of action that we're going to have to have a transformative view of mathematics PK 5 to hit that fifth grade goal and my understanding dr. Brenner's is that we picked 5th grade because it's that sort of transitory space and math of like I said with third grade is they're learning to read and that tells us that their grade are they on track with their reading and math is the same that kind of built on the scope and sequence throughout elementary school and fifth grade is really that indicator of are they have they grasped it fully and mastered it so that they're ready for that sort of more advanced math that comes in the middle school is that correct yep so do we have the curriculum in place so where we have the buy-in broadly into that curriculum if it is in place so it's part of our guarantee and and viable curriculum that we've had teams working on and so it that that will be a work in progress as you know our teacher teams dig into it as you know we just finished a full-day workshop with instructional leadership teams from all of our campuses across the district to really dig into then the curricular units and to work with the leadership teams on how to go from a unit plan to planning for engaging instruction and there was a lot of excitement in the room for like oh these are these are the resources and and and this is what what we have but there will be future budget asks because we will need some significant professional development to to shift just to I mean we really will need to increase the mathematical comfort and knowledge and belief and mindset of our teachers of our administrators of our central office of our parents I'm probably one of five people in the room who truly deeply believes that every student can be successful in mathematics because our society has just trained us so deeply that they can't and I've just I've done so much work with little kids and and with the ways that that things can be changed that like I can promise you every kid can do math they may not be
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able to do it the way it's taught right now but every kid can do math and so there's going to be a lift involved and so the GDC is our first step it's getting us really focused on the standards and what kids should be able to do with the grade levels and then we're gonna have to come behind that with what are the best pedagogy's and what are the ways to do that and then we have a baseline set of instructional materials but there's some amazing open source materials that are that are coming online and so we don't necessarily need a textbook adoption but we need that deep pedagogical professional learning so that teachers are better able to filter the open source materials that that are available and so we've made a good first step and I think I think we're in the right place to make additional steps and and it's going to be work so I think the other step I think that it's really interesting what you said about expectations and I see that everywhere that it's also a relevance question you know reading I think people see the relevance because it's used every day the quadratic equation not so much built the bridge that you drove here oh no but I mean and for the average person and so it is that puzzles and problem solving and so you do more math in your life than you actually think that you're doing but you think of it in terms of problem solving you know picking which parking garage to park in is actually frequently an algebra equation because there's this much to enter the garage and this much per hour but this garage is just a flat rate and and people they they don't see the madness in that because they just see it as the everyday and and what they're doing and so I do hear you like like full-on being able to derive the quadratic equation do I think that every person I stopped on the street needs to be able to do that no but they're actually there really is a deep relevance in in everyday mathematics and in and in the problem-solving and in seeing how how things fit together we obviously need to go grocery shopping together because I make my daughter figure out the price per ounce so we can figure out which thing to buy so math for her isn't everyday situation yeah tell her that it actually says that on the shelf [Laughter] that years ago when Excel was missing an obvious growth function and I had to go okay yeah yeah yeah and it pulled out natural logs and exponents and had to reverse engineer that but that's you know and I'm I supposedly have a really math centric job and there's there's a lot of math that I don't use before we move on to there our last goal which is the new goal or an amalgam of a lot of things that we talked about last time I just want to make sure that we all feel comfortable with these first two goals and that they are seem like a representation of our previous discussions on these areas and that we likely want to move forward with them any questions or concerns about these first two goals so I do I'm running if I look at this adding on the second fifth grade math goal it's the same subgroups that are but this time plus Latinos that are you know ranging anywhere from 23 12 to 23 percent meeting benchmark and if you translate that into our target if I do the math that even if we meet our targets it's just 277 more students which is about looks like about I don't know 13 12 and I got a percentages 12 to 13 percent so I I like the focus but I would want somehow it just seems like we should be able to that's just 10% of our students that were moving to benchmark over five years so I three years two years the three three years okay this is a math test so I'm not counting free and reduced because those are in some cases and so many double counts so I'm looking at the eol students which is 102 Latino which is
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106 I'm black which is 69 okay so can i it says on the chart 326 students director Scott things I'm I guess what the thing at the point I'm trying to make sorry I just finished my point is that I would like a potential sort of a super up on the the seven groups that are the lowest versus just across the board I'd like to see what that look like which is what we've tried to do with the second statement in each goal area in accelerating their target you want to see it be even higher well this is part of our conversation that we need to have about the achievable part of SMART goals and you know what how far we can get we all want to see them at a hundred percent and yet this district never has so what is the next three years worth of accelerated growth look like if we're aggressive about it resources are not an issue teaching and leadership capacity is there with the core and content knowledge that they need to actually do the work we also need a whole apparatus around the case management that would that would need to go into this kind of work all doable and even if we did all the right things what's a reasonable a target to that we can we can feel like is reasonable I guess I should amend my earlier statement cuz I don't think it's just about money because we in some schools already have very high per student's expenditures and one of the other things maybe director Scott's direct bailey's sorry that was like miss on both fronts that it's not just the funding piece of things so what other things do we need to do that would make people uncomfortable that can push the bounds and you may come back and say they're like we've exhausted everything but I guess I would be interested in hearing you say there's no other strategy either financial or non-financial yeah I think you have the published adopted budget book there and I think what you noted in the school-by-school pages is is the per pupil expenditure some of our most rapidly improving schools have actual in some cases have among the lowest per pupil expenditures some of our more affluent schools didn't show the same rates of improvement so it yes resources make a difference in the kind of work you're doing but the the actual kind of work that you're embarking on matters even more and that's what we would need to get at and all our pockets of students are actually situated to make sure that that's the experience they're being exposed to so just to jump in on this point and one of the benefits of multi-year goal-setting is that we can adjust as we go and I think picking up on director Brad words point we would all like to see these grow I think the district and superintendent his staff have said this is what we think we can get to with current resources but we can be checking back a year from now to say hey how much progress have we made we're these too aggressive were they not aggressive and adjust those goals on an annual basis as needed I do think the director from Edwards your point about the small number of students actually can be really powerful sometimes solving these really big problems is hard but solving a much more targeted group is easier it still takes resources still takes effort but it's a little bit easier so I think we may be able to do that I I would I'm really comfortable with what we've put on the table as a starting point and then revisiting this to see you know can we be more aggressive maybe a year from now as you mentioned you know we aren't probably going to see a slow ramp up and and things are going to accelerate in the future we need to be careful for that too but but these these are not set in stone for the next three years I think part of that acceleration too is not just the specific interventions on these specific areas and certain grades but it's really the result of so many systems improvements professional development work that is the ongoing rebuilding of this district that will all come together to play part so I would say yes to the two goals in terms of goal areas and the questions we raised around metrics to acknowledge the capacity building and learning curve how does the board feel about a 2 3 4 percentage rate increase it still gets us at the 9 percent that it acknowledges that we're still firming up foundational work building curriculum where it hasn't existed putting in place a balanced
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assessment system where it didn't exist jumping into continuous improvement processes with our leaders and schools where it didn't exist that was not a rhetorical question how do we feel about a 2 3 4 I think I think yeah no I think that's a makes total sense and I think actually laying out the path I mean that that is part of goal-setting right it doesn't have to be linear I'm right we have to assume it's not going to be linear right it won't be yeah so I think that once we settle on these goals then I think the the next task is going to be figuring out the progress measures so a year from now what are we going to be looking at to see if we're on track to meet the three-year goal and and yeah at that point I think it would be helpful to know what your expectation is for each of these goals in terms of one year from now what are we likely to see you know and probably have a you know low expectation of medium and a high if we're really knocking it out of the park what would it look like so I think the progress measures are going to be as difficult as it is to come up with with these goals I suspect the progress measures are going to be trickier I have a question about that though because of that growth curve we would expect I mean does nine months or one year of data give us enough time to actually accurately measure progress we're not in other words not we're not expecting a whole lot of progress that first year it's sort of flat before it goes up I think seems lower than the audience might expect this is why we went back a number of years and you actually just see a fluctuation by a percentage point or two over the last three four years I think we know we just instituted some some interim measures across the district the map assessment that's that's been instituted more in the reading across schools and introduced in math and some schools and so we would need to wrap out scale out the implementation of that so that you could have a consistent progress monitoring tool if the map is going to be an important predictor of how we expect students to do on the summative test at the end of the year so you know I think it's true we're gonna have to go through the same exercise and look at our students are doing on that formative assessment to try to equate a rate of improvement there as predictive of the improvement rate we want to see here and we'll work with our partners at nwea who construct that map and work with other districts and States on that very question so I'm just gonna give my I have think it's a hard gonna be a hard sell to the community that we can't do better than 2% when we're at 12 to 13% measures and it's not an intellectual reaction to like I could see if you do the math well that makes sense you get to you know what the objection is and it's not linear I just I think that will be a hard conversation with the community that we can't I guess I go back to just looking at the individual student numbers and the difference between 2 to 3% or 2 to 4% the actual numbers of students isn't gonna be that much and if again like what sorts of things can cause discomfort oh we could do this year whether you we've got like toeses and reading coaches or they assign at the right school do we have the right strategies do you have the right school improvement plans at the places where you have the most students not a benchmark and I don't know the answer I'm just it's a more emotional like sure it's emotional to us to see these numbers and I was referring to in the aggregate right so the spring before my new administration appeared this districts literacy rates went down 3% so we took them back up 2% and you know we still have were and that's before instituting curriculum and assessments and PD so we are hopeful that we will see an even better trajectory moving forward but I agree a 1% improvement for our student groups that have
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historically been underserved is not acceptable to us as educators so I don't refer to their rate of growth being that I'm referring to the aggregate of all students which they represent some portion of but we certainly want to accelerate their outcomes and I think quote director Scott he's talked about the moral outrage of looking at some of these numbers and seeing how much we as a district have failed some of our student groups and I also want us to be careful about continuing to over-promised under-deliver on the flip side director broom Edwards of if we say we are going to get to 75 for everybody and we again fail what is realistic what is good-faith what is collaborative growth that we can push towards and I take a lot of it's not perfect but if you look at the goal to baseline data 39 of our black students were proficient and the projected goal would be a hundred and eight which is more than double the number of students would then be proficient and I feel like these goals are not the end we're not saying okay in 2022 we're gonna throw a victory party that GPS is the most perfect district we have it all figured out I think this is a step towards getting to that place where all students I mean even if we meet these numbers on math we still have most of our student groups under 50% meeting which doesn't fit that ideal that all students can do math and so I think for me this is a good faith first step and how do we do it in a way that is aggressive that does honor those communities that we have long not met their needs and yet continue to do so in a way that is in good faith and not over promising under-delivering I do hope this goal setting exercise the board is undertaking is similar in the spirit with which we approach our schools improvement efforts in that as we evolve into adopting a more performance management orientation one important step is to set some performance goals and to be able to articulate the effort towards and improved outcome I don't want to see it as we failed to meet a goal but rather what are we learning from the process because some of the strategies we adopt may show a great outcome for a student group but we need to mean we may need to make adjustments in our approach with the different so I hope that the fill forward is a little bit of latitude that will need to be required because there are a lot of places to point to around the country that have figured out the correct recipe for tackling this level of differentiation while moving a school system forward so sort of that's the commitment we can make is to be transparent and saying here's what we're attempting here's what we're going to stop doing or we're going to move this direction to try to get at those performance targets we all want to see the other piece of it too is going back to the big picture is that this becomes more of the lens through which we view all of our decisions all of our budgetary decisions you know all the ways that we're trying to transform this school district how does this or or does it not contribute to raising a student achievement especially for our lowest performing schools and students that is a key point because the budget as we were budgeted for the projects and initiatives in place came before this right so there would have to be some retooling to refocus on this effort which will then impact other initiatives and other projects that also have value so it's it really comes down to this year we're still add some storming and norming and setting foundation while at the same time trying to push initiatives that at this point would be aspirational at best but we're moving forward with those a lot of that would have to be paused so that we can refocus and then retool so that the quality of professional development shifts the the space and times allotted for schools to connect would have to also shift because right now they're working off of an understanding that they have a year to gain the deeper understanding of what they're being asked to do and and we're gaining a better understanding of how best to support them so we're all learning this process together and so accelerating in to this will require more attention given to that and last out of so I think this is an important point our chief academic officer is we feel the urgency we also have an organization to build the capacity of to do this work and so while we're doing that foundational work how do we get serious about the supports and interventions for students that historically have have
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been left behind so that that's the tension here is that yes so that's averaged across overall yeah yeah maybe the way that would make me feel less more comfortable is that we be really explicit that for those students more underserved that the numbers are more aggressive because I think sometimes we get this loss when we talk about averages is everybody thinks about their own individual student and if you're one of part of the successful I mean not at benchmark it isn't matter what the average is so maybe the fine point is that or the nuance is that for they that's the average and that reflected some really suppose there's some B's and really specific strategies and theory veterans around this one thing I have suggested previously is for each goal area you have 1a 1b 1c we actually call out the more aggressive percentage of improvement with the end size so that we're actually capturing that in a really concrete way folks will see that it's a whole lot more it has to be a whole lot more than the 2 3 4 or problems you know some number much higher than that I mean when we talk about the progress measures the interim measures it can't be just the overall average because this is it this is a two-part goal both of these I mean you've got the overall average but then you've got the different student groups that are supposed to be making a 25% incremental change so the progress you're gonna have to have progress measures for each of those groups to know if you know in year 1 year 2 do you even have a prayer of hitting that 25% so I mean it's gonna have to be called out it probably won't it won't be called out in the goal but when we talk about the progress measures we're gonna have to be calling out it out right I think that's a great point and I do think we're gonna have to be explicit about it because if we have a goal that says 2% I think we should we don't want to communicate that that's the rate that some of our groups in particular that are behind that's our only expectation we have a much higher expectation than that so one more and then let's move on to our third goal are there gender differences amongst these groups that are substantial enough so that's another dimension yeah that's something that some of the directors had noticed in our data binders that they were in some cases some gender differences some variability shall we move on to the third okay eighth grade this needs development and it's a verbose description here but just to try to capture what we think we heard is if we were to be a little bit innovative and leading-edge here and not on a line to the middle school redesign we want to embark on as an experience for our students what would it look like to assess that learning progress in those skill and disposition areas of the Graduate portrait via something like a digital portfolio that a student would publicly present before a panel what would it look like if we brought together educators and others to develop a rubric they captured an expectation for how students would speak to present and prepare to talk about not just their progress in core academic areas but some of those areas that I know our directors were excited about to hear in how they've attended to their social-emotional development or their leadership skill capacity as during their middle grades their arts or their exploratory CTE experiences what would it look like if students were actual active learners of their experience and were able to reflect on the three years of their middle grades experience before a panel and get much more creative about that so we we started to do a high-level
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survey of other districts that are giving some thought to this and some districts around the country that are also embarking on middle school redesign we we have an example and this one's an Oregon district but we have Ashland school district that actually is doing some interesting work and outlining expectations I don't know if the a/v support can can click on the link here I don't have a laptop connected to this presentation but what they're able to what they've articulated for students and families is sort of the hoped-for goals and objectives of their middle grades experience and let's students know early on what the capstone will be at the end of that eighth grade so if you recall just a jog our memories as we've had students come in to share whether it's a foreign learning experience or some of their Capstone's we talked about as we embark on redesign work or what would a field experience look like that students could describe and connect to their learning what if every middle grader had to embark on some service-learning project as a requirement of their middle grades experience and presented as a component of their panel presentation what if we captured all of the progress that students made around a checklist of well-rounded items and that was captured in a digital portfolio and that was presented before parents and educators and students were provided with some 360-degree feedback there so we have to link there for you not sure if we can pull it up but it essentially outlines what the experience is intended to to provide for students and an opportunity for students to sort of reflect on that so if we spent some time really building the connection to our graduate portrait how do we in an open-ended way allow some personalization of that for students and yet still be able to give it an assessment that that students had have made progress along a few different dimensions of the portrait I think part of the conversation that we had at the end of our last work session on this was that we wanted a goal that captured some these social-emotional points that are so tied to our portrait of a graduate and I think this is seeking to do that one question that I have here is that it seems to me like a lot of this depends on the predicted reconfiguration and re-imagination of our whole middle grades curriculum which is at least a year away so it's I don't understand what our metrics would be prior to prior to that you're raising the same question we had internally is there a metric that could serve as a proxy while we developed this or you'd have to tease one element out I would think and I pulled this up on my laptop and it looks pretty cool I'm just in a very very first glance yeah reasoning and problem-solving one of the metrics Civic and social responsibilities have you demonstrated that knowledge of sustainability in the natural world and our relationship relationship to it have you have you demonstrated that a whole timeline through the air of pulling stuff together working in a team I would think a first year metric of just planning and putting together a measure and having that discussion at the middle school level would be that in itself would be like taking our vision and deepening that conversation for the middle grades would be a pretty cool process so I think by killing an engaged staff engaged so this is an example of a middle school in Ashland and sort of the the capstone project has been detailed out for for students and families but it essentially outlines what those key areas are so you see the core academic knowledge which is in our own vision better to articulate some of the things that you just listed out director Bailey and then as you go down through the handbook it affords students the opportunity to demonstrate their growth in those areas and some initial work that they've done on how to rubric this
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inquiry project so that that learning can can can be demonstrated so you see that it's not just an assessment piece but it's you know demonstrating fluency with technology tools or public presentation they've attempted to find a creative but well-rounded way to really promote out eighth graders they feel have a good foundation to to to have a successful high school experience so if I could ask dr. or a would to come down here as we work with some of our partners on our college and career-readiness work this is not unlike some of the work that our partner organizations are beginning to do with other school districts and we do have a fourth goal that we inserted in here just to give a little bit more of our thinking on college and career readiness but I thought it'd be good if dr. would gave you a little bit more description excuse me I want to let members of the audience know that we are going to hear the complaint after this item before we have our discussion of the levy referral which is next on the agenda but I know we have several parents here and we will get to that after we finish this schools discussion sorry for the delay so we through our partner connect platform have connected with already over 600 partners in the Portland area who have signed up and have put themselves out there to offer different types of experiences for students and so that was the initial rollout we were able to get interest from 600 people in the community and so with I think a big rollout and some advertising and explanations and of the different opportunities I think who that that number would expand and the it the platform is called partner connect and they volunteer that's how we have been connecting our CTE students with career related learning experiences so the Curly requirements at the high school level that's one of the way that we've been our career coordinators have been acting as the liaison between our high schools and our community members and they go on to the partner connect platform and they're able to say who has signed up and as an option for a job shadow and then they'll they're able to connect students with these partners in the community so that is something that we could absolutely look to expand upon to broaden the experiences of our students outside the classroom walls building on that foundation that's been started at the high school level to bring some opportunities for middle school students and also we have some pockets of greatness and things that exist currently in some of the middle schools such as the IB community project that's required of all eighth graders at IB school so we have some work that we could build off of that looks similar and that has some start around the district to broaden those opportunities for more students Thank You dr. Terry and I think this goes with our interest of really bringing that college career readiness down through and into the grades and so as we think about redesign work how do we do some of that pre CTE exploratory experience as well that our students could could speak to so this is an area that would require some development and we'd want to continue to kind of surveying what's happening out there this was just a good you know example here in the state you can see how one middle school is tackling that we think we could you know put our heads together to come up with an example I think based on our last conversation what we want to see is something that that includes both core competencies so we wanted to get proficiency and high school readiness from an academic standpoint as well as some kind of social emotional indicators or career readiness and so it seems like we have a bit of a ways to go before we have a goal here that we think makes sense prior to implementation and middle school redesign and that we can monitor in some in some fashion but we can look forward to the next part of the conversation and if there's an appetite if as a proxy placeholder whether
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staying with the sense of belonging from our survey whether students reporting that as an important you know social emotional feeling is worth capturing for eighth grade while we developed this one out and then the fourth goal area was the college and career-ready certainly there were questions around PSAT and certainly other ways that we could measure college career readiness but I wanted to give dr. Terry sorry I was having deja vu to a previous past colleague Aurora Terry here to talk a little bit about this indicator so now last time we met we discussed the PSAT and so that is still reflected here the idea of moving from 48% of students meeting the benchmark to increasing that number to 57% and if you'll remember the benchmark is for the tenth grade students taking the PSAT that they would score a 430 on the reading and writing section and a 480 on the math section is meeting that benchmark and so I know we'd also discussed potential indicators that would not be reflective of an assessment and so some ideas again along those lines something that could mirror the eighth grade project in that a personalized graduation plan or revamping the IDI plan and profile which is the organ requirement and right now we're using our transcript the student transcript to to meet the organ requirement for the ED plan and profile but that could also be fleshed out to include things such as personal and academic career goals post-secondary interests a senior project work samples a learning portfolio that could have resumes expanded curly opportunities that career related learning experiences my plan si additionally we could also look at an increased participation rate in advanced coursework and/or the number of college credits the students are earning in high school increasing the credit amounts another opportunity would be students taking and progressing through a series of CTE courses so those are also some ideas currently in our high school strategic plan that we have been working on the last two years and working towards our goal for the high school strategic plan currently discusses increasing by five percentage points and by ten percentage points for historically upper underrepresented students completing at least two credits in a CTE program of study and two credits in advanced coursework so I think those are some of the goals that were working on that could be also more clearly articulated as a board priority are you thinking it you may come forward with a combination or alternatives at your interest pleasure absolutely absolutely so so I just know last time we talked you wanted some ideas of what it might look like if we went away from a standardized assessment like the PSAT so those are some options so there there are some options if we wanted to look at something besides the PSAT so I I love the blended measurements because some some students do great on the PSAT others knock it out of the park on CTE others on arts some of our as we saw last year then the school year we have lots of students receiving the cela by literacy so we have C excellence in lots of different areas and I think having something that's blended gives us an opportunity to see excellence in every student so I like the approach versus just the PSAT not that the PSAT data is gonna go away or anything I mean we're still going to have it but I think these other measures also allow our students so we can see where they excel in different areas or their own excellence so I like that I did have a question about why the only you only had yellow under the PSAT which I mean at one point three percent I'm just I'm surprised by that number but they're also yellow are not any the other eleventh grade math on time for
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graduation I'm wondering why that is an oversight we can pardon an oversight in this slide we have that data and we can make it that available I apologize any further discussion around college and career readiness benchmarks does everyone still feel like this we want to include this in some fashion and a blended flash fashion as fourth goal I'm still thinking about it both in terms of a goal area I'd rather focus earlier not not against it but it's again my priority would be earlier grades to build the foundation and still have issues with piece using sad or piece at I think you get it the whole testing thing and then who gets to take the preparation for peace at stuff and that's a whole equity issue around that for a test for and I'd rather not use that as a benchmark yeah our kids going to take it sure but as a benchmark for the district I not sure and it certainly doesn't measure writing I had a question 11th grade math means what exactly from the piece PSAT you know the 11th grade math is the aspect that Oregon's state assessment system okay I think it's really vital for us to have a college and career readiness goal because I think with the graduate portraits one of the things we're seeing is what does it look like for someone to exit PBS as a successful person and so I think that needs to be part of it and I've said this before I think leadership is key and I think we hit that in the eighth grade in a lot of ways so I do like the blended idea of what does I think college and career readiness looks different for different people so that idea of how do we measure it in ways that are more cohesive I think is important I am concerned about our on-time graduation rates and this is a conversation we've had how what does that number actually tell us other than students pass classes with D's I mean that's the that's the current benchmark and I think that that doesn't necessarily mean someone is college and career ready so I'd like whatever metrics we use to really be about mastery and that ability to be a leader to go into a career to go to college just sort of have had a successful school experience that's demonstrable I mean I think ultimately we're looking at a portfolio kind of measure there as well as the middle grades or at least I would be interested in that so I'm gonna echo me as well because this doesn't tell a whole story about who's gonna be successful in life necessarily and Society is made up of people that have abilities in all areas and if we're gonna be modeling inclusivity then we want to model people that are excellent poets good dancers there's the statisticians it's gonna be a hard wait it's gonna be a long way to get them to that point so I wonder if we want to develop this and let it let it simmer for a year and kind of develop it out rather than jumping into it right now for college and career-ready yeah so I we certainly ever just doing the others have our work cut out for us so I think I strongly feel like we should have a high school measurement in in in the mix because I think just a missing element and I think if we don't have one then it just defaults to graduation on-time graduation which I think is not a high standard nor does it necessarily serve as an indicator of whether students are ready for college and college and career and in life and fulfilled that graduate profile so I'd rather we actually we have a lot of metrics we've made investments because of alla measure 98 in high schools it seems like were actually in this phase I think somewhat ready to go there's lots of work done on around the collagen CTE and the mapping across the schools where I actually think this could be one
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of the more inspirational places where we can focus on something besides I think is you mentioned director Bailey that that some of these things are seem like just the sort of old basics and to me this if you had some sort of blended measure we really could shine a spotlight on the great work that's happened in expanding CTE in our schools and arts education and that syllabi literacy we've got lots of students coming up through our Dual Immersion programs that we can highlight as well so I I would like to keep a high school measure can I can I just suggest I think staff have put some interesting ideas on the table here and I'm interested also in the perspectives but it feels like this is more of a work session topic then we should come back to you in the future because I don't think we're gonna solve this goal today was suggesting is that we could but I don't even know if we need to put off a year I think we could put off like two two or three weeks and come back to the come back to it to see if we can get to to some resolution we still have some fairly open-ended questions around our goal setting to try to get to the place where we all feel this is what we want to spend our next three years measuring and monitoring and thinking about can I just on this point cuz I want to come back to what I'm gonna continue to say the goals are not static and so I think it's totally I could guess we're going to adopt goals soon and I think if the board is comfortable with the first three goals we can adopt those well still continuing to talk about goals four and five and you can add them at any time during the year in terms of you know because the district has a whole bunch more than these in terms of data and goals that they're tracking themself so if I'm hearing correctly as a next set of direction to staff you want to have us come back with two or three measures maybe CTE courses completed arts pathway courses I advanced coursework AP IB dual credit completion understanding the kids are going to choose different pathways what we want to show is that they're persisting through them as as a proxy for college career readiness okay and we'll have to get the numbers for each of those areas as well so I think there's still questions about core competencies especially for me around writing and how because I don't think we have a tool to assess that writing prompt in the 11th grade for instance okay I just want to quickly acknowledge that we had at the end of our last work session we had a little bit of discussion around potentially fifth goal around English language learners and how quickly they are exiting out of a ll programming and you know we're obviously addressing rate of progress with our first two metrics as we look at English language learners as a subgroup there that has or will have expectations about rate of progress but let's quickly address what this might look like and what might be attainable for our consideration around a goal as this as this appeared there was excitement in it because we realized that as as many of you know research has suggested the students will have reclassified actually outperform even English only students and so we really needed to figure what would be the right measure up a 21 as a metric and then the measure inside of that and the improvement has not been identified yet primarily because we have not had enough ESL Department and the tracking of students has not led to that and that question for the first time that people remember come up has how do we begin to track them in a way that actually aligns them with progress in growth over time to see how they're going to to succeed in English on the environments with rigorous academic tasks attached to them and so while this piece is exciting now we don't have an identified percentage that would actually be able to at this point say well we're going to create a three-year or five-year progression based on this baseline and that's where we are right now trying to determine that that number and so perhaps if you
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wanted to speak to to that historical context of this so but if not like the other academic milestone areas where we have for the aggregate incremental improvement in student subgroups acceleration targets another way to draft goals is to just pull out the student group and so there was some interest in sort of well what would that look like for a ELLs which we could have a performance target for there's a long time bilingual educator and I think a lot of people would agree we want to be careful in this area and caution us because you know 100 percent reclassification in a given year because that's not how second language development works there's a healthy margin by which you would expect a certain number of students to be naturally progressing in their second language literacy but you don't also want to create incentives to reclassify before they're ready to compete in grade level academic content in English so we can have a target for having worked on language district plans in this area you know I just we would need to be thoughtful about it but I would like to get the the data because I think there's some pretty compelling data that shows as dr. Valentino mentioned of when students actually Master English and are reclassified how they perform and when I look through the the data on whether its third grade reading fifth grade math you know I guess PSAT at one point three percent of the ALL students it seems that there's sort of a double a double challenge that these students have not only are they be really required to master a Content area but also English and I mean one of the things that looking at the data and having some thoughtful goals around it I do think it focuses our attention I mean especially even like bad data or data that is sobering will focus our attention on something so I'd like to see the data because I do you think this you look at when you when districts get it right and move students through proficiency mastery that there's huge payoffs on the content side of the ledger so familiar with the research agree when students have that strong literacy foundation we said third grade reading we're assuming that's in English right it could be in another language if we wanted to but we do know when kids have an opportunity to to really develop their language literacy they do do better in the end and we want to have some measure for but that's only if there's quality of programming and implementation and fidelity and training and supports and so what we want to do is have some proxy for strengthening our programs for students that are learning English for sure I think it's also important to disaggregate the data by formal schooling before students came to PBS because that's just a change in that population will have a big impact well that's staffs pass next pass at iterating these I think we've taken a lot of notes here we'll do some some further tinkering and look forward to coming back to you thank you very much if I'm the only one who was interested in the article should I just let that go in the what the arts goal I think you know at this point we're seeing arts incorporated than that eighth grade goal we're seeing arts incorporated in the college and career readiness and you know that arts especially band is near and dear to my heart real shocking leadership and band and math that's my jam but I think you know it's again what if we can only have five things what are those those priorities and I at least feel satisfied that arts is being included in really meaningful ways and those other places all right thank you everyone for your patience we're going to move on to consideration of a step to complaint in accordance with board policy 4.5 0.032 p the district sets forth a specific procedure for resolution of formal complaints by students parents and guardians and people who reside in the district in order to resolve formal and informal complaints in a fair and timely manner tonight as a board will hear an appeal on a step to complaint brought to the
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board regarding services provided students identified as talented and gifted the board will now consider resolution okay still laughing the board will now consider resolution number five nine four five a resolution to a hold the super tennis decision on a step three appeal complaint number two 0 1 9 - 0 4 do I have a motion second director Scott moves and director more seconds the motion to adopt resolution five nine four five miss Huff is there any public comment on resolution 5 9 4 5 hello my name is Ashlyn Rennick Radd I seek Hey as you know we are here to talk about the group complaint felt on behalf of over 5000 Tech students you know behalf of all students working above benchmark or capable of doing so I think Elaine addresses PBS's violations of state laws related to talented and gifted services PS PBS has been out of compliance with Oregon tag allows for most of the last 20 years the district continues to float state rules protect protecting above men from can highly capable students over and over PBS has failed to implement its plans to come into compliance these facts portray an embarrassing pattern of not agile negligence and just regard for students specifically the government including includes the following there's not enough central tech staff there are fewer staff positions now than there were two years ago open positions in the department have gone fill for many months the tech department is also now is Munsell for other instructional programs this trip does not support the tax department enough this makes it impossible for a tag department to support schools tech services are implemented by discretion rather antennas district-wide standards the tech department budget is too small which prevents staff from ensuring basic tag services central tech staff and school coordinators are not properly trained in or resources parents routinely receive mister information' from district offices and school school staff building tag plans are outdated or in film unfamiliar to staff a very small number of students receive individual tag plans teachers are generally unable to show that students receive rate and level instruction critical information is poorly communicated if at all families do not receive meaningful details about second-grade tag testing parents rights or acceleration opportunities this perpetuates historica inequity and develops new areas of inequity opportunities for advanced coursework are not consistent or equitable for example single-subject acceleration is ohm is available only in math the process is partly documented and it cannot be considered successful there are very few students allowed to accelerate in math must be brought to the class daily by their parent if it is in different building further there is a woman in there is limited inequitable access to advanced coursework in high school freshmen academies require all students to take same classes regardless of ability or achievement ie programs are only offered to high to high schools AP classes are not equitable equitably offered nor are they available to all students transfers are generally not allowed finally PBS's complaint process is dysfunctional in and inadequate for example significant misinformation about the complaint process were communicated by multiple district officials and this step 3 hearing scheduled was confirmed only at 10:00 p.m. this past Friday night thank you thank you my name is Colleen McCormick MCC orm I seek a I'd like to review some mitigations that would address issues raised in this complaint aside from obvious solutions increasing the budget increased staff standardized
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practices documented policies true accountability measures clearer communication to constituents here are some best practices for you all to consider the use of cluster grouping is a proven Institute instructional best practice that supports all students in cluster grouping elementary classroom assignments are made by grouping three to five students with similar strengths together allowing teachers to more easily differentiate and students to more easily cross pollinate another instructional best practice is to systematically use flexible ability grouping for instruction rather than leaving it to teacher discretion flexible ability grouping is a dynamic process of grouping or regrouping students who are working at a similar rate and level so that they can deepen or accelerate during any given unit of study consistent use of unit pre-testing would allow teachers to determine what content standard should be taught to each group of students and at what depth further supporting differentiation and curriculum compacting standard use of these practices will improve differentiation of instructions for all students notably these techniques are used successfully in neighboring districts that enroll a high percentage of historically underserved students such as david douglas however acceleration is the most effective curriculum intervention for capable students a review of over 380 studies reveals that almost all forms of acceleration result in growth of achievement here are a few ideas that can increase access to content-based acceleration standardized bail schedules to support out of grade-level walk to programs for math and reading so that all students can access ability level instruction automatic and systemic consideration of curricular acceleration and are compacting for students performing above benchmarking and standardized IB program and a true breadth of advanced placement courses available throughout the district thank you you have Megan Kubler thank you my name is Mark and Kubler ko ble are returning to the complaint the district's first response generally agreed about the insufficiencies of staff training and budget as well as the inconsistency of offerings and inequitable access to appropriate instruction here are some experts expert experts from districts response there is not currently sufficient staff in the general tag Department to support a system-wide approach to instructional practices for talented and gifted students there is not sufficient budget to support a system-wide approach to instructional practices for talented gifted students the schools are not supported enough to consistently implement a system-wide approach to instructional practices for talented and gifted students PPS said there are inconsistent practices across the district regarding access to services and to appropriate classes and that it has plans to address access for students the district said enrollment eight in IB AP or honors classes does not automatically show that a tag students rate and level of learning are being addressed the finding may really the finding regarding this complaint that is that services vary by campus regarding its failure to implement and evaluate tag services beef PPS says that it has created a plan to address implementation and evaluation in the future PPS assessment of its dysfunctional complaint process is that parents received responses to their complaints that are consistent with division 22 requirements the step one response ends with the statement that PPS will again self-report being out of compliance with the division 22 area of meeting rate and level of tag students at step two the superintendent's office pointed to its latest five-year plan the current staffing levels in the existent exist sting inequitable high school offerings and assertions of eventual improvement the district says it will be fully compliant with tag lost or in the twenty twenty four twenty five school year I'd like to share the short-term improvements that districts said they would put in place during the coming five years to make real difference to the students money parents and students have been here before speaking about how you are failing and me and the majority of students who are highly capable so - oh so many of us have been in this room month after month
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trying to help you work towards equitable opportunities for all students you have told us over and over and for longer in fact than I've been in school that you have a plan for highly capable students and yet there is nothing to show for it another five years is not acceptable for me I will be a senior before tag services are implemented for our timeline thank you for your attention thank you do we have any more public comment I'd like to open it up for board discussion on this resolution we have before us would we would would we like a recap of the staff recommendation we all have had the summary of the staff superintendent Linda Smith our district tech coordinator and our CEO thank you yes just a just a brief recap of the thinking that went into the recommendation before the board thank you very much so we submitted a tag plan to the state as required in Division 22 in January enlisting our five goals for our three year plan from 2019 to 2020 22 and it within that plan it did describe some of the ways in which we feel that we can bring the district into compliance through professional development through ensuring that we are identifying more historically underserved students we need to work with our partners in order to come up with writing individual tag plans for each one of our 7750 to gifted and talented students as of this year that are in synergy as well as I just yes and then of course writing extensions and adding strategies within our GBC curriculum our guaranteed viable curriculum for the units that are being written in our core subject areas within the district also last at last year too I want to say that we trained all of our student all of our teachers and all of our schools on rate and level was quite an undertaking but we did get that work done each one of the tagged facilitators is the tag facilitator in each one of our school buildings who is responsible that is the key person for the contact between parents teachers administrators in the district tag office they supply information resources bring back professional development that they were from the tag Department each and every month as well as help facilitate the testing schedules for all of our students that we do test for identification including the universal testing that we do for second graders into September or 1st of October so there's that partnership with the schools as well on the testing I want to open it up for questions so our tag plan was submitted to OD e yes and they don't approve it's my understanding but maybe you can share what their response was to our submission so so we are to submit the OD to OD e our plan showing what our areas of growth and goals are going to be for the year giving specific information it is a framework in which they present to us we fill in ensuring that we have all the correct documentation how many students we serve what kinds of high school courses that are accelerated so it's basically giving OD e a glimpse at how we provide service to our tagged students and in Portland Public Schools we provide that delivery through the classroom teacher at the school level except for the program at access which is an alternative program
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for highly gifted children so we received that we got an email stating that we had you know submitted the plan but there was really no feedback from that plan that we submitted it's a complete plan a complete and we we checked all the boxes that we needed to do basically what was our status with division 22 relative to tag compliance in the previous year or years so we reported that we were out of compliance for providing great and level for every student in the district and immeasurable systemic approach and so the OTE then asked us for our plan of action how do we plan to address this and so our plan of action to address that for last year was to provide tag training for every teacher on campus and so we did a train-the-trainer model where our central tag Department trained the tag facilitators on every campus and the tag facilitators provided a training for every teacher on campus as a starting point again we recognize that that is that we have to start somewhere and so when we submitted the sign-in sheets for completion of the tag training on every campus we then met our corrective action plan so I'm gonna say the statement but I'm looking around I don't think anybody was here in 2015 at the Dyess over there the parents the students were you there but I'm looking at the complaint or the findings actually so the comment was very thorough and the response was as well which I appreciated but on page two it says in 2015 PBS submitted a new tag compliance plan is that similar to what not necessarily the content but it's the same thing that we sent to OD e is that what you're referencing in this is same format yes the same framework that was provided by OD e that was completed in 2015 yes so this won't be our first tag compliance plan but it says here the school board and again present company excepted since we have changed over never approved it funded it and P P has never implemented it so the difference this time would be we have a plan I don't know I is it gonna come to the board to it to be approved and then that I guess the other question would be the resourcing of it during the next budget cycle so the tag plan comes with five articulated goals as a way of addressing the differences in deficiencies that exist and we believe that it starts with a comprehensive look at how our students are being taught so in looking at our at our text in population it really comes down to making sure that the the teaching in the classroom actually works to differentiate for all students in that classroom but also they might have they need to have good content and so working those two together has been a clear focus that there has been the identification of student populations and to make sure that when we're assessing students we're actually able to capture progress and growth for that population of students and ultimately how does all of that translate into having a plan for each one of those students that we can actually track over time to make sure that those that the needs of that of those students are are being met so the plan was designed with those five goals in mind and just as a a governance issue we wouldn't normal the board school board wouldn't normally approve a compliance plan but we would weigh in on the budget that's presented so does our play tag plan contemplate in order to be able to implement it that we have to that we would there'd be a proposal in the budget process to fund the district's response I think if we want to accelerate work in this area or any other we would want to make sure that that those work strands are inclusive in our budget recommendation in the coming spring it balance that against all of our other priorities the differences this coming spring we anticipate a little bit more of an infusion so how can we move forward in some of these areas where the district hasn't had the capacity to the degree that you know at warrants is there is there a resource Plantin it's a resource the plan work the planned
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is there a resource plan contemplated that in order to implement it so yes and partially so this year our current tag budget is 1 million one hundred and eighty five thousand dollars and two and that amount will help us incremental e move to these goals can you give some can you get some context for that number what was it the previous year do I have that in the first response so previous so that's level funding essentially from Lasher you're thinking of the year before it's I mean it was on page four of the step one complaint is the chart with that tag for me so I think some of these strategies outlined in your three year plan are addressed by other more systemic improvements like the guaranteed and viable curriculum and you know differentiated instruction that we're working toward across our system as well as the professional development that you've already invested in but what is the likelihood of being able to achieve this five point three year plan outlined here without additional resources I think without additional resources it will take longer so let's do the inverse of that how many additional resources would it take to accelerate this five years is a long time and I think it would be helpful to know what the limits are I mean there are there are some issues that probably there isn't enough money on the planet to make this an immediate turn around because we're talking about professional development for thousands of people and we're and we're talking about curriculum and we're talking about a lot of moving parts with all of which take time okay so given that would it be possible to come up with a resource plan or something would allow us to make the kind of progress that you're contemplating over five years but do it in three or four one of one of our steps that we've been able to take just recently because of the fundraise fundraising efforts here in the school district because we do have a donor who is going to fund some professional development so we will be able to reach more teachers immediately for differentiated instruction that we wouldn't have been able to do without that so that's one start and I think those fundraising efforts and just in by word of mouth and in folks wanting to contribute to gifted and talented students in their instruction I'm hoping that that will grow is as we get this plan off and see the success that it brings the donor so we're excited about that things could be sped up for example when we're talking about creating individualized tag plans for every student so with additional funding we could have the resources to pay teachers or tag facilitators extended hours to complete those plans meet with families discuss growth as we're discussing how to shift instructional practices besides direct training for teachers which again comes with substitute costs or extended our costs we could also invest in toeses or invest in supporting the PLC trainings and working with the GBC to actually create those units at the student level and common assessments and so those
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kinds of those pieces would be helpful as it stands right now we do teachers do our compensated for writing individual tag plans however the parents must ask for it so then there becomes that sometimes stopgap of of equity right the parents that know to ask for them versus the parents that don't so that's why in our plan we feel it's really would be a benefit to the child's learning if we were able to fund the individual tag plans for all students and that I think would then you know what the teachers being very specific with the learning targets and addressing rate and level I think could make a pretty substantial movement on the needle quickly the release time for the tag facilitators to go into classrooms model lessons give feedback to our teachers meet with potential students so there are a few options that potentially could increase the attainment of this plan and resources would then pull from other priorities of course there are some other suggestions that were made that are probably cost free that could be done presumably relatively quickly it would I mean I'm thinking things like standardized bail schedules so that so that you could do the walk - you know accelerated courses I'm guessing there would be some resistance on the ground to doing that sort of thing because it would mean doing things differently but it seems to me there are some some things that could probably be done in the short term that would not necessarily require an infusion of a significant amount of new money but could make a difference for for kids who need acceleration it would require that the central office exerts some centralization just want to double-check when we talk about schedules we're talking about synchronizing departments to be providing content at the same time of the day okay I don't have a good sense of what the low-hanging fruit is and what is doable because the even the low-hanging fruit that doesn't cost anything does cost a lot because time is money I don't have a good sense like what could be implemented right away and what could be stepped up over time that might cost more money so I don't know if you can fill me in as a newcomer so the right so the right away thing is really the process in which we are now deeply committed to the guaranteed and viable curriculum and really looking at the unit plans and finding those extension activities and strategies for all of our teachers in all of the content areas I think that's some low-hanging fruit definitely and that's not going to cost us anything except at the time we're already spending on developing unit plans and providing the training to teachers and to administrators on the guaranteed and viable curriculum and in priority and supporting standards so I that would be something that would be very that would be something that would be cost effective and could happen in a timely fashion and that's because that work is always current happening that's right that's right so what we have before us is consideration of the recommend staff and superintendents recommendation which is whether or not the board should approve this five-point plan and it is agnostic on the question of resourcing fair to say additional resourcing would allow us to accelerate the proposed five-year plan what resolution is this resolution five nine four five so so it's a five-point plan but also a
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five-year plan and so there's at least those two dimensions to it I was a little confused earlier so assuming that we that we pursue this five-year five-point plan is that going to pass muster for the division 22 is is well will that allow us to check the box as compliant not immediately you know okay so at what point I mean is there some point during this five-year period when we would be compliant or do we have to wait for the full completion of the five-year plan so to to mark compliance we have to have a systemic measurable way to say that we're meeting the rate and level of every student and because our students are being serviced by classroom teachers we we want to make sure that our classroom teachers are provided with the training that the classroom teachers are provided with the curricular materials and supports and that our students have individualized plans so those would be the three markers that we would want to meet before we would feel comfortable as a system saying that we have put systemic processes in place - as well as using the data that we can you know get from the map scores and different assessments that we already use within the district to look at growth of our talented and gifted students so we have that data here in the district now through the map assessment so some another way that we can measure that growth as well to see that we're meeting rating level thank you do we have any further discussion so this has been around since before my kids were in school and they're 30 and 26 right now so and being an economist on the one hand on the other hand what you're saying is really true across our system no matter which group of students you pick out we're building systems where there have been no systems so you're in good company and I'm not and I'm not I'm not saying that to diminish what you're bringing but just you know if you've seen what we were talking about in terms of our goal setting and where we are now this is the challenge for the district across the board with every student one thing I think I would suggest as this evening we looked at the different student groups and I think one noticeable group that was missing that we could track over time with growth and increases would be our tag student absolutely just sort of picking up on director Bailey's point because I think it's an important one I really appreciate the complaint you know being able to read through it was very thorough I think it makes it very clear that the district is failing tag students I also had an opportunity to meet with a number of tag parents during the campaign and I heard about a number of these issues and I think the district is is agreeing with that I mean from what I read in terms of the response I mean we're saying yes it's it's pretty clear we're not meeting the needs of these students but what director Bailey said is really important that as we look at the entire district and as a board we need to look at the entire district but but as parents we need to look at the entire district as well I'm also a parent of a tag student the the reality is is that and I know most of you were here for this we are failing students across the board and I want to make sure we don't miss this point and I want to make sure we're really transparent the five-year plan is not currently funded so in order to even achieve the five-year plan which I believe most of you think is too slow for good reason we're gonna need to make some really hard resource decisions in terms of even getting to that speeding that up and I'm going to get to your to your science cuz I appreciate them speeding that up would require even additional resources and a question that again the board needs to answer but but I'm gonna really put the
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stall of you in the room as well is where do those resources come from and one of the things we need to make sure that they don't do is do harm to other students in the district who we're also failing and and that is a really really challenging question and I think that all of us when we talk about these issues need to be thinking about it is a zero-sum game and I hate I hate the fact that it is but when we're talking about resources it's a zero-sum game now I am interested in some of the parents are putting up signs about you know cluster grouping and and state subject acceleration etc and out those don't cost money they do cost time and resources of staff to figure out how that works what I just be really clear right now I'm gonna vote to uphold the superintendent recommendation and this what I what I do hope staff continue to do is work with these parents on what are the things we can do in the short term that might move things forward more quickly and then and then also what are the things we could do to make sure that we are getting into compliance and even if that's over five years which is a long time that's better than being out of compliance so - director Scott's point um I the board is gonna need to know for the next budget cycle how what kinds of resources you're gonna need in order to do even this because yeah I mean there's there's only so much money to go around and Lord knows there's endless need out there so yeah we're gonna we're we're gonna be in the hot seat we're gonna have to make some some difficult decisions and um and we're gonna need we're gonna need help from the staff to figure out what those you know the contours of those difficult decisions and I mean I I'm I am also gonna vote to uphold and I do think this is you know it is a testament to where we are as a district that that we're having to come up with a five-year plan that is probably not going to be satisfying to anyone in this room we're outside but we are where we are and there's a lot going on I I think it might be helpful as time goes on to report out not just to us but to the you know to God and everybody what you're doing in terms of like professional development for classroom teachers to advance the cause you know the cluster grouping you know the walk twos though you know whatever it is that you know kind of progress reports so that we all know we don't have to wait for five years that stuff is happening they leave it you've laid it out as a three year plan but without an infusion of additional resources it's going to take longer so we will expect progress reporting on you know how we're chipping away at these and then it will also along with many other things be a topic for the budget so I'm gonna call this call us to a vote soon my vote so I'm gonna support the public superintendent's recommendation but this has been going on a long time so when I was on the board in the early 2000s the creation of access was one way to address the lack of services to a specific and targeted group of access of tagged students and there hasn't been a lot of progress made since then so I guess I'm gonna support it the superintendent with two caveats one is that I'm an expect in the budget process that we have the resources because of a plan without it's not resourced isn't really a plan and then second I think there's some missing piece here is the equity piece so the plan I don't see any data in here that talks about how our
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different groups all right have their tags just in term it with some but in terms of notification and or you know what the disaggregated students who are getting the individual education plans because I mean frankly I didn't I had a text one-one of my three kids as a tag student but I never knew that you could ask for a plan so I'm just wondering there's the in terms of the equity of who know who knows that you could ask for that and then the information about the API B and dual credit I think while we have it at all also we have a variation at all schools it's not the same and it's not equitably access accessible so if you're at Madison there's a lot fewer AP classes than there are and some other in some others high schools so just because we have some if that's how we're saying we're meeting some of that the tag students need for you know rate and level or love that would be level instruction I think we still have a gap that exists in same thing with the under enroll K eights I think we still have some gaps in what's it's not consistently applied so as we look at how we resource the plan that's like another element that I'd want to just see fully fleshed out and getting back to our goal discussion this is one more reason not to just sit if you're over the benchmark your that we we need to look at the full spectrum progress for all students yeah and not just oh we don't have to worry about you if you just to clarify our commitments I do want to thank the families who have been persistent and patient for a long time in this area as the educational leader for the district want to see every one of our students realize their their full potential and we're also stretching the organizational capacity to cover work across a lot of different fronts starting with the building of a core curriculum and a set of consistent instructional practices that hopefully are able to be sort of more targeted in their universalism and that's been a heavy left no less urgent to make sure we meet the rate and level needs of our kids but I feel the same urgency for the need to make sure our practices are culturally responsive to our black and african-american students who are at 12 percent proficiency I need our students to our educators to practice and integrate differentiation and universal design for our students with disabilities at 29 percent proficiency in fifth grade I need them to know how to to have some foundational understandings about language acquisition for those that are learning to speak English who are performing at 17 percent proficiency in fifth grade also so we we are trying to balance all those needs we're talking about the same set of teachers and craft a professional development plan that tries to get at some of these areas I do agree that as we go about our pedagogical models that there are opportunities there like mixed ability grouping or some differentiation by ability that is something we're trying to do in our primary grades for sure so we can certainly continue to take a hard look at and many of the things that are suggested here for sure and see where we can integrate some of these practices not as distinct to tag students but ways to continue to keep the curriculum open-ended to meet the more personalized needs of our students but will be balanced seeing this coming spring a whole host of these areas to try to propose a budget recommend that makes an installment of investment along a lot of different fronts where we want to make progress so we're gonna continue to see what we can do in the interim and see what we can come back and reasonably propose a few months from now thank you very much the board will now vote on resolution five nine four five all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no are there any abstentions resolution five nine four five is approved by a vote of seven to zero with student representative lattrell absent
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thank you thank you thank you all right we are going to jump back on our agenda to the discussion on the referral of our local options levy sorry for the delay for those of you who are here with us on this item tonight the board will vote to refer to renew the Local Option levy for the November ballot the PPS Local Option levy was passed in 2014 by more than 70% of the voters it was originally intended to support 642 teaching positions in reality each year it has been able to fund more than 750 positions for the 2019 2020 school year the renewal is anticipated to raise approximately ninety six point nine million dollars and fund an estimated eight hundred teaching positions the Board of Education is considering referring a renewal of the current levy at the existing rate a dollar ninety nine per thousand of assessed property value this means that the tax rate will continue to be the same if it is approved by our voters in May the board has had discussion to hear from many stakeholders such as the Portland Association of teachers principals parents Portland council PTA and community partners at our last August sixth meeting and previously has had two other board discussions do superintendent do you want to have any brief staff introduction of this item yeah brief staff introduction of this item we have our CFO Cynthia lay in our budget director Georgie like good evening Madame chair members the board superintendent I am here tonight in front of you respectfully asking you to approve the resolution number five 944 to refer to Renault of Local Option levy to voters to be considered for the November 2019 general election and to maintain the rate of $1 $0.99 per $1,000 assessed property value I'm happy to answer any questions you have I'd like to put the motion on the table for resolution five nine four four calling for a five-year Local Option levy to support our teachers in schools do I have a motion so moved director brimm Edwards moves second director more beep director Scott to the punch on that one miss Huff is there any citizen comment on resolution five nine four four no all right we had we had some good citizen comment at our last meeting is there any board discussion on this resolution director more yes so I'm in favor I did have a couple of a couple of questions suggestions and I guess the first is the title I want to make sure to draw the board's attention to the revised resolution and recitals and so maybe may I ask you a question please or requests it might be worthwhile for us we have a revised version that has some perfecting amendments in the actual ballot language can we potentially have a motion to adopt the amendment so that our discussion is on the technically perfected the technically perfected version would would you allow me to do that before you jump in thank you so if you take the revised what I'm moving is you take the revised resolution which I don't have in front of me but it has some the revised version it has a series of of track changes in it and I'm happy to walk through them an exhibit a in the summary the word projected is put a place of estimated on the third bullet there is
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a restructuring of the sentence excuse me can you can't I know I'm not seeing the tract yes you have to go deep into it so it's not to the resolution it's to the actual exhibit what we would that that would be submitted to to the voters and and then there is a change as some established exchanges and then a clarification about the auditing and then there at the end there's a duplicate 'iv sentence that it's just a repeat of what's said earlier so we're striking that and there is also in the paragraph relating to the the financial audit a change as well but that there are technical changes and some just radical changes that I thought we needed one thing that we're confined by is there is a word limit in each of these sections so part of it was to also make sure that we stayed within so sometimes we just made things crisper so that we stayed with them a motion to put this substitute I was just gonna do that but I'm gonna go ahead and all second it motion to put this AB stitute on the table second now back to director more thank you so is there any discussion that Reid is going to have on this particular amendment or on this revised I'm just trying to get the revised version before the boards of the week which is which income this is the underlying resolution itself so it's the changes changes okay so hearing none no you're gonna hear something okay changes themselves on the changes okay well summit okay some of them are on the what was what we were originally had some of them are on the revisions but it's it's on this document that we have in front of us label revised right so the motion there are lots of ways to get work but once we assuming we approve the amendment then we can have a full discussion about the amended resolution which will create an opportunity for you to bring all your concerns so I have a motion in a second on the amendment before us for this revised referral on the ballot levy all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes any opposed any abstentions this revised amended resolution is approved by a vote of 7 to 0 now do we have for discussion on this amended resolution okay yes take it away okay so I want to start with the title of the of the ballot measure levy renewal to maintain teaching positions and classroom supports in the past we have had I think two levies that were exclusively for teachers that were the the levies were explicitly to support certificated teachers and I think I guess I'd like to ask what the benefit
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of adding classroom supports is because I think it could lead to it could unnecessarily complicate the discussion of the living so can somebody explain to me how we got there sure so we had language before us at the public hearing in which it said teaching positions educational programs which we had I guess there wasn't any questions about that and it became classroom support says I guess a discussion that apparently happened with a discussion between staff and some board members but I'm going to speak to whether it's classroom supports or educational programs and I'm gonna start with the underlying one underlying fact which we say in here that we're going to maintain the the average of those teaching positions which is 825 so I think we're pretty clear that 825 teaching positions well I have a question about that too but go ahead okay so it seemed clear so if it's not that's how I read the well I think it's clear I mean if we're talking about the number I get nervous when that's a pretty high number and it's it's based on the the history of this levy over the course of an unprecedented growth in real estate value and therefore really extraordinary revenues if God forbid we get another recession over the next five years which i think is not impossible i wary that we're we're setting the bar very very high and I worry that if if revenues decline we're not going to be able to meet the number I you know better to under promise and over deliver than over promise and under deliver and and so I actually agree with you and down the number I actually agree with you but that was just a parenthetical to my getting to your answer because I thought it would I'm more comfortable with 800 which is a but but I could go yeah but I could so go lower but I was just I guess saying at some point we're sampling some sort of baseline right and then I thought about the conversations we've been having about doing things radically differently in setting our district goals and serving students who hadn't haven't been served well by the district and because we haven't got to the part of the conversation with and it's actually going to be something the superintendent comes to us with around what the strategies are to do things differently and for our students and whether it's culturally specific supports in the classroom supports for English language learners it could be academic intervention specialists it could be behavioral and mental health staff career technical education instructors early education teachers it could be a whole host of things some of them who are teachers and some of them who may have other professional certifications and I guess from my viewpoint by exclusively just saying they're going to be classified teachers may close off some options that in out the out years so five years down the road were a long a long way down the road and some things you know may not be classroom teachers but they may be the things that make a difference for our students and I say maybe culturally specific supports that happen in the classroom and I want I want to allow for people to have that in their thinking when they're going to when they're voting for this that it's not that that's not just our only strategies is teachers so that's the thinking okay um so I'm gonna I'm gonna make it I'm gonna point out a technical issue so we have again in this the in the summary a sentence saying no
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levy funds will be spent for administration on page 4 page 4 of the of the revised things it's in the summary okay so this is that's a sentence that has occurred in the last two levies and and we ran into trouble in the first one the first levy that was passed that had that language because we we didn't really have accounting procedures where we could guarantee we could say you know no money zero dollars were spent on administration it's not a code that says administration no there isn't but I mean we came up when that with an administrative with an accounting mechanism so that's so that we can now say with absolute certainty to the voters when we say no administrative costs we mean no administrative costs goes for teachers okay my worry is if we start talking about other things if we start talking about programs or classroom supports that may or may not be delivered by sort of certificated teachers they may be using you know contracted services or something we probably have to take out that sentence because we're not probably not going to be able to guarantee that zero dollars would be going for administrative costs and it just I mean it's that kind of thing that I think is it makes it unnecessarily complicated and and that's what I worry about did that make any sense it did I'd like to ask our budget team to weigh in on that question and and I'm making a deal out of this because it was a deal for the first levy it was a deal so could you please introduce yourself sorry Thank You Jordan Ely director of budget and analysis the process that we currently use for the levy is at the end of the fiscal year we calculate the average experienced cost of teachers and then we take the actual received revenue we take the revenue divided by that average cost of a teacher and we come up with the number of FTE that we journal onto the levy so that's the that accounting practice that you talked about so we can say that 100% of the levy gets used to pay for teacher costs that being said the levy does go into the general fund it is an unrestricted resource in the general fund so it's it's helpful to have language that clearly indicates the board's intent for these funds the calculation I'm sorry the calculation is being done in May and then reviewed by the CRC and then once again at the end of the fiscal year when we closed the books that we will outro up with the last two months of actual information for teachers cars just to add to this because I here point director more but it is it is it's a very solvable problem under under Oregon budget law and I think the way it sounds like staffs doing it by essentially billing to the levy costs we can be very clear that we're not billing administration costs to the levy funds and I think to meet this our auditors would be able to second that and say yeah absolutely oh I agree I agree I mean the way we've currently set it up yeah it's it's not a new system but if we but if we set it up so that we might be supporting you know I don't know CBO's delivering services which I think was one you know part of that would probably you know if we pay that contract some of that money would be going probably to overhead for the CBO's I mean I just I'm being nitpicky here and I hear you and I need to be nitpicky because we're because we're saying no we do need to be careful but I also think that is something that from from a financial standpoint because we're billing to the levy we can be very clear to back out any administrative costs that would be that would be questioned about anyone and our independent eye outside auditors will so I hear what you're saying we need to be
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careful but I'm also really confident that think that you director Scott and director more I reassure you that through our accounting system we will have coding mechanism but we will be able to code certain expenditures so that we can call out but what part of the budget what part of the actual expenditures being spent on the local option levy and then I'll just add to that that we actually do have a code for administrators so anybody that wants to see how much we spent on administrators the code would be five because it's an expenditure and then one one four so any codes in our accounting system that start with five one one four under the object is administration I don't expect people in the community to open up our budget book and figure that out on their own but I am happy to answer that question for anybody that would like to know and furthermore we welcome the community to come and reveal the information with us so at any time but I'm hearing is there's absolutely nothing preventing us from validating that every dollar of collected levy funds goes to teaching positions yes that is a correct statement into your point about the community validating part of the oversight structure for our levies is the community budget Review Committee on which director Moore sat for many years hence the interest and experience on this particular issue but they are charged with the oversight of the levy funds annually yes that is correct and the other thing if I can just you mentioned a recession because I do think that that's an important point as we look at these things it would it would take a what's happened over the last few years with growth in real market value versus assessed value and the tax is on assessed value it would take a really really significant recession to bring those real market values back down now we saw that in 2008 so nothing is impossible but I also think it's really important that we give voters the best estimate of the revenue we're going to raise because yeah we could go to or we could have you know a massive you know you know earthquake I mean all kinds of things could happen that would throw that into question these though are conservative but you know good estimates about the type of revenue that would come in and frankly I'm really comfortable that it would take a really really massive recession and frankly at that point I'm also comfortable going back to the voters and saying we did not expect the 9.0 earthquake when we passed this and I think it's better we could go out there with an estimate that's half this and say just in case you know it might be lower but I think it's better to go out with a realistic estimate of what it'll raise I was curious if we had you're asking about the recession or you know questioning what would happen in that scenario and you know going back to previous levies do we have data about how many teachers average were we're hired during those periods 2006 in particular it was much lower it's gone up quite a bit I think the last one we were estimating 600 and we've gone all the way up to 8 that's because property values have just shot up in addition to the allowable increase under the cap so I'm just curious what happened in 2017-18 that we actually did below 800 so that that is actually based on the actual cost of the teachers if you look at how much revenue we collected that year we collected more revenue than the year before but each teaching position on average costed more and so the actual FTE funded by the levy that year was lower and to put in laypersons terms paraphrasing what deputy superintendent Hertz has said before is that your office is estimating just about a wash in terms of the growth of our assessed property tax base and the growth in costs and benefits obviously per teacher that is correct what 3% I think it's important for the board to know that when we look at the revenue growth over time I've heard of talked about tonight how we've seen an extraordinary growth the growth in assessed value is actually capped and so that growth is not primarily driven by the assessed value growth it's actually driven by our collection rate or a reduction in our delinquency rate so when we make estimates of how many teaching positions we can pay for and how much revenue we expect to collect where we also we're not just predicting what the assessed value growth is we're also looking at what we think our collection rate is going to be and I think it's important for the community to know that we have estimated a flat collection rate so we're not over the past few years we have seen the collection rate go up or the delinquency rate go down and now we're projecting we
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saw between last year and this year that it kind of stabilized and so now we're saying going forward we expect that to stabilize and and not to have a reduction in the delinquency rate so there's a lot of assumptions that go into the translation you consider a fairly conservative oh they're conservative yes so I'm sorry I'm just to ask a question about the delinquency rate so I'm interested what what it is and then does our delete did we see a huge spike in that we the tax all that tax collecting entities see spike in the delinquency in 2008 and following that and it's continued to fall since the right well the precipitous drop starting and the 1516 fiscal year and it has been flat since then so since 15 16 16 17 16 17 so we're predicting we're continuing on the three-year and if we had that big recession that's great it would we might be able to look at the previous year's didn't know that's really what would cause me more concern as director Scott said we would have to have a pretty incredible recession for real market values to drop far enough to affect the assessed value so it really would be the delinquency rate that we're concerned about Thanks I think we also have to consider if we are going to change the length of the school year or the length of the school day if we did that eyes I'm gonna throw out 10% as a number that would essentially reduce the number of teaching positions supported by 10% which is 80 so that's something to think about when we're throwing the merce around here I I'm gonna agree with director more I would prefer to see this dedicated strictly to teachers I think if we're gonna specify a minimum number like 800 we're looking at such a marginal piece that might be non teachers why are we making it complicated and we can fund that out of other sources we can still go out and talk about the strategies that were employing to improve achievement that's certainly one of those strategies is funding teachers being a new board member there's pieces of this culturally that I don't understand but for me what I'm what I'm hearing in the shift is that the narrative has been classroom teachers and this is really about looking at our goals and trying to invest in teachers that will help us do some of the differentiation some of the things the tags parents were just asking us for some of the things we know will be essential to meet our goals so that my understanding is all of this will be for a direct instructional staff for students they just might not be a single classroom teachers and is that I mean well that is unclear and in fact there were some examples listed that were not direct instruction and I think you we would just make our campaign a lot easier if we just said class teachers certified teachers and we're I mean we're arguing about this much really in terms of expenditure and this is a way just to make it a lot cleaner both in terms of accounting we don't have to worry about any of the making sure there's no administration involved it's just cuts the chase we already have established procedures and I'm wondering we already have established procedures this is what we've done before and yet we're expecting different outcomes and so where is that line between holding that trust with the public and being clear and also giving ourselves the freedom to innovate I'm we have plenty of freedom to innovate this is 70 million out of their excuse me 90 million plus out of a 700 million plus budget there's no constraints here there's no constraints this is a bad making things simple out on the campaign trail and and when I said established procedures I meant around counting again we're just talking about changing how we do things that's a different discussion from from this I think everything that we're talking about can peacefully coexist here I think we have the accounting procedures in place to make sure that we have fidelity to the
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language that we're putting before the voters without question and that's been continually vetted externally but I think the superintendent has also message that a modicum of flexibility in how we serve our students needs in the classroom could be useful we could we could change the language either way and still have it be accurate and still have it represent the strategy it's just a question of you know what do we want to message to the public superintendent do you want to yeah I think as I stated earlier I mean I think we could say legitimately every dollar would go to a certificated teacher and teachers serve in different capacities in different ways within school communities but they're providing direct service to students so all I wanted to hear is and I have I haven't not heard it some assurance is that as we go into our budget development of the strategies we'll be proposing or require us to dedicate all of our other resources to making sure that we're resourcing and funding the kind of student supports like reading specialists and and other ways to make the kinds of gains that I think we all want to see possible because if we don't resource them we won't so the current the current levy funds reading specialists for example the certificated teaching staff they're providing direct services to students redirector Moore and I are both CBR C alum and so we've been whispering over here about page 4 and page 6 both have statements page four it's the fourth paragraph down it says funds will be placed in a sub-account and then on page six it's the second bullet point that says funds will be placed in a sub-account and that didn't sound like the process you had described so I'm there was a little confusion here about the difference there certainly just so that we can really capture the dollar received for a local option levy we created a fund kauffman 102 separate from fund 101 which is general fund they're all general fund but we extract them differently so we can easily call out how much we receive for Local Option funds this is just accounting but we even take a step further so we can I'm second grade what's regular of dollars for general fund versus what is for local option levy we also have internal control in place where we review the work where we see to make sure that the receipt we received from the county is being properly coded so the other things that we do in the background so that sub fund is the front end and then what you were describing is the back end revenue and where the the journal entry we're talking about is the expenditures so it's a separate fund I don't even know what a sub fund or a sub account is we have the general fund representative fund one hundred and then this fund exists within that fund so it has a parent it's it's it's still part of the general fund but we create a sub fund so that we can pull those resources out away from our state and local property taxes understood it to be a separate fund in the sense that it has its own number of backing it does have its own yeah for revenue purposes correct thank you that's that's what I thought it was thank you for the question I I still have I am still concerned in there saying nothing for administration it's you know if we're contemplating using this money for something other than teachers that makes me I think we're leaving ourselves open to unnecessary questions and confusion but I thought I just forgot a lupe say that this will only be used for certificated teachers let's just say so so have that be the title and then you can wax poetic in the summary about all the ways you can use certificated teachers I'm concerned that if we don't specifically talk about ways in which we're going to help our students who
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haven't been served in specific ways then when we get to the budget it will be the understanding it will be potentially the community's thinking that it's going to go to just classroom teachers and that's what we currently have and that's hasn't that's a that's incorrect it's not just classroom teachers we current so we currently have just teachers and I think there's other potentially other ways that we might want to support our students so I'm also in favor of supporting of this language change for that reason because the students that we aren't currently serving may be better served by having a reading specialist for instance and I'm also confused about white I don't understand the nuances in the language what we currently have are in the bond language or the levee language rather are our teachers only teachers and right now we're we're suggesting adding reading specialists and how are they different there'd be anything in the language preventing us from assigning to teachers to a classroom and still meet the spirit of the levy okay so I think we're welling in semantics here and I think what the superintendent has said is that any sort of certificated teachers can serve the strategies that you are envisioning for classroom supports and we do have some concern over the ambiguity of some of the language here and I'm asking the superintendent if you would feel hamstrung in any way if our levy just spoke to teachers and would you still have the flexibility you need to drive the strategies do you think in the way that we've described it there would be flexibility to use the levy to fund teachers however we use those to provide direct service to students we have other resources where I'm I'm counting on that we be able to fund all of the other interventions and supports where we want to see movement for our student subgroups so those strategies would be prioritized in your in your budget and some of them I'm guessing will involve teachers so but the language doesn't prevent you wouldn't prevent you from also having the current language doesn't prevent you from having any of the same flexibility correct right so I'm thinking of models I've implemented before let's say there's four third-grade classrooms but I assign fifth-wheel teacher who goes room to room providing direct services to students co-teaching with those homeroom teachers so we're still funding teachers they're providing direct intervention and teaching to our students there's enough flexibility in teaching positions okay here's the problem I have with the title classroom supports so right now teaching positions and classroom supports okay many of the classroom supports can be teachers but many of them may not be teachers I mean things that are called classroom supports may not be teachers okay so my concern is when we're trying to sell this to the electorate I think it's important that they know what they're buying and that they're buying teachers who make who fulfill many many diverse roles within the district you know mostly in classrooms but not only and but they're still teachers and it it just it just feels to me like we are injecting a level of ambiguity that is both unnecessary and unhelpful so give given given the confusion as we've talked about it I I'm tempted to say yes maybe the simplest message since we're all gonna be half there is is it's just for teachers so I would like to make an amendment to so go ahead and just sort of limit it back to teachers but it feels like that's an amendment that needs to be made in in at least two or three different places in the resolution am I remembering timeline we have to to vote on this tonight okay so being a new board member maybe I'll turn to our attorney and just ask is there a process where we can like recess for five
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minutes to figure that language out not in a quorum where you can hope sorry yeah we were volunteering man list that really critical point I'm happy I'm happy to take direction from the boards come back with proposed language I wonder if there are other other other issues besides good point right are there either yeah so I'm just gonna say I don't support taking out classroom supports because I think it gives us additional flexibility to help support supporting students and we don't know what is going to be out there in the future so if it's taken out I'm not supportive of that and I think we have research that shows that voters will support what we have before them and that a big priority for them is support for struggling students so I just if we take it out even though just to be clear the superintendent is said that he'll be able to do everything that we're talking about needing to do if the language is limited to teachers and he's also said he would be can do everything he wants to do with the current language so what are we getting by keeping the language in again I think additional flexibility but but I mean I literally concretely I'm just trying to get it what what is it we will get by keeping the language that we lose if we take the language out because what I'm getting the sense of here's what we gained by taking the language out as clarity in terms of a message to voters but we're not losing anything substantively if there's something we're losing something like there is a specific expenditure or practice or something we won't be able to fund I guess I'm curious as to what what that is so one thing I'll just go back to the testimony that we had at the public hearing the other night where there was a focus on class size reduction or lowering class size and I think there will be an expectation if we just say teachers it will be translated to classroom teachers and this when we say we're going to maintain the teachers that means we're gonna maintain the class size and that's this is given you actually say that in the summary number two is help maintain class sizes so if you don't want to say that one of the things and I think it's strategy was not the primary strategy to increase drive okay so so on page four in the summary second paragraph this renewed Local Option levy would continue to fund teaching positions to one support a well-rounded education including Career and Technical programs and enrichments and electives for all students to help maintain class sizes three provide supports such as reading specialists for struggling students I'm fine with those three bullet points thank you okay but you don't need in the title the the the term classroom supports which i think is subject to I mean I think it injects a level of ambiguity that is not going to be helpful you can still talk about supports we could I mean we could wax poetic I expect us to talk do more than talk about it and to me it's an indication of the community that it's it's about more than what we're currently doing so we can disagree I'm going to call the question on the underlying resolution I think this has been a conversation really worth having because we brought forward the most important issues about this campaign I think the divergent perspectives are all covered by what we want to do here together I think we all believe that we need a lot of different roles to come to the aid of our students in this really important work that we're embarking on especially for our students that we have then failing I think the superintendent has identified a wide range of strategies I think it's clear that the levy will fund predominantly teachers in service to that as it has in the past and I think with the modest addition of the language here we're going to convey to the public maybe we would already have the flexibility without it but we're going to convey to the public that we have an interest in investing in a range of strategies in service to our kids does that suit your needs I disagree with that interpretation
03h 20m 00s
I don't think and conveys that it clearly conveys that the dominant investment from the levy is certified teaching positions we have a minimum threshold of teachers but and classroom supports means that what the levy supports takes place in our classroom it's not strategies in the central office its classroom support I have a question in the comment the question is have we done polling on the wit on this language do we have an idea how well or not the language is received but also just from a personal perspective we are presented with statistics about the voter turnout and the percentage the win rates that were compelling when I heard them and they were in the high 60s early 70s consistently you know Portlanders love education and are willing to tax themselves to get to these goals and and I was influenced by those statistics they were high they were in the high 60s low 70s and and they impacted me and it and impacted my my own decision so we have done research support of this the language that was surveyed was the teaching positions and educational programs so when we changed I mean classroom supports I think was felt to be more specific than educational programs but yes and we're well positioned assuming we have it on the ballot I mean any kid any any parent that's had a struggling kid it's not gonna mind that we bring those to conclusion I was saying any parent of a kid who's struggled is not going to mind the language about classroom supports because you're gonna want to see more classroom supports if you have a kid that is failing would director Bailey and director more feel more comfortable if it said classroom support staff okay I have I have not seen the polling data so I don't know what it says if if you're basing the decision based on survey results that the rest of us haven't seen then okay I I still think it is going to complicate it okay whatever the board will now vote on resolution five nine oh excuse me I didn't see that director to pass let's take a three-minute recess until director to pass returns amendment but we will not can I ask a question in mean time yes okay we are not on recess yeah I'm gonna so we're voting on this and in order to submit it as ballot language correct okay so am I correct in assuming that once we vote on this we cannot make any changes this is the language of the referral actually yes we will not no one can discuss this issue while we're at recess we'll just wait till director Pass returns three minute recess
03h 25m 00s
all right the board will now vote on resolution five nine four four all in favor please indicate by saying yes yes yes yes all opposed please indicate by saying no there any abstentions resolution five eight seven seven is approved by a vote of 7 to 0 with student representative lateral absent I just want to close that conversation by saying I think it was healthy to have a robust conversation around the language there I also think that we are very much united in what we want to do here and what we're all committed to doing together I think we're also united in supporting a variety of strategies I think again I appreciate director Moore you're bringing the conversation forward so that we had some more critical dialogue on it I think it's helpful I think it helps us make better decisions and we're now as citizens all engaged in this process of communicating to the voters about it and making sure that we get this pass so thank you for that
03h 30m 00s
discussion I agree this was a tactical discussion I'm ready as usual to go out and with the rest of you work our ears off to get this passed and on that note I would like to thank you in particular director Bailey for your early footwork that you have been doing to get us to this point of referral thank you all right given the late late ish hour I'm gonna suspend our discussion of our board governance structure until our next meeting and we'll be in conversation with each of you around that and we will proceed to our business agenda we did not have any items pulled from the business gen agenda but director Broome Edwards you had something that you wanted to raise so thank you do you want to move the second move by director Scott seconded by director bream Edwards is half are there any changes to the business agenda no is there any public comment on the business agenda No all right for discussion so I just wanted to raise one issue and this is in the context of continuous improvement work is underway with our contracting process especially those contracts that impact our students in a very positive way and I think we heard some of that tonight in the public comment around our long relationship with sei on the front of the contracting process we have a really robust system of initial contract review and I think that's been developed by a hard-working staff working with the board board members and also the Audit Committee persistent board agitation over time yeah and I think I think we've nailed it I think that when Secretary of State looked at the front end we really have a great system in place the districts also committed to monitoring the quality the services provided and implying the valuation of a performance tool and there and that the district will evaluate the deliverables against the expected outcome we have and I'm going to talk about this in the next agenda item when we talk about get to the committee's agenda but the independent performance auditor will start will be starting an audit of our contracting process which will support our ongoing continuous improvement and transparency with the goal of assessing how our contracts support our students so tonight in the business agenda we have a host of contracts that impact our students that fit within that sort of narrower band that I think we we all want to see the most sort of efficacy in terms of supporting our students it's worth noting that in addition to all the work that's happened on the front end there's a new template for the board for contracts where staff is asking for advanced authorization and that's just new from two weeks ago we have a security contract that has an explanation of that so thanks to the staff for sort of turning around really quickly an advanced author a new template for when they're asking for advanced authorization that's we're going to be approving a contract when we actually haven't seen the contract yet so just best practice to have a process by which what contracts are allowed to move forward with advanced authorization there's also a new template for each of the contracts now and they are I think just called the board cover memo something with the title and we had about I don't know eight to ten of those this last week and though that cover memo highlights why direct negotiation or FP press the RFP process was used it summarizes data and outcomes for the price opposed to summarize data and outcomes for the prior year and describes any change from prior year scope the new deliverables are planned for improvement so I read through so I really appreciate staff doing that because it's a new piece I think to this sort of continuous improvement that we have underway so I read through all of them and then also the supporting data and as a further process improvement and just thinking through its that it's a new new template I want to ask that the superintendent that we received for the contracts that we are going to be approving tonight and I'm going to be supportive of all of them but that we have board cover memos that are revised so that they reflect the staff's assessment of last year's sort of goal attainment and then where there were many places where the goals weren't attained what action staff has taken if we're looking at a renewal and these are
03h 35m 00s
all for renewals if it's a renewal if there wasn't a tainment of the goals whether the goal needs to be revised or a different strategy so that we're getting this continuous improvement in the goal so as I look through them I noted we probably could staff would benefit anytime you have a new process of having additional guidance from from you the new chief of get this right of systems performance and the deputy superintendent of business operations and our contract managers so that they have a sense of when they still like filling out the template that we're got the information the board needs in order to be able to make the to assess as we proceed with voting on a renewal I think this is part of our journey that we've been on in terms of improving our contracting practices and I think one of the other benefits of having a little bit more of a descriptive assessment from staff is that it helps us to compare like contracts to one another which is hard to do right now because most of the information that comes forward to us is the direct account of performance from the contractor themselves and so that's why I think a little bit more of that uniform internal assessment would be helpful yeah I just make clear this isn't a common a comment on the contractors of the providers that are providing services to our students it's really about us creating a system just like we did on the front of the contracts of creating on the back end so that we have oversight so we're able to really see you know which strategies and services are providing the greatest efficacy and if we aren't getting the outcomes to ask why and just create this continuous improvement cycle but I say I think we have the right template now it's just going to be it's a new muscle we were going to need to be exercising and I think the ones that were submitted tonight could use additional guidance on being able to provide clearly for the board what the goals were how the promisee the performance through the goals and then what what if anything is being recommended for the from for the coming year and again this is not a substitute for voting on the contracts tonight and as director Thomason said it's less about we hear from the contractors of here's here's how we here's the data here's how we feel about our performance but it's really getting that critical eye and not critical that's probably the wrong word getting that the the district to focus on our assessment of that and are there any changes we need to make or do we need to be doubling down or expanding each other schools so that's I would just request that we have that and I think with what then also we'll be in good shape as we head into the I'm sure there's gonna be more contracts coming through the pipeline you want to see cover memos in the way that you described them for all of the contracts on tonight's business agenda or or not the transportation facilities ones but the others no it's just it's a revision of the ones that we currently that we received and again sort of applaud the staff we're putting together I think a template that is responsive for what we need both to assess for the board to assess it without going through all the data but also I think respects the work that our service providers have done so it's there was I don't know maybe there were 79 contracts that were not transportation or facilities related right the ones that the staff selected I think that there were other ones for ones that are direct services to students and this is something that came up in the Secretary of State's audit and also that for the board if like we have thousands of contract we're going to really rely on staffs judge staffs judgment and the recommendations but the ones that they felt that we could make the biggest difference in terms of a leverage point for our students was to focus on those that are services to students as we're gonna pick contracts out of all the thousand that we're gonna approve or ones that were not even going to see cuz they're less than a hundred fifty thousand that these are the ones to focus on again the templates the
03h 40m 00s
right template I think we just need with any new process to have guidance on how we can most effectively review and get the staffs expertise of their judgment of the performance of the contract okay this is very very timely conversation as our own internal auditor is just getting an approved audit underway to look exactly at our protocols and processes for contracts like these any further discussion on the business agenda the board will now vote on the business agenda all in favor please indicate by saying yes all opposed please indicate by saying no any abstentions the business agenda is approved by a vote of 7 to 0 student representative lateral absent all right or conference reports so I have two committee reports the first is from the policy and Governance Committee and we had a meeting last week of the committee and we brought back a series of changes to the professional conduct between staff and students policy that has been under development for eight or nine months we had the benefit of a fresh set of eyes sets of eyes from the new board members so really appreciate you all taking a look at it we got some great suggestions things that the old board members had looked at maybe 50 times and missed something so we think really took advantage of it a new fresh perspective in addition we also had a really great discussion with representative from the Portland Association teachers about things from a teacher's perspective on the latest draft and I think we are very close to a bringing back a new draft for first reading we have I think my sense is one last meeting but having the opportunity here directly from classroom teacher and a representative of the teachers really I think had enriched the for the board members were there really enriched the discussion and gave us a different way to look at it we had in some cases thought we had totally nailed the language on something that they were concerned about and we hadn't quite got it and having sort of the back and forth at the meeting and just being able to get real time feedback on sort of suggested revisions made a huge difference so I think we're pretty close so we had two other things on the on that agenda but they'll have to move forward cuz we felt it was a great discussion and again we're close to having it done there's training underway for the new school year and we'll be set up I think really well heading into the fall having a a really robust policy that has had the input of parents teachers staff administrators well I would say that we have a PTA rep at every every committee meeting it's almost ex officio now and so it goes back and lism a large go back to we earlier in the process we this is our probably fourth first reading and we did get feedback from parents and I think we're getting I think we're getting really really close and again really appreciate the work that that you and director consum did on the whole piece about volunteers because you know this this school system runs with lots of volunteers I'm providing helping support to our classroom teachers and so that was a key piece so thanks the two of you so I think we're pretty close so that's the policy and governance committee and then the audit committee met this week and we had a number of agenda items we planned out this year's work and shifting to hopefully quarterly meeting and sort of our two are the two focuses of the the work of the the committee this year will really be the auditing that's underway and for the twenty nine twenty nineteen twenty and also the development of receiving
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the twenty twenty-one draft audit plan from the auditors that would then advance the board and in addition I think the other piece of work is just monitoring and supporting the standing up of the the audit function because it's been several years since we've had a functioning audit capacity here and this will allow us it just be pieces that are different about having out a committee that we'll need to do to support them this first year for example one of the agenda items is we had a review of the committee Charter and that's going to come to the whole board for review so that the full board will see what the what the committee's charter is and the independent auditors charter in addition we had a brief update about the hiring of our second auditor and it's hopefully imminent and this is for the senior the senior performance auditor and we think we'll have a great compliment to our existing auditor Mary Katherine Moore so that's in the works and then the last piece is our current internal auditor brought to us the sort of work plan for the first the first audit which is around contracts and she spent considerable time sort of creating sort of the template and her testing okay I mean they used the wrong sample it's the wrong Burbage here but bringing all the items that she's gonna test for in our current contracting process and this would give us some insights on the improvements that are currently underway in our auditing and again I think the spirit on which she's approached that she's meeting with the contracting staff and has had conversations with the Secretary of State's auditor so that we make sure that we capture any concerns they had so I think we'll so I think we're launched and she will come back to the full board when she has some preliminary findings so that's the report from the Audit Committee I don't know if either the other two members want to add anything we're good to get finished our discussion about committees and who will be serving on what committees and what committees we're gonna have moving forward so we'll have that conversation next week and or excuse me at our next meeting and I also would like to have someone report back on our boards experience with school board governance Institute at Harvard so director Lowry can I ask you to do that at our next you made eye contact all right thank you we are adjourned next meeting of the Board of Education will be held August 26

Sources

PPS Board of Education, Archive 2019-2020, https://www.pps.net/Page/15694 (accessed: 2022-03-24T00:57:49.341831Z)
PPS Communications, "Board of Education" (YouTube playlist), https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CC942A46270A16E (accessed: 2023-10-10T04:10:04.879786Z)

2019-08-13 PPS School Board Regular Meeting

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Event 1: Regular Meeting of the Board of Education - August 13, 2019

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